obviously this is a ridiculous statement but I have seen people agree with that and I think there needs to be an established reason as to why it is stupid. do you defend this position or not?
obviously this is a ridiculous statement but I have seen people agree with that and I think there needs to be an established reason as to why it is st...
like how a movie can be uncomfortable and upsetting to watch the whole way through?
Gee I didn't realise war was bad until a video game told me do.
I mean, is it though?
War gets rid of weaker nations and allows stronger people to thrive in the long run.
He meant the experience of war.
ok i am gonna kill you and your entire family because i just will ok??
jokes aside, this doesn't work anymore since the modern weapons of destruction have been out and war is now essentially VR lite simulator for those homosexuals, then you got the meat bags sacrifice at the front and thats it, drones,rockets,banned weapons ( which are ok if ''we'' do it because we're the good guys 🙂 ) all these kill so many civilians that there really isn't anything to do about it in the first place so no, it isn't about getting rid of the ''weak''
what the frick do you even mean by weaker nations.
>look they dont put all the ressources they have into killing other people just cause so lets destroy these weak ass b***h
also the USA is clown world personified filled with troony and subhumans Black person so when does a stronger country rekt the frick out of them,cant wait.
Actual child post
*tips fedora*
Wars kill able bodied masculine men in the prime of their lives and then leave their countries to be run by women and the infirm. Win or lose, war weaken everybody.
War is a massive brain drain. The entire reason the western world is such a shit heap today is entirely because the world wars left it ruled by effeminate morons.
Knowing war is bad is different from experiencing it in videogame and even more different experiencing it in reality
It's true though
Pretty pretentious example in that pic, but think about horror games for example. Most horror games aren't really fun mechanically, but they limit your controls to increase the sense of vulnerability. Horror games are improved by being less fun to control.
the fun in horror games is found in being disempowered for most of the game but still being able to overcome it and the limitations imposed on the player
In the ones that are trying to be fun, yes. Not all horror is meant to be fun. Not all horror is Friday the 13th.
"Elevated" horror is the worst that has happened to the genre
>Not all horror is Friday the 13th.
Bad example. Slashers weren't actually supposed to be fun originally. They took their shit seriously. Innocent people were killed horribly. That's not fun. It was like 2 decades after Friday the 13th came out before the slasher genre was reduced to some terrible self-parody genre.
I hate that in a horror game. Give me the power to move how I want and shoot what I please, but make up for it with harder gameplay and creative jumpscares.
Cry of Fear did it best, games like Amnesia just irritate me
also true for jump-likes and games where your character controls like a fart and the challenge is to make it move where you know you need to.
octodad, qwop, an unnamed astronaut game i once saw.
All pretentious c**ts that don't want games to be fun can and should go back to writing shitty novels and acting shitty roles in local theaters
It's very simple.
Videogames are games.
Games are meant to be played.
Fun is an inherent factor of "play", play cannot exist without fun or else why would we play?
If you as a developer decide you want to introduce some 2deep4u edgy hollywoodslop to videogames feel free to do that.
But if your game is not fun it is by definition not a game. Maybe you want to make a movie instead, since you're so stuck up on all the shitty Hollywood tropes.
Call it an interactive experience.
Call it a cinematic simulation.
But don't call it a "game" if it's not fun.
Basically this. Don't call it a video game if you wanna pull some deep and meaningful shit.
Semantics but still true.
Yes, it's perfectly valid and reasonable. Most games most people will be interested in will be fun ones, but there are some obvious examples of games that aren't meant to be "fun" like horror games. Some might also consider Souls games more stressful than fun but still consider them worthwhile experiences for how well they put you in the mindset of someone on a daunting, bruising, demoralising adventure. And look at something like Rain World, which just sets out (very successfully) to make you feel like a small animal trapped in a dangerous and very unfair world.
The word "game" is because the first video games were straightforward adaptations of existing games and that was the most obvious word to use to describe them. The choice of word doesn't constrain what the thing it's attached to can evolve in into, words are descriptive not prescriptive. We're smart enough to handle a bit of nuance and use the word "game" for something isn't a perfect overlap with the historical use of the word.
>words are descriptive not prescriptive
Oh you're one of those moron homosexuals. Get the frick out and go back.
then graphic adventures are not games?
You mean shit like DetroitBH?
I wouldn't call it a game. It's a visual novel with walking
no he meant like point and click game,like myst for example.
Point and click games have puzzles.
puzzles are still games. And generally speaking puzzles are meant to be fun.
Of course, a lot of them aren't, but that isn't on purpose.
>Fun is an inherent factor of "play"
Wrong, see: Mahjong.
Why do you automatically call something profound "2deep4u edgy hollywoodslop?" Are you really having fun hiding behind all that irony?
kek. Found the philosophy major trying to convince himself that his degree is valuable.
having fun is to be entertained. a movie game can also be fun. the word fun is also subjective as frick.
How do you live life as a dumb word slave
Thing is, videogames are not art so that person whole point is invalid.
Games are made to be fun, no matter what. Yes, Silent Hill 2 is a dreary, lonely game but you have fun exploring that town and checking rooms off of your list. Total Chaos is also a heavy, dreary mess but is still fun going through that hellscape
The biggest problem with the statement in the OP pic is that that sentiment is always used to justify terrible design choices by people who have no interest in making games, just their own version of movies. If you think your message is more important than the player's experience, take a step back and REALLY think about what you're doing. Chances are that you're going to end up more like The Order than MGS.
