Noah Caldwell-Gervais: In-Depth Game Analysis on YouTube

[DerAlex]

I debated if I should simply post this in the YouTube video thread, but I think this deserves his own thread.

I follow this YouTuber for a little over half a year now:

Noah Caldwell-Gervais

He posts long, in some cases really long videos on games and game series, always articulate, always well thought out, always borderline but not quite pretentious. The production value of the videos is no that great, especially the sound quality in the earlier episodes sometimes leaves much to be deserved, but he more than makes up for that in quality of his essays.

He posts only 1 or maybe 2 videos a month, but his scripts and thoughts could be the closest thing to proper video game documentaries, and are almost always worth a watch.

His newest video clocks in at a little over 2 hours and discusses the single player campains of all 11 Call of Duty games, and is a deconstructon of motifs, story telling devices, tropes, praises, critiques and everything in between of all things Call of Duty, how they went from anti-war to pro-war to pulp back to anti-war, how the Infinity Ward CoD games are different than the Treyarch titles, and many more questions I didn't know I had where answered. The last CoD I played was the original Modern Warfare, and this video makes me want to check out at least some other entries in the series.



It's hard to describe a 2 hour video with as much spoken text in a few sentences, so I won't even try. In my opinion, he is one of the best at what he does, so please, take a look. He deserves a much bigger audience than he has.

Some other videos worth watching:

From Shock to Awe: System Shock, Bioshock, and Infinite
Aliens vs Predator vs Aliens vs Predator vs Aliens Colonial Marines
Revisiting the Warcraft Strategy Trilogy

[FlowerChild]

Hmmm...interesting. The pro-war bias that came with time was probably one of the things that winded turning me off the COD series, so given your mention of that as a discussion point above, I'll have to check it out.

I remember the first games had an almost "Saving Private Ryan" feeling to them that was lost with time, and nothing drives me away from games faster than jingoistic military themes.

[FlowerChild]

Watched the first half hour only so far (will continue later), but while I agree with most of what he's saying, I have to disagree on one of his points about games being limited relative to films/books as an artistic medium.

While I can see what he's getting at in terms of not being able to setup specific shots and such to tell a very specific story, he seems to be neglecting in that statement the ability of games to get players to feel like they are actually experiencing something rather than just spectating, and to make decisions themselves that will convey far more powerful messages than if they are simply witnessing someone else doing so. IMO, making those kinds of decisions in games when push comes to shove *yourself* speaks far louder than any other medium that currently exists as it provides a unique insight into other people's thought processes in difficult situations that you probably wouldn't get otherwise.

Granted, I don't feel the power behind that kind of decision making is really exploited in something like the Call Of Duty games that revolve around largely linear story-telling in their single player campaigns, but I always tend to think that when someone makes statements like that about the "limited" capacity of games, they don't really understand the unique artistic features of games as a medium and are instead somehow expecting them to conform to the strengths of others.

To me, his statement on that would be the rough equivalent of someone saying that photographs are a more powerful medium than films because the viewer has more time to focus on the details of a single image: it doesn't really speak to anything other than the person saying it not really understanding the strengths of film.

[Simurgh]

he seems to be neglecting in that statement the ability of games to get players to feel like they are actually experiencing something rather than just spectating, and to make decisions themselves that will convey far more powerful messages than if they are simply witnessing someone else doing so. IMO, making those kinds of decisions in games when push comes to shove *yourself* speaks far louder than any other medium that currently exists as it provides a unique insight into other people's thought processes in difficult situations that you probably wouldn't get otherwise.

This.... So much this. Anyone whos played Brothers through knows the impact of "that" moment, or the campaign of homeworld 1 - just two examples off the top of my head.

In my opinion the element of interactivity makes you more invested if it's done well. I think the problem is that there are not *that* many games that do it that well, the biggest names tend to be the big AAA generic blockbusters which are all style and no substance which makes the medium appear very superficial to many. Many games also seem to be written with the view of aping the methods of TV/Film and ramming story down your throat, which takes the player out of the moment. Show, don't tell basically.

