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Sci-Fi Entertainment Games

Sci-Fi Writer Considers BioShock's Artistic Merit 108

Posted by Zonk from the it's-art-get-over-it dept.
The LevelUp blog considers an article on the Washington Post site, where their tech columnist did a little experiment. He set Science Fiction author Michael Dirda down in front of Irrational's BioShock, and asked him to consider the game's artistic merit. N'Gai has himself some interesting commentary about the article, which raises a flurry of question on its own: "Dirda, to use his word, doesn't know the 'rhetoric' of video games. Me: I've spent so much time playing video games over the years that I'd forgotten people aren't born instinctively knowing how to 'circlestrafe' a monster ... 'I could lose myself in this, in some ways, easier than in a book,' he said. Dirda said the game showed him that video games 'obviously have artistic value' and will likely become more of a recognized art form. So: Is BioShock art? 'I would hesitate to go that far,' he said after a short pause."
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Sci-Fi Writer Considers BioShock's Artistic Merit More

Sci-Fi Writer Considers BioShock's Artistic Merit

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  • I especially liked the author's comparison of people new to videogames to schoolchildren who have just learned to read. In fact I sometimes show a great videogame to someone who's not into gaming and they obviously "don't get it". I think this shows that videogames are progressing and becoming more and more sophisticated all the time, and maybe sometime soon they won't be dissed as some "inferior kind of art" anymore. Even though I, myself, still consider books and music to be somehow superior to games. Goo

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by JordanL ( 886154 )
      I want to emphasize that I think the article is good, and that it's the kind of point that needs to be made...

      But lets not forget that the "artistic merit" of Bioshock is basicly the watered down artistic merit of System Shock 2, as Bioshock is a copy and paste of the game, sans cyberpunk theme.

      No one talked about that game back in the day when it came out, and I think it's important to remember that such artistic merit is not a new thing. Very old games had just as much, or more artistic merit that w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Pojut ( 1027544 )
        I am one of those gamers that firmly believes graphics do NOT necessarily make a game better (example: my ladyfriend and I likely play my Atari 2600 together more than any other console I own)

        However, in the case of BioShock, the graphics do have a lot to do with it....the fantastic lighting, the quite realistic water, the texture work...System Shock 2, in all honesty, wasn't even really all the nice looking when it was released. It was scary as hell, really fun, and a gaming experience that every gamer sh

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by DDLKermit007 ( 911046 )
        Amen to that. Check out Zero Punctuation's review of Bioshock. He does make some damn spot on right remarks about the game.

        http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/editorials/zeropunctuation/1394-Zero-Punctuation-BioShock [escapistmagazine.com]

    • Michael Who? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Geoffrey.landis ( 926948 )
      Why is Michael Dirda labelled as being a science fiction writer?
    • It seems to me that the whole shooter genre is quickly moving away from regular people and becoming focused solely on hardcore players of the shooter genre, who know how to "circlestrafe" a monster, whatever that means. As a result, all those hardcore strafers like the game, and the rest of us stand scratching our heads and wondering what could any sane person like about it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Goaway ( 82658 )
        Quickly moving away from? It's sitting exactly where it always was. Perhaps Doom was a bit more accessible, but most games since have pretty much just been Quake over and over again.
      • Circle strafing is just sidestepping around the monster while shooting at it. I don't tend to do that in single player games, or even multiplayer, because I prefer one shot kill games, but it's pretty much necessary for stupid unrealistic games where you have to shoot something a zillion times before it will die.
    • It's not that many games (like Bioshock) aren't art on the level of many quality films and novels, it's just that with things like literature, you can fall back and say "This author was the greatest there ever was!" Since "mainstream" culture is familiar with great books (or at least knows they exist even if they've never read any), no one thinks about all the terrible ones out there when they talk about the medium as a whole. I have no qualms in saying that most video games are better than, say, a Nora R

  • The Interesting Thing (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Effugas ( 2378 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @07:10AM (#20649929) Homepage
    The question is not whether video games are or aren't art.

    The question is why, oh why, are artists in other genres so utterly threatened by the concept that it might be.

