Jimquisition: Jimquisition Extra: Virgillio Armarndio's Art Hole

[Tinybear]

Jim, how do you manage to act like that without the urge of drinking cyanide while dropping the toaster into the bathtub? I couldn't have done half the impression without beginning to vomit uncontrollably.

 

[McShizzle]

Seriously? What the flip is this shlock? If the purpose of this video was to further enforce how far Jim Sterling is up his own ass, then well done, mission accomplished. Why this man is given a forum here to spout his garbage, I don't understand. I guess his fee must be cheap.

 

[Asuka Soryu]

The player looks actually way more like a pennis.

Someone noticed that Virgilio looks a lot like Jim?

Really? I thought it looked like a disembodied breast.

Anyways, Virgillio might be a relative. Who knows?

:/ I thought it was a tank being driven by Fry.

 

[Therumancer]

WHen did we get Extra Credits back on the escapist?

I wasn't here for when Extra Creditz fell off the site, so maybe I'm bias, but ehhh... That's pretty rude, guy.

Haha, of course its rude! Bit still a joke, as extra credits drips with pretentiousness more often than not.

pretentiousness- an exaggerated sense of one's importance that shows itself in the making of excessive or unjustified claims.

they do dabble a lot into going for more complex n deeper meanings and analyzing excrutinely their topics, but i never got them as having a sense of exagerated self importance. they seemed humble enough, while just stating an opinion. maybe you meant sth else?

It really came off when they talked about how Other M screwed up with the story on how they characterized Samus. This struck me as pretentious because they are telling Yoshio Sakamoto, the man who wrote all but one metroid game, that HIS character is wrong because THEY thought of her in a way that was misinformed. It was also lol worthy when they blamed the wrong people on how the story and character are wrong, even though Mr Yoshi was the lead director and writer on the game, so if something had been going as WTF wrong with it as people seem to think he coulda (And would have) stopped that.

So I may have been exaggerating when I said more often than not, but its still there and obvious at times.

Well, your right and your not. The thing with Samus was that it wasn't just a few people thinking that the characterization was bad, it was pretty much everyone. People go on about how characters can be defined through their actions without having to speak, and really the way Samus acted during the cinematics was contrary to everything established in regards to the character given her actions throughout the rest of the series.

The original creator deciding something does not actually make him right in cases where a property has grown beyond that one person. Creators can, and do, frequently lose touch with their own work and the fan base. A good example of this would be oh... George Lucas. George Lucas created Star Wars, but that doesn't mean his changes were good, his modified characterization of Han Solo was good, or that the inclusion of Jar Jar Binks was in any way justified.

That paticular Metroid game was pretty much the "Phantom Menace" to the other games before it representing the original Star Wars trilogy (to continue with the analogy). The guy might be the creator, but he was wrong in handling his own property, which amazingly can happen. The big question after something like this is whether the creator is able to figure out their mistake and get back on track without blowing an arrogance gasket, or if like George Lucas they instead choose to embrace greater and greater insanity after their mistakes, George having not only failed to learn from "The Phantom Menace" but to surpass it in the next two prrquel movies, and then turn around and infect the original trilogy that made him famous with the same kind of drivel... it's like Jar Jar morphd into a disease that spread throughout Star Wars, leaving behind a trail of muppets, cutesy CGI, and bad arse space smugglers who suddenly forget they are badarse in the place of things like festering boils, fever, and shivers.

We'll be in trouble if Metroid's creator decides to say re-do all of the previous games in new editions, riting in the new voice work and personality traits. You know like situations where you have to turn into a ball, but instead of just doing it you have to wait for the permisison of your commanding officer... something that will be repeted in boss fights where you won't be able to activate the right weapon that your carrying until someone else tells you it's okay.... all touted as "improvements, fulfilling the vision of the creator".

All rambling aside, the point is that I think it's a bad example, in general while it's possible for gamers to be pretentious snobs, in cases where you see large groups of gamers agreeing on specific points like how horrible the characterization of Samus was, or what a let down the ending of "Mass Effect 3 was" that's not snobbery, that's calling the creators on having seriously F@cked up, and without that there is no way for anyone to know when they do wrong or improve. All jokes aside, I'd imagine the creator of Samus is sane enough to have gotten the message in a way George never did, though only time will tell.

Also, I have to say I thought this was hilarious, I hope we indeed see more recovered episodes of "The Art Hole", I've always wondered at the deep, symbolic meaning behind the name "Pitfall Harry" myself.

