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Crawford Lambasts Overly Technical Approach To Games
Thanks to the IGDA for its Chris Crawford-authored 'Ivory Tower' column discussing the gap between science and the arts in videogame creation. Crawford, ever belligerent, argues: "Let's face it, the world of game design is dominated by science/engineering people; people from the arts and humanities play a secondary role... the result: a vast wasteland of cold, heartless games, technological works of genius deficient in redeeming social value." He goes on to suggest: "We need educational programs that expose students to equal amounts of technology and art. They should learn to program even as they study Michelangelo, rhetoric and recursion, algorithms and architecture." Do you think this would lead to better, more innovative, socially aware videogames?
No.
Socially aware? Please. Look, it's important to be a renaissance man/woman and experience life broadly. But games are games.
There's many games out there that seem to be more tech demos than real games, and even some of the bigger hits, like Ninja Gaiden, I sat there playing it, and it just felt like it was missing something... a soul, if you will. Hopefully we get more games that are more than just the sum of their parts, and I see them from companies such as Nippon Ichi, and Nintendo.
...a whole world of geniuses?
Not everyone can come close to being able to focus on that many areas - the literary/artistic education people are given in this country (at least) is laughable, and there are people who want to add onto all of this?
Why not just get more people who have the artistic skills and prowess more involved in the game making process? Why do companies let engineers write game plots? As I see it, the reason there isn't more redeeming social value in gaming is because no one involved in the creative side of game development seems to be good enough to tie it in.
It's a bit silly to try making everyone into an artist/writer/director as well as a mathematician/engineer/programmer; most people's minds just don't deal that well with one area or the other (right brain/left brain dominance I suppose).
I'll be graduating in a couple of years with a degree in English, and hope to make a name for myself through writing, but the last thing on my mind is getting a job writing video game stories or working on development. I'd love the chance to do that kind of work, but it's nothing I've heard of happening lately.
"Infants flesh will be in season throughout the year." -Swift
As a programmer, I'm a little insulted. This guy seems to ignore that many of today's game designers do not come from a highly technical background,...at least not as technical as the programmers. Furthermore, much of the design either comes from or is altered by the producers. That means that much of the content is swayed by people that don't necessarily have 'any' technical background; they're business people, not programmers or software engineers.
Many of the bigger names in the industry 'are' technical, but they're also artistic, and they mainly hail from the days where only 2 people may be working on a game, forcing programming and artistic expression into one condensed job. However, these people are the exception, and the majority of people who influence the content of video games at this point have little to no technical knowledge of the games they're creating.
The author makes a good point, and more artistic creativity wouldn't hurt the creation of games. I'm just not sure he targeted the problem correctly.
On the flip-side, in a large team there needs to be people who specialise so that the hard tasks can be done.
Communication is an issue in any large team and it's not due to some abitrary divide. In any industry, not just the games industry, anyone who isn't interested in learning a little bit about everything that goes on in their company will always be a problem, from the IT officer that never learns how the marketing deparment works, to the engineer that doesn't know how to budget, to the project manager that doesn't understand how hard it is to workout how long it will take to do something that's never been done before.
The most telling part of the article is below:
What a graphic demonstration of how wrong the author is.First there are games which are work of art, "Planscape:Torment" for example. Averall there is a lot of art/music in the games, and some of that is not of bad quality. More important from educational point of view, videogames brought to public awareness quite a big layer of humanitarian knowledge, not accessable by general public before. Ask teenager of 70-s , who is shaman, where the Jotunheim is, and who were major opponents of Oda Nobunaga during Warring States period. What kind of answer would you get ? Now the situation is different. In the search of content developers digging through a lot of world history, culture and arts.
When I take a look at game developers a majority of the staff are generally artists and designers who come from every creative field you could imagine, and it keeps showing in the games. If you only play doom and quake you might not see that there are a lot of more artistic and creative games available. But a game designer (or at least a lead designer) needs a ton of experience to know how to create things that work in games, if you just bring in a famous script writer you're just going to get one long cutscene with no room for gameplay.
