PassiveKaerenai

There's something about People Driving Cars that never got my adrenaline going. I mean, anybody with the cash and inclination to engage in super-nitro-street-racing is almost invariably an unrelatable dickwad. Is it just me?

Bioware should be treating this situation firmly and with dignity, not just apologising and hand-wringing. It's a controversial quote, but justified.

@Icemael said:

@PassiveKaerenai: You are right that art can be a relatively effective way to make a wide audience aware of an idea, but this is not really something with which artists should be concerned. The wide audience only ever deals with casual thinking, and ideas hidden in symbolism must by necessity be simplistic -- and why should an artist concern himself with force-feeding simplistic ideas to casual thinkers? Leave that shit for the public education system and newspapers.

Of course, an artwork doesn't have to be bad just because the artist attempts to teach us something. There are plenty of great works of art with some sort of moral lesson at the end, for instance. The real problem arises when people declare that they are great precisely because they try to teach us this or that, and not because they are funny or beautiful or exciting. Such ideas, when allowed to flourish, can only result in the degeneration of art (this is most obvious in painting, a field in which childish doodles by talentless bums are now considered more important and valuable than the works of masters like Bouguereau).As for games being playthings, I do not mean that in a belittling fashion. Playing is a very important part of any healthy man's life.

I take your point, and I agree that ideas should never excuse a lack of genuine quality. Perhaps I'm biased: I'm a writer myself, and since literature is the most idea-heavy artistic field, I see the debate of ideas as an actual dramatic component - generating energy, depth, and tension, as well as engaging the reader, making the experience mean something. This isn't so strongly the case in visual arts, and nor should it be in games. But I think Blow is coming from the same place as me. It's not so much that a work should have a moral point, but that when you get people to really think about a piece, to question what it's saying, or debate the validity of what it's saying, then the level of engagement and pleasure is greatly increased. And hey, if they learn something too (which they should, if the idea is well expressed, no matter how complex) - then what's the harm?

And personally, I like to treat the audience as equals, not 'casual thinkers'; any artist who feels compelled to talk down to their audience is a hack. Call me an optimist, but I think that if art can at least stimulate people to ask more questions about the world, then it's doing a good job. Games don't have to be sheer escapism and fantasy; neither do novels, or paintings, though they often are. Encouraging people to think - not what to think, but merely to think for themselves - is art's greatest gift. You're right, playing is important - but ideas are also play-things, pleasurable things, with the added bonus of being educational.

Solid Snake taught me that smoking is cool because it reveals enemy infra-red and slowly kills you.

@Icemael said:

I never cease to be baffled by people who think art should be about delivering messages. If you believe you have a philosophical message that actually matters, write a goddamned essay or book like real intellectuals have done for millennia. Making a video game (or a painting, or a song and so on) for the purpose of hiding a message in symbolism is just as retarded as baking a cinnamon bun for the same reason (though in the case of the cinnamon bun people would react the way they ought to: by laughing their asses off at you). Games are playthings for fuck's sake. Maybe if you used your brain for once in your life, it would occur to you that there might be a good reason why serious physicists, biologists, psychoanalysts, philosophers etc. (that is to say people who actually have something of value to say) publish their findings and theories clearly and concisely in written language and not through shitty symbolism in a fucking puzzle-platformer for Xbox 360.

Also, any decent strategy game is more intellectually challenging and stimulating than Braid, and there is far more artistic value and intelligent design in cartoonish murderfests like Metal Slug or Vanquish than Blow could ever hope to produce with his pseudo-intellectual little mind.

Are you an artist, by any chance? Or an academic? All art is a form of communication, even on a purely sensory level, and in that sense, all art is allegory. Academics present their cases plainly. Artists present their ideas in a way that entertains or stimulates, and very often, this is the best way to communicate ideas to a wide, non-academic audience - look at Tolstoy and his theories about history, Dosteovsky and existentialism, Bob Dylan and society. You can't pretend that art isn't in a dialogue with current thinking, nor that it doesn't contribute to current thinking, especially when its audience is so much broader than that of academic writing.

I agree, making the artistic experience pleasurable is the first concern. But dismissing 'symbolism' in any art form wholesale is really, really childish ('retarded', as you choose to put it), and dismissing all games as 'playthings' forever is really, really narrow-minded. Yes, they're toys now, but why not think big? - And look, I can't stand Jonathan Blow...

@Grissefar said:

You have to ask yourself when you find an article: would a 5 year old write this?

If the answer is yes, then it is likely an Alex article. Perhaps it wouldn't piss me off as much if he wasn't so awkward and uninteresting on the podcasts and live shows. I guess he just doesn't click with me. Ha! Ha!

Is that you, Tricky? Man, this article war is heating up!

I'm English and far too cunning to fall for this. If you want to ask questions, ask them in the thread. Right now you just sound pandering and underhanded.

(btw, Americans - please, stop using the word 'British' in general. You rarely use it correctly, so just stop. The Scottish, Irish and Welsh do not fall under your Anglophilia (you know, ENGLAND-o-philia), and would be justified in henceforth despising you.)

Melt it down. Add marshmallows. Screw the status quo.

This is the first time I've ever felt curious about a DMC game. So it's got that going for it.

Guy's still wealthy enough that he can quit the whole media circus for good. In his position, I'd be grateful to retire.