You Are Not An Artist
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I'm glad we can all agree that this is stupid.
Programmers, engineers can be artists, for one thing. Mainly because problems allow the coder to get creative in solving problems, and that you can program anything you want. You have control over every aspect of your creation and can create any kind of program you want with virtually limitless resources.
For another thing, you seem to understand that Bioware has writers who are indeed artists that are entirely separate from the programmers and engineers, yet you conveniently ignore them for some reason. The people you are addressing in your argument: the people who fucked up the ME3 ending ARE in fact those writers, who are by your definition artists, as they don't work on any actual code or programming. I'm not sure whether this oversight stems from your lack of knowledge of how most game companies work nowadays, or if you legitimately just didn't think about it.
Programmers, engineers can be artists, for one thing. Mainly because problems allow the coder to get creative in solving problems, and that you can program anything you want. You have control over every aspect of your creation and can create any kind of program you want with virtually limitless resources.
For another thing, you seem to understand that Bioware has writers who are indeed artists that are entirely separate from the programmers and engineers, yet you conveniently ignore them for some reason. The people you are addressing in your argument: the people who fucked up the ME3 ending ARE in fact those writers, who are by your definition artists, as they don't work on any actual code or programming. I'm not sure whether this oversight stems from your lack of knowledge of how most game companies work nowadays, or if you legitimately just didn't think about it.
Pretty much sums up the topic.II2 said:
As usual, unless you've actually worked on a game, any conception you have of it is probably wrong. Yes, even if you worked on a non-game software development project, some things might be similar, but to think it's the same is wrong.
I mean, what other industry has a merging of all these varied disciplines into a product? Not just programming and testing, but also 2D and 3D art of characters, environments and animating it all? Writing, cinematics and sound? Making sure the UI is decent, as well as communicating it to the player, let along doing the same over a network for a multiplayer game?
And having to juggle it all?
Weird, I wonder who does all that concept art for gameschuckdm said:
And this seems very off with me when I think that some of the games that I've enjoyed the most appealed to me in ways not strictly limited to the gameplay. The music, visuals and storyline of Bastion are what made it such a memorable game. If the designers of the game didn't put nearly as much effort into those aspects of it I would not have enjoyed it.
This isn't one thing I would complain about as much as you did but one thing I hate similar to this:
Girls who have a camera and consider themselves a photographer....
LADIES ITS A CAMERA, JUST CAUSE YOU HAVE A CAMERA DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL ON TAKING PHOTOS THAT WOULD BE IN A NEWSPAPER.
Girls who have a camera and consider themselves a photographer....
LADIES ITS A CAMERA, JUST CAUSE YOU HAVE A CAMERA DOESN'T MEAN YOU ARE A PROFESSIONAL ON TAKING PHOTOS THAT WOULD BE IN A NEWSPAPER.
Incoming wall of text captain!
Shields up! Load all torpedo bays!
Okay, first of all, and I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this:
You just said programmers aren't artists... All of the 'Fuck you'. All of the 'fuck you'. All of the 'fuck you' I can ever give and will ever give on your head. All my rage and all my hate on your house for that statement. May the fucking of you never cease until you die or repent your statement. I can stand person insults and people saying nasty things but diminishing programers, reducing them that way and generally making a complete ass of yourself for your ignorance, that's inexcusable. You have no idea how programming works or what a programmer does (I hope because God help us all if you've done an actual programming and have that attitude). That statement cuts deeper then a flesh wound, deeper then a mortal wound, deeper then a wound to the soul. The only proper response is unending 'fuck you'.
Secondly, no, your wrong. Even if you don't think programmers are artists, 3D and 2D artists, as their names imply, are artists. A texture artist, a modeler, a scripter, a level designer, the god damn folly guy, they all are given a task and build something grand from it. A level desginer takes a sketch and some description of what something should look like and brings it to life, useing there own artistic vision. modeler takes a sketches and concepts and turns them into final products, Texture artists take a description of a type of wall and make it reality. They are all creative fields and they all are art since a person takes a general idea and using their own imagination fleshes it out into reality. Just because they have a general direction and idea of what it needs to be int he end doesn't matter. Hell Michelangelo said "In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it." Is he less of an artist because he had some idea of what he wanted to do in the end when he started out? Is da vinci less of an artists because he was commissioned to do his artwork and told what to make? There is art in the creation, and there is uncertainty that is overcome with imagination. On top of that, not all games start out from the story. And no game starts with a complete script. How a game starts is a creative and artistic process, and its not always a writer that starts it. The initial planning and building a game that goes on before development even begins is art and saying it isn't is not only an affront to developers but to games as whole, an insult to something that you came to this very forum to discuss.
