faetal on 11/12/2015 at 18:43
It's not great literature, it's amateur paranoid conspiracy fan fic as written by a teen with a cyberpunk fetish. That said, it's also my favourite game of all time, but not because it is so well written, it's just a great overall experience - greater than the sum of its parts. In a way, I think games like it possibly become so great as much by luck as by design. Something emergent that cam from a lot of talented people with good ideas all working on the same project. It grew from them in a way that may not have been 100% orchestrated, but just happened to fall in that way. It's a lot of why I think sequels and re-boots fail to achieve the same quality when they are trying to re-do the thing. Because suddenly, when trying to tap in to the same idea, something is lost by there being too much intention. It's like how a lot of bands write a great first album because they just love making music, become a hit and then put out a shitty second album because they're trying to write a great album.
There are exceptions to this. Assassin's Creed 2 for example was leagues better than the first game, but that's probably because the first game was the game equivalent of an industry pop band - made high budget and low risk to begin with, so all they had to do was to learn from the mistakes of the fist game and refine the formula. Then AC2 absolutely nailed it and everything since then has felt either too stale or too cautiously iterative to have that same sparkle.
Another exception are re-tooled IP, where the makers aren't trying to re-create the original, but to do their own thing with the same fiction / model. This is why I think Invisible War was a damp squib while Human Revolution felt like a solid and self-contained experience. That said, there are no hard and fast rules and a lot of exceptions, it's just interesting to muse. This is why I'm taking exception to the "'90s were best and that's just fact" stance, because I think even risk-averse AAA titles can achieve greatness in ways that weren't anticipated in their design process. There's no formula which describes an absolute relationship between budget and quality in either direction.
froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 18:45
Show the scripts for DX or PS:T to a literature professor or author and it's going to look like an amateur sci-fi/fantasy story filled tropes and cliches, plus a few interesting ideas thrown in. I have absolutely no idea how you can equate those with great literature, and if that's really your idea of high level expression I don't know what to say.
The bottom line is that games generally have an order of importance for the respective media they incorporate. #1 tends to be the visuals these days, and that's the one non-gameplay arena that receives the most attention to innovation. Flashy visuals sell games possibly moreso than even gameplay, so it's turned into more of a technological dick size contest than innovation for artistic purposes.
#2 (and sometimes #1 in good cases) is the gameplay itself.
The script basically acts to justify the visuals and gameplay, and is generally a little bit of an afterthought. Even in games like DX and PS:T, it's clearly not the primary reason for the game's existence or meant to be a work of art in itself that can stand up to great literature. Which is why it's ridiculous to say they can - they're not even trying to!
Then the music comes last, as basically the icing on top. And since improving the scripts and music won't increase sales, these two elements tend to be poor and regurgitated in 99% of games.
Starker on 11/12/2015 at 18:54
Mark Morgan's music, though... so good.
[video=youtube;JgjqtIY_zww]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgjqtIY_zww[/video]
GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 19:07
Quote Posted by froghawk
Show the scripts for DX or PS:T to a literature professor or author and it's going to look like an amateur sci-fi/fantasy story filled tropes and cliches, plus a few interesting ideas thrown in. I have absolutely no idea how you can equate those with great literature, and if that's really your idea of high level expression I don't know what to say..
Like I said, best of both worlds. It may not directly compare, but it showed games are capable.
You still haven't said why it
doesn't qualify as literature (nobody even said anything about it matching up to or succeeding the best writing in the world, by the way) beyond "tropes" and "show it to an academic professor and he'll laugh".
Quote Posted by "faetal"
It's not great literature, it's amateur paranoid conspiracy fan fic as written by a teen with a cyberpunk fetish.
That's more than an exaggeration.
Quote Posted by "froghawk"
Flashy visuals sell games possibly moreso than even gameplay, so it's turned into more of a technological dick size contest than innovation for artistic purposes.