[DerAlex]

In my opinion the element of interactivity makes you more invested if it's done well.

Well, the video is about a game series that recently got notorious for "Press F to pay respects" ;)

But yeah, I agree with both of you, and I like FCs photograph comparison. He does say a few things about interactivity later in the video, about the a-bomb in MW1, the airport mission with the civilians in MW2, and about some torture scene in one of the later, more violence-pulp-porny CoDs, but I don't think he ever comes back to that point in particular, that games are somehow more "limited" in their capabilities as opposed to other mediums. Given that I've seen most of his other videos, the inclusion of this line is somewhat of a headscratcher, and this is his newest video. Maybe he misspoke or tried to say something else.

[FlowerChild]

This.... So much this. Anyone whos played Brothers through knows the impact of "that" moment, or the campaign of homeworld 1 - just two examples off the top of my head.

I think this kind of thing is actually most powerful when it's in non-linear games. Basically, to my way of thinking, the more decision making potential the player has at their disposal, the more powerful the "message" when they wind up making decisions based on a mindset other than what is normally their own.

Prison Architect is one game which I see having a *huge* amount of potential there, but which I think is unfortunately going at least partially untapped. I normally stay away from politics here, as per the forum rules, but in this case I'm going to skirt around the fringes as it's directly related to this game's design:

The way I see that game, it has a huge amount of potential, not in trying to potray some kind of "good guy" prison system where parole and prison reform programs are artificially reinforced to be the "right" thing to do (which I feel is where Introversion is trying to fit a square peg into a round hole with some of their current system designs), but in illustrating how in a privatized prison system, those kind of programs actually make no sense whatsoever, and that the rules of the "game" (both the video game and the consensus reality one) reinforce and encourage behavior that many of us would normally consider abhorrent.

Those kinds of programs act counter to the profitability of private prisons. With such prisons, you're basically running a business where the inmates are your "customers". You want as many of them as possible, and you want them to stay as long as possible, because that's at the core of your revenue stream.

So why would you want to educate them so they might get a decent job when they get out? That only cuts into your return business. Why would you want to treat them well when treating them badly will reinforce aggressive and criminal behavior either causing them to commit additional offenses on the inside, to extend their sentences, or to reoffend for repeat business once they are out.

Given the above, and given the overall flexibility of the game, the player would then naturally realize with time what works and what doesn't, and potentially start making some really nasty, but perfectly logical decisions as a result. Maybe we should let some drugs into our prison so that addicts stay addicted and we even get some new addicts thrown in who are more likely to resort to crime once they get out? Maybe we should loosen our restrictions on guard violence or reduce surveillance so that they don't get caught to keep our prisoners angry?

How about playing the Soviet Union in a world war II game like Hearts of Iron and realizing through your own decisions that Stalin's strategy of fighting a war of attrition at great cost in lives to his own people was central to the allies winning the whole thing (my personal take on that war is that having one merciless bastard show down against another like that was a far more significant factor than the flashier aspects the western mind tends to focus on like the D-Day invasion or dropping the bomb)? How about essentially selling off your daughter in a game like Crusader Kings in order to solidify a treaty? How about that recent RimWorld story I told about how I wound up with a brain damaged artist in my colony and then had to decide what to do with her in a survival situation with limited resources at my disposal?

That's the kind of decision making in games I really love to see: the kind that potentially takes players out of their comfort zone, where the player feels inherently complicit in the decision making process as they've been an integral part of everything that's lead up to it, and puts them in situations where they're making decisions they might not be able to even conceive of in the really real world. That's where I think games have a real capacity to transcend into an art form unlike any other.

So again, that's why I don't think that point even really applies to a linear game like COD. There just isn't enough complicity on the part of the player to really transcend into the kind of thing I'm referring to, as I think those kind of games are still clinging desperately to more comfortable and known strengths of other forms of media.

And ultimately, that's where the real design challenge comes in IMO: the more freedom you give the player, the harder it becomes to setup specific circumstances to communicate a "message". However, if you can pull it off, the message becomes exponentially more powerful if the player truly owns it through a whole series of decision making.