As for integrity, I'd like to just say 'indie developers' and note that some have the luxury to not compromise because they don't rely on there product to survive. Now aside from that, artist integrity is a goal, something we'd all like to have. In a major studio its not nearly as possible because your product has to sell. You can make the game you really want, but if it flops, your company goes bust and people lose there jobs. As a result, you have to change some things you love sometimes. Doesn't mean we can't still strive for artistic integrity, only that sometimes we have to kill our babies for the greater good of financial security. Now its not always necessarily a compromise. Sometimes the fans give you idea that you like and build on them, incorporating there ideas into your project. I wouldn't say that's necessarily artistic compromise. Within the realm of changing for sales, there are levels of offense. Obviously changing the gender of a character where gender really isn't important is a minor offense, making your game about bunnies suddenly be the next God of War and change it from a racing game to a beat-em-up is a much bigger offense. I don't think you can blanket say 'You changed something for sales, you're a non-artists, rawr!'. Especially when you consider that if its a mandate from above to change it, there is little you can do. If your boss tells you to do something its either give up some artistic integrity or lose your job. Honestly its be pig-headed not to change because you were told to.
That brings up the issue that development is not a singular process, it a multitude of artists working together, yes they are artists and until you admit it may your fucking continue, its difficult to say who and what artist integrity of a company refers to and who's responsible for its breaking down. If the producer, who isn't involved in development beyond funding, makes a decision to make a game more marketable and promises to cut funding unless it gets done, is artist integrity gone? To be an artist does that meaning letting the game never get finished due to lack of funds when you claim 'integrity' and don't change? If one developer makes a decision to change something because 'Company X did it' and it trickles down through the team and everyone is affected, do they all lose integrity or just that one guy, does the company? It's not as cut and dry as 'You do X, not an artist, lol'.
Anyways, its all kind of moot anyways because artistic integrity is not synonymous with being an artist, its only a principle. You can still create art even if you have certain things that you do with lack of integrity. So long as your creating some part of it, its still art and you're still an artist.
Now, onwards! On the issue of artistic integrity causing bad game decisions, you're wrong. Bad decisions are responsible for most of the problems in games. Whether that decision was because of a bad development decision or a bad decision to appease fans, an idea that isn't going to work isn't going to work. A writer who writes only to appease fans can create crap or fantastic work and a writer who never listens to fans can create crap or fantastic work. The source of a decision is unimportant to whether or not it works. I'm not sure what your logic for this is, honestly.
Also, your idea of not trying to adhere to artist integrity is basically saying 'That's great, sell out! It'll make your game better' or something like that. I believe that a company can exist with a balance between never budging an inch and completely losing its spine to try and sell copies. In fact I think all companies need to do that, because the extremes seem very bad for business.
Going off from there, again. Listen to your customers on everything is a bad idea. Why? Because customers are ignorant. Customers don't make games, they have no expertise in the filed, usually. Listening to them for every decision is stupid. Sometimes you have to just say 'No, that won't work/can't be done'. The customers aren't part of your internal team and don't see and know the same things you do. listening to them is great, but their are points where you just can't. Maybe its artistic, maybe its technical, maybe its because the idea is stupid (The idea that zombies makes everything better even when its really, really not appropriate comes to mind) but feedback is not always good and listening to it doesn't always help. Especially when you consider the diversity of opinion of humans, (if you have 5 people in a room with a problem they will have 10 different opinions on how to solve it) which can't always be reconciled, but also just how much shrill whining gamers do. Gamers complain unceasingly no matter how hard you try and at some point you just need to tell them to 'shove it' and stop listening or you will be developing and iterating things forever, probably very unimportant things too. Its not a simple cut and dry thing to know how much to listen to fans when you do listen to fans. Hell part of being a developer is not only technical knowledge but also a good judgment on unquantifiable things like that. You're whole argument is based ona partially sketched idea. Yeah. listen to fans but its more complex then that.
Also, 'well paid', lol! Yeah, not really. That's almost on the same league as laughably naive like saying teachers are well paid. Its not a job for people who want money, its a job for people who want to make games.
