How games did not become art

Regarding art, I share the position of Ernst Gombrich from the book "History of Art":

There really is not what is merged by art. There are artists. In ancient times, they, picking up pieces of dyeing minerals from the ground, threw bison figures in the caves. Today, people of this breed buy paints in stores and draw, for example, posters that we see on the walls and fences. Their hands are created and much more. It will not be a mistake to name all the manifestations of such activities by art, but at the same time it should be aware that at different times and in different countries this word denoted different things and, therefore, art with a title letter does not exist at all. This concept has now become either a fetish or a scarecrow.

Ernst Gombrich

And, of course, I myself believe that games are an art that is no worse than cinema, painting or architecture. If about 15 years ago one could doubt this and even Kojima in the zero said that games are not art, now even my parents understand this.

Then what is this small essay about?

About one very specific and small aspect of art: about means and methods. And quite a bit about recognition.

Let’s start with the superficial. They almost do not write serious scientific articles about games, do not distinguish grants, do not hold festivals that billionaires and presidents willingly come to, do not discuss in a “decent company”. This has obvious reasons: the controversial reputation of the games, the skeptical attitude of the older generations to them, the higher requirements for the entrance. You can add to the list and toxic environment of gamers, but this is a complex and controversial story, about it another time.

But there are reasons and more complex, namely the weak development of methods and a poor understanding by the authors, which are the strengths of games as art.

The easiest way to draw an analogy with the Seventh Art – Cinema. This will need a very small historical certificate.

Now we are accustomed to the fact that cinema is the most popular and discussed type of art. There are bonuses, festivals, critics, creators, authors, thousands of magazines and books. Cinema is studied at universities, monographs are written on it, it becomes the subject of discussions at all levels: from disputes in the kitchen to debate in parliament. It is difficult to even imagine a person who would seriously claim that cinema is not an art, but cheap entertainment for the poor with the mind.

But this situation was formed only by the fifty to sixties of the twentieth century. Before that, the consensus was like this: cinema is an industry, a simple amusement for the masses in which and there can be nothing deep. What statements, what aesthetics, what are you talking about? These are just dancing, songs and stupid falls.

Of course I am exaggerating. The situation changed gradually, already in the twenties there were people who understood the potential of the cinema and made films that are impressive even now. But still the generally accepted opinion was the way I described above. The changes have occurred for many reasons: technological progress, cultural changes after the Second World War, the author’s theory, the activities of specific personalities, but we will talk about one particular argument with which it has become much easier to argue in the sixties.

It sounded approximately as follows: the cinema does not have any unique means of transmitting beauty, it is simply the capture of reality as it is, all films are just shooting simplified theatrical plays, dancing, scenery created by artists, and so on. I must say right away that this is a very simplified approach, but this is not about that.

The truth is that the first time the movie was really like that. Early films – really just records of real events. Most of the silent cinema is essentially a pantomime plus simple plays plus a little circus art. Early sound films are literally actors standing still and pronouncing replicas from simple dramas and comedies, and sometimes musical numbers with dancing.

There was a surge of mature silent cinema between these two points, which was and remains a real art and still looks cool. I’m not joking, look, for example, Sherlock Jr. Surprise how interesting and cool it is.

But at that time, few people appreciated these films. And they were lost against the backdrop of endless converse debris. This is a dumb cinema is represented by a dozen eminent directors, and for contemporaries Charlie Chaplin and Baster Kiton were just one of many.

Modern cinema is a unique experience that cannot be conveyed by other means. Neither theater, nor photography, nor music, nor literature are able to reproduce those sensations that are created by installation and operator work. Cinema does not just portray reality, it creates it. And this, of course, does not happen by itself, but as a result of the creative decisions of the director and his team.

To come to this unique language, the years of experiments and research were required: from Jiga Vertov to Quentin Tarantino.

And here is my thesis: now the games are in the same state in which the movie was at the beginning of the twentieth century. They have not yet developed their language and often use the tools of other mediums: literature, cinema, graphics, painting. There are games that create a unique game experience, but this is more of experiments than a common practice.

Let’s see the examples. A mini-discuteum, so as not to repeat myself: I gently love and appreciate all the above games; Do not forget that we are not talking about estimates here.

Here is the great game Disco Elysium. Very beautiful, with a bright statement, an excellent art, an atmosphere, and even successful: it seems that she made a mini-revolution, forcing many to accept that games can speak very cool on serious topics. But if you look at the methods, if there is a lot of unique? Phenomenal texts? They would not have lost a lot in the form of a book, for completeness you can still add interactivity. Beautiful art? Would not have become worse if it was part of an illustrated publication or comic book. Better yet, it would all look in the form of an animated series.

