Topic: new Rein interview

[nemo_83]

I didn't know where else to post this.

eurogamer


begin quote:

"is there any chance of Epic ever making a Nintendo game? After all, at an IGN event recently Rein did suggest that the Revolution controller would inspire developers to produce "sparkling innovationy, crappy, cheap, I-wish-I-hadn't-bought-it games"...

"I actually said Nintendo's going to make amazing games. I never really passed a judgement on the controller itself. I think the controller's cool!" Mark says.

"I wasn't bashing Nintendo, I wasn't bashing the controller, I was really just saying that a byproduct of having a device like this is that people are going to make games that possibly are just there because of the controller, as opposed to being great games of themselves, and I said it badly... I regret that."

There will be plenty of great titles that make use of the controller, too, Rein adds. "Nintendo and some of the best third parties are going to make amazing games for it."

We mention a recent interview Eurogamer did with Nintendo's Jim Merrick, where we asked him what he thought of Rein's comments.

"You know, I read your article and I called him up right afterward," Rein says. "We had a long, very good chat."

So he wasn't, shall we say, a bit cross? "Didn't seem to be!"

And what about Merrick's suggestion that Rein get a Revolution dev kit for himself so he can see exactly what the machine can do?

"I told him we've absolutely love to take him up on that."

That doesn't mean Epic has signed up to develop for Revolution, but it's certainly something worth looking into, says Rein.

"I think Unreal Engine 3 and Nintendo Revolution would be very well suited to each other."


end quote.



Mark's assumption that the software library of Nintendo's new system in ign's video conference would be filled with sparkling innovationy I wish I hadn't bought this games was for me disappointing because I was looking to third parties like Epic to ensure the library would not be filled with micro games. I am afraid it is up to Nintendo to show third parties this controller is the new standard for their traditional games and not just a sparkling innovation for cheap short mini games. Judging from how they have used the touch screen on the DS though to shell out non games; I just don't know at this point if Nintendo will match their hardware innovation with software innovation as well. My faith in them as a software provider has been damaged; I own a GameCube and the last time I bought a Nintendo game was when MP2 first came out. The last year has been abismal for me as a gamer and Nintendo console owner (oh Twilight Princess, what abyss have you vanished into). DS does not serve as a suplement (I may wait for the DSmicro); I only play at home so I'm best off with just buying multiple consoles. I guess I just screwed myself over this generation placing my money in Sega's Dreamcast as my other console for five years.

Everyone knows to rely on Nintendo for the next Zelda, Mario BROS., and Metroid, but as a fan original serious IPs I am worried they will not be aggressive enough in convincing third parties like Epic to develop big games on their console as well. I simply don't know if I can trust Nintendo to develop anything original next generation that is also an epic game. The only game they have talked about that isn't a franchise so far is a cooking game. Hint, I don't cook because its fun; I cook because I need to eat. I have too many classes and too much homework to be thinking about cooking food for fun that I can't then consume.

It is not the controller that is the sparkling innovation; its about how the software developer uses the controller that may be sparkling innovationy. I see on the DS Nintendo abandoning their software roots in epic game design going back to Super Mario Bros, Zelda, and Metroid on the NES; games with story, conflict, and resolution. Now Nintendo is busy cashing in on pet simulators absent of what I have come accustomed to relating as game design. As a long time consumer of their software; I feel they have abandoned trying to create new games that appeal to me.