It's one of the things I always try to aspire towards with my own designs.

In my opinion the element of interactivity makes you more invested if it's done well. I think the problem is that there are not *that* many games that do it that well, the biggest names tend to be the big AAA generic blockbusters which are all style and no substance which makes the medium appear very superficial to many. Many games also seem to be written with the view of aping the methods of TV/Film and ramming story down your throat, which takes the player out of the moment.

Yup, exactly. I've been saying for many years though, and I still think this to be true, that we're still in a period similar to the early days of Hollywood film-making. There are some definite exceptions, but a lot of early films frankly sucked. They were largely "oooo...wow" technological showcases about a new medium that wasn't very well understood (a lot of films still boil down to that to this day), and it was only after many years that the real masterpieces began to emerge.

As an aside, I rewatched this film last night:

Spoiler

Show

Now THAT is fucking film as art, and it only took around a hundred years to get there ;)

[DerAlex]

Maybe he misspoke or tried to say something else.

I wanted to expand what I was trying to say here shortly. He talks about games vs. movies vs. books in the context of a game that references specific WW2 movies and imitates certain scenes and plot points of said movies in a very specific and "movie-like" way. In that context, I think he is right, in that games that want to be movies have the disadvantages of both mediums, with only the positive caracteristics of one of them.

As I said, having seen his other videos, I don't think he wanted to say what he did say, I think he just forgot to specifically mention the context of what he is trying to say.

[FlowerChild]

As I said, having seen his other videos, I don't think he wanted to say what he did say, I think he just forgot to specifically mention the context of what he is trying to say.

I can believe that to be sure. Even in that video at other points he speaks about the strengths of experiencing something interactively instead of just passively viewing it like when he's talking about the Enemy At The Gates style opening of the Soviet campaign in the original COD (and I still remember that level well from when the game first came out as being very cool).

And like I said above, much of what I was talking about really doesn't apply to the COD games given their linear nature. The number of opportunities for significant and emotionally powerful decision making on the part of the player, and thereby the ability to really take advantage of games as a medium, is thus rather limited IMO.

I think I was more arguing against the general sentiment of games being a "limited" medium rather than his specific points, as it's something I've heard quite frequently elsewhere. For example, I remember reading something Roger Ebert wrote late in his life along the lines of him thinking that games would never become art that caused me to lose a lot of respect for him.

Actually, here, a quick google turned it up:

http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journa ... ver-be-art

To me, that's a clear example of someone that obviously understands one medium extremely well, but really having no clue whatsoever as to the strengths of another.

[DerAlex]

For example, I remember reading something Roger Ebert wrote late in his life along the lines of him thinking that games would never become art that caused me to lose a lot of respect for him.

To me, that's a clear example of someone that obviously understands one medium extremely well, but really having no clue whatsoever as to the strengths of another.

The best response to that whole thing I read back then is still the related article by Ben "Yahzee" Croshaw

I can't say I was really that phased by that whole Ebert thing ether. I wholeheartedly disagree with him, but I don't get my steak recipes from vegans, I don't get my reading advice from illiterates, and I don't care what a film critic says about my favorite medium. The way he did say what he said was uninformed and most of all patronizing, regardless of content, so I still get the whole losing respect thing, regardless of if I thought the whole "uproar" back then was justified.

[FlowerChild]

I can't say I was really that phased by that whole Ebert thing ether. I wholeheartedly disagree with him, but I don't get my steak recipes from vegans, I don't get my reading advice from illiterates, and I don't care what a film critic says about my favorite medium. The way he did say what he said was uninformed and most of all patronizing, regardless of content, so I still get the whole losing respect thing, regardless of if I thought the whole "uproar" back then was justified.

I actually only stumbled on that article sometime within the last year, so I wasn't even aware of the uproar at the time ;)

And yes, I agree that he was out of his depth and talking about a subject he knew nothing about (I think he may have even later admitted that himself), but he's putting forth a viewpoint there that I've heard from many other sources, *including* many in the game industry itself.