    I mean, just look at the constituent properties of games.

    Games have music of all genres, and nobody denies that can be art.

    Screen shots from many games could probably be snuck into your local modern art gallery. Nobody denies imagery can be art.

    They went to a sci-fi author! Certainly a science fiction tale can be art.

    If you combine all three of the above -- well, you end up with a movie, and nobody denies that cinema is an art form.

    Even if you take away the controlled progression of experiences -- well, welcome to architecture. Was Frank Lloyd Wright not an artist?

    I think the bottom line is that a lot of people who don't play games, but do pay attention to art, don't want to imagine that they're not trained to appreciate a particular art form. Better to deny its potential as being art at all.

    The real question is -- why should gamers care?
    • I checked Wikipedia and the only writing that Dirda has done appears to be literary criticism. I think, while he likes SF, he's not an SF writer. I could be wrong though...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by EtoilePB ( 1087031 )
      I think the bottom line is that a lot of people who don't play games, but do pay attention to art, don't want to imagine that they're not trained to appreciate a particular art form. Better to deny its potential as being art at all. The real question is -- why should gamers care?

      Games are really paralleling film history right now. The answer to anyone invested in it (say, someone who went to film school and now writes about video games and spends spare time on Slashdot) is, "of course they're art, stup

    • Re:The Interesting Thing (Score:4, Insightful)

      by UbuntuDupe ( 970646 ) * on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @08:15AM (#20650559) Journal
      I've long felt that art is "whatever the old boys club says is art", which is what makes art so disenchanting for me. It's like if, in science, you could determine whether observations would fit your theory *only* after making them, instead of having to put the theory to the test by making the prediction first. Supposedly, you have to have a refined taste to appreciate art, but in my experience, this in practice means, "you have to be told it's good before you notice its good". Also known as the Placebo effect.

      Recently, people have been putting the objectivity of art judgments to the test, and art's gatekeepers aren't looking so good:

      -When Joshua Bell played anonymously in L'Enfant Plaza, with the world's best violin and supposedly most beautiful music, virtually no one stopped to listen.
      -When wine critics have to do blind tests, the results look pretty random.
      -When an author submitted Jane Austen's work to a publisher, the publisher rejected it as no good. (Of course, it should have been rejected, but on grounds of plagiarism.)

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by Gulthek ( 12570 )
        What is art? [xyzzyb.com]

        Generally people have a vague notion that art is something that everyone agrees is art. That art is cultured, refined, high-brow, sophisticated. That art must be appreciated to be art. Art is that which is hung in museum galleries and fawned over by elite scholars who write detailed analyses describing their value and meaning. People believe these scholars and nod their knowing agreement, sure that they too see the same value that the experts have ascribed.

        At the other extreme there are those w

      • There's other studies that break the other way though.
        For just one, a research project analyzed some of Jackson Pollack's paintings using fractal-based math, and got what they called a complexity index. Pollack's works tend to fall in a narrow range for this index, and photos of natural settings tend to fall in the same range. In particular, sufficiently large photos of woodlands and jungles to capture good detail for single trees, fall in this range 90% of the time or so, whether they are of just one tree

      • Supposedly, you have to have a refined taste to appreciate art, but in my experience, this in practice means, "you have to be told it's good before you notice its good". Also known as the Placebo effect.

        Really? I always thought it was the Pablo Picasso effect.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by westlake ( 615356 )
      The question is not whether video games are or aren't art.
      The question is why, oh why, are artists in other genres so utterly threatened by the concept that it might be.

      What makes you think they are threatened?

      You have as much as said that a video game is collaborative effort like a movie.

      You need people who think in terms of narrative, dramatic structure, pacing. People who can script dialog and action that is persuasive and entertaining.

      You need production designers, art designers, animators, co

    • The question is why, oh why, are artists in other genres so utterly threatened by the concept that it might be.

      Basic insecurity - and one really good question.

      With videogames as a recognized Art form what established Artists know and do becomes cloudy, just as the value of great scenery artists was questioned by the rise of great scenery photographers. Prior to photography it was simply understood that a great painter had value, because he could render an emotionally powerful image. With photographers on

    • I think the bottom line is that a lot of people who don't play games, but do pay attention to art, don't want to imagine that they're not trained to appreciate a particular art form. Better to deny its potential as being art at all.

