if songs and drawings could be considered art, or rather, a way of explaining things, why can't video games?


ok, ok, ok, that probably wasn't enough to get your brain's thinking juices flowing. allow me to provide further context and maybe a different point of view.

so, a long time ago, there was this guy that made a columbine game in rpg maker, called super columbine massacre rpg. and it's exactly what you think, you choose either eric harris or dylan klebold and you go around killing people until you eventually kill yourself, just like what happened in real life. now, since this game was based off of a real massacre, there was naturally going to be big controversy. but the creator's point was that SCMRPG was a way of explaining it through an alternative way, and that alternative way being a video game. now, read the first line of text in this post.

so, the question is, what do you think? can video games be used as a way to explain things in the same way a song or a drawing could?

it's also pretty likely that i've worded myself incorrectly here. if that is the case, sorry.

Regarding Columbine, a fun vidyagame is arguably an insensitive way to explain something, since this form of media is associated with pure fun as opposed to songs and art which don't inherently have those gamey elements.

they are definitely able to be like a vehicle of explanation, yeah :> i actually have a very personal relationship with this part of video gaming, not exactly as being a participant myself, but both as a viewer of participants and their understanding of a creator's work, while also as a fledgling creator myself!

i don't know if that necessarily must mean games are explanatory, i only intuit that they can be if that is how information and experience and sensation is delivered... and to what extent is that dependent on a creator? the "death of the author" is a very intuitive example of viewers and participants who take little bits of their own kind of meaning from a game and extract that personal subjective value, independently/separately from who the creator is or what the creator might or might not have intended.

some games are supposedly made to be "about" something, and so the interactive form commonly presents a narrative that serves it in a way that delivers the thing it is about. sometimes, the "about" of it is simply the fun of playing with systems that do stuff or look/sound/feel like stuff. sometimes, there are games that serve as virtual documentaries that are "about" something complex and personal.

and in each case, viewers/participants can derive their own impressions of what this explains, hypothesizing what it is that the game might be able to communicate rather than just what it explicitly/concretely writes in graphics and sound and controllers.

...

like ymir suggested, you can submit an explanation of something, but that explanation can be insensitive and even be invalid-- an explanation, after all, always seemed to me like something that posits/submits information to prescribe/describe something. how might it be invalid, i can't quite say.

I don't get the question?, yes, you can use videogames for educative purpouses, but is that what you're asking or do you mean something else?

Patatitta wrote:

I don't get the question?, yes, you can use videogames for educative purpouses, but is that what you're asking or do you mean something else?

yeah that's what the question is basically asking

sametdze wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

I don't get the question?, yes, you can use videogames for educative purpouses, but is that what you're asking or do you mean something else?

yeah that's what the question is basically asking

thats a really out there and completely out of tone and confsuing example for the simple question you wanted to ask. We've always had games like mario teaches typing or whatever, there are many educational games to teach young children about colors, animals, and other things like that, i'm sure you've played at least one in your life

you also have the entire field of american christian videogames which they all exist to teach you about the bible and god and stuff, or geography games, I used those in high school to actually learn the maps and stuff

Patatitta wrote:

sametdze wrote:

Patatitta wrote:

I don't get the question?, yes, you can use videogames for educative purpouses, but is that what you're asking or do you mean something else?

yeah that's what the question is basically asking

thats a really out there and completely out of tone and confsuing example for the simple question you wanted to ask.

+1, in the sense that conventionally you're not going to go to this example in order to make a point strictly about the broad existence of explanatory video games. to me, it reads instead more closely to confirming something about the singular specific example itself rather than the overall concept

imo video games nowadays are essentially "art plus mechanics," and can be interpreted much in the same way that other forms of art can, but there's a balancing act between the artistry and the mechanical gameplay that must be taken into consideration and sensitive subjects make that balance much more important. at a base level, making a video game that's centered around the columbine school shooting is a pretty tough sell. before you even start working on the game you'd have to be aware that anything that could be parsed as glorification of violence will be parsed as such, even if your intent is precisely the opposite. a lot of the criticism surrounding scmrpg was of the game's format and plot lol. it doesn't matter if the script you wrote stands up to some of the world's greatest literary works, when the game surrounding it can be boiled down to "what if final fantasy but school shooting???" you're just replacing the goblins you farm for xp and potion drops with jocks and teachers. ofc that's a bad look. people also forget the part where the two shooters die and meet pikachu and lennon in hell lmfao. I agree with the general sentiment of the game's overall message, but the way that sentiment is expressed mechanically is seriously lackluster and the entire experience is cheapened as a result. the final boss of the game is satan from south park.

a while back, I learned about a game called "heal hitler," in which you play as hitler's psychiatrist, trying to resolve his trauma and preventing the holocaust through therapy. what an incredible premise for a game lmfao. it was more akin to a visual novel and was generally really amateurish and boring. it's worth noting that it was voice acted as well lol. wild. but this didn't cause nearly as much of a stir as scmrpg because of the mechanics. you just sit in an office, listen to some badly written lines delivered by a bad voice actor, make a few choices, and at the end of the game instead of having sex with an anime girl or whatever you end up convincing adolf hitler to not kill a bunch of people. it's in bad taste, tho clearly not in the same way as scmrpg.

it's interesting to consider what would be needed to approach topics like these with care, to display your artistic intent and goals as clearly as possible without being totally explicit in what they are. I think video gaming as an art has evolved to the point where you could pull off story driven games about extremely sensitive real world topics, like the framework for building one is there but you would need a very strong vision to pull it off. games like scmrpg and heal hitler don't have this.