Topic: The Nintendo Switch Thread

in its most basic and universal form, art is bringing imagination to life and the creation of the real into another form beyond the ability of the subject matter, skill is about experience, not superior ability

yes, programming can be a complicated and fantastic art, even beyond the visual, music, story, ect.

Disagree. There's a finite number of physical copies of Earthbound. The second-hand market gives them value. If you couldn't buy it second-hand (eg. if the physical media somehow only loaded for the original buyer) then the game becomes worthless.

What would happen to game sales if those £50 Day 1 purchases become instantly worthless once you've had enough of it?

Sure, that's not gonna do much to affect Jaxon's buying habits, but there's a lot of us out there, myself included, who wouldn't drop that sort of cash on a game. Even with the option of selling it, the most I've ever spent on a single game is £37.

I don't personally tend to sell many of my games at all (though many do) but I have started taking a few more risks on games, having had a positive experience from selling those I ended up not wanting. This confidence is good for a market, particularly in the context of broken games etc. getting released.

And of course, do me that have sold a game take that money and spend it on gardening tools? Maybe, but quite often, they take the money and confidence they've recovered from selling their game and put it towards the next new release.

All the second hand market really does is encourage those with lower budgets into the market. I bought my first console (Gamecube) second-hand, on ebay, when I was about 26 years old. Consoles and console games had always been beyond my budget, but ebay finally created a market place for me to try it out at a price I was comfortable with. Despite loving the couple of occasions I got to play Super Mario Kart on the SNES when I was 12, it took me another 14 years and the help of ebay to get me to buy a Nintendo console. I doubt it would ever have happened if I didn't have the chance to buy a second-hand bundle.

I've only ever bought used cars. If I couldn't buy used cars, I wouldn't save up for a new car at 5-10 times the price, I'd just cycle/bus/taxi more.

And as for piracy, the whole reason I have any interest and fondness for gaming in my 30s is because my brother saved and saved for an Amiga A500 in the knowledge that we'd be able to copy games for free to make buying the hardware worthwhile in the first place. If you couldn't copy games we'd never have got the Amiga and I'd never have gotten into gaming.

Gaming is expensive for kids and the industry benefits from having ways for lower income people to get into it, helping breed lifelong gamers.

It's kind of weird, there's plenty of backlog and games I want to buy but I'll probably end up doing Xenoblade 2 NG+ (base game and Torna) if a Smash Direct + demo/beta isn't inbound soon.

I set a goal to finish Revelations 2 and both Bayonettas before the end of the month but FighterZ keeps distracting me lol

@GrailUK
Well, she would say that the way she does a filling is different from another dentist's, and she can see the subtle (personal) differences.

No big deal, I'm not saying I disagree with you or anything. I just think it's interesting to see what people think. "Art" is a pretty big topic.

Anybody know when The Missing is releasing? It says the 11th, but that was on Thursday and no sign as of yet.

@rallydefault Agreed...and I'm the first to admit I'm not really the guy to be defining it lol.

@GrailUK I'm going to have to agree with you in saying games are not art. Some games may have artistic qualities and some can certainly move me but like 99% of movies, television and film they are entertainment and I think SOME of the people who see them as more than just entertainment do so to try and justify the investment of time and money to what is just a but of time killing entertainment. Also some people just love being pretentious.

As for preservation being justification for piracy you know what anyone who wants to pirate something go ahead thats your choice whether it is for the convenience or financial reasons or whatever but I highly doubt every ROM site user who claims they are doing it for preservation is a games scholar looking to help the next generation of gamers these are the people who need to be more honest with themselves.

If anything I find the idea that entertainment isn't art and that art is somehow some higher form of... whatever, more pretentious. Entertainment is an art.

@gcunit Gah, my head is really going to hurt trying to type this. Entertainment isn't an art. Performing is an art. Film making is an art. Painting is an art. But the product they make is either made for purpose e.g a puzzle game is designed to perplex a player so they are entertained playing it or a context outside it's purpose communicating a different expression which is more a piece of art. I'm not willing to say one form is higher than the other as both require adept skill and knowledge (although some modern art seems to buck this trend in my eyes lmao), but fundamentally, their purpose is different. MC Esher's Relativity plays around with the idea of perspective. The eshop game The Bridge draws inspiration from MC Esher to make a puzzle game. One is art, the other is entertainment. Sure, programming is an art (some would argue it is a skill much like drawing or painting), but they have made a piece of entertainment, not art. Maybe...I don't know anymore lol. I'm gonna bow out of this discussion because I'm not clever enough to convey what I mean lol!

@GrailUK Art can be both a process and a product in my book. Mona Lisa is a work of art; Mona Lisa is art. 1-2 Switch is a work of art; 1-2 Switch is art.

@gcunit Ye. Please don't think I am trying to say you are wrong either mate Christ, I'm not that arrogant. Maybe Nintendo games are Dadaist masterpieces protesting against war, poverty and capitalism. It would certainly explain some of their business decisions hahah!

@GrailUK @gcunit I think defining 'art' is a debate that is never going to be resolved on a Nintendo fansite or anywhere else for that matter anytime soon. I personally think everyday entertainment and art are very different concepts and that while the everyday can be beautiful and art can also be beautiful this doesn't mean that the everyday is art. I think everyone can have there own definition of art thats cool but you know its a Sunday afternoon I've just had a lovely meal with my wife and kids and I'm going to lay back and play some Super Mario Party with them I'll leave the philosophical debates to you'll.

@bluemage1989 Ye. Let's just draw a line under it and move on.

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@ReaderRagfish Yeah agreed. The best forms of art doesn't come from trying so hard, it just comes naturally by just creating the best possible product you can get. Games like Dark Souls, Xenogears, Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, Halo 1, Chrono Trigger, and etc fit that bill pretty nicely if you ask me. But if you really really try hard to be art inherently like what Braid does, you'll miss the mark pretty badly (and Braid kinda fails at that whereas Dark Souls succeeds better).

And besides, some works of art commonly used also doubled as entertainment. As an example, Charles Dickens' books may seem like stuffy old books all about doom and gloom like A Tale of Two Cities, but they were actually written as funny books for its time for entertainment. Of course we know of books like those for being more profound and deep, but for the time there was actual humorous qualities that only really stick for people of that time period.

Of course at the end of the day, right now the term "art" is so abstract and arbitrary that before anyone argues if anything is art, the term "art" needs to be defined with hard guidelines.

At this rate I wonder in how many pages from now you guys will have defined the very meaning of life!

Duh, it's 42. Everyone knows that the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42. The real problem is that nobody knows what the question it's self is.

Life only exists to play video games.

Anyone who disagrees is wrong. :^]

No, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

@EvilLucario
But my life is Not for gaming entirely.
There are another things i must do like drawing, giving a private lessons, doing my chores, etc.