Now that I've completed my super epic wall fo text, I'd like to conclude by linking a video to a song I was reminded of during the writing of this post. Enjoy the little earworm.
Shields up! Load all torpedo bays!
Okay, first of all, and I'm probably going to get in trouble for this, but I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this:
You just said programmers aren't artists... All of the 'Fuck you'. All of the 'fuck you'. All of the 'fuck you' I can ever give and will ever give on your head. All my rage and all my hate on your house for that statement. May the fucking of you never cease until you die or repent your statement. I can stand person insults and people saying nasty things but diminishing programers, reducing them that way and generally making a complete ass of yourself for your ignorance, that's inexcusable. You have no idea how programming works or what a programmer does (I hope because God help us all if you've done an actual programming and have that attitude). That statement cuts deeper then a flesh wound, deeper then a mortal wound, deeper then a wound to the soul. The only proper response is unending 'fuck you'.
Secondly, no, your wrong. Even if you don't think programmers are artists, 3D and 2D artists, as their names imply, are artists. A texture artist, a modeler, a scripter, a level designer, the god damn folly guy, they all are given a task and build something grand from it. A level desginer takes a sketch and some description of what something should look like and brings it to life, useing there own artistic vision. modeler takes a sketches and concepts and turns them into final products, Texture artists take a description of a type of wall and make it reality. They are all creative fields and they all are art since a person takes a general idea and using their own imagination fleshes it out into reality. Just because they have a general direction and idea of what it needs to be int he end doesn't matter. Hell Michelangelo said "In every block of marble I see a statue as plain as though it stood before me, shaped and perfect in attitude and action. I have only to hew away the rough walls that imprison the lovely apparition to reveal it to the other eyes as mine see it." Is he less of an artist because he had some idea of what he wanted to do in the end when he started out? Is da vinci less of an artists because he was commissioned to do his artwork and told what to make? There is art in the creation, and there is uncertainty that is overcome with imagination. On top of that, not all games start out from the story. And no game starts with a complete script. How a game starts is a creative and artistic process, and its not always a writer that starts it. The initial planning and building a game that goes on before development even begins is art and saying it isn't is not only an affront to developers but to games as whole, an insult to something that you came to this very forum to discuss.
As for integrity, I'd like to just say 'indie developers' and note that some have the luxury to not compromise because they don't rely on there product to survive. Now aside from that, artist integrity is a goal, something we'd all like to have. In a major studio its not nearly as possible because your product has to sell. You can make the game you really want, but if it flops, your company goes bust and people lose there jobs. As a result, you have to change some things you love sometimes. Doesn't mean we can't still strive for artistic integrity, only that sometimes we have to kill our babies for the greater good of financial security. Now its not always necessarily a compromise. Sometimes the fans give you idea that you like and build on them, incorporating there ideas into your project. I wouldn't say that's necessarily artistic compromise. Within the realm of changing for sales, there are levels of offense. Obviously changing the gender of a character where gender really isn't important is a minor offense, making your game about bunnies suddenly be the next God of War and change it from a racing game to a beat-em-up is a much bigger offense. I don't think you can blanket say 'You changed something for sales, you're a non-artists, rawr!'. Especially when you consider that if its a mandate from above to change it, there is little you can do. If your boss tells you to do something its either give up some artistic integrity or lose your job. Honestly its be pig-headed not to change because you were told to.
That brings up the issue that development is not a singular process, it a multitude of artists working together, yes they are artists and until you admit it may your fucking continue, its difficult to say who and what artist integrity of a company refers to and who's responsible for its breaking down. If the producer, who isn't involved in development beyond funding, makes a decision to make a game more marketable and promises to cut funding unless it gets done, is artist integrity gone? To be an artist does that meaning letting the game never get finished due to lack of funds when you claim 'integrity' and don't change? If one developer makes a decision to change something because 'Company X did it' and it trickles down through the team and everyone is affected, do they all lose integrity or just that one guy, does the company? It's not as cut and dry as 'You do X, not an artist, lol'.
Anyways, its all kind of moot anyways because artistic integrity is not synonymous with being an artist, its only a principle. You can still create art even if you have certain things that you do with lack of integrity. So long as your creating some part of it, its still art and you're still an artist.