If anything, we need designers that have more technical skills so they are more able to put their creative skills to better use.
video games are, for the most part, made by a team of people. so are movies, music, plays, etc.
Sure, some of those people should know a thing or two about the world in general, and maybe have some culture. However, all those plays on Broadway would be nothing without the sound and lighting crews. everyone has their own job to do, and some are more technical than others.
Perhaps game studios should be like movie studios, buying scripts and having a director shape it into a playable and fun game. but the most important thing about a good game is that it runs well on my current system without crashing. To do this you need good programers, no matter what else they are.
Anyway, in a hundred years current games WILL be art, regardless.
Crawford may not have anything nice to say about the game industry, but he knows a lot about games. Listen when he preaches, just don't take his words as gospel.
I totally agree with him that there is still an unpleasant divide between the academics and the engineers. It's great that people are starting to take games more seriously and I still believe that the current trend will result in a much more mature (in the intellectual sense, not the Playboy-Sims game sense) industry.
However, here is where I disagree with Crawford - I don't think the video game industry will emerge from its 'puberty' once interactive storytelling takes off and the humanities people are finally able to add their 'emotion' into games, but I think it'll happen once academics master the formal elements of games, build theories from the ground up and recognize things computers are inherently good at, like real-time distributed communication and number crunching for complex systems.
After that, all that's left to be done is to create a thriving indy scene and bring game development to the masses, raise public opinion and awareness of games as a medium by creating them for their artistic merit as opposed to their marketability and popularity, and finally, acknowledge the enormous educational potential of games and wholeheartedly integrate the study and play of games into our educational institutions all the way from elementary schools to university departments.
Let's face it, the world of game design is dominated by science/engineering people
Good. Game designers who can't at least begin to understand the technical aspects have no place in game development. The best game designers understand why a programming team can't implement a solution in a particular way due to the underlying complexity. The simpler the design, the better it folds and fits onto the hardware. Designers who simply sit around spouting unimplementable nonsense are eventually going to get punched in the face by the developers who have to actually build the game.
Put it another way: Do you want your car's engine and steering to be designed by an automotive concept artist (the guy who does the first outer rough sketch?) - or a competent engineering team who understand technical problems?
Another point: The consumers of games aren't exactly fine art afficionados. They've got to have a technical bent in the first place if they are going to own a machine capable of playing games. Science / engineering folk tend to know what other science / engineering folk like best.
people from the arts and humanities play a secondary role... the result: a vast wasteland of cold, heartless games, technological works of genius deficient in redeeming social value." He goes on to suggest
The stereotypical "chick flick" hasn't had much of a draw among young 15-26 year old male gamers. I'm not sure warm, lighthearted, socially redeeming fluff games would sell to anybody. "Feel good" movies are forgotten 2 minutes after exiting the theatre - and somebody forgets they've played such a game, what, really, was the point?
We need educational programs that expose students to equal amounts of technology and art. They should learn to program even as they study Michelangelo, rhetoric and recursion, algorithms and archite...
WOAH! Hold on a second there - I'm not sure if you've ever worked on a modern game development team (sorry, things have come a long way since 1979) - but there's a certain specialization of the roles. Unless you're an indie developer and with a team of more than about 4 people, artists produce assets - and generally don't code. Programmers produce code - and generally don't make art. Larger teams even have specialised designers - the "lead designer" will be in charge of the entire game's direction. The best designers are a cross between empowered gameplay testers and someone who knows the level design tools.
Unless somebody is set on making their own little games in their spare time, heeding your advice and learning art alongside programming is a good way to dilute talent and torpedo someone's game development career before it's even started.
"Another point: The consumers of games aren't exactly fine art aficionados. They've got to have a technical bent in the first place if they are going to own a machine capable of playing games. Science / engineering folk tend to know what other science / engineering folk like best."
That's bunk. The first part of your point because people needn't be 'fine art aficionados' just to be positively effected by art in the same way non-art aficionados can appreciate a fine novel, poem, painting or play. If you think the only people who appreciate the messages conveyed through these mediums, or the only people affected by the social change they bring about, are devout followers of fine art and academics, I beg to say you're kidding yourself.