Do not understand the wrong thing, the game has a gameplay and it is important, but the gameplay is not what we love Disco Elysium for. The strongest aspects of De: script, texts, art are created by methods of other arts.

There is, for example, a series of Mass Effect. I wrote not so long ago that the greatest series made this series: it is she who creates emotional peaks, supports the illusion of a lively large -scale choice, makes the story of a dramatic. Yes, Me cannot be painlessly turned into a series or comic book, because what a lot of use to look at Captain Shepard if you cannot run around the citadel and get a jack.

But, nevertheless, the strongest aspects of the game are not in the system of dialogs, not in the shooting part, not in solving puzzles on the door, but in the script and directing. The characters are built according to the canons of Hollywood script, the story at the right moments inevitably leads the player to key points: here is the threshold, here is a fall in the darkness, here is a meeting with the dragon, here is a victorious return. The movements of the camera in Katszen always remain familiar, as if from high -budget science fiction taken with drones and cranes. The authors use the experience of cinema and literature and simply adapt it to game features.

No, this is a bad example of the camera movement. I will definitely cut it out then.

And here, in short, you go out of this type from the shadow of a mysterious one and the photographic carrier on the right on top of you shines on you, and the camera from below to emphasize the coolness

There is a general plan just a car, well, do not bother there, align about the golden section and the rules of the third

In the cinema, the standard low -level picture emphasizes power and strength, but here the background is left in the focus and literally presses the general figure of the general

If you return to comparison with the cinema, then the Mass Effect is a theatrical production from which they removed the scene and the curtain, complicated the scenery and allowed the operator to go back and forth. Not just shooting a presentation, but also not a movie.

There are many such examples. I’m not even talking about interactive cinema from Telltale and Life Is Strange, I’m not talking about The Banner Saga and the like “Interactive books with intermediate puzzles”, I’m not talking about Warcraft and Starcraft, where mission is pieces of game between literary dialogues and kinematographic videos, and one on one on Other does not affect almost in any way.

You can object: but there is a gameplay, isn’t that enough?

And I will answer: not enough. In the same way as a video with actors – this is not a movie, and a sketch of a hare in the fields is not a picture, just a gameplay will not necessarily be art. This is not bad in itself, I spent thousands of hours for gameplay and not the fact that this watch would have become better if there were more art in them.

I don’t know where the Anduine, along which the border between the “just game” and art passes, but I feel about the following contours:

The integrity of the plan. Elements specific to the game work together with elements of other arts to achieve one goal, and not just coexist.

The presence of an author’s statement. This is a thin ice, so let’s dwell on the fact that with the help of game methods we should be told something or show, some story, experience, feelings that the author wanted to convey.

Regarding the author’s statement, I will clarify. The game itself can also cause emotions, just like football or chess do it, but they do it regardless of the author and his intentions. But if the author consciously or unconsciously puts a piece of himself inside, tries to convey something and convey something to the consumer, then this is already a statement.

But there is good news! Games are rapidly moving towards art and there are many examples. Take a look at the last two projects Supergiant: Pyre and Hades.

Unobvious Take: The plot -oriented Pyre, full of deep characters and thoughts about the essence of society, to a lesser extent, art than the Hades roars, focused on races and battles. And I have evidence.

What Pyre looks like? You listen to dialogs, sometimes make a choice, then look at beautiful landscapes, listen to another dialogue, and then we have trials, you still listen to the dialogue in front of them, play the test, again dialogs, choice, landscapes, choice, dialogs. How tests are related to history? Yes, in no way, they could be replaced with anything, even with knights, at least with a stone-bum. Yes, the test results affect the plot and ending, but this is essentially the only point of intersection. Otherwise these are two independent processes. The test could be chess, bloody massacre for survival, magic billiards with hedgehogs, competitions in the spirit of saw. Any of these options fits into history with minimal modification.

Firstly, 95% of the time you are busy with the game: passing rooms and battles with bosses. The remaining 5% of the time occupy dialogs and they reinforce the gameplay, because they are a reaction to your actions within the game, to the objects you find, to the results of the passage. From Hades you can not throw the gameplay and turn the story into a book, Hades cannot be represented in the form of a visual short story, because gameplay is the core of the work.

Secondly, Hades is a holistic work. What is this story about? About perseverance and about the family, if rude. Is the gameplay related to this? It is directly connected, you are trying to get out over and over again, with each attempt you become better and stronger, each time go a little further, become a little better if you do not give up and continue. This topic is also supported by small references in dialogs (from reference to “myth about Sisyph” I clapped my hands), and gameplay of a pants, and even art.