Something doesn't need to be fun to be enjoyable
If war is so terrible, why do people still do it? There has to be some appeal.
Now, if you try your best to remove that appeal for the sake of some political message, you're doing the opposite of communicating a human experience. You're just spewing propaganda.
>a game that's not fun HAS to be a movie game no ifs or buts
classic Ganker
There's a big difference between being bad and being intentionally bad for the sake of saying 'revenge bad'
>and being intentionally bad for the sake of saying 'revenge bad'
That's exactly what Drakengard is, though. The gameplay is deliberately monotonous to reinforce the themes of how fricked up it is to just run around killing hordes of people. To quote Yoko Taro on the subject:
>It was about 10 years ago when we were working on the original Drakengard that I thought about the meaning of “killing.” I was looking at a lot of games back then, and I saw these messages like “You’ve defeated 100 enemies!” or “Eradicated 100 enemy soldiers!” in an almost gloating manner. But when I thought about it in an extremely calm state of mind, it hit me that gloating about killing a hundred people is strange. I mean, you’re a serial killer if you killed a hundred people. It just struck me as insane. That’s why I decided to have the army of the protagonist in Drakengard be one where everyone’s insane, to create this twisted organization where everyone’s wrong and unjust. I wanted to weave a tale about these twisted people.
Everything from the gameplay to the music is deliberately offensive to the senses because of this central concept. You have to be insane to keep playing this horrible game.
He is literally just saying that dynasty warriors '100 kills!' messages are more fricked up than the games actually present them as. The game was monotonous because he had basically no budget and was a pretty new director
No, they were just pretty incompetent. He doesn't mention gameplay at all. That's why all the characters are nuts, not why the game is really slow and dull.
I never got this because I liked dynasty warriors as a kid and enjoyed flying around killing dudes in drakengard and thought the story was dumb as shit but also wanted a MILF dragon to give me super powers.
I would say that with any entertainment medium like video games television films etc these are all vehicles to deliver messages or themes to an audience and as a creator of these things you want them to be accessible to the most amount of people. Being obtuse can be fine and artistically fitting like Dark Souls or cruelty squad at the same time though those games still give you enough carrot to keep you hooked because it understands the medium that it's in and how it needs to deliver it. you can be the greatest most thought-provoking lyricist in the world but if your music sounds like ass or it is a bunch of noise that doesn't sound harmonious then your lyrics will fall on deaf ears to the majority of the consumer base
"video-game," as a compound word, isn't the same thing as a "game played through video."
It just means any interactive digital entertainment. So just as there can be movies which aren't about fun, there can be video-games which aren't about fun.
I think the real issue people have with this sort of talk is 1. the absolute pretentiousness of many of the people most audibly advocating for "unfun" games, like the last of us guy. 2. the fact that many of these games aren't good either way and hide behind "it's not MEANT to be fun!" to deflect valid criticism. and 3. that many of these types essentially claim to be "elevating" video-games. As if something aiming to be fun automatically means that it's of a "lesser artistic merit" than something which doesn't aim to be fun. which is utter horseshit.
my two cents.
there can be but I don't think it's antithetical to the medium. Fun is some sort of catharsis you're getting from the action. You need that to attach people to the messaging you wanna push
it depends upon the definition of fun
if you use it to mean literally any positive feeling then yes every single "good" ANYTHING is fun. all good books are fun, all good movies are fun, all good games are fun. all good food is fun, all good furniture is fun.
but I think most people have a more specific definition of fun. it's an "I know it when I feel it" thing. there are positive feelings which AREN'T fun.
as a game example I recently played infra and it was really enjoyable. walking through really great environments and whatnot. but it wasn't a feeling of "fun." so yeah there can be great "video-games" which aren't fun.
some anons don't like using the word "video-game" for these things but it's just how english has developed. the typical "interactive digital entertainment" product when they were first created (and even now) were games, and so "game" is now the latter part of a word which encompasses things which aren't actually games.
nothing can be done about that unless you want to try convincing the anglophone governments to create an english academy like the french have and make a NEW word for "interactive digital entertainment."
I'm saying any sort of enjoyment you get out of engaging with that medium would be qualified as fun as you are continuously through your own volition playing through it due to the catharsis you're getting from it. playing a Souls game is fun for me but it's extremely frustrating most of the time but that fun is born out of frustration.
To me pathologic 2 is the definition of a perfect game.
On the first playthrough the experience is miserable, gruelling, and mentally exhausting.
Then on repeat playthroughs you have a rough layout on what to expect, where to go, how to barter like a champion, and then before the plague even arrives you have a closet filled with food, water bottles, like 4 schmowders and survive a day without a single death or infection.
It's genuinely fun and addictive and rewarding.
SOMA tells a fantastic and compelling story but has no real replayability at all because its just a walking sim with light puzzles sprinkled in and some hiding/running sequences.
There's advantages that the medium of games has over others that can be taken advantage of well, it just requires creative thinking on the developers part.
Here's the thing: even games like TLoU2 where they explicitly reject the idea of fun, is still a fun TPS to play through. There's nothing bad with it, they've had more than a decade of experience making them, and the quality is there to match. All other "movie games", all still fun despite their increasing penchant of removing gameplay elements from parts of their games. So by the definition of "game", that is "an activity that one engages in for amusement or fun", they all still count as one.
How much fun you can get out of them however is another matter. This is where people get filtered and start crying about how it's not fun, normally exarcebated by political messages that are included in the game, because they don't align with the player's.