As to the second part of your point: You think the only people playing games like Ninja Gaiden, Madden and Final Fantasy right now are also hardcore followers of tech science or at least in a technology-focused frame of mind right now? Try standing by the register at your local Gamestop for a few hours. Games are mainstream now (granted, PC games are still a bit more slanted than console) - people of all mindsets, including the non-techies, play games. The whole point of console gaming is so that people who aren't 'technically bent' can enjoy the same things hardcore geeks have loved for years.
Regardless of the makeup of the consumer base, you don't seem to consider them people interested in 'cultural' materials. They're not going to be the crowds reading Kafka or visiting museums, right? If that's the case, why shouldn't games be a legitimate medium to express some of the same artistic ideas to those people, through a medium that's more relatable? If I'm right in summarizing your statement by saying 'gamers aren't interested in culture,' why could the reason for that not be because no instruments of culture have been appealing to that type of people yet? Why couldn't (shouldn't) games be the first?
"Infants flesh will be in season throughout the year." -Swift
Western videogames maybe lacking in art, but games originating in Japan are almost pure art... Zelda, Final Fantasy, even Soul Calibur. These games are beautiful to play. ... And American games are more "American" (Starcraft, Halo, & Doom.) Graphics and violence can be pretty damned fun.
To say games don't have an artistic bend is just silly. People have been calling Miyamoto an artistic genius since the N64 Zelda.
Whilst I agree that there are alot of bad game design and desingers out there. I don't think that it's because designers are too technical. If anything my experience is that they are neither technical nor artistic enough. Generally the people who end up being designers are people that entered the industry from the bottom rung: testing.
Lots of the designers that I've worked with over the years are people who are in the games industry because they want to be (nothing wrong with that) and have no skills that are of obvious practical use to the industry (i.e. they can't draw, they can't code, and they can't project manage). So, we make them testers, and then when they've been there long enough to deserve a decent salary we make them into designers.
There's no qualifications that you need to be a designer, people just get into it and they're either good or bad at the job. This is unlike both code and art, most studios don't employ coders or artists without qualifications (unless they take them on as co-ops or something).
Maybe all these game design courses that universities are starting up will help, but in the end I think that this is just the nature of the beast.....
Ahhh, yes of course the Sciences and the Arts are of course mutually exclusive- a great physicist couldn't possibly also be the writer of equally great literature, a geneticist couldn't possibly also be a painter and poet...
The idea that science and art are seperate is idiotic and a line I hear mostly from incredibly close minded arts graduates... Socially unaware games? Are they really socially unaware? I'd wonder about that...sounds more like pure arts whinging to me...
In other words, they are enormous fun...which some of us happen to think has a social value in itself.
The old I get, the more distain I have for self-styled intellectuals.
I like my games to be fairly emotionless, i disagree that they are not works of art though. The art _is_ in the code. I prefer to inject my own emotion into a game, much like i like my music. emotionless. I'll decide how music makes me feel thank you very much.
Ian Bogost pointed out that science/engineering tends to be "predictably useful" where arts/humanities tend to be "unpredictably useful".
Then perhaps the real problem is not that science/engineering dominates, it's that business people are the ones choosing where the emphasis of today's games lies. An executive can choose to hire more programmers or more English Department types. The programmers are reliably useful, the academics either incredibly useful for detrimental. If you're spending a billion dollars to make this game, the choice becomes clear--hire more programmers and avoid as much risk as possible.
The only way we'll see more creative, less technical, and riskier games, is if it becomes possible to make games at a drastically reduced cost.
As if anyone who is an engineer can't possibly understand arts and humanities.
What a load of crap.
If anything, talent in both fields seems to be quite common among intelligent and creative people. You can't tell me that any engineer couldn't jump right into a philisophical/humanities discussion with relatively few problems understanding what's going on.
The only "problem," if there is one, is that the typical engineering type is outclassed by the guy-with-the-humanities-doctorate when it comes to spouting bullshit, and consequently yields authority or creative control to him because he doesn't want the hassle.