Now, onwards! On the issue of artistic integrity causing bad game decisions, you're wrong. Bad decisions are responsible for most of the problems in games. Whether that decision was because of a bad development decision or a bad decision to appease fans, an idea that isn't going to work isn't going to work. A writer who writes only to appease fans can create crap or fantastic work and a writer who never listens to fans can create crap or fantastic work. The source of a decision is unimportant to whether or not it works. I'm not sure what your logic for this is, honestly.
Also, your idea of not trying to adhere to artist integrity is basically saying 'That's great, sell out! It'll make your game better' or something like that. I believe that a company can exist with a balance between never budging an inch and completely losing its spine to try and sell copies. In fact I think all companies need to do that, because the extremes seem very bad for business.
Going off from there, again. Listen to your customers on everything is a bad idea. Why? Because customers are ignorant. Customers don't make games, they have no expertise in the filed, usually. Listening to them for every decision is stupid. Sometimes you have to just say 'No, that won't work/can't be done'. The customers aren't part of your internal team and don't see and know the same things you do. listening to them is great, but their are points where you just can't. Maybe its artistic, maybe its technical, maybe its because the idea is stupid (The idea that zombies makes everything better even when its really, really not appropriate comes to mind) but feedback is not always good and listening to it doesn't always help. Especially when you consider the diversity of opinion of humans, (if you have 5 people in a room with a problem they will have 10 different opinions on how to solve it) which can't always be reconciled, but also just how much shrill whining gamers do. Gamers complain unceasingly no matter how hard you try and at some point you just need to tell them to 'shove it' and stop listening or you will be developing and iterating things forever, probably very unimportant things too. Its not a simple cut and dry thing to know how much to listen to fans when you do listen to fans. Hell part of being a developer is not only technical knowledge but also a good judgment on unquantifiable things like that. You're whole argument is based ona partially sketched idea. Yeah. listen to fans but its more complex then that.
Also, 'well paid', lol! Yeah, not really. That's almost on the same league as laughably naive like saying teachers are well paid. Its not a job for people who want money, its a job for people who want to make games.
Now that I've completed my super epic wall fo text, I'd like to conclude by linking a video to a song I was reminded of during the writing of this post. Enjoy the little earworm.
Word*The Almighty Aardvark said:
I personally love all the concept art for some of my favorite games like bioshock and fallout. I find it fascinating and to be considered as actual art pieces, maybe not like the ones shown in museums but art neverless.
Oh holy shit, lol. I think most of the people in the thread have covered my sentiments fairly well. I can't comment on the Mass Effect stuff because I've never played more than 20 minutes of a Bioware game in my entire life. Art, on the other hand...
So yeah, maybe there was a point hidden in that giant wall of text, but I'm having some trouble seeing what it is in all that silliness.
Sort of, usually those people are called technical artists.
You don't seem to have a very solid understanding of what artists and animators actually do, or what the workflow is. Needless to say, the decisions I make now as a modeler are no less artistic than those I made in fine art undergrad while making art simply for art's sake. How, what, and why are essential questions to ask oneself in making something coherent, plausible, and enjoyable. Working with limitations and collaborating with other people isn't something that artists get to do in many industries, but it can yield some amazing products when all goes well.chuckdm said:
I think you really just give way too much credit to writers. To suggest that they're solely responsible for the decisions that make a game what it is is, frank, insulting. D:
I thought I couldn't lol any harder over your ideas of the development process, but then I did. Building gameplay around a script, that's a good one. And by that I mean a recipe for frustration and failure.
I indeed have a cake baking in the oven as I type this.
Developers are willing to do this all of the time, it's a fact of life for many people in this industry. Just ask anyone working on Barbie Pony Adventure 12. When it comes to AAA games whose publishers play a big part in the direction they go, that may be a question for the shareholders. Most of whom are not artists.
Maybe you're coming from an overly Bioware-influenced perspective cause they're big on story or whatever, but this statement makes me think you've spent about zero time around actual game developers and this is funny to me.
So yeah, maybe there was a point hidden in that giant wall of text, but I'm having some trouble seeing what it is in all that silliness.
Adam Jensen said:
Sort of, usually those people are called technical artists.
Who gives a fuck about artistic integrity.
As the creator, the engineer, the artist, whatever I do what the fuck I want when the fuck I want...