 

[Davroth]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyEcA127dWM

That's the funny one. Too bad that that lightning didn't strike twice. :I

 

[thanatopsis112]

First off this video has destroyed what little respect for what Jim Sterling has to say, the Satire of an extreme view was so lacking is skill or execution that it really just devolved down to trolling. This is especially the case seen as in the previous video Jim did acknowledge video games he did feel were good and well executed art games, yet with how he went about satirizing those that feel like all games are art he negates his own previous argument by simply trying to say anyone who calles a video game art is pretentious and over analyzing.

with that being said Jim is Just wrong on his content and he need look no further than the fact that he has a job reviewing/ critiquing video games. simply put anything that can be Critiqued is a form of art. you talk about the story, and visuals whether the item makes you feel an emotional connection, these are all things video games, books, paintings, plays, and photographs all have in common. all forms of art are different from each other, this being said not all art is good but it doesn't mean its not art. Very few people would call the twilight movies examples of excellence of artistic expression yet we dont hold up similar movies as why Film making as a whole is not an art form. It is instead understood that film making is an art form regardless of the fact that there are bad pieces of art along with the good.

 

[maxben]

Wasnt that what you made in the first episode with Halo? Or was it Moviebob?

All I know is that this kind of things don't really work with only one person throwing away all their points on their favor (Jimquisition, Extra Credits, The Big Picture), to do this kind of thing there needs to be people representing both sides of the argument, with only one it is quite easy to convince the viewers that the host is right.

There aren't two sides to an argument, there are many subjective positions that may overlap in some ways but definitely not two sides.
As such, no matter what the debate is, or how broad it is, it will be missing other opinions and sides.
In fact, when people claim to show "both sides" it just becomes a situation where one side gets put into a weaker position as a way to reinforce the other point. Consider MSNBC or Fox News, these guys really know how to pull that off.
If you study philosophy, this is the technique Plato uses in the Dialogues to trick the reader into agreeing with him.
"This is my opinion" is a hell of a lot more honest.

 

[josemlopes]

Wasnt that what you made in the first episode with Halo? Or was it Moviebob?

All I know is that this kind of things don't really work with only one person throwing away all their points on their favor (Jimquisition, Extra Credits, The Big Picture), to do this kind of thing there needs to be people representing both sides of the argument, with only one it is quite easy to convince the viewers that the host is right.

There aren't two sides to an argument, there are many subjective positions that may overlap in some ways but definitely not two sides.
As such, no matter what the debate is, or how broad it is, it will be missing other opinions and sides.
In fact, when people claim to show "both sides" it just becomes a situation where one side gets put into a weaker position as a way to reinforce the other point. Consider MSNBC or Fox News, these guys really know how to pull that off.
If you study philosophy, this is the technique Plato uses in the Dialogues to trick the reader into agreeing with him.
"This is my opinion" is a hell of a lot more honest.

Hmm, I guess. I see what you are saying, maybe it's just they way they "sell it" to us that annoys me a little. It's like if your opinion is different then theirs then you are an idiot.

 

[Gigano]

First off this video has destroyed what little respect for what Jim Sterling has to say, the Satire of an extreme view was so lacking is skill or execution that it really just devolved down to trolling. This is especially the case seen as in the previous video Jim did acknowledge video games he did feel were good and well executed art games, yet with how he went about satirizing those that feel like all games are art he negates his own previous argument by simply trying to say anyone who calles a video game art is pretentious and over analyzing.

I rather doubt [http://www.gamesradar.com/does-it-matter-what-roger-ebert-thinks/] there's any claims that video games can't be art at play here.

What is at play is a critique that the current breed of "art games" are formulaic and not particularly interactive in nature (previous video), and now a - rather crude - satire of people who read lots and lots of things into games which obviously isn't there, perhaps as a consequence of the staggering lack of art games that are actually good and worthwhile available to them.

with that being said Jim is Just wrong on his content and he need look no further than the fact that he has a job reviewing/ critiquing video games. simply put anything that can be Critiqued is a form of art. you talk about the story, and visuals whether the item makes you feel an emotional connection, these are all things video games, books, paintings, plays, and photographs all have in common. all forms of art are different from each other, this being said not all art is good but it doesn't mean its not art. Very few people would call the twilight movies examples of excellence of artistic expression yet we dont hold up similar movies as why Film making as a whole is not an art form. It is instead understood that film making is an art form regardless of the fact that there are bad pieces of art along with the good.

