[ SECRET POST #3798 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3798 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.



__________________________________________________



02.


__________________________________________________



03.


__________________________________________________



04.


__________________________________________________



05.


__________________________________________________



06.


__________________________________________________



07.












Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 38 secrets from Secret Submission Post #544.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

05. http://i.imgur.com/Fhg4iEe.png

[(Anonymous)]

I have never in my life read, played, watched, or otherwise consumed a work of fiction because I was interested in the author's Very Important Opinions on human nature/the essential doom of humanity/the true moral value of heroism/whatever. I read/watch/play stuff because I want to see where the plot goes, or what happens to the characters, or whether my ship is going to kiss. If I wanted the author's opinions on human nature or whatever, I'd go find a philosophy book.

[(Anonymous)]

Congratulations about only liking things on the most basic possible level I guess

[(Anonymous)]

DA

Was that necessary? Someone is stating their personal preferences and you have to be a smug dick about it.

There is nothing wrong with what they are doing.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

I know my response was harsh so fair enough. But to be clear, I don't think OP is just stating their preferences. Their post is pretty hostile to the idea that works of fiction can engage with deep themes, and seems to imply that deep themes only belong in philosophy books. It's a contemptuous post.

[(Anonymous)]

No, it isn't. Yours, however, most definitely is.

[(Anonymous)]

nayrt

What is this lol. So if I eat food because it tastes good, and I don't go into appreciation of the artisan handcraftmanship of ancient cultures and tradition and history of it every time, I'm enjoying food at the ~most basic level~ like a sad, basic person and deserve sarcastic congratulations for it?

I must be out of touch if "doing things for enjoyment" is now basic. Has hipsterdom taken over that far?

[(Anonymous)]

If we're going to use that analogy, then OP is the equivalent of someone shitting on people who like to cook because it's pointless when you can just get food delivered

I let myself get annoyed and my response was impatient and rude and not in line with my best self but dammit if OP wasn't on some shit to start with

[(Anonymous)]

Uh pretty sure OP was responding to loads of people who hold the common pretentious belief that simply enjoying a story or a game simply presenting a story, i.e. cinematic, is "basic," which is what was in the secret they are replying to.

It's not "on some shit" to reply to an idea that was presented to them.

They are doing only exactly what you did.

[(Anonymous)]

They are doing only exactly what you did.

I agree. We're both being dicks. Granted, I shouldn't have let them get my goat.

[(Anonymous)]

I mean, if you're really interested in a mid-level fantasy author's opinions on whether it's really moral to try to help the poor peasants or whether the correct thing to do is leave them to their noble shitholes, good for you! Have fun. I picked up this book because I thought something other than authorial navelgazing was going to happen in it.

[(Anonymous)]

Midlevel fantasy writers might not be good at it

That doesn't mean it's never anything more than worthless authorial navelgazing

[sachiko_san]

Same. Not a fan of analyzing everything I read as if everything needs to have a message in it because I simply don't care about it.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't like the story actively getting in the way of gameplay, if I wanted story I'd read a book.

[(Anonymous)]

it sucks that you don't like it. genuinely.

I don't think being metafictional is the only way for video games to be good, and I agree that there are times when people use that approach as a shorthand for "intelligent and artsy and worthwhile"

at the same time, I do think that video games are distinctly good at doing metafictional and complex things. even if metafictional approaches aren't distinct to video games, there are genuinely things you can do in video games that just aren't possible in books. and while there's nothing intrinsically wrong with games trying to be cinematic, I also think it's true that most games that try to be cinematic are aggressively bad at it. It's not that being cinematic is bad for video games, but most cinematic video games are bad. I mean this is a medium where people take the fucking Halo storyline seriously. no offense if people like it, horses for courses and all that, but if you're talking about What Games Can Do As Art - if you're talking on that level - the Halo storyline is a load of hot garbage.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I try to stay out of Games as Art, because it digs too much into the question of what kind of books qualify as Art. If I can point to a game that's equivalent to The Deed of Paksenarrion, does that count, or is the game not really Art because Paks isn't really Art? How about if I can point to a Lovecraft equivalent, or something that's modeled on '60s comic books? I would say that all of those are at least potentially as creative and insightful as a work of Art, but I'm aware that a lot of people would disagree.

