Poll: Gaming is "...juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy" says Jonathan Blow.

[Kahunaburger]

As a rule of thumb, if IGN/Gamespot/etc. use "cinematic" as an adjective when describing a AAA action game, the game is trying to be a shitty action movie on some level. QTEs, overly scripted segments, excessive cinematics, etc.

but they are better than shitty action movies

a shitty action movie has got what going for it? a few action scenes..mabye a half amusing plot if its lucky

a game has that AND the fact that its actually enjoyable rather than painful, of coarse theres no need to set the bar low but for me its the difference between trying somthing ou and staying the hell away

ans even then..why couldnt you put somthing as cool as inception in game form?

and movies are not "shity" because they ahve action in them (but you probably know that already)

Hey, I love dumb action movies and dumb action games. What I don't like is misguided developers cramming my dumb action games with a stack of QTEs, scripted events, cutscenes, and other things that do not involve me playing their game in an attempt to make their dumb action game more like a dumb action movie. The result is something that doesn't work as a game or a movie.

In a nutshell:

 

[Vault101]

As a rule of thumb, if IGN/Gamespot/etc. use "cinematic" as an adjective when describing a AAA action game, the game is trying to be a shitty action movie on some level. QTEs, overly scripted segments, excessive cinematics, etc.

but they are better than shitty action movies

a shitty action movie has got what going for it? a few action scenes..mabye a half amusing plot if its lucky

a game has that AND the fact that its actually enjoyable rather than painful, of coarse theres no need to set the bar low but for me its the difference between trying somthing ou and staying the hell away

ans even then..why couldnt you put somthing as cool as inception in game form?

and movies are not "shity" because they ahve action in them (but you probably know that already)

Hey, I love dumb action movies and dumb action games. What I don't like is misguided developers cramming my dumb action games with a stack of QTEs, scripted events, cutscenes, and other things that do not involve me playing their game in an attempt to make their dumb action game more like a dumb action movie. The result is something that doesn't work as a game or a movie.

In a nutshell:

ok..I get it, though I havnt seen a modern agme that forces you to "return to the comabt area"

 

[Kahunaburger]

As a rule of thumb, if IGN/Gamespot/etc. use "cinematic" as an adjective when describing a AAA action game, the game is trying to be a shitty action movie on some level. QTEs, overly scripted segments, excessive cinematics, etc.

but they are better than shitty action movies

a shitty action movie has got what going for it? a few action scenes..mabye a half amusing plot if its lucky

a game has that AND the fact that its actually enjoyable rather than painful, of coarse theres no need to set the bar low but for me its the difference between trying somthing ou and staying the hell away

ans even then..why couldnt you put somthing as cool as inception in game form?

and movies are not "shity" because they ahve action in them (but you probably know that already)

Hey, I love dumb action movies and dumb action games. What I don't like is misguided developers cramming my dumb action games with a stack of QTEs, scripted events, cutscenes, and other things that do not involve me playing their game in an attempt to make their dumb action game more like a dumb action movie. The result is something that doesn't work as a game or a movie.

In a nutshell:

ok..I get it, though I havnt seen a modern agme that forces you to "return to the comabt area"

It's relatively common in Call of Battlefield: Modern Company, although I've mostly run into it in the multiplayer. Single-player they generally just railroad you with corridors. I saw a particularly stupid one in a Homefront vid that was definitely in the single-player campaign.

 

[Sarge034]

Snip

First off, I would like to thank you for ignoring almost all of my post and all of my points. I implore you to provide a rebuttal to the rather good points I brought up in the body of my post.

Spoiler: Here is the post in case you forgot -click on me, I'm a spoiler box!-

Oh my god, Jon Blow never said anything like that. He's been a huge supporter of indie games and has given a lot of praise to games that you probably wouldn't consider "artistic", such as Super Meat Boy.

What do you mean? I'm serious. Is this a jab at us "not being able to recognize art" or is this just saying that one indie platformer developer has supported another indie platformer?

