Pretentiousness in Video Games?

I don't know about games being pretentious, people on the other hand...

David Cage

I don't find games pretentious, per se, but I will stay away from a game if I find the developer overly pretentious. For instance, I have zero interest in any of David Cage's games because I find him to be a stuck up prick. Similarly, after reading his arrogant comments in PC Gamer (yesterday? Spring Break is really doing a number on my perception of time), I have no intention of playing Richard Garriott's new game. Regardless of his impressive legacy with development, that man really needs a nice sharp stick to the ego.

I'd say I'm a little slower to call a game pretentious than some, but there are definitely pretentious things out there. Personally, I feel the line for pretense in a game comes when games pretend to be too 'grown up' for gamey things. Like that Belgian game whose name I'd never recall. They tell the player (not directly), "No, you don't want to go fast. You only want to go fast because you have not taught yourself to be patient. No, there is no challenge. To appreciate life, you must appreciate that the best experiences are not competitive." It's one thing to try to elevate gaming to a more cerebral level, it's another thing to say that the things that players enjoy are stupid or immature and pointedly refuse to give it to them.

I've never found a game pretentious, but the so-called ending to Minecraft certainly got close to being just that. Duke Nukem is as pretentious as you can get as far as characters go, though, and there are definitely pretentious developers out there, who think they're so damn important.

I'm not sure a game has the capacity to be pretentious. The marketing behind it, the developers, those can be pretentious, but the game itself? I'm not so sure about that. However after reading this thread, the word has lost all meaning to me.

Pretentious is what a person who does not want to think calls anything that asks them to think.

So basically what @bbqbram and @winternet said.

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This This This.

If you're criticizing a game for being pretentious then you're either having trouble judging your real issue with the game or you're out of your mind.

Outside of a game saying "NO MAN, YOU JUST DON'T UNDERSTAND HOW GREAT I AM," I don't see how a game can be pretentious.

Phil Fish is an asshole so him being called pretentious isn't too much of a stretch, the nebulous aspects of his game may be pretentious but it appears the game is playable in and of itself so that seems fine. If a game's art style is incredibly more significant than its gameplay it has a chance of being labelled pretentious, I'd say there's an argument that it is no longer a game and is simply a different form of visual media.

@scrawnto: Good way to phrase it.

I've never been turned off if a game was considered "pretentious" because most people don't know how to use that term correctly.

Plus, those games are bound to be different and that's usually a good thing.

For example, The Path by Tale of Tales is a great exploration game centred around 6 different and contemporary versions of the Red Riding Hood, with different "wolves". Can get repetitive but worth it for the story. Getting lost is a mechanic, and each character's path is different on each playthrough. Pretty unsettling horror game, not in a scary way, but just general creepy atmosphere with one girl's encounter with a wolf making me feel very disgusted.

Disagreeing with someone like Jonathan Blow or David Cage when they tell you they hate most games for x and y reasons is not enough to label them as pretentious.