I would like to say I don't play games to simply play games. I play games for unique experiences. I choose my games as carefully as I choose my movies and books. And I like my movies and books to make me think about issues in life; I want a story and I want themes and metaphors and symbols. Nintendogs and Warioware are the equivalent of pornography. I am not looking for porn; I'm looking for the next Stanely Kubrick film. I am looking for art; I am not looking for a quick fix. I want to experience something that makes me talk about it the next day. If its really good I'll still be thinking about it a week later; and if it is timeless people in a hundred years will still be talking about it then. In a hundred years people will be looking at the games made in the past twenty years as the art of this time. The age of the painter is dead, killed by animation, the fourth dimension. Now the age of the film director is dead, stangled by a fifth dimension; interactivity. People in the future will look back not upon the painters of this time or the hip hop performers; they will look back at Super Mario Bros 3 and The Legend of Zelda and see an art beyond just asthetics and beyond linear storytelling; they will see an art of storywriting or storyliving. Videogames bring together music, graphic arts, animation, and storytelling, and the center piece that holds these parts together is the interactive nature of videogames. Can a videogame be a videogame without animation? Without graphic art? Without music? Without a story? I do not believe so; otherwise the wheel collapses. And I am more interested in making it so that wheel is strong and can run on its on without an engine; the future will take us to a new dimension beyond the television screen through augmented realities in which entire virtual worlds are painted upon the skeleton of our real world (imagine wearing a pair of glasses with a transluscent screen, motion capture control, and cameras for each eye taking in the image of your world then splicing it with virtual reality on the screens).

 

[Nephilim]

he was on a power trip infront of a bunch of dumb pro american xbox fans, and now hes come back to earth
yay for him

[Strell]

Holy hell, if you can't see the artistry that is INHERENT in Warioware, there's something wrong.  It's highly visually attractive, looks like nothing else on the market.  It has a stupidly zany story that's enough of a reason to see what happens purely because you can.  

If anything, it's a postmodern game.  It's a game that says to itself "I know I am a game made of minigames," much like how a story by any postmodern author tends to refer to itself, its own author, etc.  

If we're going to bring philosophy into this and talk about art and videogames and how they clash respectively, then I think we're going to need better examples.  Calling Warioware pornography - essentially devoiding it of any creative being or artistic integrity - is a terrible statement in my opinion.  That's assuming the game has little, if any, redeemable qualities.  At all.  And that is a HUGELY elitist proposition.  

Yea, I guess if you play one minigame, turn it off, wait a day, play another game, turn it off....on and on and on, then it's worthless.  But that's the equivalent to leveling up one level in any RPG and shutting down the game and doing it again a day later.  If people did that, RPGs would be boring as hell.  Since a good portion of ALL RPG games REQUIRE leveling up, we might as well say that "it's boring to level up" (which it is) and remove anything genuinely appealing about that entire genre.

Warioware is a game whose sum far exceeds its parts.  One by one they can't stand.  All together they rock.  Hard.  It's not Ico and it's not Okami and it's not Disgaea and it's not Viewtiful Joe, but the more I think about it, all of those exist on aesthetic pleasure alone and the stories are generally trash.  In fact, the more I think about it, a huge percentage of games really rely on tired concepts for stories.

I could take all of this further with an anaology to traditional/modern/postmodern forms of writing, but that would really take me off topic and make this a lot more bloated than it might already be.

However, to tie it Rev/Rein, I think he simultaneously has a point and doesn't.  sparkling innovation games will be made but there's no way to know what percentage and how fun/in depth they will be.  Additionally Nintendo has already made it clear long, epic games (no pun intended) will exist on their console.  I think the mix right now is good - we get Mario Kart, Mario, Zelda, and then stuff like Kirby Racing.  That's good for me.  I have a huge, HUGE backlog of games right now, several on the GC and DS (and others).  As I stated in another thread, I think Nintendo's comments are taken wildly out of context, and one of the favorites is "we need shorter games."  Again, they are saying they need potently focused games, not bloated ones.

All of this remains to be seen how the Rev's games will pan out.  So I can't say anything on that.  I sincerely hope it leads not to simple mini games, but to awesome new experiences.  I think that is what Nintendo is betting on as well.

Also, DeadlyD's comment made me laugh.  A lot.