He thinks modern, AAA games have become intellectually lazy, and can you really disagree? The writing, voice acting, and other production values keep increasing, but gameplay is in a pretty sad state. And even the writing is still pretty bad compared to film. There are exceptions obviously, lots of them. But come on. Have you played Call of Duty single player? Or Uncharted?

Thank you for asking as this was in fact going to be my point. All of the newer CoD games have moral and ethical questions that they force you to face. CoD4 had the nuke, WaW had the unarmed Nazis when you play as the Russians, MW2 had "No Russian" (the airport massacre), BO had the whole mind control/PTSD hallucination thing, and MW3 had an interesting take on revenge (RIP Cpt. Price). If you take a moment to think about these things you start to learn something about yourself, and that is the only definition I can think of for art. Something that forces introspection on the viewer after observing the piece. As a broader rebuttal I loved the hell out of the ME series up until the last 15 minutes of ME3, but look at what we are talking about in the next section...

Even supposedly nerdy, technical games like RPGs have been seriously dumbed down over the years. See Mass Effect.

Nerdy... Really? Why u ostracize people like that? However, I don't think RPG is the appropriate classification for ME. The best descriptor would actually be a space opera. You can change how things go down in an RPG. You could, for example, help the evil side dominate the story that the dungeon master had planned out. I assume that DnD is what we are talking about when we say RPG because there are no true RPG video games. They all have a set story that you have to follow and that, by definition, negates some people's role playing experience. I personally think that ME3 should be the new standard for friendly and romantic relationships in games. It felt real when Garrus and I were bro-ing each other through hard times and it felt real when my girl was supporting me. That in its own should qualify as art.

Strategy is probably the only genre left that regularly requires higher thought functions from the player.

I will rebuttal this in three sections.

Single player
> The story is hit or miss with RTS games, but they are always slow simply due to the delivery method. I agree that RTS games require a different type of higher thought process, but this is also the difference between chess and say... clue. Both require higher thought process but one is tactical while the other is inquisitive.

Multiplayer
>I agree that this takes the higher thought process described above, but when something becomes formulaic it is no longer art in my eyes. I know this sounds hypocritical with my supporting CoD single player but hear me out. CoD is a continuation of a story, while any RTS multiplayer match turns into who can "zerg rush" whom the fastest. It is no longer about the game of chess, it becomes a formulaic race to turn all of your pawns into queens and win. In my mind this actually makes RTS multiplayer require less higher thought processes.

Wut? lol...
>Technically any problem solving and/or pattern recognition qualifies as requiring higher thought functions so all genres qualify. Yes all of them. Even Gears of War has problem solving and pattern recognition.

I mean that games being artistic, whatever that means, is not the point. Jon Blow isn't saying that games need to be artistic. He says games need to get better.

But that is not what he is saying... To quote the title of this thread that is a quote from the relevant article, 'Gaming is "...juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy" says Jonathan Blow'. So if he is not saying that all games need to be artsy and that current games are intellectually lazy. What point is he trying to make?

And fine, if you think indie platform devs are biased in favor of each other or something, another example of a game that Blow has heaped praise on is Counter Strike. Not exactly an art game.

Not unless you are fond of the art.... OF WAR!

I had to it was too easy. One could argue that Blow supported Counter Strike not for the game, but for the software. Think of how much art "stuff" has been created using a variation of the Counter Strike software.

If you label AAA games as juvenile, then you are asinine, similarly stating "Oh there are exceptions to this of course" weakens your argument. Gaming has always had its completely brainless AAA games, and it has always had its challenging and insightful AAA games. Complaining and overblowing shit that it out of your hands is useless, and generalizing makes you look like a twat.

I agree completely. If you want to copy pasta my post to answer his/her question I would be honored since he/she felt it too much of a threat to respond to. Perhaps it is because I proved him/her wrong with CoD... You know what, I'll do it myself.