Given the current state of the commercial "AAAAAAAAA" game industry, I think you can see how that's the case. Many people making the most popular games out there have very little understanding of any of this, or even a desire to understand it as they're too busy shoveling in the cash making unholy movie/game hybrids :)

Take the last bit of Ebert's article for example:

I allow Sangtiago the last word. Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.

He's absolutely right with that, and I think whomever he was arguing with there about it was one of the worst people to try to make the case for games as art given that's what she boiled it all down to. She obviously didn't have a fucking clue about it either.

[DaveYanakov]

The COD series has really stopped being games to me. The last few especially are simply strung together cutscenes with very little tension provided by the gameplay. I've started to simply watch edited cutscene reels so that I can follow along with the conversations and I can't see that I've missed out on any kind of experience by doing so.

*Spoiler warning*
Then you have games like The Line where your decisions don't have any real impact on the plot, allowing them to open up the options for dealing with the choice points. At one point you are told to choose to execute one prisoner or another. You can either make that choice, refuse to choose, or you can engage the snipers on the nearby rooftops who are holding you there until a choice is made. There is no button to choose one or the other, no quick time event, and the only lasting consequence to the story is what you as the controlling agency have to live with having done. Conventional wisdom is that since it doesn't affect the ending that it was done wrong. What happens instead is brutally and stunningly memorable to the player.

[DerAlex]

In the spirit of this thread, where I wanted to shine a light on a small, not well known, but in my opinion really good youtube channel, I want to present another such channel, to which I'm sub'd to for about 4 months now, simply called Joseph Anderson with 6.5k subs at the time of writing.

Once again, just like in OP, the channel offers in-depth deconstructions and analysis of certain games, and for demonstration purposes I choose a recend video of his called The Witness - A Great Game That You Shouldn't Play (41 minutes) (Spoilers!)



If you don't want to spend over 40 minutes on this video, consider skipping the first 18 minutes:

0:00 - 18:05

What is "The Witness", how does it play, etc.

18:06 - 29:01

Analysis of "The Witness", and "I can't shake the feeling that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us"

29:02 - 41:01

Why is it called "The Witness"?

I don't want to spoil the video here, but I can't recommend it enough.

-----

Some other videos of his I recommend wholeheartedly:

Tomb Raider (2013) Critique (24 min)
Rise of the Tomb Raider (2015) Critique (47 min)
Fallout 4 Analysis (84 min)

[DaveYanakov]

Extra Credits did a better and far more concise delve into the motives behind The Witness

[DerAlex]

Serious question: What makes it "better"?

While arguing about what critique about a work of art is better or more accurate is pointless in itself, since one cannot really argue about a subjective understanding of said work, I still have to disagree.

Yes it is shorter, but it also covers a lot less, basically only that one clip and the end of the game, while Joseph Anderson covers a wide range of motifs, topics and moments in the game.

[Equitis1024]

I watched chunks of the first video and it didn't seem like it actually covered that much though. It seemed like he played the game in an insanely stubborn way that made him take far longer to do things than he ought to have. A lot of his complaints were irrelevant unless you're trying to go for 100% completion, and since that's not the 'win condition' I don't see why it particularly matters. My chief take-away was that I think it was a mistake for Jonathan Blow to put in those obelisks that let you track environmental puzzle completion, since they really only serve as a trap for obsessive people who feel compelled to do something that is clearly not the point of the game.

I don't entirely agree with the second one either, since in some measure it does seem to presume that obsessiveness which I didn't feel myself. I got both achievements after fourteen hours, felt very satisfied with the game, and since there was nothing more for me to learn from it, I left it. However, I think that guy is right about what the game is 'about'. I know that after only a couple hours of playing it I told one of my friends how it felt remarkably like an elaborate self-portrait of a mind.

In that vein, my main criticism of the game is that the audio logs and the video clips felt like Jonathan Blow drawing the feet on the snake, as they say. But I felt the same way about the idiotic prose in Braid, so I wasn't surprised by the ham-fisted injection of a lot of lame philosophy here. The guy seems insufferably pretentious, but whatever, the puzzles were great.