Everything is also saturated with the theme of the family: you spend resources on restoring relations with your loved ones, the main goal of the game is spinning around reunion and reconciliation, skills are gifts with notes from relatives and so on. This cannot be reduced to the film or book, because you yourself are building relationships again as part of the game. You are not just empathizing with the hero, you are involved in the process at a different level, because you can’t get out of the fiction from the fucking des and not make peace with the former. Because each time you choose: to take money that will help to defeat opponents, or take a ragbrise that will help restore relations with others.

The game allows you to survive the same experience that the hero experiences: endless attempts to get out, endless attempts to restore relations with loved ones, anger at the father, a sense of growth and an increase in your strength.

In this regard, Hades is a representative of game art, because the author’s statement is transmitted to us through game experience, and not through the experience of viewing or reading.

Another example. A person who will be studied in universities in fifteen years, Jonathan Blow at the time when the market was scored by meaningless graphone shooters, created Braid. Braid is a simple game built on mechanics from Mario, the plot in it is not particularly complicated, the graphics are pleasant, but also nothing outstanding, but with all this Braid – art – art.

The blu made a very simple thing: he took a classic platformer and added the opportunity to rewind time there, and then built a puzzle around this. But this is not important, but the fact that Braid has a story presented in the form of small pieces of text, which in total will make up a dozen pages. And there are also puzzles that we collect during the passage of levels, and we get paintings.

Both that, and another focuses on the stories of the destroyed relations of the protagonist and on the fact that he has a desire to reinforce time back, correct, change, do differently, and remain in that beautiful moment. Tens of thousands of films have been shot about this, tons of books and poems were written, pictures, dancing and sculptures are built around this topic, so there can be a new one here?

You can make a game out of this. You can give the player the opportunity to really rewind time, correct his mistakes. You can give him the opportunity to stay in the moment, freeze him, do not go anywhere.

And then show that even https://bookmakersnotongamstop.co.uk/fast-withdrawal-betting-sites/ this opportunity does not solve the problem: that you still have to move on if you want a good end. You can make the player live the emotions of a person trying to restore destroyed relationships through the fucking "your princess in another castle". You can not just blink a gameplay with history, but force the player to live exactly the experience that is described in this story.

Braid cannot be transferred to the format of a book, comic book or cartoon. To be honest, I think that it is normally impossible to retell it, so if you want to understand what I mean – play. Moreover, the game is small and is very cheap.

But there is also a second interpretation that makes you look at all this completely different.

> I am not very often talking about the plot – and I’m not going to talk a lot about it here – because the reason I create video games (or one of the many reasons) is that I want to engage in some artistic things – I would say, art – right; And what I want to do is to convey certain feelings, situations.
These things are very difficult for me to express in words. What I think about is not to tell a straightforward language. Or, at least, I don’t know how to do it. Despite the fact that the game has text fragments, I think about the game as a whole, that this is a kind of shell that I try to display – either I point to it in one place or another and direction.

Jonathan Blow

Or the fresh No Case Shoup Remain Unsolved. Collecting pieces of conversation, comparing them with each other and with the interlocutors, building in chronological order and trying to understand what happened, the player will live, no, not a detective, but a person with dementia. Is it possible to convey this feeling in another way? It is possible, but the effect will be completely different.

Ice-Pick Lodge told about the same things when they made games actively. About the same way, they usually describe the experience from playing Journey and Papers, Please: as something more than an arcade or tactical game with a beautiful background, music and screwed dialogs. One of the elements cannot be removed from the banal Stanley Parable, because then the game will completely lose meaning. This is not WARCRAFT to you, the wave of a magic wand turns into Starcraft, and not a series about the assassins, where they will soon release part about dinosaurs.

It is easy to notice that almost all of the listed games are made by small independent teams or loners. Of course, in expensive studio projects, gameplay is also used to form a statement: for example, in Dishonored (I wrote about it in a last article), in different immovables, in some horror. But this does not go out onto the framework of small experiments, almost everywhere the developers leave the standard core: they shot enemies, climbed the level, guessed the puzzles, then listened to the dialogs and looked at the Katsen, rinse, repeat, repeat it.

I think that now we are in about the same situation as cinema in the twentieth to three years of the last century. The tools already exist, there are already authors who are able to create masterpieces, already there are games that convey unique experience, but the industry is not yet ready to retreat from the usual entertainment formats. New methods are introduced by small, timid steps. There is neither a normal institution of criticism, nor a qualitative theoretical base either for creating works, nor for their analysis.

And this inspires optimism. Firstly, because the most interesting is still ahead, and secondly, because now is the great time when even one person can create a new gaming, open new means of expression and lay the canons. For authors, this is a huge space of freedom, for consumers – it is an exciting time when any product can turn over the idea of ​​a possible and impossible. It is possible that right now someone makes the future “metropolis” from the world of games that we are witnesses that the next generation will study in textbooks and consider in virtual museums.