[OptimusPrime]

The key element for some people getting frustrated about Nintendo these days is lack of information. We don't know what's going on, we don't know whats Nintendo has cooking up. We don' thave screens, we don't have movies, we don't have official announcements. That creates a frustratation with some people under skin. If suddenly Nintendo says  no HD for rev then that frustration pops and bam they scream rape and murder while HD is a pure visually something and Sony and MS need it to validate their consoles very existence with it. Gameplay-wise well...they should have just let their old consoles live a bit longer. But Rev's no-HD is big enough a argument to say that Nintendo's new control only negates that argument for some... seriously where are we going as gamers when we use a complete new controlmanner (more intuïtion, more immerssion, possibility for new genres and heaps on heaps of innovation in gamedesign) as only a argument to negate something minor as a graphical update (look it looks... a bit...cleaner...).

Nintendo's Revolution will have a hard time with rusted hard-core gamers as nemo (maybe) is. A rusted hardcore gamer is one that glues himself inside the box that gaming is today, anthing innovative that can break the box is a sparkling innovation or completly useless. They will buy every sequel out there and expect more the same all the time. It's nice nemo mentioned Zelda because every new real Zelda is actually more of the same even if every zelda actually uses a new concept to create new gameplay variations that nobody did before. The problem, because every zelda does that  the rusted hardcore games will expect that from every zelda. Innovating within the zelda-box of gameplayfundaments is a fundament of every zeldagame (same like saying that Nintendo's biggest tradition is to innovate... sounds like a paradox but it isn't) so rusted hardcore gamers will not scream rape and murder if the next zelda inovates hugely as long its within the box of the zelda gameplayfundaments (which innovation is one of them). They will scream rape and murder if the Zelda Revolution wil suddenly force you to control Link in a complete new and innovative way trought the controller, it breaks the box that is zeldagames.

Those rusted hardcore gamers now demand stories as if they we're part of the gameplay (which they aren't), they made this word 'epic' up whose definition is extremly vague (and so very usuable for marketing hypes). Denis Dyack's accusations towards Nintendo not wanting to make epic games are for me complelty ungrounded... Zelda is probably the most epic gamingseries out there and he even admits it by answering to the question 'what do you think of the controller?' with ' it wil not stop me from buying the revolution for zelda'. This is what historians call a unguarded moment by the forgerer. he can not maintain his faked spontanity and has a unguarded moment at times that actually reveal his true motives or personality.

Nintendo is eager to break the box and they know that for breaking it you need to make the software that really uses that controller and proves that breaking the box isn't a bad thing at all. Especially to the rusted hardcore and after that the rusted fanboy hardcore. it's nice to see that among al the third parties who commented on the Revolution no one seems to be a rusted hardcore and sees the box-breaking potential Nintendo has in store for the industry. We can ssume they know a lot more then we...what games Nintendo has planned, what kind of applications in regard to the controller, the hardware, Nintendo strategies how to appeal to the new markets ect. Problem again, those are behind the screens talk, we don't know what's happening...result frustration under the skin with some that can seriously pop if some kind of news that has some kind of negative in it comes up. Not by coincidence are those people with the most frustration the ones who are the most rusted hardcore.

Only thing we can do is wait and carefully and with lots of consideration at what we know, not ripping things out of the context, discuss. That's a very thin line i know.

[Avinash_Tyagi]

I wonder if this lends strength to the whole REV is as powerful as competitors argument

[Hostile Creation]

Stanley Kubrick is entirely overrated.

[Karl Castaneda #2]

My guess? He let his personal views and bias get the best of him and it got recorded. Then, when he got back to work, his boss said something along the lines of, "You better fix what you did, because if this promotes bad relations between Epic and Nintendo, I'll castrate you." So Rein apologized and now everything's groovy. Do I think anything will really come out of it (i.e. Unreal Tournament 2007 on Nintendo Revolution)? Eh, unlikely, unless FPS games do in fact become revolutionized with the new setup. That Unreal Engine 3.0 comment seems so bloated I nearly vomited.

However, if anything great does come out of it, I'll happily eat my words and rejoice with the rest of you.