The contemporary perception of what a "game" means is basically anything that's interactive. Visual novels are games. Point and clicks are games. Show someone that Black Mirror episode or movie or whatever and they'd probably go
>oh wow it's like a game
Kys
Video games are not art nor should they strive to be.
Art is any form of human creative expression, and any further qualification is pretension
This is wrong. Games aren't art. They're toys. Toys are inferior to actual art, like paintings, movies, and books. Never make a Marxist comment like that again.
This is what a person who feels threatened by a new medium looks like
>he thinks an interactive medium (that is, a game dressed up as art) which requires viewer input via a series of button presses in order to 'win' will ever, EVER, be superior to other mediums which facilitates reverie, contemplation, reflection and enlightenment
frick off with your children's toys homosexual
Struck a nerve, huh?
It is a form of art though. Autismos have no feelings lol
Your assumption is that the art style game has a win formula, when they don't. I look at an indie game like Kenshi and I see art, it has flaws and strengths, and reaches out to be an interactive landscape of dystopia. Freedom of Narrative is there, mercilessness of nature. Honestly you could compare Kenshi to a very shitty painting, and you would pick the interactive medium as the better choice. You compare Kenshi to a famous painting, you can arguably get more discussion out of the later.
The fact still stands to counter your point, certain Video Games are appreciated as an Art form.
>What empty sequence of words can I use that makes other mediums sound as deep as possible?
They are art, but it's just a limited medium. You can't approach it like other mediums.
>Never make a Marxist comment like that again.
marxists are the one who cant agree on the definition of words and make up bullshit,the anon gave a pretty clear definition of art.
>Imagine a game with the purpose of communicating how terrible war is, which it does by making the gameplay miserable.
Fun or frick off. I don't care about art, art is gay as frick.
Ganker is infantile
not fun? why, because its too difficult and unfair? you underestimate my autism.
Yeah I agree with the post
For me video games are a toy to while away the time with
What about a game with neither?
The problem is that all these homosexuals suck ass at actually utilizing video games as a platform to even remotely convey a good artistic/thematic message. Literally the only game that accomplished this for me was Rain World, and it did it through its gameplay. Story driven AAA developers can kiss my ass.
Many do, but i can't morons on this board and others that think because a lot of people suck, that it somehow makes it not a art. There's probably more shitty painters than good painters, but no one acts like painting isn't art.
I never said shit about what is and isnt art. Just that using cinematic story telling in video games is a shit way to use the medium as a way to convey a thematic/artistic message. Its not just that they are bad at it, but they choose to convey it in a bad way.
I agree with the statement, I just don't think I would like to play that kind of game. If someone wants to make that kind of game, more power to them, I'm not giving them any money however.
>want to play a horror game
>play one
>it's scary
>it being scary ruins my fun a bit
>turn it off
damn guys why did they make my horror game scary, don't they realise it's not fun anymore if I can't shoot the ghosts
>want to play a horror game
>play one
>it's not scary
>having a gun ruins the terror a lot
>turn it off
damn guys why did they make my horror game a shooter, don't they realise it's not fun anymore if I'm not terrified
you think you're funny but RE was shat on massively back in the day for this exact reason, now it's literally all anybody wants from mainstream horror games
>entire purpose of the game is to say "war is bad"
>terrible gameplay is used
>watch it on youtube
>dev gets paid a janitor's salary from my non-purchase
>game with the appearance of a 'war is bad message'
>is double subversive and is about war being fun
What game?
War Funder
Call of Duty
how is this a contentious point?
plenty of games exist where the entire point is fighting against their absurd controls or games that are completely bullshit and its meant to give you the feeling of overcoming challenges
this is such a midwit thought to have as its immediately obvious if you have played anything but the most mainstream of titles
except the point being made here is that there should be no sense of gratification from overcoming. The experience is intentionally designed to be as miserable as possible to convey the message
All true art is but a reflection of nature, and the essence of nature in its purest form is the Drama. Not the performative drama, but Drama itself as a concept. If then the essence of Art is dramatic, it follows that there is a clear distinction that can be made between serious art, and something merely for play, though it must also be said that just because a thing is dramatic it does not automatically become art. The essence, I think, is to ensure the drama does not veer into false-pathos, that being a deliberate effort on the part of the author to provoke insincere feelings in the audience, such as Tlou2 giving you an entire backstory to a dog after you kill it, to make you feel bad.
The unique quality of videogames as a form is also extremely important when considering their potential to be artistic. Choice is the most important aspect of videogames, and it is the player's input that must contribute to the development of the drama laid out by the game's story. Again taking Tlou2 as an example, the player does not make the decision to kill the dog, nor do they make the decision to see said dogs entire pathetic backstory. The games that really deserve the title of art are those steeped in choice, such as Pathologic or Disco Elysium because the drama within those stories stems entirely from the player's own input and no other.
You only ever say "all true art" if your point isn't valid with "all art".
Sounds like this guy has an incredibly narrow definition of fun. Probably doesn't know much about videogames either. Look at say, milsim types, who larp the worst things humanity has to offer, in games with miserable gameplay, and enjoy every moment of it. To them, war being terrible is the fun.
>guy
https://twitter.com/taftaj1/status/1686239670005313537?t=dpfEDvjjnwVCQXIzH7vPOw&s=19
smells like a bad faith argument to make games unpleasant for the sake of their other, adjacent views.
This dude probably thinks that people don't enjoy things that are tough and challenging.
No one thinks Paradox map games are fun. And a game doesn't have to be fun. It just has to be mentally stimulating.