      If Ebert had only watched a couple of movies in his lifetime, I doubt he would find any artistic merit in them, or understand them at all. As the Level Up article says:

      It soon becomes clear that Musgrove's experiment, though well-intentioned, was doomed to failure because Dirda d

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by h4rm0ny ( 722443 )

      That is a good question. But perhaps an equally useful one is why are so few artists choosing video games as their medium?

      That question, of course, presupposes that they are not. For myself, I see video games as being less artistic because they do less to engage my higher faculties than a lot of other traditional art mediums. I apply the same heuristic in gauging the degree of artistic quality of a film. There may be video games that do provide such engagement. The general case is that they don't, I thi
  • ... the truth is bioshcok being a game couldn't easily BE like a movie, game makers haven't totally mastered storytelling by merging the best elements of cinema with the best elements of games yet. We're getting their slowly, but I ultimately believe games will one day be 'art', it's juts a matter of time. Part of the real problem is the passive nature of exposition and the desire for the player to be "having fun".

    Movies are a passive media, games are not, and the thing with bioshock was if you didn't exp
    • Also bioshock as a game felt unfinished toward the end, the story was interesting for the first part of the game, but by the time you got to Andrew ryan things just seemed to get really weird, and then on your journey to fountain the story loses all cohesiveness really.

      How would this distract from it being art, allbeit rushed/unfinished art?

      There are plenty of movies that start out good that finish horribly or rushed. Where they butcher the film in the editing room. Some books are like that, where you get
    • Bioshock is definitely a work of art. Chock full of art, I would say. The question that should be asked is whether it was any good as a game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by brkello ( 642429 )
      There is no real problem. Replace "having fun" with "being entertained" or "seeing something that challenges your mind" and you see that games have everything in common with art. Art is made for the enjoyment of others. No different from games.

  • Sci-fi author? (Score:5, Informative)

    by Negatyfus ( 602326 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @07:21AM (#20650027) Journal
    As far as I can tell, the man is a book critic [wikipedia.org]. The write-up makes it seem as he's actually written sci-fi books?
  • I started playing Bioshock a few days ago, I'm enjoying the game (and find it kinda creepy). I wouldn't consider it art.
    The closest I've seen in a game I would consider art is Zelda: Twilight Princess. It has a compelling story, good graphics and was very enjoyable.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tgd ( 2822 )
      Play it a bit more... the game really starts to pull on you more as you learn more about it and get farther into it. (Assuming you're playing with the goal of figuring out whats going on, not just shooting everything).

      I'd argue BioShock is one of the few games out there that does meet the criteria he mentioned -- does a game make you depressed? I found BioShock plenty engrossing enough to be sad about actions I'd taken as the game progressed. Weird, perhaps, maybe a bit fruity but whatever. Thats how I felt

      • When there's a video game that makes the player depressed, that's when the medium might be onto something as an art form, Dirda said. It's easy to like something that makes you feel powerful in its fantasy world, as games generally do. But would anybody play a game that makes him sad?
        Shadows of the Colossus.
        • Bard's Tale 3 - Thief of Fate: The player tries to fix what Tarjan the Mad god did (killing all the other gods). The first attempt looks like it's possibly going to revive a god of the forests, and it doesn't really accomplish anything except making a nice memorial to him. You play through the whole game feeling like you're not accomplishing what it looks like you are really supposed to accomplish, and are going to have to settle for revenge on Tarjan and a world without its apparently well beloved deities.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ebertx ( 860162 )
      "Art" is not synonymous with "good". Literature is an art form regardless of the merit of an individual book. I think with video games, an important distinction needs to be made. Counter-strike is not art any more than soccer is art. In other words, any game played competitively as a sport should not be considered art. Any game with any sort of narrative structure should be considered art. Obviously there are exceptions and fuzzy areas (a cooperative game, for example), but I think the general rule ho

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by topham ( 32406 )
        Not all books are art. Not all paintings qualify.