I believe that in the coming years we are waiting for a boom of game art, which will no longer be simple festival demons and will be able to balance the endless conveyor of the same mobile phones, gach.

Share in the comments what games you are ready to call art. If there is something interesting, then I will definitely play and then then I will write a boring article.

The best comments

Do not understand the wrong thing, the game has a gameplay and it is important, but the gameplay is not what we love Disco Elysium for. The strongest aspects of De: script, texts, art are created by methods of other arts.

I do not agree. What you distinguish above, as the strengths of the work, of course, take place to be. If Disco Elysium was a book, a series or animation, it would most likely be a good work. But it is the form of the game that makes it even more special.

It is unfair to throw out a system of throws from this equation, which determines the narrative. And the fact that the player is pumping and developing the character can affect this narrative. More than one medium except for games will not allow you to create a work with many options for events that you can roll back and replay, as well as fail. Because, in theory, each player’s action forms a unique experience, even a rollback rollback.

And art, script and music that are layered on gamemlles from the “shots of their walking” only decorate the final work. If interesting, there is a good work cycle where they study the unique gameplay narrative Disco Elysium.

The whole blog spilled diagonally, a little lingered on the conclusion to understand what we were talking about and ..

Comparison with the film industry of the beginning of the 20th century is not fundamentally correct, because there is a film industry of today’s day, where one Yorgos Lantimos and several more high-profile festival hits, and 90% of the info is scored by another Marvell with a Fast and.

And in the gaming industry I see several excellent "copyright" indie for hundreds of Kalovduti. And nothing will change, because most of this “copyright” did not go, they need to shoot under the chips in the friend in a multiplayer and that it was fun.

In general, when we have Annapurna, who makes literally the same as the A24 in the cinema, and AAAA-blockbusters in budgets and scope overthrow the summer blockbusters of large studios, it is strange to compare the state of the video game industry with cinema and say “we have not yet grown up”.

In the game industry, frankly, the situation is worse. There are several excellent copyright indie, there are several expensive Kalovodii, and there are also hundreds of cheap and dumb games that no one needs, because there are neither spectacular nor copyright.

Why do you ignore tons of bad films that come out in no less? Games are easier with publication, flying to Steam is easier than getting to the cinema. But what about the work of students who they shoot for training? And the consumer goods, which enthusiasts laid out on YouTube? This is also a movie. Nobody needs them also and are also bad as hundreds of cheap p of dumb games. Just to find them, you need to make efforts.

About Disco Elysium: it is difficult for me to imagine this work without interactivity, neither in the form of a book, nor in the form of a movie/series/animation. Because the main character does not have a person here, it is formed by a player. Harry is a white sheet at the beginning of the game, and we decide how it will be. Yes, the elections in the game do not affect the plot as a whole, mainly on the attitude of others to you (and most importantly, on your attitude to the world), but this is the essence. Different people will invest different ideas in their main character and get different emotional experience. How it would look in the series/film? The authors would determine the behavior of the GG instead of the player? Well, I congratulations, you have lost half of the whole meaning of the work. For the sake of this, people re -recall Disco Elysium to see what Harry can be, how Kim will react to him, what will happen if you fail/pass red checks.

And in general, many theses on the blog cause me a reaction “well, no, the same!". Maybe from here the readers have a desire to put a minus and silently leave, because you can argue before the blue: then the decency of society is measured in the impossibility of discussing games in it, then grants for games cease to exist, then something else.

It creates that you are just a big fan of cinema and decided to tell everyone why the cinema is greater than games (in the territory of games lovers, please notice). Games are a very complex form that combines both the means of artistic expressiveness and the competitive aspect (as in sports). Games have their own unique means: elections and consequences, challenge, interactivity and research. And there are games in the world that cause strong emotions with these means. Cut out the entire gameplay from What Reminds of Edith Finch, and the story will crumble because for the narrative it is disastrous that the player walks along the path of the characters on his own. If you look at what is happening in the game from the side, part of the meaning eludes (in a pair of specific episodes). I was amazed at how much the gameplay was woven into the narrative there, how much context he gives to events.

The book is judged by the cover, and your blog by its heading. And I did not mean this, this is clickbeat, ”do not turn away now, instead of a clearly designed thesis, you begin to brate, and only at the end you already say that“ the games are all ahead ”. And why do you have such overstated games for games? Why don’t you judge a movie like games? After all, the cinema is borrined by stories from books, the production and game of actors from the theater, work with a frame from painting and photography, and music from music actually. Let us then also judge the artistic value of the cinema solely by the installation and work of operators. Why should games prove their artistry only by the presence of magnificent gameplay integrated into the directing?
Besides.

[. ] But if he [a major politician] will say “I have been fond of computer games since childhood, I want to support them,” then this will cause either questions or a grin from a large layer of people.