Again, I don't think his point was to say that games can't ever be works of art; Merely that not many of them are good works of art. And that there's sometimes a tendency to overthink things in a desperate attempt to compensate for this lack of actual titles to bite into.

The Schindler's Lists and Shawshank Redemptions of gaming are unfortunately still in rather short supply. Good games with artistic merit exist, and many more will come in time, but right now there's still a bit of a quantitative and qualitative void to fill here. Which isn't going to be filled by overanalysing space invaders as some kind of gender war metaphor, but by creating a demand for games that actually do mean to say something.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Jim is getting more annoying with each passing episode. At least his older videos used to be to the point without all this other nonsense. But that's just my opinion. No need to go spreading it around.

 

[thanatopsis112]

First off this video has destroyed what little respect for what Jim Sterling has to say, the Satire of an extreme view was so lacking is skill or execution that it really just devolved down to trolling. This is especially the case seen as in the previous video Jim did acknowledge video games he did feel were good and well executed art games, yet with how he went about satirizing those that feel like all games are art he negates his own previous argument by simply trying to say anyone who calles a video game art is pretentious and over analyzing.

I rather doubt [http://www.gamesradar.com/does-it-matter-what-roger-ebert-thinks/] there's any claims that video games can't be art at play here.

What is at play is a critique that the current breed of "art games" are formulaic and not particularly interactive in nature (previous video), and now a - rather crude - satire of people who read lots and lots of things into games which obviously isn't there, perhaps as a consequence of the staggering lack of art games that are actually good and worthwhile available to them.

with that being said Jim is Just wrong on his content and he need look no further than the fact that he has a job reviewing/ critiquing video games. simply put anything that can be Critiqued is a form of art. you talk about the story, and visuals whether the item makes you feel an emotional connection, these are all things video games, books, paintings, plays, and photographs all have in common. all forms of art are different from each other, this being said not all art is good but it doesn't mean its not art. Very few people would call the twilight movies examples of excellence of artistic expression yet we dont hold up similar movies as why Film making as a whole is not an art form. It is instead understood that film making is an art form regardless of the fact that there are bad pieces of art along with the good.

Again, I don't think his point was to say that games can't ever be works of art; Merely that not many of them are good works of art. And that there's sometimes a tendency to overthink things in a desperate attempt to compensate for this lack of actual titles to bite into.

The Schindler's Lists and Shawshank Redemptions of gaming are unfortunately still in rather short supply. Good games with artistic merit exist, and many more will come in time, but right now there's still a bit of a quantitative and qualitative void to fill here. Which isn't going to be filled by overanalysing space invaders as some kind of gender war metaphor, but by creating a demand for games that actually do mean to say something.

my issue is that the "Virgillo Armarndios" sataires are poorly done and contradict the message he made the day before. the skit rather than using an "art" video game he used space invaders, the problem with using this for his satire is that he goes from satirizing the "art" video game category and ends up making the statement that no video game is art and anyone who tries to make that argument is over analyzing the medium, and that argument is just wrong. this is part of the same problem I have with his literatica audio book he made a few weeks back, satire is A) subjective and B) extremely easy to destroy your own message. Jim played it to heavy handed and rather than satirizing a genre of games satirized anyone who sees games as art or feels its something to aspire to.

 

[Darth_Murmeltier]

I'm not sure what the point was of this video. Seriously I don't know. Jim I actually like you when you are not ironic - which doesn't happen very often unfortunately -, I dislike your exaggarated irony alot. Maybe that's what you just like to do, but I think it's totally unnecessary and it would be far better if you would be just earnest about things, at least sometimes. You make some good points here and there though.

 

[Thaius]

I would appreciate his criticism of the "games are art" movement if he would ever actually talk about where he stands on it. He's said he understands the potential of video games as an art form, but all I ever see from him is stupid, sensationalist crap like this making anyone who claims to find artistic depth in the medium out to be pretentious, know-it-all morons. As it stands, he's never managed to go anywhere on my list other than "that really annoying guy with a lot of really bad ideas and the occasional brilliant one." Stuff like this is why.

Well as a chemistry major at my university I can sympathize with Jim in that he views all the "fine arts" people as pretentious. Its hard to argue after a few short conversations with the types. They genuinely think you are simply a nerd who has no life and would rather do math then be a human being. At least that's my experience with fine art majors. Then again the regard I hold them with is not much dissimilar then with which they regard me. But I get a job out of college .

Unrelated note,

Solve media is showing advertisements? For shame...........