        The fact there are people who will whole heartedly disagree with me and swear all paintings are art the more I believe that the commercial art world has overridden common sense.

        My statements about the game may have implied I thought 'good' was a requirement for art. It isn't. There is plenty of things I consider art which I do not like; however there are lots of things which are art in form (some abstract paintings come to mind), without having any artistic m
  • Gameplay and artistic depth are two very orthogonal goals. It's hard to engineer a game which is fun to play and tells a truly original story -- generally, the high ratio of (time spent killing people) to (time spent talking to people) precludes a lot of useful dialogue.

    Probably the last game which spoke to me in any meaningful literary way was Deus Ex -- and even that had long stretches of plot-thin killing.
    • That's just your choice of games, though. There are games available for us that enjoy a good story.
      For an extreme example, how about 'Hotel Dusk: Room 215'? It's basically an interactive book, and I still enjoyed it quite a lot.
      It doesn't have to be story, either. A rich, explorable game world can have artistic merit even in the total absence of plot.
      How about Myst?
    • I'd argue that "Bioshock" beats "Deus Ex" in being meaningful in a literary way by miles. "Deus Ex" was, in my humble opinion, a fairly stale regurgitation of standard cyberpunk, as seen in Neuromancer, Ghost in the Shell, and The Matrix. Bioshock is a far more novel and refreshing rebuttal of Objectivism. As well as being an interesting treatise on the issues of choice and free will, and their often illusory existence.

      "Deus Ex" was a better game than it was literature or philosophy, "Bioshock" excel

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Fallingcow ( 213461 )
        Haven't played Bioshock yet, but I'm constantly reminded of Deus Ex as I read or take classes. As I read Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy recently, I was reminded of characters, lines, or episodes from that game at least half a dozen times. Several times, my experience with the game has helped me to more quickly grasp an idea, or to make connections between it and others which I might not otherwise have made.

        I don't know of any other game like that, not even among the other plot-heavy ga
        • Alternatively, you could have read Rousseau, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Hume, Machiavelli, etc in High School. Not that anyone does, except myself apparently.

      • Bioshock (Score:2, Interesting)

        by ravenshrike ( 808508 )
        Actually, Bioshock is a damned piss poor rebuttal of Objectivism. Mind you, it tries so very hard, but it happens in a closed system with a hard limit on resources that has already been reached. Any remotely intelligent economist could tell you that it was already fucked, no matter the economic system. Add in the fact that extremely life-altering changes were introduced in an astonishingly rapid fashion, and any two-bit hack could tell you bad things would go down. Not to mention that from a scientific stan
        • I ask that you ignore that the "science" is utterly impossible. What I think you miss is that even before ADAM was discovered, poverty and social stratification had already become major issues. That was how Fontaine was able to set himself up in the first place. ADAM simply serves as an impetus for revolutionary change. The desire to overthrow Andrew Ryan was already there, but the people were powerless to do so.

          As an aside any non-Keynesian economist expects 95+% of citizens to be completely ration

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mwvdlee ( 775178 )
      If anything, art in games will probably come from the gameplay itself. For instance; games have the unique ability to let people experience paradoxal situations or vicious circles. I think games are getting ever closer to this, but it's still tied to the concept that games can somehow be "won". A game like the infamous Columbine RPG is a good example of how you can make a game where the concept of "winning" isn't clear anymore.
      • The biggest flaw in the Columbine RPG was [SPOILERS AHEAD] sending Harris and Klebold to hell after they commit suicide. Until that point, it was a poor game, but it was a thrilling story. But that turned it into a stupid joke. It should have ended right there. Or, even better, but maybe too big to be viable... it should have had an earlier starting point. It should show the whole story, rather than just its last day; not only the massacre, but what drove them to that path.

    • Re:It's been a long, long time since I've seen "ar (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Probably the last game which spoke to me in any meaningful literary way was Deus Ex -- and even that had long stretches of plot-thin killing.
      Well, the Iliad had its share of plot-thin killing too.
      • You're not kidding, O AC.