People used to make their own fun in vidya with their imagination especially back when vidya graphics were leaving much to be desired.
I think the core issue is everyone wants everything explained to them or presented to them. I can't make my own fun, I need the devs to feed it to me. I bet you these type of players are the kind that uses the same meta load out all year or makes a OP build in a SP game and all they do is run to the objective marker.
A game is just supposed to keep your mind awake and curious/interested or thinking at least. The ball was always in the players court not the devs and gamers are unknowingly giving up that position to devs for 100% control of what to do and how to do it in games.
Those games are fun though. A lot of the fun comes from setting goals, seeing what you need to do to achieve them and trying to predict what the other players/ai will do so you can best execute them.
Sure it doesn't give you the same satisfaction as the little noise mario makes when he touches a coin but it's still fun when you finally overcome a powerful rival or pull off a crazy strategy that actually works
except they are fun, once you understand them enough to be minimally competent
EU4 is actually really fun once in a blue moon when the stage is set for a frickhuge world war between two balanced endgame powers.
lol paradox games can be fun though i only played Stellaris recently and after 30+ in-game peaceful years my AI neighbour suddenly went toxic against me it triggered them that i am an autonomous machine empire and their entire war goal was to subjugate me which they did accomplish because they were fricking OP and i lost the game lol.
Well technically i could continue playing despite being under them but eh.
I haven't read a single post in this thread
Threads like this really just act like massive vents for everybodies rehearsed rants, if you've seen it once you've seen all you need. There is no objective truth or facts to the fun in video games argument, because what constitutes as enjoyment is different for different people. So trying to agree upon any standard form of belief is pointless.
Fool, it's human nature to collaborate ideas and then categorize the chaotic nonsense into a sensible collection of good takes and proven negatives.
this thread has demonstrated how subjective fun is, and by extension what is considered a game as well since the criteria of a game is that it has to be fun. fun is not a quantifiable objective metric, it differs going from one person to the next. why exactly you're having fun, what mechanics do you find fun, are the characters and story contributing to the fun, etc.. saying something is fun tells you diddly squat. fun is literally a buzzword.
I mean it's an interesting question
does it stop being a game if it's not fun?
so when you rage at a game and you're really 'ot enjoying your time, does it stop being a game?
what's a game?
that being said I'd like to see a game that makes playing war absolutely miserable, but I'm not sure if I would consider it a game
Look no further than the Arma series. Absolutely miserable experiences, both in the war is hell and how the frick did jank like this get released ways. Well loved because of how miserable they are
Arma does atleast have an actual gameplay, its just too autistic.
Vanilla Arma is alright and the A3 inventory system is the first time we've had a decent inventory in the series. It becomes a slog when people start playing Antistasi and looting corpses for two hours after every fight just to see number go up
This conversation is always dogged down by people getting too autistic about the definition of fun. Usually what people want is to be entertained.
Horror is the obvious example. Horror games can be be scary, frustrating, sickening, upsetting but people who play horror games clearly enjoy it. Whether or not they use the word fun is up to the individual, but whats important is that they were engaged, entertained, and got some form of value from the experience. Ths could extend to a game that uses mechanics which are frustrating for a purpose or the subject matter leaves them uncomfortable. If the player leaves the experience engaged and found some value in that experience then great.
idk, I've seen games that can communicate "war is bad" just fine while also being fun
Maybe the author is just a talentless hack.
Yes, you can make "not fun" games that are still entertaining for some other reason.
What people need to understand is that you at least need to retain the audience if you want to have your uncomfortable message delivered. It must be engaging or entertaining at the very least.
This, there has to be a hook if you go the path of 'no fun' and maintain it's theme. Walking simulators are arguably not fun, but a few do and will appreciate the experience and time someone has put in to create it.
Of course, modern developers that want to subvert expectations yet FAIL to understand the original intent, make horrible as frick games, and there are no excuses in the world to justify appreciation for the slop they make. Their misunderstanding is always their failure.
I wouldn't be against the making of a Netflixbox or whatever that exclusively has these cinematic experiences and comes with a remote since clearly these don't need a controller or M+KB.
Let these "people" take their companies to ruin in their own shitty media no one wants to entertain instead of leeching off a medium that has its own merits.
Some people are just incapable of making good games, so they become pretentious c**ts instead, pretending that they did that by choice.
ultimately there's enough games around that you shouldnt be pissed when one is not made specifically for your tastes
But they get mad when I don't buy their stupid game and they demand their artsy homosexual shit be implemented into fun games.
So frick them
Honestly, I think a lot of people have different definitions of "fun" and are mixing them up something like "engaging".
Video games SHOULD be "engaging" at least in some way - you shouldn't be literally bored playing it. Fun on the other hand i'd say is a more specific form of "engaging" - a lot of games are fun, but you can definitely have a game where you're engaged, but not exactly "having fun" - something like the example in OPs pic.
The problem is that for that to even begin to make sense you would have to nail the specific negative emotions caused by the experience you're trying to depict, because you can't just yell at me or throw shit at my face and then say you're making a point about cancer or poverty. And if you want to approximate that type of emotion in a piece of art, then you have to engage not with feelings that can be triggered on their own like boredom or repulsion, but bad feeling that can only exist in the context of their positive counterparts, e.g. I can't experience loss if I never got to treasure something there in the first place, I can't feel dread or tension if I was never immersed in the experience as a pleasant one.
Why isn’t it enjoyable to keep playing Diablo 4?
Too much fricking downtime.
