Wouldn't it be more like an illustrated e-book, perhaps of the pop-up variety, then, where you are simply clicking to the next page/panel? If as you said, there was still a particular pattern to figure out in Monkey Island, then at least there was a minor mystery/puzzle element involved.

Just going off of what the last few posts in particular are saying, that is. Ignore me as you wish, heh.

 

Games are fun. If it is not fun, it is not a game. I don't fucking care if someone wants to make an interactive piece of art, or whatever, but trying to market it to the video-gaming population by saying that that is what it is is retarded.

 

I don't know how you drew that conclusion from that definition.

Also, doesn't this rule out every game ever made on the basis of subjective taste? I mean I personally consider League of Legends as marginally less fun than getting all of my fingers broken with a mallet, but that doesn't make it not a game.

 

Sure, all games need to meet your subjective definition of fun, and while we're at it all books need to be easy-to-read pulp - preferably fantasy or science fiction - and all music should be pop. I mean, by definition, Infinite Jest isn't a book. I don't care if someone wants to make a written piece of art, or whatever, but trying to market it to the novel-reading population by saying that's what it is is retarded. Same goes for that faggot Beethoven.

Seriously, I think this game looks fucking stupid as shit and am not even mildly interested in it, but this is the level of argument you guys are putting out.

 

I suppose that I should have said that games are meant to be fun. They have to be made to be an enjoyable past-time. Even if they fail at that.

I'm not saying artsy crap like this doesn't have value; I'm just saying it isn't a game and shouldn't be advertised as such.

@ Fiat:

No, of course that isn't what I, or anyone else, said. A book is bound paper with words on it. Music is rhythmic sounds made to appeal to the listener. Video games are an interactive video medium made to be enjoyed by the player. Key words there are "games" and "play." I don't care how much you want to include unfun bullshit in the video game market, but you can't change the definition of the word "game." And, yeah, I know I didn't choose a very good definition to use as my example.

 

What if this is a game made for people who enjoy watching children die?

 

I just wanted to quote that again to point out how far from reality this conversation is.

 

I knew some dick would say this. My point isn't literally about people enjoying watching kids dying, but instead that giving things defenitions based on subjective values is fucking retarded.

 

This is a game because you control a character and interact with the environment, even if it's all ultimately pointless. It's not an adventure game, though. I guess you could call it an art game, but I'd have to play it before I was willing to even give it that title.

A game doesn't stop being such just because it isn't entertaining. Remember ET, Superman 64, Custer's Revenge, and countless movie games. A game doesn't have to be entertaining, or even interesting, to be a game. Just to be a good one.

This game is shit because the basic premise is fucking stupid. It's shit because clicking on things I don't care about just so I don't have to listen to some little bastard cry sounds about as irritating as sitting in an actual waiting room, and the fact that may have been exactly the goal kinda pisses me off. The game is shit because it's railroaded as hell, and it's shit because it sounds like it defeats it's own intention. There is no 'hope' when you already know the ending. When you know that, regardless of what you do, 100% of the time, the kid dies. Maybe the concept would have merit if their was even a .05% chance that the kid would make it, but as it is it just sounds like a particularly boring snuff film.

And if I enjoyed watching children die, I'd still pick a game that gives me a little variety.

....Wow I sound like a terrible person :awesome

 

Then perhaps you should make a point with a phrase that doesn't make you sound like a monster.

It's not subjective that watching other people suffer for your personal amusement is frowned upon by our society. This situation is basically similar to if someone made a child pornography game and then called it art. Nomenclature is not a form of defense against calling something disgusting or horrific, and let me be very clear: watching a child suffer in horrendous pain while you are unable to help them is a great example of a real life horror that parents have to experience every day.

That being said, even in the OP that is not what the game is about. It even says "this kid has cancer... And two years later he is still alive." The article talks about how the writer was touched on an emotional level because of the content and portrayal of the characters and the overarching triumph of the narrative is that no matter how horrific the events are, the child is still alive.

As an interactive media object this will probably be enormously successful. We already know that a story does not have to make you feel good to be successful, and any emotional tension and release can allow the audience to enjoy the experience. The fact that the audience interacts with the object no more makes it a game than viewing a painting is a game. The details of that interaction are wholly meaningless (unless they inhibit the audience from interacting with the idea/object/piece). So just because this can be played on the xbox or playstation makes it no more of a game than netflix.

There seems to be a lot of people talking at each other without actually addressing the others point. I consider this a form of digital media art, where the importance is in the concept and the narrative, and the gameplay aspects are a secondary concern, as opposed to a video game where the point is to make an enjoyable experience and the narrative is second to that point. Refusing to draw a distinction between different kinds of media that share a medium is as obtuse as saying that a narrative is the same as a textbook. Both are books but have fundamentally different purposes.

