If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
(Try to avoid spoilers. The beginning can be played for free, so it's not
like you are losing anything.)

  Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote:
> If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.

yes, I heard it is very good.

BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:

http://www.comagame.net/

I played this one before Limbo was announced, so I wonder if Limbo is an
upgraded version for the XBox...

and no, I wouldn't call these games arcade... they are more in the same vein as
puzzle-platformers as (ancient) Prince of Persia or Another World...

>   Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
anymore...

He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
toy medium...

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Warp wrote:
>   Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.

Yeah, they're even making things like Heavy Rain, which is (from the demo I 
played) basically a movie that pauses occasionally to let you interact with 
the controller. Seems like the kind of thing much more appropriate to the 
Wii or Kinect, given that when you come to a door, you open it by cranking 
one of the joysticks in a half-circle or some such.

Yatzee reviewed Limbo, btw, along with Deathspark. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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On 12/5/2010 7:38 AM, nemesis wrote:
> Warp<war### [at] tagpovrayorg>  wrote:
>> If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
>
> yes, I heard it is very good.
>
> BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:
>
> http://www.comagame.net/
>
> I played this one before Limbo was announced, so I wonder if Limbo is an
> upgraded version for the XBox...
>
> and no, I wouldn't call these games arcade... they are more in the same vein as
> puzzle-platformers as (ancient) Prince of Persia or Another World...
>
>>    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
>> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
>> his rationale. IMO Limbo is a good example of why he is wrong.
>
> Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
> first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
> anymore...
>
> He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
> toy medium...
>
>
He has, fairly obviously, never a) played games that have real stories 
(which could stand as movies, if you yanked out the player interaction), 
or b) gone to/heard of interactive art exhibits. That said, got one a 
bit back through steam and my reaction was.. "Oh, good.. Another Myst 
clone, which even the Myst team managed to make full 3D at one point, 
and including even more horribly awkward turn arounds and confusing 
steps to do things. 'Amnesia: Dark Descent', specifically. I mean, I 
have played some others and not minded "much", but this one just annoyed 
the hell out of me, for some reason.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

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Patrick Elliott <sel### [at] npgcablecom> wrote:
> > Roger Ebert is full of BS.  Watching games is not the same as playing them.  I
> > first realized games could be art when I would not pay attention to the score
> > anymore...
> >
> > He's like one of those late 1800's drama critics dismissing cinema as a cheap
> > toy medium...
> >
> >
> He has, fairly obviously, never a) played games that have real stories 
> (which could stand as movies, if you yanked out the player interaction), 
> or b) gone to/heard of interactive art exhibits.

  He says: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and
poets."

  Even if that were true (which is debatable), it still doesn't make sense.
Is the requirement for something "being art" that it has to be comparable
with great examples of other fields of art?

  Is he, basically, saying that "if it's not great art, it's not art at
all"? That sounds like snobbery to me.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
>   He says: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
> game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and
> poets."

Clearly, it's *harder* to do it in a game, since you have to deal with the 
interactive nature and the fact that it's supposed to be enjoyable to play. 
I think, tho, that if nothing else, he's comparing a medium that's what, 40 
years old at best, to one much older (cinema) and that took its own designs 
from one yet even older (theater)?  Ask in 200 years whether there's a video 
game as moving as the best live play.  Given that the best English author is 
still generally considered to be Shakespeare, who wrote so long ago that he 
wasn't even using modern English, I'd say he's jumping the gun in his judgment.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> "Oh, good.. Another Myst clone,

Yeah, for a while, there were a whole *bunch* of Myst clones that really 
sucked rather hard. I think both Lighthouse and Schism fell into that 
description.

Lighthouse sucked because if you're going to make an adventure game, you 
really need to be rather open and sandboxy about the environment. Making an 
intestinal adventure game really just is silly. For example, I spent the 
first 10 minutes trying to figure out how to get out of the house. It 
wouldn't let me leave until I listened to the answering machine message. Not 
any message or hint or anything so crass. It just wouldn't interact with the 
door until you listened to the machine. Then the front door the same thing, 
but you had to take the umbrella. And so on.

schism had a novel idea - you start with two characters, and you have to 
help each other out at various points, switching between viewpoints. Except 
that the game starts with you going to a place to rescue the science team 
that was sent there to investigate the alien artifacts, and it ends with you 
finding out there was never a science team and it was all a ploy by the 
aliens to get you to get from where you landed to where they are. Huh? The 
boss that sent you on an interstellar rescue mission didn't know there 
wasn't anyone there to rescue? As soon as they made you run back and forth 
across the world full of slow, over-compressed quicktime events due to (I'm 
trying to remember the exact term here, but it was something like) "ritual 
deception" or some such, I knew it wasn't going to get any better. When it 
became impossible to solve one of the puzzle because the compression was so 
bad you couldn't read the combination you were supposed to plug in 
elsewhere, I just cheated my way thru. :-)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Serving Suggestion:
     "Don't serve this any more. It's awful."

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> BTW, does it happen to be anything like this:
 >
 > http://www.comagame.net/


Limbo is artistically similar to that, but the gameplay is much better. 
It's actually more of a platformer with physics puzzles.

  - Slime

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On 12/5/2010 4:35 PM, Darren New wrote:
>  Ask in 200 years
> whether there's a video game as moving as the best live play.

This has always been my view on the subject as well, and I'm surprised 
that I almost never see it mentioned in discussions on the matter.

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On 12/5/2010 9:08 AM, Warp wrote:
>    If you have an xbox360, you should check the arcade game named Limbo.
> (Try to avoid spoilers. The beginning can be played for free, so it's not
> like you are losing anything.)
>
>    Roger Ebert has famously stated that in his opinion video games can never
> be art. Even after reading his essays on the subject I still can't understand
> his rationale.

His rationale is that he is employing a subjective definition of the 
term "art."  By his definition, a work is only art if it is pleasing to him.

He makes his living by presenting himself as an authority on art, with a 
sense of discernment that is superior to ours.  But since there can 
never be an objective reason for why one person's subjective opinion 
should be regarded as superior to another's, he position is inherently 
contradictory.  Which means we are justified in ignoring him.

Regards,
John

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