Well "fine arts" people, yes, because the very concept of the "fine arts" is a load of pretentious crap meant to give one art form and people group a sense of superiority over others. But that's not the same as the "video games are art" movement. The games as art movement is only trying to support the very correct understanding that video games, as they are, are an art form, capable of causing deep introspection and telling incredible stories in ways nothing else can. Experimenting with the fact is not pretentious, it's having a good understanding of art.

For that matter, making an interactive experience that does not fit within the traditional definition of "game" is not pretentious. I'm tired of people acting like gameplay is the only legitimate way to interact with an artwork.

Point simply being, Jim seems to say that video games are art, then take issue with anyone who actually tries to explore the different ways in which they can express that. And that is really starting to get to me.

 

[CapitalistPig]

I would appreciate his criticism of the "games are art" movement if he would ever actually talk about where he stands on it. He's said he understands the potential of video games as an art form, but all I ever see from him is stupid, sensationalist crap like this making anyone who claims to find artistic depth in the medium out to be pretentious, know-it-all morons. As it stands, he's never managed to go anywhere on my list other than "that really annoying guy with a lot of really bad ideas and the occasional brilliant one." Stuff like this is why.

Well as a chemistry major at my university I can sympathize with Jim in that he views all the "fine arts" people as pretentious. Its hard to argue after a few short conversations with the types. They genuinely think you are simply a nerd who has no life and would rather do math then be a human being. At least that's my experience with fine art majors. Then again the regard I hold them with is not much dissimilar then with which they regard me. But I get a job out of college .

Unrelated note,

Solve media is showing advertisements? For shame...........

Well "fine arts" people, yes, because the very concept of the "fine arts" is a load of pretentious crap meant to give one art form and people group a sense of superiority over others. But that's not the same as the "video games are art" movement. The games as art movement is only trying to support the very correct understanding that video games, as they are, are an art form, capable of causing deep introspection and telling incredible stories in ways nothing else can. Experimenting with the fact is not pretentious, it's having a good understanding of art.

For that matter, making an interactive experience that does not fit within the traditional definition of "game" is not pretentious. I'm tired of people acting like gameplay is the only legitimate way to interact with an artwork.

Point simply being, Jim seems to say that video games are art, then take issue with anyone who actually tries to explore the different ways in which they can express that. And that is really starting to get to me.

In the video before this he showed one of the games he liked that worked along the lines you decribe called Follower. I'm actually interested in playing it (once i rebuild my computer to be able to play it lol.) He's critical but hes a critic so thats kinda his thing.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

What a wonderful can of worms this has opened!

I wanted to be original (i.e. not at all) and reply with my own take on "YOU ARE ALL WRONG AND I AM RIGHT, HERE IS MY SILLY TAKE ON A NEEDLESSLY PROFOUND CRITIQUE" but I'll settle with saying that this is fucking genius. Absolutely.

Being a Lit student, I can definitely say you can get away with any explanation whatsoever for any medium imaginable, provided you're able to twist various high-brow concepts to suit your needs. Plug Walter Benjamin, Vladimir Propp, Freud or Lacan into any project whatsoever and if you vaguely know what you're doing, that ship will sail just fine.

This is what's fundamentally sad with intellectualism. A lot of what I'm learning in school as part of my Master's is actually pretty damn near useless. I'll need a fraction of all those theories and interpretative tools to do my job as a college teacher, to the point that quite a bit of the tools I'm using for my paper are just... there.

University campus libraries are filled with these kinds of books, basically extremely obscure and obtuse theories appealing to niche thinkers who will never, ever get to use these tools in any meaningful way. The weirdest part is this is actually one of the reasons why I keep at it. I love that at the point I'm at in my personal education, I can afford to write a thesis on Lovecraft. I love that I know other people who can overthink things like Journey or LIMBO in campus hallways.

When it's done in good fun, there's no harm done. What Jim's satirizing is basically what happens when you start to expect people to give you an ace because you were able to cram out-of-place theories into models that make no sense. It's also what happens when the newest indie developer assumes the only way it'll survive is by aping Braid or tacking some sort of pseudo-profound meaning to excessively simple gameplay mechanics.

Heck, one of my friends is writing his thesis on Gears of War, and I've been respectfully disagreeing with the entire concept from Day One. GoW wasn't written by a Sci Fi author with surprising insight into the human condition; it's a series that's designed from the ground up as a male empowerment fantasy - or that mutated into this at some point in the game's development cycle.