[magikeh]

A lot of his complaints were irrelevant unless you're trying to go for 100% completion, and since that's not the 'win condition' I don't see why it particularly matters. -snippy-

Woah there, when I was playing the game the win condition sure didn't feel like getting into the mountain and shedding light into it's depths. Rather I felt the win condition of the game was in fact to find all the puzzles and complete them. The only reward in the game was that of progression onto the next puzzle, so would completing all the puzzles not be the win condition? By getting to a point where you were able to gain no more reward from the game itself? I guess you could say it's all a matter of perspective ;)

[Equitis1024]

Woah there, when I was playing the game the win condition sure didn't feel like getting into the mountain and shedding light into it's depths. Rather I felt the win condition of the game was in fact to find all the puzzles and complete them. The only reward in the game was that of progression onto the next puzzle, so would completing all the puzzles not be the win condition? By getting to a point where you were able to gain no more reward from the game itself? I guess you could say it's all a matter of perspective ;)

It just seems absurd to me for someone to criticize a game on the grounds that "trying for 100% completion isn't fun" when the game designer has already told them that they've beaten the game long before then. It'd be almost like someone complaining about an RPG because they played it twelve times to experience every class combination and by the last couple playthroughs they found it really repetitive.

For instance, the guy complains about a particular environmental puzzle that takes fifty minutes to solve. To me though, once you see that puzzle and understand what exactly you'd have to do, you've solved it. If you want to wait around to complete it officially, that's fine, but don't whine about it being unfair when you know that it's a standalone puzzle that you're only completing for the sake of having it completed. There's a reason none of the puzzles along the progression path were unfair like that.

I approached The Witness as a game rather than as a puzzle book, and I think that well-designed games should have official 'endings' once the player has demonstrated their mastery of all the skills which the game is about. For instance, what FlowerChild has said of his plans for The Device seem like it would have fit that bill in Better than Wolves, whereas the Enderdragon in Vanilla definitely does not. The Witness also delivered on that front, and I was happy with that. Sure, I knew there were loads of environmental puzzles left unfound, and a handful of unsolved panel puzzles, but I didn't particularly want to solve them and the game told me that I had experienced everything that was an essential part of the creator's vision for the game, so I called it quits and was very satisfied. If a person will have fun going on after that point, that's great! But by then it's perfectly clear what the long path towards 100% completion is going to look like, and so a player ought to know whether or not they personally will enjoy it.

[DerAlex]

It just seems absurd to me for someone to criticize a game on the grounds that "trying for 100% completion isn't fun" when the game designer has already told them that they've beaten the game long before then.

Does he really, thou? He repeatedly praises the game for being fun and engaging. What he tries to deconstruct is the design and the designer behind it, not necessarily the game itself.

For instance, the guy complains about a particular environmental puzzle that takes fifty minutes to solve. To me though, once you see that puzzle and understand what exactly you'd have to do, you've solved it.

So if I have a shuffled rubics cube, and know exactly how a solved rubics cube looks like, I've solved it? Less snarky, in the context of the game, a puzzle isn't solved until the sparkly stuff comes out. Figuring out the rules and the solution is half the battle, the second other half is completing the puzzle in accordance with every constraint the game and using the tools and means the game gives you. This is true for every game, video game or board game or whatever game, doesn't matter. In this case the resource you need to complete the callenge is just time, which in my mind makes the question about why the puzzle is in a game that advertises itself as "valuing your time" a valid one.

If you want to wait around to complete it officially, that's fine, but don't whine about it being unfair when you know that it's a standalone puzzle that you're only completing for the sake of having it completed. There's a reason none of the puzzles along the progression path were unfair like that.