        That book could probably be cut to 1/2 size if you took out all of the boring-ass, irrelevant actions scenes and replaced them with, "Then they fought. X and Y died, and so did a bunch of other people who are named here but aren't mentioned anywhere else in extant ancient literature, including the rest of this book."

        I'd prefer such an abridgment should I ever go back to re-read the damn thing. I like the book a lot (Odyssey's better, though, IMO) and I even like a few of the less-

  • Definition... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by pieaholicx ( 1148705 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @07:39AM (#20650187) Homepage
    I think it really comes down to how you define art. I personally will consider a lot of things as art that most people wouldn't, things like games, graffiti, and even source code. If you look at things like music, movies, and images you'll notice one thing in common. They all show or inspire emotions. I think that is how art should be defined. So why would a game, which quite often inspire emotions like fear and victory, and many games have quite elaborate and emotional stories, not be considered an art form?

    Just my opinion though.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Goaway ( 82658 )
      Here's a workable definition [shii.org] for you:

      Art is the word we use when we refer to that creative activity or its result, when images and objects, sights and sounds, drawings and carvings, convey the beauty and splendor of the world, or realize the imagination of the artist, for the purpose of self-expression or the shared enjoyment of its creation. Art is that which elevates our interpretation of the world and of ourselves from mere description or narrative, to the sublime.

      By that definition, a few games do easily pass, while many others fail.

      • I'd say the same about movies.

        I mean, to be honest, how many films are released just to make a quick buck? I know of several studios that will release 6-7 monster/zombie movies because of their low production costs and high return- yet what was the last artistic zombie movie you saw?

        If someone can give me a reasonable explanation to why games are not art, that's fine, but all i see is a loose double standard being applied. Point out the shitty FPS while comparing it to the Mona Lisa, sure, that's a perfectl

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Pojut ( 1027544 )

          yet what was the last artistic zombie movie you saw?

          I dunno...the films that make up Lucio Fulci's unnofficial Gates of Hell trilogy ( City of the Living Dead [wikipedia.org], The Beyond, A.K.A. Seven Doors of Death [wikipedia.org], and The House by the Cemetary [wikipedia.org]) are considered as "art" by MANY MANY people around the world...

          • You do realize these were released in the early 80s? I'm not saying that the movies are bad (i haven't seen them personally, but you've got me interested, along with what I've read from IMDB), but it doesn't really combat the idea that recent horror movies are made for a dollar, sold for 3.

            I'll agree that there are movies of any genre that actually somehow transcend the money making motives of their (seemingly begrudgingly) producers, but for everyone one of those, there are easily 10 other's that don't. An

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Pojut ( 1027544 )
              Honestly, the only horror series really worth watching in the last 10-20 years have been the saw films...not just because they are exploitation flicks, but because they actually do put some effort into a storyline as opposed to just slash n gash...

              Most of the great horror movies came around in the 70's/early 80's though...the aformentioned Gates of Hell trilogy, Evil Dead (NOT Army of Darkness, only the first two films) Suspiria, Zombie (or Zombi 2 if you are a purist), Cannibal Holocaust, etc.

              It's a shame

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by mink ( 266117 )
          Check out a film called Undead (I think it was a 2005 release). While not the best film ever, it at least has some thought put into it.

  • Sad, isn't it? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Chemisor ( 97276 ) *
    > The fact is that BioShock, at its best, is capable of evoking some complicated responses
    > from players--among them, shame, guilt, remorse, regret, and, yes, sadness--using not
    > only its story, but most interestingly, its gameplay.

    Isn't it sad that people spend so much time making games to make us scared, shameful, and depressed, instead of using the genre to make us self-confident, satisfied, and happy?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )
      It does that, too, but someone recently commented that it's not art if it can't make you depressed. While that's probably the most fucked up definition of art I've ever heard, games -are- capable of it and fit even that definition.

      Anyhow, just like everything else in life, something that only makes you happy gets boring pretty quickly. There needs to be some balance of other emotions to contrast the happiness, or it won't be appreciated fully. In the end, you should walk away happy, but the path to getti

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by brkello ( 642429 )
        Yeah, funny how that works. No matter what crazy way people want to define art, video games still fit right in. The only definition of art that doesn't include video games would be something like, "Art is music, books, pictures, and movies but not video games."
    • Isn't it sad that people spend so much time making games to make us scared, shameful, and depressed, instead of using the genre to make us self-confident, satisfied, and happy?