In other words, this is why things like "Dear Esther" can either succeed or fail miserably. Pushing intellectualism as part of a game's core concept is an extremely risky gamble. That's not to say gamers aren't smart, but that being asked to mull over complex themes can sometimes get in the way of player engagement.

 

[bdcjacko]

@00:35 - I'm scared.

@01:29 - Who else does this remind of the time Extra Creditz tried to tell us that there was some deep meaning behind some very old arcade game with a red dot and (I think it was) missiles?

I am glad I am not the only one that thought that.

 

[Therumancer]

The original creator deciding something does not actually make him right in cases where a property has grown beyond that one person. Creators can, and do, frequently lose touch with their own work and the fan base. A good example of this would be oh... George Lucas. George Lucas created Star Wars, but that doesn't mean his changes were good, his modified characterization of Han Solo was good, or that the inclusion of Jar Jar Binks was in any way justified.

I would like to add Clive Barker to that list. When that guy misses, holy shit does he miss.

Case in point: Hellraiser. Pinhead was an iconic character that horror fans loved. And then came the sequels. Barker decided to make Pinhead "more interesting" by giving him a backstory and at several reconning his entire personality. The backstory was a terrible decision because aside from the fact that it wasn't very good, it took away much of the character's mystique and appeal.

Yes, it was Barker's character to do with as he pleased. That didn't make it a good decision.

Anyway, I'm a filmmaker and musician and I support Jim. Some of the people in my line of work need to get over themselves.

I thought Clive Barker had no real involvement with the movies other than the first one. The first movie being an attempt to see if he could turn his novella "The Hellbound Heart" into a movie. The other movies were done by differant people without him, launching a totally seperate franchise. I seem to remember reading some pretty solid statements that he was not involved with the franchise at all, especially when it came to things like the comics published by Checker (some of which were quite good).

Though in one of the many sequels I was kind of impressed that someone finally got around to referring to Pinhead as "The Engineer" which is what he was called in the novella.

It's been a long time but I've read a bunch of Clive Barker's work, and it seemed to me that he seems to connect most of his writing through a shared cosmology like Michael Moorcock or Steven King (where the Gunslinger series ties a lot of the differant things happening together, and Flagg is a recurring villain/source of evil in numerous titles). The so called "Cenobites" and "The Engineer" are kind of bit players overall.

The way I sort of view it is that Hellraiser is like The Macross Saga, it's both the starting point for it's own series, and a totally differant series called "Robotech" (which I won't go into here, but anime fans know what I mean). You've got "The Hellbound Heart" to which the mocie is fairly close and how it fits into his other writing as the creator's universe, and the more well known universe based on some of the characters from that Novella that exists through the Hellraiser movies and assorted tie ins. Both have their ups and downs.

To be honest I think "Candyman" is a better example because I think even the first movie missed a lot of the point of the story it was based on... and "Lord Of Illusion" was another one with such huge potential given that it was one of his more interesting stories, but the ball was dropped so badly with it that it's not even funny.

 

[Therumancer]

I thought Clive Barker had no real involvement with the movies other than the first one. The first movie being an attempt to see if he could turn his novella "The Hellbound Heart" into a movie. The other movies were done by differant people without him, launching a totally seperate franchise. I seem to remember reading some pretty solid statements that he was not involved with the franchise at all, especially when it came to things like the comics published by Checker (some of which were quite good).

I could have sworn he was the screenwriter for all of the movies, but I just checked and he was only given a story credit. So I stand corrected.

Nevertheless, I still agree with you that being written by the same author doesn't make every decision a good one. My general experience has been that when someone criticizes something like Jimquisition or Extra Credits for "overthinking" a subject, what they're really saying is, "This person is thinking about this more than I am."

Yes, we do agree on the point I was trying to make. I could have spoke better in going on about Clive Barker I was not intending to argue with someone for agreeing with me, just point out what I knew about Clive Barker.... I was a bit of a fanboy at one time, and have read a lot of his body of work and seen most of the movies based on them.

When someone accuses someone of overthinking something, I agree, but I'd go a bit futher to say that there is a negative association to it, the accusation being that someone is making an issue where there isn't one because the situation is very superficial and doesn't have as much depth as the critic believes. You can't peel away layers, when there really aren't any (so to speak). It's akin to dismissing something as a conspiricy theory.

For the most part though, I think overthinking is usually "invoked" as a criticism when someone runs into a point they don't like, but can't refute, usually having to do with the realization that they hadn't thought things through enough themselves, but like their original conceptions and want to stick with them. Pretending there aren't any layers to something when someone proved that there are.