nuba km said:
well any way most of the guys have actually stopped trying to argue with me because they can't get through my defence which is made out of logic but one of them still try to argue with me once in a while but his argument is ignoring what I just said and slightly changing what he said before that and this makes him think he has won the argument.
Got to be careful with that man, what you may see as "great defence" they may see as mere "confounding"
I have found I do this myself all too often, I don't leave people better informed after a discussion I'd just prove they were wrong, now they don't know what to believe. Often what can be planned as the most logical defence can end up as effectively a "wookie defence"
But if you enlighten someone to reveal that they were wrong, especially for something they may have highly valued, they rarely take it all that well. They may avoid the issue or lash out with more insistent reasoning.
I think you have to home in on what they TRULY value and work around that.
Some prejudices you will have to deal with:
That CoD is realistic:
Well only superficially and then only to a small extent, the reality of war is pretty shit and one thing that could let them down easy is that real soldiers do in fact play games like CoD and enjoy them because it has many of the things they like about war and none of the bad. The cool weaponry, killing bad guys, saving the world, and a certain camaraderie... but no death. No pain. No lifelong disability. No civilian casualties. And none of the fear of all of that.
Video games are BALANCED by the all powerful game developers, in war each side is fighting for UNBALANCE!
That's the angle I would take, this is the way soldiers WANT war to be, not the way it actually is. Especially the infinite lives trick.
From there you have to square how they like the game with how it will not qualify as "significant Art".
I wouldn't use terms like "good/bad art", that's bringing morality into this, the question is does it have anything to say, convey, infer or induce in the consumer, whether for good or bad. Also you can walk into a dilemma; CoD as a creative work is obviously art to a certain extent, and of course to a CoD fanboi they know that it is "good" so to them it's a forgone conclusion that it is "good" "art".
But does it say anything? And is it worth while?
I'd say for CoD4 it certainly does, in a very minimalist way. It powerfully uses the "silent protagonist" and "Hero's Eyes" perspective to tell a big story from a very personal and poignant perspective. Though it certainly is too rushed and hamfited in ways. Modern Warfare 2 just takes it too far, and doesn't have anywhere near as much to say.
But you again have to work around your audience, and realise they may most care about CoD because of the social aspect of its multiplayer, you could talk at length about the singleplayer that most had not played and many more not even completed. See many I know buy CoD purely out of desire to play online as that's what all their peers are doing (see how it can be so successful, it reaches a critical mass where it is popular simply because it is popular).
But I suppose you could add the qualifier that your critique will be limited to the single player though I think the biggest barrier is misperspections of words. I mean the number of people who seem to think "Art" merely means "the best stuff" as in "aww dis beautiful car, it's ah work-of-art" and then only limited to their own limited perspective.
I think they wanted you to call CoD "art" for that reason. You could start off by saying "of course it's art, it's a creative work" the question then becomes of its significance as a work of art. Also, should anyone even care?