      About 90% of all modern "artistic" ventures are based on the sensations of fear, shame, anger and regret. This certainly isn't limited to games.

      the question with a work that spans time is that does it end in fear, shame, anger and regret? Most games don't, many other forms of expression do.
    • Yep. Art should be an accurate realistic depiction of the real world, and a happy one at that. How can these so-called 'artists' only see and depict things that make us scared, shameful, and depressed?

      Either these 'artists' really do see things in this way and believe in what they represent. Then one has only to ask how the defect in vision arose, and if it is hereditary Homeland Security will have to see to it that so ghastly a defect of vision shall not be allowed to perpetuate itself. Or if they do not b

    • Isn't it sad that people spend so much time making games to make us scared, shameful, and depressed, instead of using the genre to make us self-confident, satisfied, and happy?
      Maybe that's why I play geometry wars. =3

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by parcel ( 145162 )

      Isn't it sad that people spend so much time making games to make us scared, shameful, and depressed, instead of using the genre to make us self-confident, satisfied, and happy?
      it's cathartic.
    • Uhh, because there are plenty of games that do make us happy? I don't see how 1 game that elicits emotion like Bioshock is an example of every major game on the market.

  • Is it art? Sure? Is it good? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by edremy ( 36408 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @07:45AM (#20650233) Journal
    Bioshock is art, as are many other video games. It may be a different kind of art than a painting, a novel, a piece of music or a movie (indeed, it combines all four) but it's still art.

    The real question: is it *good* art? Nobody will deny that a painting or a novel is art, but 99% of all of them are crap. Good art provokes a response- you think about it and remember it later, and not just because you managed to frag some noob thirteen times in a row. Video games for the most part have not reached this state. I can only think of a few that merit the title "Good art" that tell stories that are interesting enough to reach that goal.

    • So going by that logic games like Chrono Trigger and the oft mentioned FF 7 would be good art, because most remember them years later and the emotions they envoked. Granted the two chosen are rather subjective as not everyone cared for them, but most people I've run into seem to remember both rather fondly.
      • You're damn right they are :-)

        Seriously, i keep thinking of Chrono Trigger while reading this. It was one of the first games that made me feel emotions for characters. Not like the love for my parents, but the same amount of affection or "will" for a character to win as i see in an epic sports movie, or sad at the loss of a character equivalent to the death of character in a film.

        I think it's unreasonable to only call a game art if it gives you lifelike emotions, as most mediums don't give me lifelike emoti

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Hoknor ( 950280 )
        Really, I think the point is that if you start judging the quality of art, it is necessarily subjective. When broken down to basics, something being art simply means it plays on your senses and the way you percieve beauty. Art is mainly just a way we reference the human pursuit of aesthetics, and sometimes we tend to get so caught up in what pleases us that we start calling things that are not pleasing to us "bad art". Something that makes you feel disgust or boredom is still invoking your senses and is thu
  • Books are not art. I can see how they are useful to art when, for example, you need to record the script for a play or a story, or the mathematical formulas needed in architecture, but they themselves are not art. Give me one example of a book that can be considered art! Surely, they don't compare to classical epic plays and stories, to music, to statues or even pottery.

    Besides, they are just a fad. People might be reading a lot now, but it will soon fade away again when people realize that the theater was
  • I'd have to say games don't do things as well as other "real world" pursuits:
    I don't think that they tell stories as well as movies and books.
    I don't think that they do "challenge" as well as physical sports (from team sports all the way to darts and bowling")
    In some ways, I don't think do "gaming" as well as traditional board, card, and RPGs (though it depends on what you're looking for...)

    What I think games do really well, that no other genre can touch, is making new, creative, interactive systems and wor

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mink ( 266117 )
      "In some ways, I don't think do "gaming" as well as traditional board, card, and RPGs (though it depends on what you're looking for...)"

      Have you tried the Culdcept style games?