I want to keep playing it, but I log in, have to fricking mount up, go across the open world which is fricking empty to a dungeon, come across a barricade along the way which forces me to dismount (and re-mounting has an 8s or so cooldown as well), then get to the dungeon.
Once inside, 70% of the time is spent walking around empty spaces because the density is completely fricked, or backtracking to the door to the next part once I've finished the objective.
It's fricking boring
One problem with having this debate that is causing a huge disconnect is that "fun" does not just mean frivolous and joy inducing, it can also mean a game that is satisfying and compelling.
All good games are necessarily fun because of the nature of playing a game, even if that game is made to evoke negative emotions.
"Fun" should be replaced with "engagement".
>i am miserable
>therefore everyone else must be as miserable as me
No, games must be fun. It's really the only fricking reason games exist
What an obnoxious way of framing it, does this guy realize he's basically just beating up on kids and legitimately developmentally challenged people? Nobody who seriously plays games thinks everything has to be bing bing wahoo happy funtime.
Wasn't bioshock 2 supposed to have the good route be harder because doing the right thing is hard?
Would've been cool.
They are free to make games that are not fun. They are free to film movies that are not fun. They are free to write books that are not fun.
I am free to not play, watch or read whatever they make. Thank God I'm not at school anymore.
Simple as.
This is all language games over or not whether you consider fun synonymous with engaging.
We can come up with another word for "fun", but it needs to be there. Games need this, called "fun", but they do not need to be funny. It's hard to find comedy in many classic, good games, but they are still "fun" to play. Take Tetris for example, it's a time based puzzle game, it can be challenging but not funny. It's engaging and "fun". Other games may have other forms of "fun". In a game that shows the horrors of war, seeing how those horrors affect people or finding ways to overcome them can be the "fun". That doesn't mean that the "fun" is funny. But it means that games need to have something that engages, or there is no reason to play.
cont.
said it mich better than me though.
Games don't have to be fun, and they don't even have to be enjoyable on any level, but art made for the purpose of conveying a message is just propaganda.
Consider the claim that a piece of art nobody can enjoy is better overall just because it spreads a message. This is a claim that the message matters more than the audience's enjoyment. Anyone who makes a game believing the message is more important than the experience also believes convincing you is more important than delighting you.
The message is the experience, and thats ok
And if that's what they believe, they must have missed the part where your audience is far more likely to at least entertain your ideas when their experience is positive. As an example, you don't get someone to stop being racist by treating them as public enemy #1 and turning every comment into a fight.
It does not matter what message you try to convey, if your delivery is hostile to its' recipient, they will actively rail against it.
>needs to be an established reason as to why it is stupid
1. Video games aren't art, therefore they're not an artistic medium, like film, painting, music, dancing, etc
2. If a game's not fun, why bother?
3. If you want to send overt political messages, write a book or make a film.
4. The idea of video games being "art" is pushed because very creepy people want to put very creepy messaging in video games because of their young audience. Get the kids into the van while they're young type of freaky shit.
Games can be art tho homie? Just make a good game that's profound lmao.
What makes film, music and dancing an artistic medium that games don't have?
NTA since I do think games have the capacity to become an artistic medium but it's not really through normal storytelling/music/characters. Vidya is unique in that compared to other mediums of entertainment there is a 'skill factor' involved to actually experience all of the content. A long book you can eventually finish as long as you can fricking read. A game like Touhou, God Hand, or others would bar you from experiencing the content until you put the work in.
What I'm trying to say is that the 'artistry' part of vidya is all the gameplay and what the dev does with it. Interesting and new ways to do FPS, TPS, RPG, etc; or techniques that make you experience things in those genres that you never experienced before. It's about how the player interacts with the game and how the game responds and manages those actions.
If you are intentionally going against the grain for what could be considered fun or good game design, you should have a proper justification for it that ends up strengthening the core/ overall experience. There is also the chance to misstep and come off as pretentious or ruin part of your game by intentionally adding 'bad' elements. For example, I hear people often complain about the mall section in No More Heroes for being a tedious and long slog, because the developer wanted to imply some kind of message about consumerism through repetition in gameplay. There is almost always a way to accomplish your intention while minimizing the drawbacks or outright creating a compelling reversal of game design. Unskilled or misguided developers end up dragging the experience down when attempting this.
every form of art should be engaging and pleasant to experience
If i wrote a book full of plotholes bad grammer bad writing on purpose because it's about war to ruin your experience and engagement then it's a bad book
same with movies, music, and games.
This.
Star Wars is art bcause I had fun watching it.
Empire Strikes Back isn't art because the ending was not pleasant.
>Empire Strikes Back isn't art because the ending was not pleasant.
What ending? The film is missing the third act.
Exactly. What a piece of shit.
That statement is the truth and a fact. That you don't want that from games is an entirely separate thing. You probably are the type that only watches capeshit movies, right?
well spec ops the line was supposed to be "player bad" but i still enjoyed blasting my way through sand people and americans alike. it was fun
Food doesn't need to be tasty.
Tasty is just a word we use for food that is good, but it could be sweet, savory, ultra-spicy or even bitter
'Fun' is just a word we use for games that are good.
Yes, but they can be fun in nonconventional ways like food can be tasty in unexpected ways.
Uh, yeah. Most of the food that is healthy tastes pretty nasty but you eat it anyway because if all you eat is junk food you get fat and malnourished.
>"Healthy food tastes nasty"
t. average Amerifat
Don't act like you don't season your vegetables.
raw broccoli and carrots are tasty though.
