I saw this piece making the rounds and I'm torn between trying to take it apart on here or just closing the tab and forgetting all about it as a waste of my time (which these days isn't exactly precious to begin with). https://twitter.com/Polygon/status/1290338042822242304

It would help if I knew anything about the games it cites. As it stands I've only played one or two, and in some of the other cases mentioned therein it's the first time I know that those games even exist.

Not to mention that a few months ago my regular computer saw it fit to die on me, forcing me back on an older backup computer that can't even play some of the games that I already have (and they're a few years old, so imagine how it would fare with more recent titles).

"What is crucial is the depiction of the almost cartoonishly evil Catholic priest, the sort of thing that is frequently deemed a cardinal sin in fiction."

I can imagine a throwback to early-19th-century Gothic fiction but can't possibly imagine myself wanting to *play* it.

The entire question of morality aside, the issue I've been mostly struggling with is whether games are art.

In the end I just came to the conclusion that they are not art, and will not be even if they sacrifice what makes them games, in which case they are no longer games.

More specifically, I realized that makes a good game is usually incompatible with what makes good art.

Games should be fun. One's idea of fun is subjective, true. But some game designers appear to think that the very notion of fun is contemptible when dealing with their games.

Truth be told, I despise the wish-fulfillment power fantasies that most traditional gaming offers.

On the other hand, I don't think much of designers who go after this with something of a sadistic pleasure, while hoping to make it into the video games canon themselves.

In the end, I could never reconcile the two and mostly moved on from video games.

Which is probably why during the whole G-merg-te debate I had not much patience for either side, neither for the budding reactionaries nor for the scolding wokelings they were locking horns with.

In the end all they were concerned with was painting a trash can a different colour with neither of them even thinking of emptying it - in fact didn't even care about the stink as long as they believed the can was painted the colour they liked.

It's all so puerile - and making it woke doesn't make it less so. Everything trapped in a sort of perpetual adolescence that blots out anything with any sort of serious aspiration. I guess that's inescapable for video games but that spread over other media forms as well.

Film aesthetics liberally borrow from video games now. Not just the usual geek fandom franchises as might be expected, but supposedly serious films as well. https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/story/2020-02-11/oscars-1917-parasite-video-games-movies

Anyway, the Polygon piece. The key takeaway from that is that its insistence on black-and-white morality is followed in the last part by more or less "the end justifies the means" as long as your cause is just/you are the underdog.

Who wouldn't claim that it is/you are?

Then there is this: "It’s harder to make characters feel trapped in their circumstances when they can always compromise on their subjective sense of moral code and do something underhanded — an action that may feel uncharacteristic of them — just to keep the story moving."

This sort of game I would already describe as a design failure, or at least the sort of game that is so linear (if you have to take a specific action just to get ahead) that it barely qualifies as a game. Regardless of the action required, I would just stop playing at that point.

In such cases, if the choices I make are meaningless, even though the game's deterministic setting might appeal to me, I might as well just watch a playthrough of it because at least I wouldn't have to care about becoming good enough to beat the game or about wasting time trying.

And at that point, how is that any different from watching a film? That is, a film interspersed with so many instances of battles not advancing the story and several minutes of wasting time running around that it makes the worst MGM musical a masterpiece of brevity by comparison.

Designing a video game such that I can answer anything to a question as long as it's "yes" is one thing. Hitting me on the head after for not answering "no" is quite another. And telling me afterwards that this is justified as an inquiry into free will just adds insult to injury.

I do remember L.A. Noire, for instance. The (romanticized) reconstruction of 1940s Los Angeles was interesting, but I found it linear, confusing (never quite understood the difference between doubting suspects & accusing them of lying), and (as played on PC) a case of consolitis.

Bought the game, played some. Got bored, started watching some random playthrough on YouTube. The YouTube player got bored and never finished it. Switched to another playthrough, got bored myself. Then I watched the cutscenes completing the story. The End. Nothing to return to.

It has nothing to do with the downer ending (this is noir, what else did you expect?) and everything to do with the game mechanics and linearity. This was a game that was so steeped in post-WWII noir aesthetics that it was inescapable that what it really wanted to be was a film.

I guess this was inevitable that this would all converge with video games wanting to be films and films wanting to be video games.

The Polygon story again, immediately after the previous excerpt above in this thread: "Instead, the steadfast nature of black-and-white stories forces their characters to walk a moral tightrope, which is far more than just a pedestrian or idealistic view of morality...."

"...These tales exemplify triumphing over personal struggles — a popular theme in stories — allowing heroes the opportunity to explore the depths of their convictions."

The problem, as shown with the L.A. Noire example, is that this runs straight into the medium's limitations.

To be honest I'm not quite sure what the author is getting at here. But what if there is no happy ending? What if nice guys finish last? Should they? Or instead should video games be subjected to a treatment where good always triumphs over evil? Are heroes allowed to fail?