At least that is how I feel as a writer and I think a lot of people feel that way. It's just arrogant for someone to go "I have more artistic integrity because I kept my art exactly how it was originally"
By that logic BGEE and even ports to PC or consoles lack artistic integrity....
If I write something for instance and I let other people read the draft and they tell me that I should change something because what I originally wrote does not make sense...then yea I probably should consider their input before trying to get the piece published..
As the creator, the engineer, the artist, whatever I do what the fuck I want when the fuck I want...
At least that is how I feel as a writer and I think a lot of people feel that way. It's just arrogant for someone to go "I have more artistic integrity because I kept my art exactly how it was originally"
By that logic BGEE and even ports to PC or consoles lack artistic integrity....
If I write something for instance and I let other people read the draft and they tell me that I should change something because what I originally wrote does not make sense...then yea I probably should consider their input before trying to get the piece published..
HAHA, perfect.evilneko said:
His post implys that the guy who strokes a brush is not the artist ether.
It's not what you use it's how you use it.
The stuff about an "artistic integrity" is utterly silly as well.
It's a artistic medium in a corporate environment, there are going to be sacrifices,
much like a commissioned painter or a tattoo artist.
Even Shakespeare gotta get paid son.
Actually they are photographers. You take photos...You're a photographer...now are you a good photographer? Well that's another thing entirely.OneOfTheMichael said:
I take photographs for a newspaper BTW.
OT. I think the product of programming can be art, and if you coded it, that makes you an artist. I'm not convinced that code alone is art, at least not to me, artful yes, but I see it more as a means to an end not an end itself. Then again I'm not a programmer, so I don't know code.
Artistic Integrity? Because only unpaid artists have artistic integrity right? Not those Renaissance hacks, or Goya, am I right?
I think being an artist is something you claim for yourself. It's not a title handed to you by other people. If you say you're an artist, then you're an artist. If other people disagree then... Why the hell are you caring about the opinions of other people? Everyone has an opinion. Yours is the only one that should matter to you.
Forget about the conversation about whether engineers or programmers can be classified as artists. I think we can all agree that writers fall under the "artist" classification, and those are the people who are driving the story.
Regarding the Tali argument, I don't think letting fan reaction influence some choices is really a compromise of artistic integrity, because, ultimately, it's still up to them as far as where to listen to the fans, and where to ignore them. If you make that point, you'd also have to say that anyone who purposefully made something that went against fans desires and expectations has lost artistic integrity, because they're still letting their audience influence their work, and that certainly isn't the case. Artistic integrity is about not being beholden to your audience, not about completely shutting yourself off from them. Just because they let fan reaction influence this single element, doesn't mean the fans have the right to demand anything from them. They have the right to critique, to complain, to decide not to buy anymore games from Bioware, but they aren't entitled to make demands.
Any patron of art, or entertainment (for the sake of less potentially exclusionary language), knows that they are taking a risk in their patronage by putting their faith in the hands of the creators of that work. Sometimes we might come out disappointed, but that's just the way it is. That's the way it has to be if we ever want anything meaningful to be made, and if we ever want something that exceeds our expectations and gives us something we didn't know we wanted or needed.
Regarding the Tali argument, I don't think letting fan reaction influence some choices is really a compromise of artistic integrity, because, ultimately, it's still up to them as far as where to listen to the fans, and where to ignore them. If you make that point, you'd also have to say that anyone who purposefully made something that went against fans desires and expectations has lost artistic integrity, because they're still letting their audience influence their work, and that certainly isn't the case. Artistic integrity is about not being beholden to your audience, not about completely shutting yourself off from them. Just because they let fan reaction influence this single element, doesn't mean the fans have the right to demand anything from them. They have the right to critique, to complain, to decide not to buy anymore games from Bioware, but they aren't entitled to make demands.
Any patron of art, or entertainment (for the sake of less potentially exclusionary language), knows that they are taking a risk in their patronage by putting their faith in the hands of the creators of that work. Sometimes we might come out disappointed, but that's just the way it is. That's the way it has to be if we ever want anything meaningful to be made, and if we ever want something that exceeds our expectations and gives us something we didn't know we wanted or needed.
An artist cares about how: how to actualise their vision, how to accomplish it, how to convey it to the public.chuckdm said:
Programmers often care why.
You need a better reason to say "you're not an artist." This one's arbitrary.
As for the rest...You've discovered a give and take premise in all art. Hooray?