Ultratwinkie said:
You assume gaming is anything like the art market, and assume what I mean. Since when was money (around 20-100 million minimum) was thrown around on that scale? taking years to make? and was so risky NO publisher would DARE make a game that wasn't a sequel? When has anyone made "Mona Lisa 2: the half-smile returns?"
You assume gaming is even close to the art of the past. When something gets that big, with that much money and fear, it becomes a industry of "safes."
They refuse to do anything beyond what is basic, invalidating the big budget market for the time being. The AAA market is not known for its artistic merit, because AAA games are in the same boat as block buster movies.
When the AAA market is that restricted, art cannot form. Only when the corporations and red tape go away can it form. This is the reason art didn't form on consoles after the PS2 era past.
Ok, i'm about done with you. Actually read up on these subjects and present me with examples of why i'm wrong before pulling the same reply out of your arse again, or you won't get an answer from me.
Let's answer your question: "Since when was money (around 20-100 million minimum) was thrown around on that scale?" Since movies became big business. Just because it hadn't happened with games yet, doesn't mean that we have no comparison. Movies started small too, then they started sinking into the habits of the populace and voilà, big budget.
Do you think making movies is not risky? I hope you don't think so, because it is, quite a lot. Movies bomb on a regular basis and studios are never happy about it, even when they are low budget (money IS money, afterall).
And yet, are there NO movies worth the label "art" with a big budget? There are quite a lot. Sure, they use their budget WISELY, instead of using it on robot testicles like some Michael of my knowing, but they still have a big budget nonetheless. "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus", "Burn after reading" "No country for old men" and so on.
And like movies, there are legitimately AAA games that try to push the envelope, they live off fans of the makers rather than of the previous titles (Not all companies are, afterall, consistent in the quality and style of their output enough to warrant fanbases). There are comparatively fewer, like there were fewer movies that took risks back at the time of Charlie Chaplin, who mainly made comedies, and then, one day, decided to mock the head of the nazi party and call him out on his bullshit.
You can't demand of a medium actions that are still not within its reach. Videogames are about 30 years old, movies were not as complex and poignant as they are now when they were 30 years old. There were exceptions, like "Metropolis", but they weren't for the masses. Like deliberately "art" games are now.
(Furthermore, while movies are still a passive medium that, therefore, follows rules that are still valid for books, comics and any kind of traditional narrative, games are an entirely new type of narrative, a narrative that has to be delivered to an active participant, if not in its plotline, which could very well be fixed, in the unfolding of the events themselves. This means many rules need to be rethought to adapt to this delivery, which means the medium starts at a disadvantage already.)
To give you an example of what i mean: Atlus, with their recent "Catherine", have delivered a game that, while not flawless in any respect, is clearly taking a risk. It's an unusual story that touches themes that are largely taboo in the videogame industry because of the general misconception that games must be catered to the average squeamish american that giggles at the mention of sex like a twelve year old boy.
If a movie did that exact same plot, it would be run of the mill (excluding the most mindfucky aspects, mind you), because movies already overcame that misconception about what could and could not be filmed - to some extent - and therefore it would not be significant for them. It is for gaming, though.
And while i agree that there are not MANY examples of games that try to push the boundaries, wheter they be AAA or indie, you know as well as i do that there are.
On the other hand there is your claim that art was not always like this, on which i have to disagree. The reason why you're convinced that it is so is, once again, lack of historical perspective on the matter.
The reason why you think the average quality of older art was better, which is clear by how you say that this is an industry of safes, implying it was not always, is that you don't take in account how people record things.
Art has to be preserved, in order for us to know it. We know there were many more greek writers than those we actually have works of. That's because only the exceptionally good ones were preserved. We know that during the reneissance there were lots of painters in Italy. We still have lots of their paintings and i can assure you (I live in Italy, witnessed them firsthand) that they're absolutely banal and they all look alike. Those we remember were the exceptional ones, but the average renaissance paintings were safely imitating the genuinely good articles.
Same goes for any period of history. Someone does something original, it sells well, people copy it. It happens today with all forms of media, and it happend for every medium since its inception. Whether it be cinema, painting, literature, music and, today, gaming.
It's not special, it's not a horrible sign of the inevitable decline of art and the human species as a whole, it's just proof that not all artists are as good and creative as eachother. That's it.