So this is about to happen: a long time ago a vidosik walked on the Internet, where the Kazakh deputy/politician admits how he likes to play in the sorcerer on the curling iron. And how Putin Team Spirit congratulated on the victory, too, everyone has already forgotten? Among the rock musicians of gamers in bulk, and recently, one of the eminent directors stated this. The ice has moved, forget about this argument already.

Because, firstly, as you yourself said, the topic raised a thousand times (someone who writes another essay on this topic appears quite regularly), a bunch of once again and read once again, once again, once again, which I have already seen a bunch of times, tired of it, tired.

Secondly, the argument on the blog is so controversial that it is easier to put a minus and go further than to enter the discussion, trying to convince a person with such views. Here are regularly encountered paragraphs that contradict each other and how to discuss this (and why) is not very clear to me.

More than a minus-a form of disagreement, the simplest on the site, no more, no less. who does not strive to offend anyone, humiliate, offend or inflict any other form of moral injury. It allows you to simply and quickly express its attitude to the written, not scribbling a long sheet of commentary, such as you read now. Type Cho, having read the blog and catching with each new paragraph the next Facepalm and feeling like a guy from the meme “What are you carrying”, I think I will put a blog plus? Moreover, my minus will not bear any consequences for the author (except for the consequences for his ChSV, but there is nothing to be done here)-they will not be banned, they will not prohibit writing comments and blogs, they will not cut off any opportunities to use the site or anything else. The only thing that he has been said to him will tell him – people with him, for some reason, do not agree and they have every right to do so. Yes, to see the minus under your blogs/comments, but as for me it means that the blog was at least opened and read, and not just scrolled by. In the end, he launched such a discussion here, a considerable achievement, by the way.

I hope we understand that Wikipedia is far from the truth in the last instance.

When they say Survival-Horror, that the first comes to mind? If this is amnesia, and not the resident, then, then, firstly, I xs what kind of circle of communication you have, secondly, it means that the problem of understanding is the same. But genre frames, this is really a different conversation. But it was on this that I focused on.

An example of gameplay degradation except perhaps that everyone picked up. That is, originally a full -fledged complex mechanics was originally, then indie the developer drank everything from it, leaving only screamers and hide and seek, after which everyone around began to saw games according to this scheme. Over time, the genre received negative development. No, a negative result is also the result, but for me, an example of a negative shade.

You can also throw, for example, the eternal three in a row, where we supposedly help to care for the garden and build houses, but Gamley is the movement of multi -colored pebbles and is not tied to the narrative.

Just insert my five cents. Do not give this example. When I earned LVV designer on one of these projects, the State Duma explained to me that these are generally two different layers of gameplay and they should not cross. Like this is a meta and heimpley, he called.

Still, we are rebuilding the house. We buy furniture, open new rooms, so I do not agree. And three in a row is a timkiller for jokes.

Yes, perhaps you are right, I have no very experience of the game here. But as far as I understand and there are one of the important factors of casuals and mobile phones.

The task of such games is to provide a very encouraging and simple gamed -beep. Including the one in which it is easy to include and is just as easy to disconnect from it. And the stronger the different layers of the gameplay are connected, the more demanding and complex the game becomes. After all, if you have a dozen systems in the game and all are closely interconnected, then any long break is out of the rut and the process becomes not very comfortable. A classic example of this is a paradox of the bars, where you often just freeze a week of a week ago, trying to remember where you have.

Okay, I’ll go better to slowly write the following essay, which, I hope, is not a striggert nobody.

Thanks for the discussion to everyone!

The other pole of this spectrum is games that use almost one gameplay and it is impossible to analyze them from the point of view of literature/cinema, nor rely on the methods of these arts. For example, Journey, yes.

Yes, Jorney cannot be analyzed as a movie, although it still has a production and virtual operator in it, which seems to run into the idea that it is possible. But yes, the platform prospect does not cause associations with cinema. But it can be evaluated as another work of art, as a picture, for example. It is clear that not to consider screenshots, but each scene has a built mise -en -scene. Light and color in it can be analyzed according to the laws of painting.

You can evaluate anything from the perspective of anything. But it makes no sense. Since we are talking about different mediums.

IMHO, but games will always use expressive means from other spheres. The language of games is already clear – this is a gameplay. And the pure language of games is Tetris, I’m sorry for this comparison. The gameplay can be different: simple, complex, immersive and so on. But if the developers want his game to have something okroma gameplay, he will take “something” from another medium.

Unique projects that immerse you through game mechanics is cool. It is foolish to compare the plot in the AAA-Igra with Before Your Eyes, just because the second makes it much cooler. And such games can really show the game industry on the other hand. But only why is it masses?