In terms of my standards, a lot of what I value is empathy. Not just portraying the emotions that characters feel, but trying to make the player feel the same emotions. That's been "feminine" since long before I was born, though, and Art tends to be something that's defined and categorized by men.

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

I completely get where you're coming from with all of that, and I share a lot of the ambivalence with regards to the idea of Games As Art.

at the same time, even if you don't want to use the particular conceptual framework of Art, I think you're inevitably going to have to deal with a lot of the issues and ideas that underly the concept of Games As Art if you're going to talk about this kind of thing. Like, what should games try to do? What are games actually doing? If you're going to talk about whether or not games should be cinematic, it's going to end up being important whether games are doing things that are the equivalent of Deeds of Paksenarrion, and how worthwhile it is to be doing things that are the equivalent of Deeds of Paksenarrion. If you want to talk about the importance of empathy, that requires looking at how a game creates empathy and deals with empathy and whether that's successful or not. Art doesn't need to be the framework for whether or not that's successful but it's a set of issues that's going to come up.

Or, to put it another way, if you're going to try to evaluate games on the basis of whether they're creative and insightful, even if you frame it in a way that has nothing to do with Art, you're still going to have to look at games and see whether cinematic games succeed at being creative and insightful, and whether non-cinematic games succeed at being creative and insightful. All that getting rid of the concept of Art accomplishes is getting rid of one particular approach to determining those questions (which, admittedly, is an approach that carries an enormous amount of garbage with it).

Which is kind of what I was trying to drive at by invoking the idea of Games As Art as a kind of shortcut for that whole mindset. Really I think the only way to avoid those particular issues is by just throwing up your hands and saying everything is 100% down to personal taste.

[(Anonymous)]

While I agree ragging on games as cinematic is stupid because it's just another form of storytelling and there's nothing wrong with it I disagree about your notion that any video game can be told in book or movie form and are therefore useless. Survival horror as a genre (or to be more specific Silent Hill) wouldn't work as movies or books. Atmospheric elements in games just can't translate the same way to screen or print.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

Yeah, I somewhat agree on this.

The big problem I have with "cinematic" in video games is that you frequently end up with the Bioware approach. You get meticulously directed and produced cut-scenes exploring the moral problems of faith, government, prejudice, and environmental exploitation. All of those morality plays are crudely inserted between levels that might as well be Carmageddon, all about finding creative ways to engage in graphic mass murder.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah that's when I think cinematic games are "bad" because they try to have their cake and eat it too. Cinematic games like Uncharted, The Last of Us, or even Funal Fantasy are fine because they're linear. Like they have one story to tell and are dead set on it being that way and there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is somewhere in the past few years linear has become synonymous with bad when it's not. Linear gameplay is a pain but linear storytelling makes for a tighter and better written story but people shunned all things linear and we get messed like Bioware or Telltale games that try this bad combo nonlinear story with a cinematic plot.

[fishnchips]

Heh, yes. I always thought it was great how you spent so much time in Dragon Age 2 and Inquisition on the plot-relevant decision of Mages vs. Templars... while slaughtering them both in droves all over the countryside.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

I actually have a counterexample for that. The Suffering by Rin Chupeco is very reminiscent of a Fatal Frame game, and it's brilliantly written to boot!

Re: OP

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah but it's still not perfectly the same. Take PT, there's no way to translate that to a book. It relies too heavily on audience participation. Reading something and having it told to you can't compare to seeing something and being forced to approach it. There's a wall provided by movies and books that the characters and story will move on whether you like it or not. Video games/survival horror won't move forward unless you force yourself to do it. There's also things like screwing with the HUD, fake outs of game crashes, looping architecture, etc.

[(Anonymous)]

If I wanted to watch a movie and not play a game, I'd fucking watch a movie. That's why I hate "cinematic" games.