If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
As someone who worked in the industry, I would say that a larger factor is the amount of hours worked by the employees. How much life experience and understanding of the human condition can someone contribute to the art when they do nothing but wake, work and sleep?
Most teams are composed almost entirely of young males with fast reflexes who do nothing but work, and games of today reflect this.
The fact that he didn't (couldn't?) articulate what makes a game "cold and heartless" and what might give it "redeeming social value" and gave examples of neither left me feeling that perhaps there is not enough to this "problem" to even adequately define it.
From the article:
First, is there a University anywhere that doesn't require a fair dose of humanities study (3-4 classes in addition to a lit course in the English requirement)? If he really wants to see "equal amounts" what would that add to a university degree? Figure six math courses, 10-12 comp sci/engineering courses, plus 2-4 more hard science courses makes 18 classes on the low end. If your curriculum already includes 5 humanities, that means you need 13-17 more to even things up. So 2 or 3 more semesters, when typical grads currently take 5 or 5 1/2 years to finish. 7 years in school to make video games sound reasonable?If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
Lots of defensive techies in here today!
Actually, I'm a tech-head too.
I think what Crawford was trying to get at, though, is that there is potential for makeing great art in the video game medium, it's just really hard and not exactly strived for very often. And given the large undertaking and large amount of passionate/opinionated people that it takes to make a game(not to mention the pressure from the business side - I'm not convinced we have a 'truce' or whatever with the business side of things), it's not surprising.
Of course, it doesn't need to be a work of art to be fun. I can blast monsters till my hearts content in quake or whatever and have fun, but i wouldnt call that great art.
Some examples that might help illustrate my opinion would include checking out Zelda: the Wind Waker, American McGee's Alice, and Dragon's Lair. All trying to not just incorporate good art onto a stable tech framework, but BE good art as a whole. (Alice, IMO, failed, but started off in a interesting direction)
Elegate/efficient tech design is part of succeeding in making great art in game design, of course. I think Crawford is just trying to emphasize that there is MORE than just the seperate parts. There's the whole multi-legged horse thingy.
FUNK!
"Chris Crawford is one of the bigger names in the industry. He wrote The Art of Computer Game Design, a seminal book on game design, in 1982, and founded the GDC in 1987."
Sorry, but pay attention to the years you have in your statement. The 80's are LONG gone and games are now completely different. Sure many general and high-level rules still apply, but games of today hardly compare to the "trinkets" of the 80's.
Mr. Crawford is a big name historically, and through his constant critique of an industry he is no longer part of. What has he contributed lately, beyond criticism? It's easy to point out problems. How about some viable, applicable solutions?
The pitch meeting: a play in one act.
The scene: Several businessmen wearing khakis and polo shirts sit around a large conference table. A large screen, ready to show game demos, dominates one side of the room.
Chairman: Ok guys, we're here to decide which games our company, Publisher X, will fund, and which we won't. We don't have a lot of time, Fred over there needs to fly to Japan to give an interview to Famitsu and Joe has a conference call with the Wal-mart guys. Because of this, we're restrained to only seeing each game for about 5 minutes.
Chairman: Our first demo is from the guys at GameDev Studios. Matt, here, will be showing us his game, uh...
Matt: "Hills of Aeden", sir.
Chairman: Tell us about your game, Matt.
Matt pops up a powerpoint slideshow on the big screen, and begins his pitch.
Matt: Hills of Aeden is a third person action-adventure game with rpg influences. Like the Square game, Final Fantasy X...
Fred: Excuse me, Matt, but have you considered changing the name of your game?
Matt: (knocked off balance by the interruption) Um...uh... well, not really. The name is pretty important, as it ties into the answer to the big mystery...
Fred: Because this, "Hills of Eden" thing sounds like a soap opera. Joe, what were the stats on soap opera games?
Joe: (pulling statistics out of his ass) our marketing research says that 7 out of 12 males aged 12 to 27 won't buy soap opera games unless there's nudity involved. However, Wal-Mart and EB refuse to sell games with nudity in them, so they're a no-go.