Seasoning and oil isn't unhealthy. A balance of fat and salt in your meal is fine to eat every day, if you're moderate about it. If you're cooking plain-ass steamed vegetables because you think it's the only healthy way to eat then that's just because you're a shit cook and you know nothing about nutrition.
Salty fried vegetables are definitely less healthy than raw vegetables. You've killed half the nutrients and replaced them with things you're body doesn't really need or want.
This just isn't true. Killed half the nutrients, wtf are you talking about? This sounds like something your mom told you. You don't "kill" nutrients by stir frying something, roasting it, or making a stew from it. Your body definitely does need oils, salts, and fats along with fibre and vegetable nutrients, as well as dairy, meat, fish, and eggs. A balanced diet is one that includes all these things in varying amounts. That's why vegans are usually so unhealthy and have to carefully supplement their diet with artificial chemicals. You need to let go of whatever bullshit you learned from your mom and actually read about nutrition, your life will be way more enjoyable.
>You don't "kill" nutrients by stir frying something, roasting it, or making a stew from it.
You can't possibly be that stupid. Do you think cooking a human has no effect on them too?
Anon, you absolutely lose vitamins, minerals, etc. when cooking shit. How much you lose depends on the length of time you cook, the amount of heat applied and the nature of the cooking, e.g. when you boil something you lose a lot of the water soluble nutrients like vitamins.
Must suck to live without 5th grade education in modern times
>Nutrients like vitamin B and C are lost when foods are boiled or soaked in water and the water is thrown away. Nutrients like vitamin A are lost when fats are used for cooking foods. Loss of nutrients in vegetables begins from preparation onward and is greater during the cooking process.
What kind of moron boils food and then throws away the water? Use a programmable pressure cooker to make slow cooked soup, curry, or stew like a normal person
You're losing shit when you cook no matter what. Most of these molecules don't like heat. The best you can do is try to keep the loss minimal.
>he has no clue why he's moronic
no wonder americans are the way they are, your educators failed you
No Child Left Behind was some shit. Technically, yeah, no-one's left behind, since no-one's going anywhere
So don't char it and eat plenty of salad. Shredded carrot, shredded lettuce, shredded kale, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, small can of tuna, balsamic vinegarette. For dinner, stewed meat and vegetables cooked in stock and seasoned with garlic and pepper. Or stir fried vegetables with fish and sweet potato noodles. A good measure of your diet is how easy it is to shit and how much you need to wipe. If your shits take less than 2 minutes, slide out easily, and you barely need to wipe then you're doing pretty well
>A good measure of your diet is how easy it is to shit and how much you need to wipe. If your shits take less than 2 minutes, slide out easily, and you barely need to wipe then you're doing pretty well
Oh, you're one of those freaks. Are you going to recommend a regular colonic next?
I'm going to recommend you start eating a balanced diet and get on my level, you disgusting straining sticky shitter. I bet you bring your phone into the toilet because it takes you so long
>Doesn't get the meta-point
Sad! Second anon I've met that's too autistic to get metapoints.
>american can't comprehend you can cook without using massive amounts of oils and salt
>This Black person thinks salt, pepper, and a little butter is unhealthy.
Just because you pour Lawry's on everything and triple up on starches everyday isn't my fricking fault, fatty.
I agree with it, games can be art and you could definitely make a not-fun game that portrays something that isn't fun. However I'm not going to spend $60 on it. For $60 I want to be entertained. I'd spend maybe $2 - $5 on an avant garde interactive piece of art and I wouldn't want to play it for more than an hour or two. I don't think this is an unreasonable stance to take.
Exactly. Go ahead and make your David Lynch surrealist nightmare movie, but my money is strictly reserved for cape-shit.
But that's different though isn't it, because David Lynch style surrealist nightmare films are actually entertaining. Same with games like Papers Please or Stygian, they are still fun. I was talking more about the game equivalent of Gummo or Dogtooth. Those films are worth a watch once, but you wouldn't want to go with your friends to see them unless your friends are hipster wankers. Scorn is a good example of an art game. It's not "fun", it's more like a walk through an interactive art gallery. It's worth a play, but it's not worth $60 even if it takes you 10 hours to beat it.
Videogames are meant to be fun, videogames have passed through a long process of gameplay refinement, improving playability and accessibility.
There's simply no excuse for a game to be not fun, people should just stop justifying bad videogames as art.
If it fails to be fun then it failed to be a videogame and consequently it also fails to be art.
i want pseudo artistic frickheads like the one who made that quote out of the industry
theyve peddling their miseable shit for long enough
'fun time' is over
its time to get real game developers to start making video games not these wannabes
I don't disagree with the statement, I think a lot of people lean on it hypocritically and try to use it as shield against criticism. You can make an uncomfortable piece of media a piece of art but that doesn't mean it's going to be a good piece of art. Indeed if you're planning on torturing the player you need to work doubly hard to make it work.
While he might have a point why would anyone play a game that makes them feel miserable?
I suppose they could make a VR game about making friends with your brothers in arms, get to know them, get to love them. And then you're shipped out to war and all your friends are killed, your best bro jumped on a grenade to save your life but both your legs got shredded and you'll live the rest of your life all alone with people laughing at you when they see you and all you've got to think about is how should have died that day, but didn't. That way modern people might understand what PTSD actually is
>why would you read a book that isn't a comedy
As long as it isn't the gameplay that's making you miserable
>In fact, sniffing farts being *not fun* might make it a better game.
