Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 LordofHats wrote:
Problem is that the time would better be served reading a book if one is seeking moral imagination.

So first off, let's just get it out of the way: these simply aren't mutually exclusive options. Second, why would people be "better off" with books than video games? You say:

 LordofHats wrote:
For every game I can think of that tackles complex things (lets just throw in ME3), I can think of one that pretends to do so but doesn't (Halo 4), one that tries but botches the job horribly (DA2), and a half dozen that don't deal with any complex themes at all and the people who say they do

The exact same thing could be said of books, movies, music, paintings, sculpture, etc, etc.

The thing is, you can find gakky work in every medium. None of them have a monopoly on gak. In fact, there are far more books out there than video games so it stands to reason that you are more likely to encounter gakky work in a book than a videogame. This becomes especially clear when we only look at best sellers from both categories. Thoughtful games tend to sell, in terms of their own market, better than thoughtful books.

 Manchu wrote:
The thing is, you can find gakky work in every medium. None of them have a monopoly on gak. In fact, there are far more books out there than video games so it stands to reason that you are more likely to encounter gakky work in a book than a videogame.

Yeah but look at the games that do tackle such things. I'll just continue with ME3 cause I presume we all know about it. It tackles war, race relations, and moral decisions and ethical dilemmas. But to what extent? You'll get a massively deeper exploration of those themes in War and Peace, Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Les Miserables. Hell Stranger in a Strange Land does a lot of the same stuff. Of course the downside is that two of those books are LOOOONG At best ME3's depth will be met by a standard pulp fiction novel like a Star Was book.

We have yet to see master pieces of such caliber in video games, because at the end of the day ME3 was as much about shooting stuff as anything. Video games haven't moved past being pulp imo. We've seen steps towards the next stage but nothing quite there just yet.

But I think we've had this conversation before

This becomes especially clear when we only look at best sellers from both categories. Thoughtful games tend to sell, in terms of their own market, better than thoughtful books.

No arguing with that. Twilight. Case and point But I would argue that being a thoughtful game is not necessarily why thoughtful games sell. They tend to be thoughtful because the developer had the time, money, and dedication, to make something good (Bioshock, ME3, Deus Ex HR). Had those games had terrible gameplay, I'll bet you they'd have sold poorly... Well not ME3. That game could have been a literal turd in a plastic case and still sold millions of copies. Some people will say it was and did Too Human could be pretty thoughtful at times. But the rest of the game was crap.

I agree that gameplay makes or breaks a game. Similarly, a book full of great ideas written very poorly will not sell.

Strangely, as Ayn Rand proved, a book full of stupid ideas written very poorly will sell sell sell.

A number of years ago when I went to my "local" Game Stop, there was an old man in there. He had to be no younger than 70. He was badly hunched over, moved slowly and had to use a cane. Yet, he was telling the clerk how to destroy the jeep in Dead Rising as the clerk couldn't figure it out. Unfortunately, I don't recall which game he was buying.

Wait till our generation gets older. We'll be complaining about how cell phone reception was partial or lost completely in some areas, how we had to use a 56k land-line to connect to the internet and how the young-uns' neo-techno is excactly the same a dubstep.

Can't remember where I heard this but:

If you were to take a member of any given generation, their worse nightmare is to live like their Great-Great-Grand Parents.

Back in my day we didn't have any fancy analog sticks! We had the d-pad and only two buttons!

I'm glad to see people playing iphone games.

Explaining my stuff is getting easier every day.

Since Manchu and LordofHats were talking about good story i do have to agree with LordofHats comment on 'deus ex: human revolution'. I'm not sure about parts of it but the game as a whole is freaking masterpiece and it actually took me a little while to notice this. That game is art man the gameplay is awesome too and the overall experience is fantastic. The endings also had their consequences and you could dig into very deep meaningful sidequests such as the one about adam's real parents. Some of this could've used more fleshing out but the game really does show you the consequences of different choices you can make at the ending throughout the whole game. You see how it can go wrong and then you make a choice.

Deus ex: human revolution even tackles certain things we deal with now. I've gotta say it's a game whose brilliance might not be fully realized until much later. Nice job to the developers. They did a fantastic job.

According to what i've heard Mass Effect 3's ending was a disappointment. Pretty much everybody seems to have said this.

 LordofHats wrote:
Back in my day we didn't have any fancy analog sticks! We had the d-pad and only two buttons!

You had a d-pad? Oh thats privilege that is!
This is all we got.
http://www.dltk-kids.com/world/japan/mfortune-teller.htm
Then we got this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600
I say we - my cousins did. I got a third party rip off...
When I'd got to school, we were introduced to the BBC Micro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bbc_micro
All 32k of processing glory! There are watches more powerful than that.
When you consider 1Mb = 1028k or somthing like that....and now we're on terabytes.
But we still mocked the acorn electrons!
They only had the same power as us but they were slower!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Electron
We hid from the BBC Masters (48k) and amstrads and spectrums as they laughed at us and mocked us unmercifully.
Then I eventually got a NES and life became better.
Then my $&&^*%^ parents bought this!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Archimedes
We had the A3020. It was as good as the atari ste and the amiga 500 but IT HAD ALMOST NO GAMES!
Educational = AAARGH!
We had chocks away, stunt racer and starfighter 3000.
Everyone else had Street fighter 2 TURBO and Mortal Kombat and many more besides.
That was it. We didn't get a pc till about 1998, (6yrs or so of only educational computer time) I finally got a job then and could buy my own, but the kids today have no idea how good they've got it...
We used to play with actual toys when I was a kid as there was nothing else to do. Now, if a kid isn't playing skylanders on a wii from the womb, he's born behind the curve.
/rant
I was 21 before I had a mobile phone too.
But yeah, games keep you thinking and now they can help keep you active - My great aunt is in her 80's and isn't very mobile. Still thrashes me on wii bowling though.
My dad (in his 70's) can write code/entire games in basic. He used to love the type in games you got from magazines - literally typed in - they had a page with the code on, you input it and then recorded it to a cassette.

I completely agree with playability being the most important factor in a game - rather than graphics. I spent hours on Chuckie Egg as a kid. It looks awful now, but I had so much more fun with that than Resistance 2 on the PS3.

 Manchu wrote:
I cannot thank video games (by which I mean all the people involved in making them and bringing them to market) enough for expanding my imagination. I hope I will be able to play them throughout my whole life.

I second this. I don't think my own writing would be anywhere near as good if video games weren't out there. Things like Mass Effect and Halo provided quite a bit of inspiration for my own stories, more so than any movie. I think I'll still be playing video games up into my 80's




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
I agree that gameplay makes or breaks a game. Similarly, a book full of great ideas written very poorly will not sell.

Strangely, as Ayn Rand proved, a book full of stupid ideas written very poorly will sell sell sell.

That reminds me, the game Bioshock is basically an outright rejection of Ayn Rand's ideas. That game was awesome; it explored themes and was thoughtful while having an awesome creepy atmosphere and great gameplay. Too bad the second one didn't quite stack up.