[ThePerm]

insert funny picture and comment here on sunday

[nemo_83]

The controller hardware of the Revolution is innovative; I'm denying that.  I want innovation in my games.  I want to see Metroid turned upside down by free form aiming.  I want full motion capture sword fights in Zelda.  I want complete original titles that use the controller in innovative ways too, but I don't want incomplete titles original or not no matter how they use the controller.  I want to control traditional style games in wild new ways.  How about Goldeneye with dual wield aiming with dual remotes?


There is a broad line to me between minimalism (Ico) and what I equated as pornography (Warioware).  It's not that the mini games in Warioware themselves are pornographic; its the overall presentation and exploitation that makes the game itself pornographic.  Ico is a minimalist game; it is like Resident Evil and MGS in that it takes an aspect of Zelda and focuses tightly on that aspect for the entire game.  

Imagine that all games are poems for a moment.  Let us assume we're in the early 20th century.  Writers found themselves looking for new ways of writing.  They abandoned the restraints of traditional meter and rhyme but that didn't mean they abandoned telling stories.  Even a two line Sandburg imagist poem conveys a freaking point.  What do you learn from Warioware?  Is there even a literary theme?  Zelda has plenty; it's built on a thousand years of British literature.  You see Zelda is the standard for video games from its conception on into forever just as Beowulf will always be looked back upon as the standard for themes, character flaws, and story for English story telling (and Beowulf draws most of its material from the story of Christ).  


The deepest thought I have heard on Warioware was that it has a secret audio clip that when played backwards says something along the lines of, "I have delivered children to hell."  That is good to know Nintendo; I always thought you were the master of false idols

Just because Zelda is the rock which all games are built upon doesn't mean any game that seeks to make allusions to it is a clone.  The closest game I ever played to a Zelda clone was Metroid Prime; it kept with the Metroid subject matter but pretty much did everything Zelda does in game design with puzzles, dungeons, weapons, etc.  Metroid and Zelda are epic games to me.  Resident Evil on the other hand is more like a whole game built on one Zelda dungeon with puzzles, keys, weapons, and a huge boss at the end.  MGS borrows a lot of the stealth gameplay you see in the original Zelda.  There isn't much of a difference between hiding in MGS and hiding behind a bush from a Moblin in Zelda.  Ico is like a whole game built around rescuing a princess; the game is basically the first scene of LttP.  If Zelda were a novel; Ico or Shadow of the Collossus would be a short story.  And WarioWare would be the mail bag in Penthouse.


Games that hardcore gamers will claim to be epic but are really just long winded would be Final Fantasy (11 if you please) and KOTOR.  Any game that requires you to play for 40 hours before something interesting happens is garbage to me.  I'm not going to play it, get over it; they are as pornographic as WarioWare if not something worse as at least WarioWare succeeds at being accessible.  RPGs are the perfect example of exclusivity and snobbery within the game industry.  The kind of crap that fills that 40 hours of monotony in long RPGs is as pointless as the scavenger hunts Nintendo has been throwing into their titles recently to extend their length like the Triforce run in Wind Waker, the keys in Prime, and everything in Sunshine.


If I were able to create a game right now on Revolution it would be inspired by the controller.  It would drive me to create a game where the control of the character feels as free as the remote itself.  I would create a game where the action is all about character control, running, jumping, and flying.  I want to go back to the roots; Mario Bros and Zelda.  I want something simple like that; I want to control the marionette; not a water pack  I would seek to create a traditional story with themes just as story tellers have done for all of human history.  The subject matter would be affected little by the remote; the remote changes the interactivity with the character and the world.  It frees the game designer to create something more ambitious, it frees the writer to tell a story more intuitively, and it allows for games with new gameplay such as free form flight to control really well.  The remote's technology does not mean we have to have games about doing dentistry work.  Is Nintendo a video game company or are they Microsoft, a software company?

