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CAPUSAFcadet23
11-05-2014, 02:43 AM
We need to get rid of stereotypes in gaming. First thing we gamers got to do is play less. We need to play less mainstream games and play more thought provoking games. What are your ideas to make video games a more intelligent medium? Do we need more complex and intelligent stories?

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 10:25 AM
This is actually one of your better topics, CAP. I'll divide my answer into three parts:

1) There is a difference between the casual gamer and the "hardcore" gaming fan that should be appreciated and respected because most gamers fall into the former category just like how most people who watch movies are not filmophiles. That's just how it's going to be. It's wrong for those of who belong to the latter category to write off those who belong to the former as "fake gamers" or to exaggerate their ranks with generalizations and stereotypes about which sex or race "hardcore gamers" naturally belong to. In short, we in the "hardcore" crowd need to be open-minded about what constitutes a game and about what constitutes a gamer. Most people are gamers today, at least here in this country and increasingly throughout the world, most of them are casual gamers, and a great many of the most creative titles out there are indie games targeting those casual gamers rather than us hour-plus-a-day fans of expensive, AAA console games. Seriously. I think it would be a good thing for our community to stop being as arrogant and exclusionary as it has been and be more broad-minded about who is and isn't a "real gamer" and what is and isn't a "real game" or we'll never recognize all the positively brilliant ideas that are flourishing right before our eyes simply because we refuse to look!

2) The aforementioned narrow-mindedness also plagues game-makers, ESPECIALLY in as far as they're in the game business for money. Independent game-makers are generally less tied to the profit system than the industry proper is. The more a company revolves around profit, the more it will tend to churn out nothing but sequels and remakes and rely on mind-numbing cliches to guarantee mass consumption of their products, not unlike in the film business. So trust indies more than the industry when you're looking for innovative new ideas. That's the main place you'll find the creativity!

AND...

3) For those of us who can be counted among the ranks of full-on game geeks (like yours truly) who might be in search of serious, artistic games more than just entertainment, it should be recognized that the player empowerment trend is the #1 enemy of art. There is an inverse relationship between the ability of developers to convey ideas to us on the one hand and our ability as gamers to control game content and enjoy total freedom therein on the other. The key to true art is letting the artist run wild with their vision rather than compelling them to survey the tastes of the 18-24 age demographic and expecting them to make only games that conform to what the results suggest is in popular demand. The latter method is how the industry churns out most of its games, and especially the blockbusters. It's a formula for commercial success and player empowerment (entitlement one might even say at this point (http://thepoliticalforums.com/threads/31772-Are-Gamers-Stifling-Creativity)) without a point. And while I like me some games like that, most of the time I personally prefer to instead learn something from the game-makers: a different perspective on life, perhaps. Whether one considers the likes of Final Fantasy VI and VII, Beyond Good and Evil, Killer 7, Okami, or The Last of Us (to name a collection of high-quality art games spanning the last couple decades), you'll notice that the most thought-provoking titles tend to have certain things in common, and that one of them is that they tend to be pretty linear in terms of play structure. (Okami is the exception to that rule here on this list.) They, in other words, minimize player freedom in order to maximize the freedom of the developer to convey their ideas. And when developers are thus allowed to run wild and tell the story THEY want to tell rather than the one YOU want to create, sheer brilliance, or abject stupidity, can ensue. Art games tend toward one or the other of those poles. Mediocrity is rare in art games, where it is the rule of how commerce operates. Art games are above all games that refuse to conform to tried and true storytelling traditions, established formulas and characters, and the most popular visual and musical styles, and instead get creative in all these areas, defying the logic of a profit-driven system that structurally leans in a conservative, risk-averse direction. Art games are primarily about telling a story and only secondarily about you having a funky good time throughout that process. In a true art game, everything is in service of the story: the game play, the visual style, the music, dialogue, and sound effects, et al. Therefore, if for you a good game is necessarily one in which, by contrast, storytelling must be done in service of game play or some other factor, serious art games are not for you. If you want art, you'll be willing to let artists run wild instead of expecting them to conform to your vision and embrace your play style.

IMPress Polly
11-29-2014, 11:45 AM
Enough Gamergate! I want more comments on THIS thread! :smiley:

IMPress Polly
12-01-2014, 06:37 AM
I hate to pad my postings with an additional one simply to increase this thread's visibility, but I'm still really hoping that more people will respond to this topic, as I think it's an important one for gamers to take up.

CreepyOldDude
12-01-2014, 12:25 PM
2) The aforementioned narrow-mindedness also plagues game-makers, ESPECIALLY in as far as they're in the game business for money. Independent game-makers are generally less tied to the profit system than the industry proper is. The more a company revolves around profit, the more it will tend to churn out nothing but sequels and remakes and rely on mind-numbing cliches to guarantee mass consumption of their products, not unlike in the film business. So trust indies more than the industry when you're looking for innovative new ideas. That's the main place you'll find the creativity!

Good points. But, as long as it costs millions to make high end games, large developers are going to go for the big ROI.