 

How did it make me sound like a monster? I never argued it was a good thing. I never said I wanted a game where you watched children suffer for your own personal amusement. I merely asked that if someone created this in order to fill that niche, would it be a game? By his ridiculous definition; yes.

Yes but they're both books. The fact that they serve different purposes makes no difference. The art form is a book in the same way that an oil painting and a watercolour are still both paintings. A photograph used for the purposes of art and a photograph used for the purposes of advertising are still both photographs. I don't see why you need to define it as 'digital media art' because we have a name for that, it's called a video-game. More specifically, it may be designated an 'art game', but that's as far as it goes.

You are presented with a screen, on this screen are pictures or text, you interact with these pictures or text and the pictures or text change in response. These pictures form a narrative, either complex, or simple. This is called a video-game. This is the word we have designated for this medium.

 

I disagree. A video game and a piece of interactive digital media obviously have different characteristics, hence my ability to define them separately. I reject your idea of a video game being anything on a screen and the ability to interact with it, and I have explained why.

What you said: "Two kinds of books are still books."
What I said: "A book and a narrative are not the same thing. They can be, but can also not be."

 

"Just because you've got the emotional range of a teaspoon doesn't mean we all have."

Look at some of these arguments. It's like some of you have never even heard of visual novels or something. And apparently tragedy isn't a legitimate genre anymore, because it's not "fun." Guess we'd better throw out Romeo and Juliet, the Count of Monte Cristo, every visual novel or point and click adventure game, all music that isn't upbeat, and every story that didn't have an overtly happy ending or dealt with depressing themes.

I'm not going to say that it's opinions like this that keep video games from being recognized as a legitimate genre of artistic expression, because it's not. But I am saying that a lot of you sure as shit aren't helping.

 

I don't think anyone is saying that a video game can't be tragic. There are tons of tragic video games. I'm just having trouble seeing how, if you can never save the kid or something, if no matter what you do the kid dies, no matter what you click on, no matter how they attempt to treat the kid, it's utterly pointless exercise of time.

 

And no matter how many times you read Romeo and Juliet, they both die completely pointless deaths at the end, with their love and future together being extinguished to the cruelties of the world.

That's what a tragedy is.

 

Yeah, but then you at least get the privilege of reading Shakespeare. It looks like in this game you wander around an ER watching your kid die.

 

So tragedy is only okay when Shakespeare does it?

 

I honestly don't know what the fuck you're talking about and I'm pretty sure you don't either.

A narrative is simply an account of a connected series of events. History books have narrative, films have narrative, games have narrative. In film, television and video games, the narrator is the camera (and in some instances, an account of one of the characters realised in audio form).

Now I assumed that when you stated that textbooks and narratives are not the same thing, you meant that literary fiction and textbooks are not the same thing, because that is a coherent statement, although wrong. Saying textbooks aren't the same thing as narratives, is like stating that apples are nothing like ultraviolet radiation. It doesn't need saying and contributes nothing to the conversation.

Now, going back to assuming that you were describing the difference between literary fiction and textbooks, you're wrong. They are fundamentally the same thing; using the written word to convey something. They may be different in approach and purpose but they operate through the same medium. The difference you are describing is genre.

Notice how we don't consider something like Stormfront and something like Brideshead Revisited as two different art forms, even though they place significance on two radically different sets of characteristics. The same can be said for Hip Hop and Classical. They're just different genres.

Also by your definition, The Walking Dead is not a game, because game play takes a significant back seat to character development and narrative. By your criteria, Spec Ops is not a game, because the developers deliberately made the gameplay predictable, derivative and unrealistic in order to strengthen the concept and message behind their game.

 

I think there's a difference between tragedy occurring in video games (a staple of the genre) and a game that is a tragedy. The elements of tragedy that are compelling I consider to be opposed to the best part of contemporary (RPG) video games; the freedom to explore your options and be rewarded for it.

Compare this game to White Rain (which I would also define as a tragedy), which received a lot of positive attention from the forum, but both deal with emotionally powerful characters and the interactions between them (something which That Dragon, Cancer will hopefully have) but White Rain offers the player a lot more mobility and decision making options. Players (or potential players) are interested in having the ability to affect their environment in a meaningful way, and removing the element excludes this game from being called a "video game".

edit:

Stormfront and Brideshead Revisited are both narrative tales told through the medium of paperback book. Their content (genre) is completely separate from the identification of the medium through which they are told. This is what I meant by "people talking past each other" where you aren't even arguing with me about the point I am making. My point is that a digital artifact (Which can have any number of elements, so as to encompass the entirety of a game) can be designed with the intention of entertaining or to express an artistic purpose, but you can identify the differences between those two intentions.

Textbooks are not art. I understand now that you are either willfully or literally incapable of understanding any kind of meaningful distinction in what "is" and "is not" art from my perspective. So i'm not going to waste my time.