>Imagine a fart with the purpose of communicating how terrible war is, which it does by making the smell miserable. That fart, as a piece of art, is *improved* by not being fun.
No, she's right, it's just shit. Like how films don't have to be entertaining, so you get 12 Years A Slave or whatever. She is correct, it's just a negative answer that makes things shit. Her mistake is thinking it's a positive outcome.
No More Heroes' open world is my go to example of this.
It makes you grind, makes you drive everywhere on Travis' janky, easy to crash weeb bike, makes you hunt down shitty collectibles to unlock Travis' full moveset, and it's unpleasant to look at, it's like the picture of a small, sad, dead-end American city and it feels like there's about as little to actually do in it as a real one.
I love it because it makes the rankings fights, which are basically just hobo fights with simple beat 'em up combat feel that much more special because the player's day to day is absolutely shitty and miserable.
I feel like people who claim that inconvenience can't work to a game's favor just haven't played many games yet.
The issue is conflating fun with engaging. A book or movie can be uncomfortable to read/watch but still be worth reading/watching. They dont all have to be lighthearted romps where the good guys wisecrack their way to a flawless win. In that same vein, a game can have elements that are unfun if it serves to make the game more engaging, it's just hard to do. Darkest dungeon comes to mind. Permadeath makes every run a tense, stressful affair which makes it not very fun but quite engaging. But this has the unfortunate side effect of requiring much more grinding for replacing lost characters which makes it less engaging for people who dont value grinding. It's a delicate balance, saying 'its not fun so its shit' is a valid take but a bit lacking in nuance.
Yea yea yea fine just as long as I can still have my fun games. Don't care if tryhards and hipsters want to play unfun games but I'll pass.
If a game is not fun then it's not enjoyable. You're interacting with a game, you don't just sit there and watch what occurs or read about it like with a film, play, or piece of literature. Those art forms can afford to be not fun because the enjoyment factor isn't linked to interactivity. If you are not having fun interacting with a piece of media that is designed around intractability then, in theory, you stop playing. This isn't hard to understand.
Games which have strong interactivity, or gameplay, can afford to frustrate players or otherwise impart themes that are very serious and not at all amusing. But most games that set out to be not fun are at the same time shit games, because the developers take the not fun aspect as to mean they can have shit gameplay, and they can't. So we end up with pretentious, gory, movie games, like the kind peddled by Naughty Dog, who can go frick themselves.
I think games are allowed to do whatever so long as the experience can make it unique through the medium of it being a game, if I can get exactly the same experience reading or watching it, then the game part actually detracts from it.
People always say that "games don't have to be fun" and yet I never see any examples of something worthwhile that fits that criteria. Until someone makes a good game that ISN'T fun I'll maintain my position that games need to be fun to be considered good.
Depends on how you define fun, and "being fun". If a game is challenging with lots of frustrating parts, but overcoming those feels good, is that "fun"? If a horror game scares you shitless, is it "fun"?
>If a game is challenging with lots of frustrating parts, but overcoming those feels good, is that "fun"?
Yes.
>If a horror game scares you shitless, is it "fun"?
If that's your goal going into the game, yes.
So the next question is, since we're chasing something other than pure gameplay here, can making the gameplay shit on purpose to enhance some other part of the game be a net positive on the fun? Removing fun from the gameplay to gain more fun elsewhere, like in the horror department? Something like tank controls to make running from threats harder and scarier?
It's what I thought the OP image was going for, until source was provided and lol nope it's just a dumb person.
>can making the gameplay shit on purpose to enhance some other part of the game
The gameplay is the medium of enjoyment in a videoGAME. It's all about gameplay. Introducing tank controls to make escape from threats harder in a horror game is literally good game design, because the whole point of a horror game is to get scared shitless. How is this not obvious?
I'm just having trouble wrapping my head around the concept of making something better by making it worse. It seemed obviously stupid in OP's image, but now I'm not so sure. Maybe I'm trying to oversimplify it
What do you mean by "worse" in this case?
Tank controls in a horror game are the perfect example. It's an inconvenient control scheme that has been outdated for decades and has been phased out in every other genre. Modern control schemer are more convenient and have better precision. So it feels like a downgrade. But it fits in this one genre since running away being harder makes everything scarier. So bad controls make for a better game and my head hurts.
...and while I was typing this
appeared and has me doubting my own sanity again. I'll just go lie down now.
Turns out your example is terrible because tank controls are adopted to solve a technical problem and make gameplay easier for the player, not harder.
The issue is that because of the abrupt camera changes, each with a completely different direction from the other, the player needs a "global" and not a "local" reference for the character's movement.
That's why movement in the game always refers to the character model, not the camera angle. So the player knows that to go forward, he always needs to press the same button/key, regardless of how the camera is positioned. This is particularly useful during an abrupt camera transition that characterizes early survival horrors.
>>tank controls are adopted to solve a technical problem and make gameplay easier for the player, not harder.
Lol, tank control was somewhat designed to make games harder,not easier. It was designed to maintain cinematic camera angles and blocks the gameplay aspect.
no need to be obtuse, sure it was originally a solution to the issue of maintaining direction while committing to cinematic camera angles, but it also served the gameplay positively to the point where design changed to revolve around it
>>If a horror game scares you shitless, is it "fun"?
Absolutely. It is still a pleasant entertainment. "Fun" here means you feel entertainted and rewarded from the media you consumed. You want to see scary shit and you got what you looking for. That's fun.
>If a horror game scares you shitless, is it "fun"?