      For the way I have seen many people play D&D over the last 30 years, I would say Diablo style games capture that method of roleplaying.
  • Where did the submitter or editor get the idea that Michael Dirda is a "Sci-Fi Writer"?

    He's a journalist. He writes book reviews. His only other publication I can find is an autobiography.

    You can't blame the Washington Post, there is no description of Dirda as "sci-fi writer".

    The GAME is described as sci-fi. That's all.

    Get a fucking clue, "editors".

  • When there's a video game that makes the player depressed, that's when the medium might be onto something as an art form, Dirda said. It's easy to like something that makes you feel powerful in its fantasy world, as games generally do. But would anybody play a game that makes him sad?

    Would they indeed..? Games are generally meant to entertain. Perhaps one could focus on the delivery of of the story. Graphics matter, but not a lot. (FFVI? Chronotrigger? Illusion of Gaia?)

    Music entertains, TV and movies entertain as well. There are a lot of music and books out there that are depressing. A lot of it can make you feel depressed if you let yourself become drawn in. See the first few minutes of High Fidelity [wikipedia.org] for an interesting monologue (I'd link imdb if I weren't at work).

    I seriou

    • Aeris!!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Gulthek ( 12570 )
      Sadness and other filth should not be portrayed!

      Happiness is All!

      But seriously, what are you on? I *love* movies, games, and songs that evoke genuine emotion. Do you want to spend your life eating cotton candy entertainment? (All fun, no substance.)
      • What am I on indeed! Re-read my post and you will see that I wrote that invoking emotions is good, meanwhile invoking depression is bad. Big difference.
    • I still feel bad for what happened to Floyd. [wikipedia.org]

      But, in our sadness, a new hope is found. That's the redeeming quality of emotional games; that with every drop, the ride back up is not far ahead.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by mink ( 266117 )
        That's becasue the little spud was like a lovable but annoying little brother during the game up until that point, and then they spring that on you. Setting the game in a almost entirely empty place with only him as company also worked into your attachment to him.

  • not a sci-fi author. (Score:3, Informative)

    by sammy baby ( 14909 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @08:30AM (#20650737) Journal
    Michael Dirda is not a science fiction author. He's a literary critic. Which the submitter probably should have known if he'd read, like, the very first sentence of the article: "On a recent Saturday morning, I headed over to the house of Pulitzer Prize-winning Post book columnist Michael Dirda with an Xbox 360 under my arm."

    From the third paragraph: "But [Dirda] is a sci-fi fan and an open-minded fellow, and I was curious whether BioShock's story would be compelling enough to draw him in."

    Did a quick Amazon search of his work [amazon.com], and the only things I noticed were essentially books about reading itself.

    Just sayin'.
  • It's an important discussion to be sure. Is Bioshock art?

    Definitely it has fantastic "art". But then books have beautiful covers... but we don't judge the books on that basis...usually.

    More importantly though, he didn't finish the game. Barely played a few hours.

    Is that the test of art? To sit somebody down in front of a quicktime trailer and make a judgement of a movie from the first 5 minutes?
  • I think that the final assessment, that they picked the wrong person to do this because of a lack of familiarity with games, is dead on.

    Why can't someone get a better reviewer to do this? Cory Doctorow? Orson Scott Card? Bruce Sterling? Dan Simmons?

    I'm a bit confused as to why, if Dirda's 16 year old son finished it, why didn't he ask for help? Seems to me this implies he really wasn't that into the experiment himself. Surely there's directions someplace on the basics? RTFM?

    I think the real challenge
    • Except you don't have to have a skill set to recognize other art mediums. Seeing and hearing is generally all you need. If I have to ask my son to come help me watch a movie every time I see it... let's just say films wouldn't make for widespread criticism.

      Anyone can and should be able judge the merits of "art". Obviously, the more experienced or educated will have weight added to their opinion, but one shouldn't need years of training just to VIEW the piece.

      It's not that I think games can't be art, but

  • But what is art? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Bragador ( 1036480 )
    I think the real problem here is that nobody really knows what art is. If you look back in time, art wasn't what it is today. Nowadays art is trying to define itself.