That is the kind of simplifying I see for this remote; not a game in which I cook with a wok (that's the kind of game you give away for free online as a demo of the controller; if you make that a game it will be equivalent to playing the board game Operation).  Games with adventures feature macro puzzles and micro puzzles; they feature adventures within the adventure.  A game that has no journey and no adventure is a game that has no purpose to me.  

[zakkiel]

Quote
Just because Zelda is the rock which all games are built upon doesn't mean any game that seeks to make allusions to it is a clone. The closest game I ever played to a Zelda clone was Metroid Prime; it kept with the Metroid subject matter but pretty much did everything Zelda does in game design with puzzles, dungeons, weapons, etc. Metroid and Zelda are epic games to me. Resident Evil on the other hand is more like a whole game built on one Zelda dungeon with puzzles, keys, weapons, and a huge boss at the end. MGS borrows a lot of the stealth gameplay you see in the original Zelda. There isn't much of a difference between hiding in MGS and hiding behind a bush from a Moblin in Zelda. Ico is like a whole game built around rescuing a princess; the game is basically the first scene of LttP. If Zelda were a novel; Ico or Shadow of the Collossus would be a short story.

Um, I guess all these games are similar in that they feature collectible upgrades and boss battles. To conclude from this that they are all based on Zelda requires a level of fanaticism that I, as a strong Zelda fan, simply do not possess.

Quote
Games that hardcore gamers will claim to be epic but are really just long winded would be Final Fantasy (11 if you please) and KOTOR. Any game that requires you to play for 40 hours before something interesting happens is garbage to me. I'm not going to play it, get over it; they are as pornographic as WarioWare if not something worse as at least WarioWare succeeds at being accessible.

Never played any Final Fantasy game, but your claim that KOTOR is "pornographic" makes sense only if by "pornographic" you mean "I don't like it." In which case, fine, you don't care for games that are long. But I'm curious: if TP is as long as claimed, will you tell us how that's porn as well? Or will that be "different"?

The purpose of a game is to entertain. A commodity, such as a game, is good insofar as it fulfills its purpose. Therefore, a game is good insofar as it entertains. The only measure of a game is how well it entertains its target audience. Which is why claims such as "OoT is vastly overrated" (I'm looking at you, PaLaDiN) are so very, very silly. Unless you think people can be deceived about how much fun they have while playing a game.

[nemo_83]

The supreme misfortune is when theory outstrips performance-- Leonardo da Vinci

I'm posting this quote because it is the world I am coming from and entering into the world of writing.


Do we do art for art's sake? Does one paint a painting simply for color. Does one write a poem simply for the pleasure of language? I do not believe so; what makes something literature or art in general is the message. If Frost gives the reader an image of him mowing it could be pretty boring, but if he gives you a bright green snake too suddenly it is a pastoral poem with an allusion to Eden. The genius of the execution can not out perform the genius of the idea and theme beneath the surface.

It is like asking the question of what is the purpose of English. Is it to compose sentences or to use sentences to compose drama?

One must step back from the trees to see the forest.



The reason KOTOR is pornographic is because you may spend twenty hours leveling up before you get a light saber; you'll spend another twenty hours developing your force abilities.  The gameplay is gratuidous and repetitive.  The difference between this and a game that actually has you doing something for those many hours is what makes a game pornographic or not.  The scavenger hunt for example at the end of Wind Waker is pointless and slapped onto the game at the last minute to make the game seem more epic; it was only more tedious.  If however Nintendo had added three new dungeons which impact the adventure with new items with new uses to solve new puzzles it would have been meaningful.  Games like KOTOR or FF11 don't allow you to do anything until you get deep into the game; you spend most of your time just playing to be playing, you just run and level up and run and level up and level up until you can actually go out into the world and explore things.  It doesn't take five minutes in LttP on SNES to get your sword and get on with your adventure and begin exploring Hyrule.  