You are now finding fault to terminology. In many sources, Survavail-Corror is called the game in which the player or there is no way to resist opponents, or they are very limited, and instead of science, the emphasis is on the atmosphere. From the context of my message, it is quite clear what is meant.

Yes, I find fault. There is an established name of the genre, which means a specific set of game mechanics. Penumbra, amnesia, outlast, Slender and thousands of second -rate horror are castrated and deprived of many gameplay components, which form the genre. Calling them to survivillers is not correct.

The fact that the seventh resident is borrowed by many elements of a wave of horror, generated by the success of amnesia – this is a fact that even the developers themselves say, referring to the same alien: Isolation as a source of inspiration, and the comparison between the two games can be regularly heard on YouTube, what is on Reddite. Honestly, it is strange to deny it.

And the Evolve network shooter was inspired by the Japanese Jrpg Secret of Mana. This says little about when the skeleton of the game is primarily built at the origins of the series, and not borrowing from other popular gaming games. Undoubtedly, there are borrowings, and they can be seen with the naked look, but the gameplay and structural backbone rests on those things that were formed years before amnesia.

I argued only with the formulations that you now want to turn out inside out. You say "no grants", I say "there are grants". What difference does it make that they are negligible in comparison if you simply exaggerate the facts for greater colorfulness? If you want to do this, your right. And my right is to complain about the words.

Otherwise, we are not very conflict, everything can have everything: institutions, scientific articles, world recognition, and the development of “Igroizika”. Just a generation of gamers is growing and aging, so they will develop their favorite hobbies and take them to a new level. The faculty of game design here was opened to the Higher School of Economics (xs is true that it has now become with it).

I just personally do not want to stand at the door, holding a game in my hands, and argue whether the gameplay transfers a semantic load, is it enough and is it enough for innovative. If the game is too movie/book/picture in my concept of "art", then let me, I will still put it on a shelf in a game.

These are pieces of the game between literary dialogs and cinematographic videos, and one on the other does not affect almost any way

And how it distinguishes the game? Take for example the “Fast and the Furious”, mentioned above in the comments, there are also scenes of dialogs, and between them the scenes of the action, the only difference is that you do not control the action.

If the Fast and the Furious is too straightforward film (the militant all the same), then you can take any "intellectual" movie where everything is built around the dialogs, Tarantino is immediately in the head for an example. But there are different representatives among the games in the same way, whether it be the game films of the Cage, or DMC.

The difference here, in my opinion, is that the author of the work has passed in the cinema and literature for you, and in the games you yourself make decisions, even if it is a rail witch, where there is no influence on the plot, you yourself pass by choosing each of your steps.

I consider an example with Hades unsuccessful

From Hades you can not throw the gameplay and turn the story into a book, Hades cannot be represented in the form of a visual short story, because gameplay is the core of the work.

Yes, you can turn into. There is no particularly in the game in general such a mediocre novel will turn out. Yes, and the gameplay itself is essentially the murder of monsters and the choice of gifts from the gods.

Secondly, Hades is a holistic work. What is this story about? About perseverance and about the family, if rude. Is the gameplay related to this? It is directly connected, you are trying to get out over and over again, with each attempt you become better and stronger, each time go a little further, become a little better if you do not give up and continue.

Well, you can tie any hornedness with some kind of entry. In Dead Cells, we are trying to understand what happened to the island and defeat the king, who arranged all this horror. In Isake get out of the basement and stay alive. In West of Dead, to defeat the preacher who killed the main character and nightmarin the afterlife. In Deathloop tore a loop. In Dave The Diver, make a successful cafe.

Yes, in Hades around endless races, the plot is better furnished, and is more remembered than in many other cuckaps (thanks to which Hades introduced the fashion for the pants with the plot), but I would not say that he did it somehow unique.

You are not just empathizing with the hero, you are involved in the process at a different level, because you can’t get out of the fiction from the fucking des and not make peace with the former. Because each time you choose: to take money that will help to defeat opponents, or take a ragbrise that will help restore relations with others.

Here, of course, we have different impressions, but I did not feel such a choice. On the contrary, for me, Ambrosia made a continuation of the story of one of the characters, which is more interesting than the money that you just spend on pumping. Moreover, my development of skill in the game and the development of relations took place with different progress. I had almost completely pumped a couple of heroes before I first fought with Aid. I generally drew attention to other characters closer to the end of the game.

Therefore, it seems to me that to make VN or an interactive book where you choose every day to communicate with (approximately like in Persona 5), ​​why not.

+ I did not have this feeling of “reunification of the family and the establishment of relations” and when I went through Hades, I was mostly gaming and “challenge” ahead. The only thing in the theme of the family I realized that the Mother was trying to return the mother and breaks through the stubbornness of his father, what he does through the fights with him.