Really? what are these deep, meaningful AAA games? Human Revolution, lol? The only mainstream game that I considered great from last year was Dark Souls. Allowing for exceptions doesn't hurt my case, because they're so few and far between. On the other hand, indie games have been a gold mine. Journey, Bastion, From Dust, The Binding of Isaac, Dear Esther, and that's just in the past 12 months. Add Minecraft, if you count the official release. So show me, where are these "challenging, insightful AAA games"?

Copy pasta, AWAY!!!

"All of the newer CoD games have moral and ethical questions that they force you to face. CoD4 had the nuke, WaW had the unarmed Nazis when you play as the Russians, MW2 had "No Russian" (the airport massacre), BO had the whole mind control/PTSD hallucination thing, and MW3 had an interesting take on revenge (RIP Cpt. Price). If you take a moment to think about these things you start to learn something about yourself, and that is the only definition I can think of for art. Something that forces introspection on the viewer after observing the piece."

Call of Duty isn't even close to being the worst. Look at the majority of time spent in Skyrim - walking through basically the same dungeon over and over, killing the same draugr, running blindly toward the objective marker for your "reward", like Bethesda's trained lab rat. What I mean by higher thought functions is gameplay that doesn't just rely on operant conditioning. This has nothing to do with writing, I'm talking about game design.

Well, I thought Skyrim sucked. Pretty bad in fact. However, a hand full of examples do not warrant such broad sweeping generalizations.

Hey... Wait a second! Why the 180 from your previous position?

He thinks modern, AAA games have become intellectually lazy, and can you really disagree? The writing, voice acting, and other production values keep increasing, but gameplay is in a pretty sad state. And even the writing is still pretty bad compared to film. There are exceptions obviously, lots of them. But come on. Have you played Call of Duty single player? Or Uncharted? Even supposedly nerdy, technical games like RPGs have been seriously dumbed down over the years. See Mass Effect.

Yea, writing has nothing to do with it.

 

[Levitas1234]

For the record, games these days just happen to be juvenile, silly and intellectually lazy.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The other game that I've played on that list, Bastion, isn't even comparable to Braid because one is a puzzle game whilst the other is a button masher beat 'em up.

Lone Survivor I have just started and is potentially a contender.

So? Are you telling me I can't say that Return of the King is a better movie than The King's Speech because they're from different genres?

Cause boy, do I ever disagree with that logic. (The Academy Awards do, too, but they still gave King's Speech an Oscar or three, so that's neither here nor there.)

I'm saying that your comment is akin to this:

THIS TEQUILA BLOWS, STRAWBERRY MILKSHAKE IS A WAY BETTER DRINK

Furthermore, you don't seem to be sure whether you're comparing artistic merit or actual game quality when you make that statement.

Braid is a fucking amazing puzzle game even if the artistic elements or the story elements don't appeal to you. For you to say that Dear Esther is a better game in ANY way, even artistically, is just unexplainable. Dear Esther isn't even a game.

Dear Esther is better than Braid? DE isn't even a game...

The other game that I've played on that list, Bastion, isn't even comparable to Braid because one is a puzzle game whilst the other is a button masher beat 'em up.

Lone Survivor I have just started and is potentially a contender.

Why wouldn't they be comparable? You'd be comparing them on artistic merit, since this Blow guy seems to his game is superior in that way.

But the guy isn't comparing them on artistic merit, he's just saying that Braid sucks and here are a few other games. DE isn't even a game, and Bastion is way overrated.

Pro tip until next time: If you want to bash someone because they bring up their own subjective opinion, don't bring up your own subjective opinion.

Besides, last time I checked Dear Esther did put me in control of moving the "character"/camera. While DE lacks any challenge or puzzles and acts more like an unfolding narrative, it is still I as the player that controls the pace of the narrative. It might be a poor game from a strictly mechanical viewpoint, but without audience agency (someone controlling the character) nothing happens.

 

[somonels]

Other: Right.
I'm neither a fan or a follower but I seem to be approving most of what pisses off the masses.