[zakkiel]

Quote
The reason KOTOR is pornographic is because you may spend twenty hours leveling up before you get a light saber; you'll spend another twenty hours developing your force abilities. The gameplay is gratuidous and repetitive. The difference between this and a game that actually has you doing something for those many hours is what makes a game pornographic or not.

I can only conclude that you've never played the game, since a) it's not more than thirty hours beginning to end, unless you really go all out on side quests, b)the lightsaber is basically just a sword with some added bonuses, c)you are, in fact, "doing something" in the sense that you are busy fighting, beating dungeons and completing quests, which is what you do in - wait for it - Zelda, and d)you do not spend time "working" on your force powers, you gain them as a consequence of leveling up. If you simply despise the whole concept of RPGs, fine, but don't torture the English language by abusing the term "pornographic." The metaphor makes no sense at all.  

[ThePerm]

sloppy or cheap works...but pornographics....it doesnt work

[attackslug]

Great Scott!!! My pretension-o-meter is going off the charts!
You've just described pretty much every RPG out on the market, including Nintendo classics, such as Earthbound.  No offense, but you might want to leave the lecture/reading material from your latest Lit class out of a post regarding videogames.  Leisuresuit Larry and GTA come *kinda* close to pornography, and perhaps something as explicit and exploitative as Manhunt, but I think you are way off on your (mis)use of the word.

Back on topic, I think most people are a bit too harsh on Rein.  Epic's middleware on the Rev would be an invaluable asset for third-party designers, especially if we are going to see cross-platform development/porting this time around.

And back off-topic again...
Dammit, Warioware has some of the best art direction in any game I've played to date.  I've never had such simple little line drawings make me chortle like an idiot before, and I love the "bastardizations" of classic NES games (über-ripped Mario vs Bowser, anyone?).

[KDR_11k]

There WILL be a Rev version of the Unreal Engine because telling potential customers "Oh, we don't think anyone would develop for that" does not work.

[Kairon]

Nemo, I don't think that you should use the term pornography. I think a better term would be expansive content.

If I'm interpreting what you're relating correctly, it's like we have two contrasting styles...

One style is lean, focused, and powerful. It's concise and concentrated; it's a pure, driving example of whatever it is. It's like one powerfully written sentence by a great writer, one sentence that only has a couple of words and takes only a small moment to read. But reading it aloud, this single sentence is so well crafted that each natural pause thunders in your ears, each word drips with intent, each image slithers into your consciousness, and the period falls heavily it's like the finality of a slammed door. So powerful is this single, concise, focused sentence (or game) that it conquers without wasted breath, extant time, or excessive adornment.

But the other style, the other style is expansive, and vibrant, and freeing. It doesn't just give you its message, but it also elaborates upon it and explores all the ideas that its initial conception sparks upon. It's not just one flower, but a garden of dozens of different flowers and shrubs and ferns and grasses and trees and roots, and vines and mosses and lichens, each unique and each one a new discovery, each one drifting into consciousness only for a moment before you alight upon the next adventure. It's never finished and never contained by one mind: each person is invited to take their own journey through it, enjoy each plant not as a single plant but as just one of an entire menagerie, enjoy each experience as one fleeting moment in a string of ideas and conceptions and experiences. This style isn't about just an idea, but about exploring that idea, romping into sidepaths and across open fields, and frolicking in a huge expansive feeling that has no single line of thought other than freedom.

Oh god I set off attakslug's pretention meter again.

Anyways, IF I am interpreting this right, the first style is closer to the style of a game like the first Mario Bros. Each level had one goal: reach the end. Each world had new challenges: reach the end. Each warpzone led to new purposes: reach the end. The first Mario Bros. was singleminded in its purpose for the player, you may have fire flowers and spikeys and warpzones, but only one thing is repeated again and again, only one thing is ever really strived for in Mario: reach the end.

