… I present you with this article.
Discuss.
Discuss.
Man, that was really short for an Avault article. Where are the other seven pages?
-Tom
Damn steve. I saw that earlier along with the frontpage blurb:
Rob Beschizza explores how games and art relate to each other - and why great game art is more than the sum of whatever traditional media it contains.
I immediately shutdown IE and went back to work as I was hoping I would not be reading it…ever. Now you are forcing my hand if we are all planning to flame the waste of time that I imagine the article is.
I was sorta hoping they’d break down art by its graphics, sound, gameplay, AI, multiplayer, etc.
I dunno, I think I discussed this in a more lucid mannger a couple of years ago. This piece was written as if it came right out of the Post Modern Essay Generator.
Okay, now, are games low art or high art? (ducks)
Loyd Case
Oh my!
It’s like the end of several Monolith and MGS games scrunched together!
That article’s Greatest Hits (italics are the article):
-History dispelled these painterly illusions. Technique reached its climax. The tools were perfected. Rembrandt and his contemporaries took the form as far as it could go, but then something went awry.That was the day the Orcs came! Woe to the people as the clouds boiled darkly on the horizon, what great shining hero would save them from the mistakes of teeth-whitening toothpaste brands?
-After World War II it finally won out, turning the illusion of reality into a subgenre, derisively renamed “illustration.”
Reality: We and the other genre’s are gathered here today for one purpose, to strip away Illusion of Reality’s genre rank and demote the cunning sonuvabitch into a subgenre!
Illusion of Reality: Woe and curses! (But mostly lots of woe!) Whatever shall I do? I’m now a subgenre! I shall go into the wilderness and reflect, mashing my face with ashes and wailing to the heavens!
And then…
I shall be reborn…
As “Illustration!”
cue thunder and lightning
The Other Genres: Oh, but that is so derisive.
(Note: Since when was reality a genre? Not even I, the guy who maintains no work of fiction needs to be believable in order to be good, will say that.)
-Movies deploy technology that deceives us with abandon, and it’s a fair bet that the graphics accelerators of the future will be equal in power to the beasts that power films like “Matrix Reloaded.”
All civilization has waited for this point until deceptive, lying beasts could power the pinnacle of society: games based on The Matrix.
-Game design has seen careers rise and fall, and years of toil have been sunk into perfecting now-forgotten dynamics, just as with any other form of skilled labor.
It’s Spartacus: The Editorial!
(Note: those “now forgotten dynamics”–which by the way we can’t have forgotten too well if we’ve sunk years of toil into them–are about to rise up from their ancient graves because one of you went and removed the Dark Crystal of Ra from the dreaded ruins again. Fess up, which one of you did it? The rest of us can mark our calendars for the middle of July as about the time the Orc hordes should show up with an army of demons and darkness using the power of the “now forgotten dynamics.”)
- Interactivity was always the focal point for discussions of games-as-art. Interactive fiction, like Infocom’s Zork, equaled anything found in the average novel.
Now Dawn rose from her bed, wher she lay by haughty Tithonos,
and spread her rose-colored fingers over the horizon,
as the immortal gods made their day’s council, grey-eyed Athene
came to Odysseus in a vision, clothed in the appearance of an owl,
thusly she warned: “Godlike Odysseus, you have done well to suffer the ‘strong, long pains’ of Kalypso’s copious bondings, but now it is
time to get up and save your damn family from the suitors! I verily
warn you: do not bone the witch!”
You wake up, disorientated and feeling slightly molested by Dawn’s rosy fingers.
What now, godlike Odysseus?
> Bone the witch.
I do not understand the word bone.
What now, godlike Odysseus?
>Screw the witch.
I do not understand the word screw.
What now, godlike Odysseus?
>Scratch down there like a good Greek man.
I see no down there like a good Greek man here.
What now, godlike Odysseus?
> Kill Kalypso.
(with dinglehopper) That is too weak to kill Kalypso.
What now, godlike Odysseus?
>But that bitch turned my men into pigs!
I think that was Circe.
>Oh, right, thanks.
No prob.
-Kitsune
Words into the parser entered brilliant Odysseus,
wary of disk-wielding Infocom’s crafty designs,
yet anxious for leathered Athena of Phoebus,
surpassing Circe herself in virtual charm!
Couldn’t get past the first page, and feel like I should get a medal for reading the whole first page. Nothing like oral (I suppose in this case, written) masturbation.
It’s a trap!
Secretly, all art are games. Even paintings. They’re just really boring games. Like Myst.
- Alan
LOL! So, Starry Night is just a 1 frame per millenium adventure game, eh? Cool graphics though.
I don’t think I’ve read the article you wrote, Loyd, and I still like it better than that Avault piece.
That was six hours of my life I’ll never get back.
[quote=“Jason_Cross”]
I don’t think I’ve read the article you wrote, Loyd, and I still like it better than that Avault piece.
That was six hours of my life I’ll never get back.[/quote]
It’s here:
http://www.womengamers.com/articles/artmerit_1.html
It shouldn’t take you six hours to read ;-)
As ever,
Loyd
LOL! So, Starry Night is just a 1 frame per millenium adventure game, eh? Cool graphics though.[/quote]
Should have licensed a good third party engine.
How in the hell does Avault still exist. The fact it outlasted OGR, Gamecenter, and the All Your Base Are Belong to Us craze makes baby angels cry.
Avault gets traffic, knows how to sell ads, and runs a lean operation.
The owner at one time placed a value of $60M on it, or something crazy like that. That was back at the height of the Internet frenzy, of course. If he had a chance to sell it for a few million and didn’t, he must bang his head against the wall every night.