The point wasn't that the puzzle is in any way unfair, or hard, or obscure, the point is it is the complete opposite of "valuing the players time", which is a phrase the dev uses to describe the game. This is demonstrable untrue, as shown in the video on a handful of examples. This isn't the only instance where the game blatantly wastes your time, "optional" and "non-optional" content alike, even if the puzzle in question is arguably the most blatant one. I do think that's a point that is worth analysing and discussing, the creator of the video argues that this is a deliberate lie by Jonathan Blow, not out of spite or malice, but to test the boundaries of what he can get away with because he is who he is. Funnily enough, the Extra Credits video posted as a response here is doing exactly what Joseph Anderson mentioned about the games media and it's obsession with Jonathan Blow. Maybe Jonathan Blow is sick of having his stuff analysed and deconstructed. Maybe "The Witness" is Jonathan Blow's "I am the Walrus".

If you've really "beaten the game long before" these puzzles even occur, doesn't it beg the question why these parts are even part of the game? And, if the completion of such meaningless tasks as the 50 minute "puzzle" in the game just for the sake of completing them says a lot about the person playing the game, isn't it also interesting to analyse the person developing the game, who put it there in the first place, and what it maybe says about them, especially if the game and the developer are as inseparable from one another as in the case of Jonathan Blow and his games?

[Equitis1024]

The point wasn't that the puzzle is in any way unfair, or hard, or obscure, the point is it is the complete opposite of "valuing the players time", which is a phrase the dev uses to describe the game. This is demonstrable untrue, as shown in the video on a handful of examples. This isn't the only instance where the game blatantly wastes your time, "optional" and "non-optional" content alike, even if the puzzle in question is arguably the most blatant one. I do think that's a point that is worth analysing and discussing, the creator of the video argues that this is a deliberate lie by Jonathan Blow, not out of spite or malice, but to test the boundaries of what he can get away with because he is who he is. Funnily enough, the Extra Credits video posted as a response here is doing exactly what Joseph Anderson mentioned about the games media and it's obsession with Jonathan Blow. Maybe Jonathan Blow is sick of having his stuff analysed and deconstructed. Maybe "The Witness" is Jonathan Blow's "I am the Walrus".

If you've really "beaten the game long before" these puzzles even occur, doesn't it beg the question why these parts are even part of the game? And, if the completion of such meaningless tasks as the 50 minute "puzzle" in the game just for the sake of completing them says a lot about the person playing the game, isn't it also interesting to analyse the person developing the game, who put it there in the first place, and what it maybe says about them, especially if the game and the developer are as inseparable from one another as in the case of Jonathan Blow and his games?

Oh, I didn't mean 'unfair' as in 'too hard', I meant 'unfair' as in 'this is treating me unfairly'. Going for 100% completion is very definitely going to waste a lot of the player's time, even without the stupid video clip puzzles, just by the nature of the task. But it seems to me that the game is telling you that you aren't meant to do that. It's exactly like the pretentious bonus stars in Braid which required things like waiting 8 hours, restarting the game, etc. Blow seems to have some stupid thing for taunting completionists. However, Anderson's only examples of mainline content that are a time waste are the long animations for the boats and the moving platforms in the swamps, and I don't think those are a big deal. If you aren't hunting down environmental puzzles you are going to use them only a couple times.

As for the Rubiks cube thing, haha yeah I thought about that, so I did deliberately say "and understand exactly what you'd have to do". If you look at a Rubiks cube and know *exactly* what steps you'd have to do to solve it from its current state, yeah, you've solved the puzzle. The rest is just going through the motions. Same with the environmental puzzles. If you see, "aah, if I drove the boat around along this particular route, I could connect this line because the perspective would align just so, etc." then ringing up the boat and getting the particle effect is just a formality. Unlike the panel puzzles, with the environmental ones you've really got no chance of being wrong about the steps you'd have to take once you see it.

And the environmental puzzles don't occur long before you've beaten the game. If they only appeared afterward, then yes, it would be sending a clear signal that "this is new content for you to hunt down" and that would be abysmal. Instead they're available at any point as a fun thing to stumble across (as Anderson said) that are important for conveying the game's themes (as that Extra Credits guy said). As I said before, I think the biggest problem with their implementation was just letting you track them, since that definitely sends mixed signals about their role in the game. I think people would complain about not having that functionality, but it would surely result in a lot misery and less wasted time. Yet, as with Braid, Blow definitely doesn't seem to care if the small segment of his playerbase who are completionists waste their time.