    Some of you think that no one denies that movies are art but you are wrong. Many believe that most movies are not art and that only some movies can be considered art. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art_film [wikipedia.org]

    This is important because if you consider that all movies are art, well if you film your vacations you have a storyline (your vacations), y

  • Forget all the rhetoric about whether the game itself is art. It's a shiny plastic disk with microsocopic dots. It becomes art when it comes to life, when the actors are "on stage" and I begin the performance. From the opening scenes where I guide my digital avatar, be it knight in shining armor or polygonal abstract, I am creating my own story based upon my interpretation of an outline of the rules that other mediums would call a script. How I interpret that script is completely at my whim; flexibility

  • Obviously new to games... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by LarsWestergren ( 9033 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @09:23AM (#20651783) Homepage Journal
    So: Is BioShock art? "I would hesitate to go that far," he said after a short pause.

    When there's a video game that makes the player depressed, that's when the medium might be onto something as an art form, Dirda said. It's easy to like something that makes you feel powerful in its fantasy world, as games generally do. But would anybody play a game that makes him sad?

    Yes, of course, Any game that has solid enough writing that you care about characters or the world has that ability. For me, Planescape: Torment, Sanitarium, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate 2 (death of vampire villain Bohdi "No! It's mine! This life is mine!"), and FF7 are just a few examples that come to mind.

  • man... it's like impossible to do that in bioshock in many places, just no room to do so. i have to be creative on hiding, taking pot shots, making a run to another area and ready up the next weapon or plasmid :)

  • let's ask a different question (Score:3, Insightful)

    by brkello ( 642429 ) on Tuesday September 18, 2007 @10:49AM (#20653495)
    Very few people are going to object if you call "Les Mis" art. But is Harry Potter art? Certainly, it has been read by more people then most all other literature. But it is a story written primarily for children (nothing wrong with adults loving it) that is more about entertaining than challenging the reader. Fantasy and sci fi has always struggled to be recognized as art. It takes a move like LOTR to show that fantasy can be as good as movies like the Godfather or The good, the bad, and the ugly.

    This is part of the problem with video games. Like Harry Potter, they are in a fantasy world and the art snobs perceive it as being geared towards children. But I have found few other things in art that moved me as much as Aeris's death in FF7. And I think I am not alone in that. Really, the old generation that didn't grow up with video games will have to die off before video games get the respect they deserve.
  • I think a greater challenge would simply to define art. That's a bit philosophical and certainly subjective. Is Bioshock art? Absolutely. As Tycho put it (http://www.penny-arcade.com/2007/08/15) "If Bioshock isn't "art," then art is the poorer for it." To my mind, Tycho is absolutely correct. Games are art. As much as any book, any song or any painting. Games are a compilation of all three of those. And just like books, music or paintings, some are of greater or lesser value to the viewer/listener than oth

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by dwye ( 1127395 )
      > I think a greater challenge would simply to define art.

      Also, there is a problem that for most people, calling something "art" implicitly means fairly good art, as opposed to dreck that was also, technically, bad art. Frex, Martin Scorsese's Hollywood movies are art, his home movies might just be art (especially if he reshoots his nephew's 12th birthday party, as in the commercial), but my family home movies, even if Dad had attempted to have a story line, would not be called "art" because they were ba
  • When there's a video game that makes the player depressed, that's when the medium might be onto something as an art form, Dirda said. It's easy to like something that makes you feel powerful in its fantasy world, as games generally do. But would anybody play a game that makes him sad?

    There have already been quite a few video games which make the player depressed as a part of their storytelling. The most obvious example is Final Fantasy VII [wikipedia.org], where Aeris dies. If nothing else, this certainly shows that it i
  • For such a young medium, video games have produced some amazing art. I think Tempest was probably the first art game, although I, Robot comes a close second. I, Robot even has a doodle mode which you can 'play' instead of playing the shooter part of the game, and draw with all the game shapes. Tempest looks like a piece of abstract art in motion, as do many of its spiritual successors. Rez is less a video game, and more a piece of playable, interactive art.

    I think it's the layers of interactivity th

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