Can a game get too realistic?

[Niode]

My friend has pre-order on Heavy Rain, but I'm sceptical. I was really looking forward to Fahrenheit (indigo prophecy) but that game flopped badly at retail and I got my copy on the day of release and paid £30 for it on PC, within weeks I saw copies for under £10. I'm expecting Heavy Rain to do the same.

[Pulsar_t]

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Are you if you don't mind my asking majoring in philosophy? It'd be cool to read a blog written by someone as yourself. Count me in if you make the move. Your RSS feeder won't remain idle I promise

[Original_Name]

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Are you if you don't mind my asking majoring in philosophy? It'd be cool to read a blog written by someone as yourself. Count me in if you make the move. Your RSS feeder won't remain idle I promise

Say, thanks alot! I'm a bit of a Type A when I write, so looking back at that sloppily-written post made me cringe a bit, but I'm glad that you enjoyed it. I suspect it'll lead to a more indepth discussion between the members of the forum shortly - afterall, people are bound to disagree with what the "full potential" of a video game is. My personal feeling is that the inherent worth of video games is its unique ability to allow the audience to make their own unique decisions when faced with deep choices - imagine the philosophical connotations this could have! If you ask me, although many people agree that Aerith's death in Final Fantasy VII was one of the most tragic moments in gaming (and even though I adore Final Fantasy VII), nothing about watching a video featuring the death of Aerith was pertinent to video games: it was cinema. Similarly, the relationship you built with Aerith up to that point was only loosely pertinent to the medium, since the relationship built between your avatar and her character was established almost exclusively through non-interactive literature with only a few bits of dynamic interaction (usually consisting of two choices which ultimately had no impact on the overall course of the story's progression) - we are not drawn to Aerith as a character by the parts of Final Fantasy VII which were pertinent to the interactive medium of entertainment known as video games -- no one built a strong relationship with Aerith through equipping her materia and commanding her to initiate certain actions in battle.

If you ask me, the full potential for video games lies in the player realizing his worth and the repurcussions of his existence within the realm of the video game. For instance, it has a more profound effect on someone if he's playing Black & White and he chooses to sacrifice 10 of his followers in order to gain a new power -- say afterwards you play around with your new fireball or what have you and you look down and see your followers mourning at the loss of their loved ones -- you will feel guilt. And that guilt will be stronger than if you watch a canned piece of cinematography which showed a person making a similar decision. The fact that your own personal choice to favor egoism over altruism made you experience guilt will have more of an effect on you than watching a person make the decision. If you watch a person do it on screen, you may feel angry at the character for doing what he did and sad for the people who suffered because of said character, but barring the circumstance that you yourself performed a similar action prior to doing the film, guilt should not come into the equation (and if it does, that is not to the credit of the film itself, but rather the subjective action of applying one's own experiences to the film). Because the human experience is one which involves being stuck-fast in one's own perspective, thus making decisions from a self-oriented foundation - it follows that video games can more directly simulate the human experience since they share that same self-oriented decision making at their foundation.

Oh yeah, and your question! I'm majoring in English (and deciding whether I should teach at the High School or Collegiate level) and minoring in Philosophy. As far as the idea of blogging, I would like to create a blog which deals with the value of video games as an artistic medium - ever since reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud I've been very attractive to the disparities between artistic mediums, how those disparities allow one to be generally more capable of portraying certain emotions more effectively than another, and utilizing said artistic mediums to their full potential -- and as an aside, art's ever-valuable ability to communicate). There's a ton I could say about the likes of Seaman, Rez, Shenmue, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Indigo Prophecy. Not sure where I'd get the time to though, being in college and all - speaking of which, I have an assignment due in an hour!

(Hence the end of this post)

[DNT 2.5]

I wish this game would stop reminding me of Shenmue.

[Haoie]

Sorry, but going to the can is fun in games.

And to a lesser extent, out here in the real world.

[Original_Name]

Wow. I just discovered this today. Mr. Rev Anthony verbalized many of my opinions on video games:

[MrPopo]

Sorry, but going to the can is fun in games.

And to a lesser extent, out here in the real world.

It'll heal you 10 health. But only the first time per map.

[J T]

To respond to some of Original_Name's points, let me first say that I am completely in favor of the games industry broadening its scope to also include games that delve into more artistic forays. This means I accept the idea that a game might not even be well described as a "game" but more of an interactive digital art installation. I even take the somewhat extreme position that videogames do not need to be fun. I do, however, think they need to be, at a minimum, engaging. I guess I just can't tell if Heavy Rain is that or not. My complaint about it is that it seems to be a graphics show-off piece more than either a game or a work of art. I could be dead wrong about that, and I'd be happy to be wrong because the idea of seeing art games on the scale of titles like Heavy Rain is a very exciting proposition. I can get your point about establishing normalcy and I don't mind a bit of exposition in my games, it just seems like 9 minutes is a looooong time for any form of narrative to only have the character get out of bed and drink some OJ.

For what it's worth, I've never been much of a fan of realism even in painting either. The technical skill required for realism in painting or in videogames does fascinate me, but it's not enough on its own-- it needs to say something. I suppose that using the most complicated techniques to model mundane realism sort of says something sort of interesting in itself, but I doubt that is the artist's intent.

Anyway, good posts. I guess I'll suspend further judgment on Heavy Rain until I've seen what happens after those first 9 minutes.

[katiebarthedoor]

'round ten years ago i worked for K&I in a warehouse that supplied outlet stores with different electronic components/spare parts/whathaveyou - driving a small electric forklift all the day...for what could be ten or twelve hours ata time...

...only to come home, pop in Shenmue, and drive a forklift for what seemed like ten or twelve hours. cruel irony.
i remember fighting that gang on the wharf about a gazillion times before i figured out what to do next. /groan/

so, to answer the original post; yes.

[pepharytheworm]

Well even though a game could seem realistic its really not. I consider games trying to seem real like reality TV. Its not real in the sense that what you are seeing or doing is what you would do in your life. Its like roleplaying, or how you would react in situations you most likely will never be in your personal life or would't want to be. Doesn't the thought of a virtual reality like Star trek's entice you?

But just to add that video seems like a training part to help you get use to the controls, I don't think you will have to do that every day.