 

[Rooster Cogburn]

?One day I?m looking at my bank account and there?s not much money, and the next day there?s a large number in there and I?m rich. In both cases, it?s a fictional number on the computer screen, and the only reason that I?m rich is because somebody typed a number into my bank account.? For the world?s most existentially obsessed game developer, coming into seven figures just provided another opportunity to ponder the nature of meaning in the universe.

"Dude, have you ever realized that 'being rich' just means you have a lot of money somewhere?" Yeah, no shit.

The only context where it makes sense to say something like that is after consuming way too many hash-brownies. And your friend is so high he thinks it's a deep observation. It must be nice to receive praise for being an idiot. I usually get the opposite.

 

[TheGreatAndPowerfulZOG]

ehhhh... fine.

Snip

First off, I would like to thank you for ignoring almost all of my post and all of my points. I implore you to provide a rebuttal to the rather good points I brought up in the body of my post.

Fine, I'll play along.

Thank you for asking as this was in fact going to be my point. All of the newer CoD games have moral and ethical questions that they force you to face. CoD4 had the nuke, WaW had the unarmed Nazis when you play as the Russians, MW2 had "No Russian" (the airport massacre), BO had the whole mind control/PTSD hallucination thing, and MW3 had an interesting take on revenge (RIP Cpt. Price). If you take a moment to think about these things you start to learn something about yourself, and that is the only definition I can think of for art. Something that forces introspection on the viewer after observing the piece. As a broader rebuttal I loved the hell out of the ME series up until the last 15 minutes of ME3, but look at what we are talking about in the next section...

So you think the "no russian" level was artistic? In that case, I don't think we'll ever see eye to eye on what art means. In my opinion, No Russian was a pretty shameless case of controversy whoring with absolutely no interesting implications. It's the kind of deep moral dilemma that the show 24 would present in its later seasons. Silly and unrealistic. The nuke in CoD4 was a nice touch, but I can't say it caused me to learn something about myself, as you say.

Nerdy... Really? Why u ostracize people like that? However, I don't think RPG is the appropriate classification for ME. The best descriptor would actually be a space opera. You can change how things go down in an RPG. You could, for example, help the evil side dominate the story that the dungeon master had planned out. I assume that DnD is what we are talking about when we say RPG because there are no true RPG video games. They all have a set story that you have to follow and that, by definition, negates some people's role playing experience. I personally think that ME3 should be the new standard for friendly and romantic relationships in games. It felt real when Garrus and I were bro-ing each other through hard times and it felt real when my girl was supporting me. That in its own should qualify as art.

Not ostracizing anyone. In case you haven't noticed, "nerd" hasn't been an insult in about a decade. I really don't give a flying fuck about your theory on why ME doesn't count as a "real" RPG. I'm not talking about Dungeons and Dragons, I'm talking about the video game genre of RPGs. The Mass Effect series is a great example of intellectually lazy AAA games. The first one less so, but since then it's devolved into a braindead cover-based shooter. The relationship bits serve as your reward for basically suffering through the same combat sequences again and again. I don't see how that's art, personally. And I don't need it to be art. I just need it to be interesting or stimulating somehow. But it doesn't achieve that either. It's just addictive and boring.

I will rebuttal this in three sections.

*sigh* rebuttal is a noun my young friend. "Rebuttal" away...

Single player
> The story is hit or miss with RTS games, but they are always slow simply due to the delivery method. I agree that RTS games require a different type of higher thought process, but this is also the difference between chess and say... clue. Both require higher thought process but one is tactical while the other is inquisitive.

Don't care about the story. I was talking about games with interesting or complex gameplay.

Multiplayer
>I agree that this takes the higher thought process described above, but when something becomes formulaic it is no longer art in my eyes. I know this sounds hypocritical with my supporting CoD single player but hear me out. CoD is a continuation of a story, while any RTS multiplayer match turns into who can "zerg rush" whom the fastest. It is no longer about the game of chess, it becomes a formulaic race to turn all of your pawns into queens and win. In my mind this actually makes RTS multiplayer require less higher thought processes.