But I thought all was good in the gaming space?
froghawk on 11/12/2015 at 19:15
I never said any such thing. My argument is that we have yet to see the golden age because games have been consistently hampered by poor writing, defaulting to violence, etc. even during your so-called golden age.
And that's not the way burden of proof works.
faetal on 11/12/2015 at 19:18
It's not an exaggeration at all. I genuinely and literally believe that the story extracted from Deus Ex is a very broad strokes and trope-laden medley of middle of the road cyberpunk and conspiracy fiction. I say this as someone who grew up reading plenty of both. It's almost entirely off the shelf - few if any truly original concepts. The whole thing hangs together so well though, that it's extremely forgiveable.
In addition, I agree with what Frghawk is saying too. It's a brand new medium in the scheme of things compared with literature, music and cinema - it's barely found its feet as an artistic medium. It's still very much mired in being all about the gameplay, which usually boils down to mechanics and there being a vague reason why you're doing something. I also think that it is very difficult to give the player agency while creating a very solid narrative experience simply because you have no control of the timing, so building the mood and the arcs is far more dynamic than a static work.
Gaming as a medium is still changing - the mainstream is very much distracted by bottom lines and hence the majority of mainstream gaming is just about finding the formula which churns out the most dollars, but "what games are" continues to evolve and very few games have an overall quality which can be considered great. I mean great in the sense that Coppola's Godfather is great. Deus Ex is great for a game. While that latter caveat remains a qualifier for games as art, then I think that golden age has yet to happen.
The question seems to be a red herring anyway though as the real question seems to have become "are '90s games the best games so far".
GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 19:21
Quote Posted by "froghawk"
My argument is that we have yet to see the golden age because games have been consistently hampered by poor writing, defaulting to violence, etc. even during your so-called golden age.
The best may certainly be yet to come, that is always a possibility. Gaming as we know it? Currently the '90s early '00s holds the crown and I don't see anything changing for a long, long time.
And there's nothing wrong with defaulting to violence, it is extremely fun.
Quote Posted by "faetal"
It's not an exaggeration at all. I genuinely and literally believe that the story extracted from Deus Ex is a very broad strokes and trope-laden medley of middle of the road cyberpunk and conspiracy fiction. I say this as someone who grew up reading plenty of both. It's almost entirely off the shelf - few if any truly original concepts. The whole thing hangs together so well though, that it's extremely forgiveable.
True, a lot of themes were unoriginal (some of it seemingly ripped straight off the internet). However, Deus Ex is also very notable for storytelling techniques in games, a lot of methods used being something that traditional literature is not capable of.
Have we been going at this all day? Seems like a big blur now.
faetal on 11/12/2015 at 19:35
Traditional literature is static, gaming fiction is dynamic since it grants agency. I've yet to see it done in a way which is qualitatively up to the standard of the greats of literature, cinema, music etc. I'd say that music in games has actually come the closest. Deus Ex: HR is a great example of this. The music for the game was pitch perfect for the tone of the game and highly listenable in its own right. It's hardly Prokofiev's Romeo & Juliet though, but I'd put it on a par with Giorgio Moroder's stuff in the '80s.
Pyrian on 11/12/2015 at 19:36
I don't really think originality or "great literature" (pshaw) should be standards of quality at all. Putting together a coherent narrative mosaic of tropes and previous ideas isn't merely "extremely forgiveable", it's quite an achievement. Deus Ex also doesn't get enough credit for its "one-note" characters, which is basically one note more than most video game characters ever get, especially at the time (this so-called golden age!).
That being said, Deus Ex has almost nothing in the way of character arcs (well, there's Gunther, and the AI merger), which severely undercuts its place in literature ("great" or otherwise). Some players may experience the holy grail of a player character arc, but I certainly didn't (the game gives away UNATCO's corruption in the intro and foreshadows a "fix it from within" arc that simply isn't included).
GMDX Dev on 11/12/2015 at 19:45
Quote:
few if any truly original concepts
That's a bit unfair if we're also including subplots too, and the fiction within the fiction book series and such.