Fred: Right. That's what I thought. No go on the soap opera name, Matt. How about something with some spark to it. Something that we can use to create a strong IP around. How about something like "Dark Fury", or "Mayhem".
Chairman: Good point, Fred. Matt, we'll need a new name for your game. Now, you've had 3 months of pre-production. What have you got to show us?
Matt: (even further off balance) Well, as I was saying, this is a very story-oriented game, so we hired a professional writer to come in, and together, we've put together a 200 page outline of the game. We've also got together some really good concept art that I think really shows off the style... (furiously clicks through powerpoint slides until he gets to art).
Fred: I like this look, but it seems kinda pretty, to me. Kinda pastel-y.
Chairman: I agree. Pastels are a no go.
Matt: Well, we have some, uh, more bold images, over here. (more slides go by)
Fred: Hey! That looks like that World War 2 game that came out last week. What were the numbers on that game, Joe?
Joe: (more number pulling) NPD has it as the best selling game for last Tuesday in the 21-32 year old bracket, Fred.
Fred: I thought so! You know, we could use another WW2 game in our portfolio. Which battle does your game take place in, Matt? Normandy? Uh, Guam?
Matt: "Hills of Aeden"...
Fred: You mean "Mayhem".
Matt: Right, "Mayhem" doesn't take place during WW2. It's a futuristic game that takes place on another planet where racial tensions between 5 different factions...
Fred: Hmmm... well maybe you can change it to a WW2 game. Those sell pretty well, and we only have two others in development right now.
Chairman: So, Matt, you only have a design doc and some screenshots? No prototype?
Matt: We really wanted the art direction and the story to take precedence...
Chairman: Matt, have you ever heard of John Romero? Daikatana? Designers first?
Matt: Uh...
Chairman: We'll give you our decision later, when you can't actually physically attack us. Thanks for coming by and showing us "Mayhem"!
Fred: Yeah, thanks Matt! Hey, next time, try to focus more on the WW2 aspects of your game.
Matt: Uh...thanks.
Chairman: Ok, guys, next game is called "Police State". Don is here to show us this game.
Don: Hi guys. We've been working hard for the past
Look what's out there. In one way or another, the market is dominated by killing simulations. It's a religion of polygon counts and frames per second.
Games with consistently poignant writing are beyond rare. (I can think of only one relatively recent one: Planescape: Torment.) The commercial text adventure, the literature of the games industry, is long dead. Games with meaningful inter-personal communication are impossibly rare. (Crawford's own contribution to this tiny genre, Trust & Betrayal: The Legacy of Siboot, a precursor of The Sims, is practically unique in this field.)
And try to name a game that displays more than a passing interest in any the humanistic studies--literature, history, philosophy and, arguably, religion.
Off the top of my head, I can think of only one: Morrowind.
I am far less encouraged than Crawford by the prospects for the next generation. The humanities have fallen in disrepute in many schools of higher learning, and "scientism" has being broadly applied to these ostensibly "subjective" studies in an attempt to endow them with scientific predictability. Given this pro-science bias, there is every likelihood that the games designed by this generation will be technological marvels ... and colder and more clincial than ever before.
Welcome to the wasteland.
Peter
I think Mr Crawford has been out of the loop for too long. 1996 was the first time I encountered someone in a dedicated design role. Prior to that, working at a smaller development company, game designs were created by the programmers and artists on the teams developing them. Since then, all projects have had a dedicated designer, and over the past few years, a dedicated design team. None - not one single designer - that I have encountered has come from a technical background. Artists, testers, games magazine journalist, yes, but not one programmer.
On one hand, this is a good thing. As a programmer, I know it can be easy to get bogged down in the technical and implementation details and lose the bigger picture. Often, great ideas can overlooked before they're fully explored because they might initially seem like a bitch to implement. On the other hand, a little technical knowledge is required to understand the limits of the target console/hardware/software, so that the game is at least possible to implement. A good designer needs skills from both sides.
Where this notion that all designers are techies came from, I don't know. Chris Crawford deserves respect for his early work in computer games and design, but to be frank, he's talking out of his arse on this one.
WAAAHHH!!
Make the meanies go away!!!!!