So yeah, I am inclined to completely agree with Anderson's assessment of Jonathan Blow personally. I just think the game mostly sidelines the obnoxious aspects of his personality in a which way Anderson didn't seem to acknowledge, and which is important. It's a welcome improvement from Braid, certainly, where the terrible prose was shoved in your face. Do I think the game is worse for having purely optional things like audio logs and video clips and the obelisks? Yeah, absolutely. It's a perfect example to me of drawing a snake and adding feet to it.

Ultimately though, when Anderson says "I can't shake the feeling that Jonathan Blow is fucking with us," I feel like the answer is "not with most of us, no, but with some of us, definitely."

[Gilberreke]

Here's my views on two of the topics mentioned:

1. I do like the idea of "press F to pay respects" and similar things in CoD, like drawn out terrorist scenes where you have to kill civilians. Video game violence is in many ways cathartic and disconnected (one of the reasons why it's bullshit that escapist violence breeds real violence). Making the player self-conscious about his actions in the game, even when it's done very simplistically is a fun way to play around with this. In CoD's case, it can feel a bit overbearing and hamfisted, but I like the idea in general.

2. Video games can be high art and I consider even some of the early arcade games as proof. Restrictions breed creativity and I think Pac Man and Space Invaders are two examples of games that offer a strong visual style, under restrictions that necessitate mastery over a craft, rooted in the art culture contemporary at that time. I don't see how a combination of these three things can NOT be considered art. The fact that they offer an interactive experience too and let people handle the art in such a visceral way, is just icing on the cake.

What I don't get really, is how the video games are art discussion leads to people mentioning Jonathan Blow games. Braid doesn't have any of three things I mentioned and slapping some teenage poetry on it doesn't make it "more artful" in my opinion. In fact, I think Braid's inter-puzzle story boxes are proof that Jonathan Blow doesn't understand the medium at all.

What IS interesting, is Mark Ferrari's viewpoint (check his GDC talk), that by chasing the latest greatest graphical technology, no one in the industry is able to master the craft. It's debatable if craft mastery is necessary for art, but it's at least a big part of most of the renowned art (renaissance masters, etc)

[DerAlex]

-snip-

I cannot agree with you on what constitutes as a solved puzzle in a game, but that point is not that important in the greater picture. I understand you now, and I agree with you on almost everything else, and learned a thing or two about braid, so thank you for your answer!

[Uristqwerty]

1. I do like the idea of "press F to pay respects" and similar things in CoD, like drawn out terrorist scenes where you have to kill civilians.

A bit of a tangent, but was the "press F to pay respects" thing a button press that triggered a cutscene, or more like "hold F to pay respects" where the game did not resume until the player released the button? Not actually knowing the game context, I think that the latter mechanic would be more appropriate for the weight of the action, while the former drifts dangerously close to parody of how such games map reality to gameplay interaction.

[MaxAstro]

It's always a nice touch when games give you that little bit of emotional freedom. Definitely feel significantly more invested a game that does "hold F" than "press F'.

Two of those moments that immediately jump to mind are Jackie sharing a quiet moment with his girlfriend in The Darkness (I almost couldn't bring myself to get out of that couch)... and on the totally opposite end of the spectrum, the beating you deliver to Zeus at the end of God of War III not ending until you stop mashing the button. That was very cathartic.

Meanwhile, "press F to trigger totally prescripted emotional cinematic" feels much more disconnected.

[Gilberreke]

Yeah, that's what I'm on about, little moments like that. That's also why I'm not universally against quick time events. There's certain moments that can be made better by having the player drive the cutscene. A good example is Tomb Raider, where I do like the "press X to pull the rod out of your body". You don't want to, because it's cringe-inducing, so you get to push that button. What I don't like in the same game is some dude grabbing your leg and suddenly you have to "press X to kick the assailant". I feel like the latter was something that game seemed to have a lot (didn't play it, some some LPs), just to induce some jump scares. It should be a question of giving an action more weight, not a crutch to fix your badly designed cutscenes.