Yes? The frick do you think people watch horror films for? Experiencing fear brings enjoyment. Getting scared brings a rush of endorphins, you literally feel pleasure.
>Why would anyone ever pay to go into a haunted house?
It's not possible if you define fun in a general sense, like "enjoyment derived from interacting and engaging with the game" because if a game is not "fun" in this sense then nobody will play it, because playing the game becomes an unpleasant activity. I think this is the most reasonable way to define "fun" in connection to video games, because playing a fast-paced FPS with amazing level design is completely different to playing Factorio or a tycoon game, but both experiences can be highly enjoyable and as such "fun."
In this sense if the game is not "fun" then very few will bother playing it. It might work when only applied to limited segments to drive some sort of point home, but not as the baseline design for the whole game. This is because unlike watching a movie or reading a book - which are passive or nearly-passive "activities" - playing video games requires real action and often full focus as well as real-time engagement on the side of the player. If this is bad or unpleasant then the vast majority of people will simply not engage with such a game in the first place, so in practical terms games do indeed have to be fun for the audience to bother with them.
Watching a movie or reading a book is exactly the same thing.
Good books and movies, even with complex or cruel messages, are made in such a way that they are entertaining. Be it with a decent structure, characters that make people identify with, with a story that holds attention, with interesting camera shots, etc. It's only very recently in human history that this idea has emerged that books and movies can be completely ineligible/unwatchable as an excuse that they are works of art but nobody really buys that shit, just a small group of talentless snobs who organize themselves like cults of intellectual self-masturbation.
Art is entertainment above all else. The best symphonies were made to entertain. Dostoevsky is discussing philosophical points, but first of all he is trying to entertain the reader by putting interesting characters in conflict during a plot in order to discuss these points. Etc.
100% of artists who say otherwise are hacks.
Fun is a natural consequence of good game design. No "games don't need to be fun" dude walks away from the claustrophobia segment in Indigo Prophecy raving about how good a game it is.
Fail states are good
Timers are good
Durability is good
Limited fast travel is good
Limited inventory is good
etc
Anybody who's against games having anything "unfun" in them are responsible for the death of video games. It makes games feel toothless and disposable. Games need a bit of bad in them to be good.
>fail states
Speaking of that, in Baldr Sky, during a couple of the routes you go for, you come across sections where the girl gets kidnapped or cornered and you need to race through a gauntlet enemies to get to her. There's an unseen time limit and every few minutes you get pieces of dialogue. I thought that shit was great and really raised the stakes as I don't want my b***hes to get raped/hurt. Though for others that might be too much 'ntr-bait' and be 'un-fun' for them.
A more annoying example of this is in Splatterhouse 2 or 3, you get a timer on each level in order to save your family from the monsters inside the house, you have to beat the levels before the timer runs out, but in the first level where you have to save your wife, when it gets, the boss reaches her when the timer lowers to 2 minutes and infects her, so when you beat it before the timer runs out you reach your wife and she transforms in front of you and attacks you, only difference is that if the timer runs before beating the boss is that she is already transformed when you get to her.
depends entirely on your definition of 'fun'
does the existence of challenge count as fun? if yes, then is talking about things that are fun because they lead to fun, so fun is the end goal
if challenge does not count as fun, then is right on the surface and you need unfun things in order to have greater amounts of satisfying fun
Frick "art", and anything putting being labeled it as a top priority.
Duplicating my post from the other thread:
Let's see how Cambridge dictionary defines "fun" first:
>pleasure, enjoyment, or entertainment
Yeah, games should be fun. When we say that a game should be "fun" we don't mean it in the SM64 way, we mean it generally. It should be enjoyable. Different people might be entertained by different things: some like the aforementioned SM64-like engaging open world gameplay, some like puzzles, some like horror, because experiencing fear through interactive gameplay can also be pleasurable, some like a good blend of gameplay and story. The key word is "gameplay" though, so Neal Cuckmann can frick right off twice. If you wanna see gameplay and storytelling interacting in a fun way, play New Vegas or older Fallout titles.
If we're using "fun" as a synonym for "pleasure when feeling entertained with something", then it's a really shitty quote.
All art and cultural production primarily aims to entertain. Even when it's a philosophy-heavy fiction, or a film denouncing some brutal aspect of humanity, they're still made in such a way that they're entertaining. The ones who say otherwise are the hacks or talentless people who are trying to rationalize the fact that they can't entertain anyone.
A good example is the YIIK author saying that videogame players aren't smart enough to understand a more complex work of art, which was just his rationalization for the fact that no one found the garbage he produced entertaining, not even as a joke game where you laugh at the writer's lack of talent (there are some videos on Youtube doing just that, but notice how people go to these videos and not the game to laugh at it, because the game itself is so unentertainable that it's intolerable).
All options are valid, just don't make it pretentious as frick when you want to make a game that's meant to be serious or don't bait people with dishonest advertising to "teach them" something
a game can't be good if at the same time its "unfun" if you're enjoying yourself you're having fun. if you play a game and you're not enjoying yourself than that game isn't fun and you've wasted your time.
looking at a beautiful sunset is fun
being inspired by a piece of art is fun
watching kino is fun
Fun comes in more forms than bing bing wahoo platforming. Scrounging through the broken cityscape under the cover of night in This War of Mine was fun, and it still effectively conveyed a message about the impact of war on the average civilian trapped in a war zone. Talking about your games "thematic message" doesn't magically mean you can completely ignore adding any sort of engaging mechanics to the game.