Puckery Maws Of Eloquent Elocution
You know what I love about GDC? It's the talking out of the asses mostly.
"The Wii is a piece of shit!"
"It's not clear to me that Nintendo gives a shit about games as an art form," he said. To illustrate his point, he searched for references to games as art on all three console manufacturers web sites. While he found numerous such references on both the official PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 sites, Wii.com had none at all. He then shared quotes from executives at Sony and Microsoft talking about games as a serious artistic medium, and then a quote from a Nintendo executive saying the company only wanted to make "fun" games.
Just 2 observations, and then I'll turn you loose:
- Not only can you believe everything you read on the internet, but Chris Hecker wants you to know that you can now believe everything you don't read on the internet.
- Those fuckers at Nintendo know nothing about making games. While everyone else is "serious," Nintendo just want to have "fun." It's no wonder that the Wii has been such a colossal failure.
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March 12th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
I believe he later recanted those statements, though we all know now that in his home he’s a rampant Wiimophobe.
I guess he means, “games are art when they have newer graphics, and who cares about innovative gameplay”
March 12th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
I don’t buy it. He said:
Which is sort of like Ann Coulter saying she wasn’t really calling John Edwards a fag. (And please, let’s not turn this thread that discussion.) You can’t say Nintendo doesn’t give a shit about making real games in one breath, and then come back and say “what I really meant is they’re a breath of fresh air!”
This is one of those times when the retraction is worse than the original comment.
March 12th, 2007 at 4:38 pm
It seems like there’s some scandal hiding beneath the surface.
Maybe he went back to his room and suffered horrible nightmares: “It’s a me, Mario, why you gotta hate me? We usedta be the friends, ciao, spaghetti”
…Or he was chastised by his bosses and had to make nice, which is much less fun.
March 12th, 2007 at 6:16 pm
This is true. And it’s on teh Inertubes, now, so it’s more truerer.
Last night I had a dream. I dreamed I ran a TV network called “Stoopid-TV.” It was a bunch of stupid shows. Fun shows. Dumb-ass stuff you love to laugh at and who cares. It’s TV. It was great.
Our tagline (and I laughed so hard, in my dream, over this that I woke myself up laughing, and was laughing when I woke up) was (is?):
“Dumb not working out for you? Try more dumb.”
I know, I know… Talking about your dreams in public is bad enough. But confessing to cracking yourself up subconsciously is probably something that will, when I get Googled in the future, cost me a job or a local political position. But it was just sooo funny at the time. And this post reminded me of it. And of something my Grandpa used to say:
“You’ll never go broke betting on stupidity.”
I’m not sure there’s anything more to this story than, “Whoops. There goes that dang mouth again. Mebbe I shouldn’a let it run without’n I hooked it up to my think-bone, first-like.”
Then again, if you rep for a company on a stage… Mebbe you shouldn’a.
“When I’m on stage, I’m me. I’m talking talk from me. From me. I’m not representing EA or Maxis.”
Uh… yeah. Unless you work for them. And are being paid by them to be at the event. And they paid for your plane and hotel and food and the only reason you’re on the stage is because of your connection to them.
Oh, well. Fu**ing up is an art form, too.
March 13th, 2007 at 3:59 am
It’s incredible that somebody with a relatively high profile within the games industry can verbalise such tripe at a major event.
It’s immaterial anyway. Although there are many people that would like games to be accepted as art, they just aren’t yet.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:18 am
Chris not smart.
There needs to be a movement in the game industry to oppose the “games as art” push. We could call it “games as fun” (I guess Nintendo is already on that). I’m sure fun and art could go hand in hand at some point, but I don’t think we’ve seen that so much yet. So Mr. Hecker, focus on the fun part first, then you can work on having a public cultural venue to display the great works from the gaming renaissance era.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:41 am
Don’t take this the wrong way, but to me this sounds just as snobbish as Hecker’s quote. I don’t see anything mutually exclusive about games as “art” (whatever that means) and “fun” games. The original Myst was a good attempt at art and it was also fun.
When I think of games as art, I think of movies. You can go really artsy-fartsy like some French piece of film noir, and while it’s going to be really effing artsy, you’re not going to appeal to a wide audience. But you can also go the Lord of the Rings route. Those films were artistic, and also appealed to a lot of people. The games as art movement should be looking for something like that. (and I don’t mean LoTR or even fantasy specifically)
OTOH sometimes you just want to kill shit or blow shit up or hit a ball or whatever. Nintendo shines at this style of game and I think that’s really what Hecker was trying to get at before his message got muffled by the sound of his own foot in his mouth.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:52 am
I think fun is bad for the industry. Making games that are fun is a porr design choice. Games should focus on making a statement about society and should be pretty, but fun is only distracting the players from the real purpose of games.
I’ve often talked about this with relation to Shutes and Ladders. They would have made a much better game if they had removed all of the latters and replaced them with shutes in order to show the two year olds that life is really just a grind and inevitably they are going to slide back and fail.
What an artistic form of societal observation that would have been.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:55 am
I agree Mox, they aren’t mutually exclusive concepts. We have a few games that blend fun and art pretty darn well. What I take issue with is big developers with a large budget pushing art as more important than fun (which is what Chris comes off sounding like). This makes me worry about what Spore will turn out like (squandered potential perhaps). Luckily Wright is all about coolness and gameplay it seems, which is good for me.
I like the example of movies, because they started the same way games are now. The first silent films, and into black and white talkies were just entertainment with not so much focus on art. Actually we still have movies that are not really art, they are just mindless entertainment.