Don't care about "art".

Wut? lol...
>Technically any problem solving and/or pattern recognition qualifies as requiring higher thought functions so all genres qualify. Yes all of them. Even Gears of War has problem solving and pattern recognition.

"wut lol" I addressed this in my other post.

I mean that games being artistic, whatever that means, is not the point. Jon Blow isn't saying that games need to be artistic. He says games need to get better.

But that is not what he is saying... To quote the title of this thread that is a quote from the relevant article, 'Gaming is "...juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy" says Jonathan Blow'. So if he is not saying that all games need to be artsy and that current games are intellectually lazy. What point is he trying to make?

You think the only two categories for games to fall into are "juvenile, silly, and intellectually lazy" and "artsy"? How about just a good, intelligent game? I consider a lot of the old Nintendo games to be intelligent. I would be hesitant to call them art, but they are designed very smartly, with a great amount of respect for the players intelligence and time. They don't make you jump through stupid, boring hoops to get your reward, like most modern games do. The gameplay is the reward. You might think Braid was "about" a relationship or maybe even the metaphysical questions posed by the levels mechanics. Jon blow has stated that one of his main goals was to create a game that respects the players time and offers real rewards rather than just some meaningless dopamine booster to keep people playing.

And fine, if you think indie platform devs are biased in favor of each other or something, another example of a game that Blow has heaped praise on is Counter Strike. Not exactly an art game.

Not unless you are fond of the art.... OF WAR!

I had to it was too easy. One could argue that Blow supported Counter Strike not for the game, but for the software. Think of how much art "stuff" has been created using a variation of the Counter Strike software.

One could say that... But one would be wrong. He's said many times that he's a big counter-strike player, that he likes it, etc...

If you label AAA games as juvenile, then you are asinine, similarly stating "Oh there are exceptions to this of course" weakens your argument. Gaming has always had its completely brainless AAA games, and it has always had its challenging and insightful AAA games. Complaining and overblowing shit that it out of your hands is useless, and generalizing makes you look like a twat.

I agree completely. If you want to copy pasta my post to answer his/her question I would be honored since he/she felt it too much of a threat to respond to. Perhaps it is because I proved him/her wrong with CoD... You know what, I'll do it myself.

Already responded to this in my reply to Purtabo.

Call of Duty isn't even close to being the worst. Look at the majority of time spent in Skyrim - walking through basically the same dungeon over and over, killing the same draugr, running blindly toward the objective marker for your "reward", like Bethesda's trained lab rat. What I mean by higher thought functions is gameplay that doesn't just rely on operant conditioning. This has nothing to do with writing, I'm talking about game design.

Well, I thought Skyrim sucked. Pretty bad in fact. However, a hand full of examples do not warrant such broad sweeping generalizations.

Hey... Wait a second! Why the 180 from your previous position?

He thinks modern, AAA games have become intellectually lazy, and can you really disagree? The writing, voice acting, and other production values keep increasing, but gameplay is in a pretty sad state. And even the writing is still pretty bad compared to film. There are exceptions obviously, lots of them. But come on. Have you played Call of Duty single player? Or Uncharted? Even supposedly nerdy, technical games like RPGs have been seriously dumbed down over the years. See Mass Effect.

Yea, writing has nothing to do with it.

Huh? Yes, like I said, the production values, writing, voice acting, graphical art, etc... are all improving. But that's not going to make a game good if the gameplay is utter shit, like Call of Duty. And even these good qualities that modern games have, writing, acting, visuals... they still don't compare to films. So what good are they? If they aren't good games, and films outclass them in every other attribute?

 

[Joccaren]

Jonathan Blow?
Interesting. I wouldn't say Genius, but he has an outlook on life that I find interesting and thoroughly respect.

The guy writing that article?