1. Close to the mainstream, but still independent Penumbra and Amnesia, who set the trend on Survival Horror and all its main mechanics. As a result, these mechanics were digested and began to be thrust even in such a popular mainstream as the seventh resident and Villanga.

What, excuse me? Just the same Resident Evil is the most important popularizer of Curveil-Horror, who set the basic mechanics and rules for subsequent imitators back in 1996! And the seventh rubber, this is already a rethinking of the entire series with the preservation of recognizable chips. And Penumbra and amnesia set the trend on Adventure Horror, where the entire combat system was completely cut out, forcing the player to run away and hide from the danger, which gave rise to millions, in my opinion stupid, giving -up horror.

And this is a very interesting topic, I already talked about it a little higher.

Played in Warcraft 2? There were briefings at the beginning of each mission, where in a literary text it was told about all sorts of events, someone storms something, some battles, rulers make decisions and so on. At the same time, the gameplay itself was approximately in this text, only in a few missions you had an additional task related to what the narrator was talking about. And the cards were at all everywhere approximately the same.

This, let’s say, is the first level when the bunch between the narrative and the gameplay is barely noticeable. You can also throw, for example, the eternal three in a row, where we supposedly help to care for the garden and build houses, but Gamley is the movement of multi -colored pebbles and is not tied to the narrative.

You can make a closer connection. For example, Starcraft is already going further and briefings are directly related to what is happening. Yes, you can still play without them at all (I had an English -powered version without rollers, so I did not catch the plot at all, but I played anyway from the evening to morning), because the gameplay itself does not depend on the narrative, but they explain, complement and comment on what is happening, and do not just remain a “bonus”. Moreover, several situations in a gameplay type of Duran’s betrayal will not be very clear if you listened to the plot.

Many old shooters work similarly, for example, Painkiller. We looked at the cartoons, silently urinate the demons for five hours, then again looked at the cartoon. I had a version without cartoons, by the way, I only found out ten years later that there was some kind of plot in the game.

Warcraft 3 and Starcraft 2 take another step because the plot is already served not only in inserts, but also occurs during gameplay. Now it is directly related to the goals of the game, and your actions move you according to the plot. Moreover, in some places in your plot there is even a choice that will affect the gameplay. Is it possible to throw a plot from the campaign, mix the missions and play them in separate? It is possible, it will be still interesting, but the game will lose a significant part of its charm.

But you can go further and, for example, go to Dishonored and Deus Ex HR. The literary text there is fragmented and scattered around the world, you can completely stumble upon the dialogs, or you can stumble at the wrong moment. In these games, the story is still presented with special dialogue episodes between missions, but a significant part of it is formed by the player with game means: where did he go, what he found, as it went. If you tear out notes from Dishonored and publish them in the form of a book, it will come out so -so. If you throw out the whole plot from Dishonored, all the notes and conversations of the characters, then a cool technology will come out. Somewhere here the ligament is already becoming such that it is not so simple to divide the narrative and gameplay.

Such a merger can occur very differently. For example, ASH of Gods makes decisions made in an interactive book lead to a complication or simplification of the game, and victory or defeat in battle, in turn, affect the narrative, that is, both streams support each other. Tactical games often often follow this way.

Another example is all sorts of cuckling and what is next to them. There, the script is deliberately divided into pieces and scattered in space, and the player collects it. The script can be very conditionally connected with gameplay, as in Isake, or can interact with it quite closely, as in Sunless Sea. Although the structure “collect notes/watch a cartoon – we play further” remains, but now the collection of a unique storyline of chopped elements becomes essentially part of the gameplay.

In a similar way, for example, Elden Ring and other sausages are acted. The plot there, well, peculiar, I would not go to the cinema. But here it is intertwined with history, not only at the level of “collecting notes”, but also at the level “look at visual clues, pay attention to the behavior of the characters, listen to sounds, study the environment”, thus restoring what happened here. That is, here the story is constructed in the player’s head, mainly just by game means, and notes and cartoons just help.

Well, then there are games that create meaningful experience without using texts and cartoons. One of the peaks there is The Witness, IMHO.

UV, almost the second article wrote already. So, the thought is that this is all a spectrum. Somewhere the game separately, the story is separate, the music is separate. Somewhere they tried to unite with one topic. Somewhere they interact tightly. And somewhere they are generally inseparable and flow one into another. One of the key parameters here, it seems to me, is the presence of a certain control idea under which everything else is adjusted.

With films a similar story. There is a movie without a plot, a movie without actors, a movie without sounds, without replicas, etc.D. It’s just that these are mainly experimental things for a narrow audience, as well as The Witness. Most of the cinema, of course, is borrowed a lot from other types of arts, the degree of adaptation is simply different.