If New Line gave Jackson a multi million dollar budget (they bet the farm on LotR remember), and he only talked about art this and art that, and made some film to only be viewed while wearing black turtle necks and a beret, that had poor box office receipts and in turn was a dissapointing representation of books many people love, I’d drag him through the mud too. His job was to make an epic entertaining movie first, and maybe add art/social commentary if he could (awesome style, I’d call those movies pretty good works of art).
A weird part of games as art is that there is so much art in games. All of the models, animations, and environments are made by talented artists, but that’s different than the game being art.
March 13th, 2007 at 10:58 am
@Cyndre: WOW I bet you are the life of every funeral. Here have some prosaic.
@Chris Hecker: This guy had a little too much Pre-Show cocktails. The foot placed into his mouth could not be removed due to not having proper tools. (The tools were all to small for such a large shoe covered foot) He deserves the chance to make up with Nintendo. Perhaps a whip made from Wii remotes. 50 lashes with said whip would go a long way to placating the masses of Wii-Fanbois.
Art in games: Just make um breakable and I’ll be happy.
March 13th, 2007 at 11:15 am
Learn2Sarcasm
March 13th, 2007 at 12:21 pm
“It’s incredible that somebody with a relatively high profile within the games industry can verbalise such tripe at a major event.”
No, it’s incredible that a talentless windbag who has never in history managed to produce a single game can get a “relatively high profile within the games industry”. The fact that people in the game industry allow him to attend, much less speak shows how broken the industry is.
March 13th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
Art is fun. And fun is art. When did they get to be mutually exclusive? We talk about these things like the two are flip-sides of a coin, or like fish and air that can’t work together or something. We’re so freaking American, not just in the US but all over the world some days I just want to puke, and the original comment about, “Not caring about games as an art form,” is a great example.
When, in the name of Pooh, did the Great Gods tell us that “Art Must Hurt?” Yes, it can. Sometimes it must. But here’s another stick for your craw; when did those Gods also tell us, “Pain Isn’t Fun?” Pain can be fun: see football. See first dates. See most physical comedy.
So… art can be fun and fun can hurt. The lines aren’t lines. Thinking of them as lines is a barrier to creativity. There’s more art in the LOTR movies than in most “art films.” There’s more fun in the novels of Kurt Vonnegut than in many comic books.
What differentiates truly *great* works in any medium is the ability to understand how to blend all the available tools. In games, “fun” is one of the colors. I would argue that a game that is no fun at all, is without art, also. And a game with no art, will be very little fun.
Was Pong fun? Sure. Some. At the time, it was all we had, and part of the fun was the novelty. And novelty is another aspect of artistic value, too. Was Pong “art?” Probably not. Or not much. Which is why, as soon as the novelty wore off and other games with better art and better fun came along, we stopped playing Pong.
The only thing I like about creative types who box themselves in like this is that it really, really helps limit the competition for my services.
Art. Fun. Go play with the crayons and the Legos and the mud and your food and your bodies and the balls and the paint and the tattoos and the rhymes and the bongos and the frisbees and the costumes and the kites, kids. It’s all art. It’s all games. Screw the lines. Make good stuff and dance like you don’t care who’s watching.
March 13th, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Dunno about you guys (mainly because I’m too lazy to read all of the comments preceding mine), but I like fun games.
I don’t like games that are all looks and no substance.
C’mon, guys. “Nintendo is only about making games that are fun!” Is that really such a bad thing to have fun while playing a game?! That’s the whole fucking point!
March 13th, 2007 at 9:57 pm
I have no opinion on the topic. I just want to say this is my favorite post title ever!
Dave (someone stole my cool internet name)
March 14th, 2007 at 9:10 am
Putting on my high-fallutin’ game academic hat…
The “games as art” position- which is one I hold- tends to be misunderstood.
It doesn’t refer to the graphics of the game. It’s not “the graphics must be art-like.”
Generally it is the idea is that games are a form of expression in the same way that any other artform is. Someone has an idea that expresses an idea or concept that comes from their own vision. In games, this vision is implemented via theme (which includes graphics) and mechanics.
I absolutely feel that Nintendo views games as art. It was someone’s idea to say “Hey, what if we had a game that actually felt like you were playing tennis by waving a controller around?” and they made choices that they felt best conveyed that experience.
It so happens in this case that it’s what a lot of people like, and ended up being a great move for marketability. So this guy’s comments are obviously off base, and I don’t think even he understands what it means to make games that are art.
(Academic hat off, back to “yo mama” jokes)
March 14th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I think we have to be aware (we being observers of the games industry, whether from within or without) that as more “art” games are being made (by which I mean intended by the designer(s) to make a statement, as Dave T. Game says) we’re gonna have to put up with pretentious twits. Or well, not put up with them, but they will arise and be present.
It’s the guy at Sundance who thinks a film isn’t Art if the average American can get into it. This guy thinks that a film could be art if it were simply 15 minutes of blackness with no audio. This is not possible. If it were a section of a larger work… maybe. Alone. No. That’s the “off” setting on the projector or whatever.
For a film to be art, it also has to be a film. To me, that implies a certain use of the (I’m a linguist so I’m going to borrow jargon even though I know it must be wrong) vocabulary available in films (changing pictures over time, for instance). Similarly, in order for a game to be art, it must also be a game. One of the chief vocabulary “words” for games is fun. Interactivity is not enough… plenty of lame things are interactive. I mean–DOS is interactive. No one would misconstrue (I hope) that as either art or game.
(Sorry that was long).
March 16th, 2007 at 6:35 pm
[...] Over at Amber’s blog, she references a speech made at the GDC wherein the speaker called the Wii “a piece of shit” and also stated that Nintendo doesn’t care about games as art, because if you search their site for that phrase it doesn’t appear. [...]