</badgering>
Ok, so the games reflect what thier creators see as reality, to an extent. The art is cruel because the humanity they see is inherently cruel, as much as we would like to pretend otherwise.
Free Mac Mini Yeah, it's
At my local university, we had an $8.5 million budget shortfall this year (thank you, tax cuts!). One of the plans to help make up for the shortfall was to completely cut all studio arts programs.
A lot of people were quite upset that this would even be an option. There were demonstrations and letters to the editor from not only students, but concerned faculty and community members as well.
I'm in the computer science department. A couple typical CS types that I know decided to write a letter to the editor of the school paper. What about? All the "whiny arts students who couldn't make any money, so why are they complaining that their programs are cut? It's not like they're worth anything." (paraphrased, obviously)
Other CS guys though the letter was great fun -- how dare those worthless art students demand their fair share?
What's that mean? Dunno -- but obviously, these guys have absolutely no appreciation for the arts. They're so out of touch that the only thing of 'value' to them is the average salary of a graduate in their department.
Personally, I think that's sad.
[The Problem] is that the typical engineering type is outclassed by the guy-with-the-humanities-doctorate when it comes to spouting bullshit, and consequently yields authority or creative control to him because he doesn't want the hassle.
Yep, because that degree gives him nothing but the ability to spout bullshit. It's good to see that you're so open minded about the abilities of people in (presumably) other fields than your own.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
It's even more of a mindless clickfest than Diablo is. Now that is an accomplishment.
Look what's out there. In one way or another, the market is dominated by killing simulations.
That, my friend, has little to nothing to do with engineers writing code. It's because that's what sells. There have been no shortage of games that were quite different, had artistic merit, weren't bloodfests, and flopped in the marketplace (one of my favorite examples: The Longest Journey. That's what society (well, US society) wants.
So then we ask ourselves -- why is this what society wants?
The main source of glamorizing killing is not, to my way of thinking, video games. It's Hollywood, which has been doing action movies forever, and instilled a good solid bloodlust in the market. Yeah, those "art and humanities" people that are supposed to wisely steer engineers.
Of course, the real root of all this is that violence is exciting because it gets our blood moving -- it's an easy mechanism to use to sell things. But the black turtleneck types were where violent media became popularized for the mass market in the US. The pocket-protector types do not deservve that blame.
It's a religion of polygon counts and frames per second.
Because the largest detracting factor from the terrifying experience of *actually being in such an environment* is how inaccurate current graphics systems are at reproducing such an environment. It's being frantically worked on by many companies.
The commercial text adventure, the literature of the games industry, is long dead.
The IF industry isn't dead -- there's still the occasional commercial release. Lack of IF content producers is not the problem. Have you *played* the amateur games out there? They go much further than the Zorks of yesteryear. The reason that commercial IF has fallen to such a low simmer is that:
(a) current amateur content is so good that it is very difficult to enter the market.
(b) People don't like *thinking* for entertainment. Books have been crucified by movies and TV as a form of entertainment, and the same thing happened in the video games realm. Dead tree authors and TV producers are not the "hard sciency" types that you claim are at fault, and the same thing happens in that arena, and on a far larger scale.
Games with meaningful inter-personal communication are impossibly rare.
Right. This has, if anything, to do with a *lack* of computer science researchers in the game field. It is *extremely* difficult to simulate a human to even a basic conversational level, and to do so effectively is beyond the best of our science. If you want to have interpersonal relationships, you require conversation capable of evoking emotion -- truly *human*-sounding responses. We are not there yet.
And try to name a game that displays more than a passing interest in any the humanistic studies--literature, history, philosophy and, arguably, religion.
Heck, my favorite FPS does that -- take a look at some of the Marathon Story site. You'll find a number of uses of literature and history, and philosophy. Religion doesn't show up much, though. Here's a sample subset: Shakespeare, Lovecraft , Beowulf (a bit dubious). There are references to mythology (Greek, Egyptian, Nordic), The Song of Roland (also see this, use of Latin, and so forth.