Again on the example. There are all sorts of Category B horror, where the plot exists only to be in between the scenes of the murders. He is usually absurd, the heroes behave inconsistently, and their abilities change from the stage to the stage, the heroine herself cannot cut the apple, then suddenly shoots from a pistol 50 meters with sniper accuracy. This is Warcraft 2 from the world of the movie: these films can generally watch without a plot, only with liters of pouring blood. Similarly with cheap fighters and comedies.

There are conditional pirates of the Caribbean Sea. They have funny tricks in themselves: choreography of the fights, scenes on ships, charismatic gesticulation of Jack Sparrow. There is also a rather twisted plot in them, which in general could work without fencing and sea battles. But together these things work better, because the team had a number of topics that were reflected in all aspects of production. For example, for the first part, one of the topics is freedom, the struggle against social conventions and class morality, and this topic is reflected not only in the script, but also in the sustainable sea spaces, contrasted with suffocatingly close cities, and in completely different costumes of pirates and British, and in musical topics.

There is Tarantino, yes. But Tarantino is a very cunning man, he has everything in films many times intertwined. Take, for example, criminal reading. The story itself is quite ordinary, nothing in excess. Action? Bright, fast, but at that time and steeper were removed. Music? Yes, an interesting choice, but not a masterpiece for all times. The film gains its magic precisely because these elements are fitted to each other and subordinated to certain ideas. All characters, all dialogs, all scenes of murder, music and scenery work to create an integral image. Tear out one of the elements from this design – and it will stop working. For example, there every death on the screen is very closely intertwined with the fact that and how the characters are discussing earlier, how they react to certain events, it is not just a spectacle, but we gain meaning in the context. At the same time, Tarantino manages to put not only his film in this context, but also a good half of modern culture, and this is skill.

Yes, the problem is not in triggers, but in people. The topic itself, even though a bunch is raised once before that (and the same amount will be raised later), but it is precisely debatable, because the art is personal, each sees his own. I don’t understand, of course, why the blog began to be minus, just express your disagreement, apparently.

About Pyre, which is not art (I did not play). I propose to look at it as the same video game method – you get a plot (or other reward) after you have made an effort. How much the effort is related to the plot is already another question. Of course there are other methods. I was delighted in this regard by Toren – in it we are experiencing a classic myth about the anthropomorphic sun and moon, playing for the moon. Pretty close to the text and almost without gameplayed excesses. And thank God, because the gameplay is shit.

Xs, why is the article left in minus. Some kind of chisan community.

In fact, dozens of projects come to the cinema every year, which are the very Pure Cinema, they are just mainly in hearing among moviegoers, who follow at least large festivals such as Sandens, Cannes and Venice. This, by the way, is normal, I do not see a problem in this. It is important that these films are just a movie that uses a movie language maximum.

Marvel and Furious, of course, score themselves with info, but this is an absolutely natural process. Billions listen to Taylor Swift and Vickend – but the music is developing well, large performers indirectly finance small ones and involuntarily develop the infrastructure.

In the game industry, frankly, the situation is worse. There are several excellent copyright indie, there are several expensive Kalovodii, and there are also hundreds of cheap and dumb games that no one needs, because there are neither spectacular nor copyright.

But it’s not about money and budgets, but about the means of expression. In the cinema, these funds have long been formed and that Marvel, that some linkeliter use approximately the same basic set.

In the game industry, these means are just beginning to crystallize, so games are so actively imitated by other types of art: cinema, for example. In the same way, the movie once imitated the circus and the theater. Generally it doesn’t matter if we talk about the blockbuster or about indie, which can be interesting from the point of view of the presentation. In the conditional 1920, in Hollywood there were 2500 films a year and most of them were purely entertaining, many quite expensive for that time. Nevertheless, this only helped to develop a movie language.

Why should it be different with games? I am sure that in 30 years the games will be more expensive, they will be more expensive and at the same time their structure will become more complicated. What is now considered the prerogative of indie will gradually simplify and integrate into the gameplay of mainstream games. Thirty years ago, in principle, we had no “language of games”, a continuous pure gameplay with imitation of literature and graphics in the intervals. About twenty years ago you can find several examples where games are trying to create impressions of the player using a combination mechanic with other content, and not with the help of poorly connected pictures and pieces of text. Ten years ago, this is already many times more. Now this approach is widely widespread, many game designers and narratives are clearly working to use the unique capabilities of games to create impressions.

I don’t see why this trend should be interrupted.

P.S. I don’t know, maybe I have a crookedly formulated a thought, maybe people triggert my optimism or, in principle, talk about art, but minus them very actively and mainly silently. And it’s a pity, the topic is interesting, I hoped for plus minus an active discussion of the future Gamdev. So thanks for the comment in any case.