Pretentious Douchebag Fanboy.
I got about halfway down that page and went "Seriously? F*** it. Wank to Mr Blow all you want. How much more of this is there?"
Scrolled down, found another 4-5 paragraphs and said "Seriously? You really are worshipping him. This is getting sad if that's all praise of him and his second coming of Christ innovations in video gaming".
Then I saw there were three pages.

 

[loc978]

I have a hard time taking any article seriously when it alludes to a True Scotsman in the first paragraph completely without sarcasm. I'm guessing I would get along with this Taylor Clark person about as well as this Jonawho Cocaine person.
Because I just don't get it, man, and there's only one truly worthwhile aesthetic to strive toward. So mark one more down for "pretentious douchebag". A pair of 'em, if I had to guess.

Apparently captchasolve thinks this is The Princess Bride. as you wish.
Creepy.

 

[Vault101]

Not ostracizing anyone. In case you haven't noticed, "nerd" hasn't been an insult in about a decade. I really don't give a flying fuck about your theory on why ME doesn't count as a "real" RPG. I'm not talking about Dungeons and Dragons, I'm talking about the video game genre of RPGs. The Mass Effect series is a great example of intellectually lazy AAA games. The first one less so, but since then it's devolved into a braindead cover-based shooter. The relationship bits serve as your reward for basically suffering through the same combat sequences again and again. I don't see how that's art, personally. And I don't need it to be art. I just need it to be interesting or stimulating somehow. But it doesn't achieve that either. It's just addictive and boring.

?

so the "shooting" part of a game gets improved and that makes it "brain dead"?

 

[manic_depressive13]

Really? what are these deep, meaningful AAA games? Human Revolution, lol? The only mainstream game that I considered great from last year was Dark Souls. Allowing for exceptions doesn't hurt my case, because they're so few and far between. On the other hand, indie games have been a gold mine. Journey, Bastion, From Dust, The Binding of Isaac, Dear Esther, and that's just in the past 12 months. Add Minecraft, if you count the official release. So show me, where are these "challenging, insightful AAA games"?

.

while I wouldnt say "deep and meaningful" there is quality stuff out there (whats so fucking brilliant about dark souls anway? ok....ok I get it, it challange and bleakness means reward and warm fuzzie feelings all round, but jsut because a game doest punch you in the balls doesnt make it less of a game)

thease games arnt anymore "art" than AAA games..its just style, journey was nice and all but fuck, it doesnt hold a candle to Deus ex or mass effect for me

Hey! Dark Souls had brilliant level design, a good difficulty curve and an interesting plot and characters. It was also very atmospheric and rewarding. The only reason people claim that it didn't have a plot is because it rarely felt the need to stop everything in order to shove the story down your throat. It's actually really intricate and prefers to show rather than tell, allowing you to figure things out for yourself if you're interested. Oh, and it lets you kill whoever you want.

It's also amusing that everyone is a batshit crazy, an asshole, or a combination of the two.

Did you even play the game?

 

[katsabas]

Stockholm Syndrome ? You decided to MAKE GAMES FOR A LIVING! I can push the off button whenever I feel like it. You get games in your face every day in your line of work and your paycheck is anything but steady. And you think I am the hostage ?

I got quite an intellectual surge with Fallout 3 on America's history and with Bioshock's feel of the 60's. On the other hand, he expects to find non-juvenile material in a field of activity in which the majority of people are between 10 and 23 years old.

You are just...overflowing with pearls of wisdom, aren't you ?

Get the wax out of your ears and go watch Jaffe's interview.

http://www.dicesummit.org/video_gallery/video_2012_david_jaffe.asp

 

[Phisi]

I got bored when they started going on about actual art. Just shut up man, you are not helping.

 

[chstens]

How about the guy actually makes a good game before getting the right be such a pretentious ****?

Second.

Braid was a'right, nothing special.

Talk about an inflated sense of self worth.

He made one, note, ONE somewhat interesting platformer, and all of a sudden, he's the defacto go-to man on industry knowledge.