The problem is that society as a whole does not seem to be interested in literate entertainment when there is much easier-to-deal-with simple entertainment. Further, efficiency of production of content ri
May we never see th
In one corner, we have the ubiquitous business people pushing sequels and cookie cutter-ness that sells...
Which is determined by the consumers, the vast majority of whom are from a single demographic...
Who are influenced, among other things, by the need to put to good use the new hardware they just bought for megabucks...
As well as reviewers who are likely to describe graphics they dislike as "outdated" instead of "unattractive" or even "ugly"...
And it's no wonder we have a market full of "stale" and "heartless" games.
As is said above somewhere, science and art aren't mutually exclusive, different yes but it isn't impossible for the same person to be able to think both logically and artistically. The bigger difference is in knowledge, and knowledge is derived from interest. Even without any skill in the area someone with an interest in technology will pick things up.
What I'm trying to say is that a designer who has no interest in technology should not be working in a technological field, even in an artistic capacity. Vice versa applies as well, someone doing lighting for an art gallery needs to be able to appreciate the art.
I've bought--and gotten large amounts of enjoyment from--games that had issues with, say, movement, or crash bugs or somesuch, and enjoyed them (and bought them in the first place) because of the quality of the art/atmosphere. (art quality != polygon count, but is improved by it) And wait, this is with a 2 year old graphics card. Heaven forbid that something that isn't state-of the art can't be pretty. But then I'm in the minority of the gamer demographic without a Y chromosome.
Games are puzzles. Hence one almost always uses the term "good gameplay" when describing the attributes of a good/fun game. The game gives you a challenge and the fun is trying to overcome it.
Name any game where the story made up for poor or tired gameplay. It doesn't exist, IMO. Now name a game that had little or no story and was a pleasure to play. Doom 2, Tetris, Ms. Pac-Man, Bubble Puzzle, Chess...the list is longer than a single Slashdot post allows.
Chew: You Nexus, huh? I design your eyes.
Roy: Chew, if only you could see what I've seen with your eyes.
"Auteur theory was articulated in the 1950s by French film critics, most notably by Francois Truffaut. The concept describes the mark of a film director in terms of: thematic or stylistic consistencies, personal aesthetic vision, recurring themes, established technique, a defined view of the world and a significant degree of control over production. The works of an auteur director are stamped by the personality and unique artistic vision of its creator, and are as recognisable and distinctive as the creators of any other work of art. In auteur films, it is the director who controls the artistic statement, takes credit for the film and is responsible for attracting the audience." (http://members.tripod.com/gillonj/alfredhitchcock /)
Hitchcock, Spielburg, Tarentino, Shyamalan, Coen Bros., Scorsese, Kubrick, like them or hate them, we know that they bring a style to their works, they demand excellence, and they have FINAL CUT. Of course the indie scene is very important in bringing fresh art to the masses, but only the best indie films ever break out of the sea of mediocrity.
Filmmaking like gamemaking is collaboratory by necessity. It is technical and artistic and involves a truckload of people who all can screw up in some way or another. Today, the cost of making a feature game approaches that of making a feature film (of course this depends on how many special effects you want and if you want to make it in eastern europe where wages are lower).
As for me, I think it is amazing that ANY decent films or games are made at all considering how many ways people can screw up. I also think there is a parallel to film history here. Watch the American movies from the '30s,'40s, and '50's. Most of them were entertaining at the time but terrible from an art standpoint. There were a few gems in there midst. Just like games.
There was a time when games WERE story driven. Back when good writing and hand-drawn art was more important than the underlying technology, games such as Planetfall, Monkey Island, Space Quest, Day of the Tentacle and Gabriel Knight all thrived. This could even be applied to some RPGs.
Did any of these have compelling gameplay? Not really. The puzzles were largely non-sensical and frustrating. Most people played them (and still do) to see how the stories progressed, and reveal what the clever writers had written. The games existed as a more interactive means of telling that story than a film or book.