The second style seems similar to a game like Metroid. Explore your world. Experiment with your abilities. Solve Puzzles. Learn your enemiy's patterns. This is a game that didn't succeed becuase you shot monsters, it succeeded because it was always elaborating upon the players experience. It introduced a variety of weapons, it had bosses who had different patterns, it gave the player countless ways to move around their world and it gave them more than one way to play the game: beat a time limit? find all the secrets? just win? AND, it even broadened the gameplaying experience because the action hero, the masculine role, was given to a female, extending the game's world into ours and intersecting with the real world discussion of gender roles.

...so....uh....

I don't see other style as negative. That's why this "pornography" term makes me icky. NEITHER of these styles are bad. But they are most definitely different.

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com  

[IceCold]

Nemo, I think you should just buy an Xbox 360 along with the Too Human trilogy...it would suit you well.

[MrMojoRising]

All of these long winded posts are making me miss Ian's complaining and Stevey's...well, Stevey's Stevality.

[wandering]

Nemo, all art is pornography.
Because isn't creating any piece of art essentially bringing to life dreams and fantasies?

You can go on about stories and meaning - but, in my mind, a great piece of art doesn't need a trumped "story" in the traditional sense - with a beginning, middle, climax and resolution...and it doesn't need an author to force a  trumped-up "meaning" onto it. In my mind, a great piece of art is about capturing something well. A painting of a woman looking out of a window can be art, even though, while there may be some story and meaning inherent in the image (Why is she staring out the window? What motivates her? What is going through her mind?), the story and meaning will likely be unknown to the viewer. The point is, the paiting has captured a singular moment beautifully, or, perhaps, has captured a beautiful moment well - and, therefore, it is art.

In the same way, Nintendogs can be considered art, because dogs are beautiful, and Nintendogs captures them beautifully.

[norebonomis]

GOOD THREAD!

[attackslug]

Certainly a bit more literate and coherent than the gamespot forums I'm used to.  It's kind of nice to see the use of big words and concepts a bit more "advanced" than the typical "my dad (or x console) can beat up yours!" that seems to work its way into every thread.
One of the reasons I *highly* disliked the MGS series is that they try so hard to be much more than what they are -- a fairly silly videogame with some long winded political & philosophical commentary tacked on.  You can argue that videogames are a valid art form (in some regards this is very true) to the bitter end, just as you can with any creative media, but in the end they are still products designed with the intent of making lots and lots of cash.

[mantidor]

Its an art thread now oh my!

For me art is the expression of human emotions and feelings through some sort of media, when you can pass the superficial aspect of such media (be it the sounds, images or whatever) and the lasting impact is an emotional one beyond basic instincts, then is art. Pornography or Nintendogs for me then ar not art, what they evoque in you is basic instincts, bieng simple sexual desire or the "aaaww" we say when we see cute things.

[PaLaDiN]

I find the juxtaposition of Pornography and Nintendogs in this discussion to be thoroughly unsettling.

[darknight06]

Um do ya'll even own Nintendogs?  You all talk as if the only thing you ever do in the game is look at cute puppies and rub their bellies or something.  Last I checked the game had a ton of depth to it, in what kind of pups and personalities you meet, how your pups can turn out personality wise, the type of social interactions between master, house pups, and pups during the walks and bark mode, the little games you can make up with the pups, it's goes on and on.  And the biggest thing about that is that it's all PERSONAL.  Nintendogs is a case of Art imitating Life.  Your life with the pups is what you make of it.  It can be the way it currently is or it can go in another direction.  It can be everchanging or very conservative.  It's whatever and goes wherever you decide to take it, just like any other great piece of art be it a painting, photograph, sculpture, or any other medium established or no.  

[Kairon]

Quote
Originally posted by: attackslug
One of the reasons I *highly* disliked the MGS series is that they try so hard to be much more than what they are -- a fairly silly videogame with some long winded political & philosophical commentary tacked on.

I agree with you sooo much on that observation.

But MGS doesn't invalidate the whole game-as-more-than-a-game concept. It was just really awkwardly done...in this critics humble opinion...

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com