What does /vr/ make of the once massive interest in vidya as the newest exciting artform that was coming from the Arthouse scenes of different mediums? Did it all never go further than pure novelty or was there some genuine merit in their attempts to push things forward? I've been thinking about the pivot in outsider interest that happened after the 90s where games (or interactive software as pretentious people liked to call them) stopped attracting the artsy crowds into their studios and instead were trying their best to get some friction with Hollywood. It's fair to say that many in the industry were and still are looking for approval from their elders in the art world, for better and for worse, and the tentpoles around the eternal debate of ''are video games art?'' shifted from a position of spunky enthusiasm to doubtful pleas. You had all sorts of artists dipping their toes into the vidya realm with a curious and welcoming spirit, from David Bowie in omikron to Peter Gabriel founding a legit studio releasing shit like Ceremony of Innocence to pure arthouse filmmakers like Chris Marker making challenging games like Immemory and so on ; and it was all sacrificed for hiring ex-hollywood writers to make ''games feel like movies'' instead of seeing what else we could make out of this. There was an interesting venn diagram between programmers and visual artists and novelists and musicians and philosophers and con men that was making up a very vibrant dynamic scene, or so it seems to me, and it's a reminder of what the genre could have amounted to had it kept going further inwards as opposed to expanding to the point where it eventually broke apart. I might be overly romanticizing that zeitgeist here. Anybody feel like there was more to do with those overlaps?
>>12315632the answer for why it never materialized is the much higher technical floor of videogames, it's really that simple. every instance of a videogame is comparatively difficult and time consuming to produce there's no space for people to create something quick and evocative with a few friends and a decent cameraman.
consider using the enter key so it's not just a giant wall of text next time anyway I don't have a ton to say about the topic. I wish David Lynch finished his point and click adventure game 'Woodcutters From Fiery Ships'it's interesting to see what accomplished people from other mediums do with video games, but I get the feeling a lot of the best directors didn't really grow up with games, or if they did then they didn't care much
I welcome any people willing to dip their toes into videogames as a medium that aren't already deep into it's conventions and genres or come from some completely other background.
There was a great stirring of interest surrounding new possibilities of artistic expression in video games once developers were no longer restricted by easily exhausted data space and what resulted was an expanding output of flourishing grandiosity never before possible. As producers were swimming in optimistic fame-seeking, developers were deluged with opportunities to stress-test the medium's ability to discover unexplored artistic paradigms through the inception and portrayal of interactive abstract expressions, unfortunately the scale of art production required for these works was unsustainable and frequently caused publishers to sell at a loss or in very limited quantities. The availability of a discerning audience was either greatly overestimated or blatantly exaggerated to producers, and every project concerning itself with "true artistic expression" while avoiding the mass marketing and broad public awareness required to make video games profitable to begin with resulted in extremely poor sales making video games as a new medium for large scale production of artistic abstract expressionism a non-viable product. Even today you can find independent game developers more concerned with conceptual expression than market viability and often won't earn back the cost of production diet; video games as a medium for abstract expressionism was conceptually effective but not commercially viable due to its often maximalist sensibilities. What makes a classic video game into a piece of art is the audience understanding its minimalist sensibilities, rather than intentionally creating art and placing it in the context of a game, the game itself is the art through combination of form and functionality. "Game as Art" outlived "Art as Game" because the minimally necessary code creates countless personal experiences which will propagate alongside other typical pieces of famous art shared and enjoyed by our cultures and societies as they progress into the future
>>12315753wtf no you're supposed to hate any newcomers to bideo games they're all normalfags
>>12315850> this image is 18KB> 12KBTrust no one...
>>12315902If it gets any smaller it'll turn into Combat
>>12315850I don't like being suspicious of any lengthy posts but something about this paragraph seems vague and aimless in a very AI fashion, which makes me ask: Why bother?
>>12315676>consider using the enter keyThe "Reddit spacing" meme has had disastrous consequences on this site's usability since newfags started it around 2016
>>12317119Reddit spacing genuinely harms a text's readability
>>12317368Bullshit, adding a linefeed here and there is far more readable than a giant wall of text like what OP wrote, and the idea that reddit is responsible for what oldfags have been doing since moot is retarded.
>>12316235My technically coherent and intentionally excessive response was poking fun at OP's pretentious word choices (as art scenesters do) and his allergy towards proper paragraph formatting. Since I never intended anyone to seriously digest the mountainous tome, I'll frack it for you:"Art as Game" has a small audience but requires lots of resources which neccesitates small-scale production. Classic games are artistic already, when viewed through a minimalist paradigm where barebones form and functionality creates a meaningful experience it will be shared and enjoyed by a far larger audience than the "Art as Game" genre. My straightforward idea was intentionally preoccupied by its flourishes and specificity making the actual message hard to discern... Exactly like one of those "Art as Game" projects. It was satirizing the subject and the form of discussion OP was attempting to create simultaneously.
>>12315632We talk about artists art schools and art collectives in the same way currently talk about video games designers. art games used to be surreal and wacky. Nostalgia kicks in an we start analysing beloved video games much like how the literature books we learn about in high school are like the New York best sellers of the 1500's. New wave of indie gaming leads to walking meditations written in unreal or unity. Now video game has become so accessible it becomes a cathartic exercise where people make games like "getting over it" or that toby fox game. Or we marvel at the puzzle complexity in elegant games of zachtronics. Interactive art, or art that people can interact with is becoming our main expression of culture.
3DO has a number of strange esoteric games.
>>12318123Go buy an easel and shit yourself disaffective "best of me" ass wannabe