Of course, these games - modeled after the original 'Adventure', and hence given that misleading genre title - no longer enjoy the prominence they once did, generally relegated to bargain bins and basements. The focus shifted somewhere along the way from art to tech, so that extra features and hardware support became the things to judge a game by. Evaluations of graphics changed from judging the thoroughness of a hand-painted backdrop to the polygon count and framerate. And its now generally accepted that game stories only exist to serve the gameplay, rather than the reverse.
And any artistic theme or coherent feeling that isn't "Dark and Gritty" is pretty much rejected straight out the window. Note the recent changing of Zelda from the controversial cel-shaded Wind Waker back to his "Dark and Gritty" Ocarina roots.
Alas, someday, the tides may again turn. However, as of now, you are correct. Most people evaluate games based on gameplay alone. To me, this is sad.
Ok, I've seen posts for both sides and I want to say, that I can see how someone would want to not look at games as an art. But I disagree...
...thank you for your time...
I'm in college right now, and have already began production on a small independant game. For almost 10 years now I have dreamt of being a game designer and have studied into what makes one great in this area. (hopefully it will pay off...) I believe to do well, you must be well versed in both art and science, and I've always felt like the bastard child of both areas.
First off, you have to ask the question what is art? For anyone who is into philosophy, this is always a fun question to try and answer. Unfortunately, many common people define "graphic art" as the only art. Art is relative. To me, art is simply creating something from your imagination that communicates that piece of you to others. Art is a form of communication, yet it conveys something on a much deeper level than any language ever could.
Now, by this definition, even the progammers' code can be seen as a work of art, I know I think of it that way.
But to not take up too much of your time... Saying games are not art, is like saying movies are not art. Now, some games are very simple, and have little to no story, but can still be considered works of art. But even Ms. Pac Man had a story... And the story of a game can provoke many emotions in the player, but even just the gameplay itself can make you feel something more than just fun. That's why so many RPGs are so popular, the good ones touch you in some way that most games cannot. For a game to make you feel, that makes it truely a work of art.
But that's not all of art, to promote ideals and morals into the player is also possible. Take Jet Set Radio Future for example. Even though your character is breaking the law, you are fighting for something much more important in the end, freedom. Now, this may have been a bad example since it has piss-poor gameplay and a mediocre story, but it was the first thing that came to mind for a slightly political-ish game not an RPG.
If something is art or not, will always be in the eye of the beholder, but video games can rise to be the greatest art form of all if done correctly. They can include almost all other artforms within them and make it interactive.
"A truly wise man realizes he knows nothing."
The CS degree was much tougher for me, but I did well in some of the abstract math classes and some of the classes on algorithms and the like. However, I think I'm of fairly average intelligence, I just decided to have no life when I was working on my tough CS major. (You know the most difficult class? One of the accounting classes I decided to take as an elective.)
So, what do I like to say, watch on TV? Well, let's see. Outlaw Star, Inu Yasha, Cowboy Bebop, Trigun, Firefly, Lord of the Rings, Ranma 1/2, Memento, Angel, Resevoir Dogs, The Sopranos, Gargoyles etc... (list goes on and on but you get the idea). (Cue negative comments about the stuff I like having a definite bias toward "genre fiction" as well as often being considered a tad juvenile by people I know.)
What do I want in video games? Stuff like that. Games that look good to me, at least in concept? Ultima III: Exodus, Doom, Painkiller, Star Craft, Command and Conquer: Red Strike, Metroid Prime, MegaMan Collection, Astro-Boy, Vampire Chronicles (Capcom Darkstalkers Retrospective for Dreamcast), Samurai Spirits Collection, Ninja Gaiden, Prince of Persia, M. U. L. E., Metal Slug etc... (again, it's a much longer list than just what is listed here, but not many surprises...)
In fact, the only place that my tastes really veer sharply away from the mainstream is my fondness for "2D" sidescrollers and fighters and my hatred of the trend towards exclusively "3D" games (I still play them though, when they are done right). I like science fiction, fantasy, crime and horror.
So, I'm not sure what point Chris Crawford is trying to make....
All the creatures will die, And all the things will be broken. That's the law of samurai. (Jubai, 1605)
Folks should stop making fun games with no "redeeming social value" and make more unplayably boring pseudo-text adventures. Right, Chris?