The future of art lies in virtual reality. The general trends of human "advancement" is a gradual movement towards complete personal isolation, which in turn promotes autism, solipsism and the desire to dominate one's environment as much as possible. From small roaming communities we settled into towns, then constructed boundaries that defined the wild Other from ourselves. Then we constructed individual dwellings. Then skip a bunch of other sociological observations that reinforce my understanding, and what we get is the dissolution of the state from collectivism (whether by economic ideals or shared religious dogma) to individualism, the break-up of the family, and the rise of Hikikimori, NEET, autism and so on. Now with the internet people are able to shed a large amount of their physical identity: that is the identity they were given without consenting to possess it, and are instead communicating anonymously or pseudonymously, using a language that is self-referential and which has its own internal logic that requires "lurking" and being absorbed from "real life" into a culture where abstract thought and realities have usurped it.
Soon (in the context of human history) "real life", i.e. the reality into which we are born and which we collectively navigate, seek to understand, perceive and attempt - whether collectively or individualistically - to dominate or alter in accordance to our wishes (fashion, interior design, listening to emotional music etc in order to add a sense of dramatic narrative to our lives) will be considered an inferior (if necessary) server (the real life server) and people will instead opt to "exist" (as a perceptive being, both more and less "abstractly" than existing on the internet entails) in a virtual reality of their own creation, in which their ambitions aren't frustrated by things they consider irrational, or wrong, or frustrating, or ugly.
The sort of Nietzschean comfort-land populated by Last Men will never exist, because total comfort can *never be found* in the company of others, whose perceptions and wills and so on are not in alignment with your own. Just as the apes drifted towards self-awareness, and just how homo sapiens drifted towards complete domination of their environment via well-planned cities, the regular working hours, the sacrifice of emotion (irrationality) for stoic data control, and just how children today spend their time on Minecraft creating a world of their own creation, in which they are simultaneously the God and the lone protagonist, virtual reality will eventually appeal to a future generation of isolated, solipsistic, possibly narcissistic and / or autistic individuals who seek nothing less than total immersion into a world in which theirs is the lone perspective and in which their wills are unhindered by the wills of the AI they have allowed to "exist" alongside them.
you are correct, books are not art anymore. videogames are the only artistic medium of any worth in Twenty Seventeen.
Carter Flores
I've had enough. I just want to travel the world with my small harem and guardian beasts and spend most of my time chilling in a virtual 1980s middle-class Chicago suburb, where I will be 18 years old forever.
Camden Davis
a nightmare we’re about to live
Evan Miller
*dream
Landon Baker
>isolation promotes autism What? When the fuck was autism something you can catch or develop? It's fucking genetic. Also your entire theory is based on the assumption that all humans are like you and only spend their free time alone or on Veeky Forums. Take a step outside and you'll realize people don't live in isolation like you're claiming.
Joshua Clark
videogames are by and large a corporate product. hardly the avant-garde of artistic expression...
Levi Ross
If a little dreaming is dangerous, then the solution is not to dream less, but to dream more, to dream all the time...
Carson Reed
A product is a single resulting unit of a process of production. A corporation is a group of people authorized by the government to act as a single entity. These are just words, semi-modern legal jargon; art has always been "products" by "corporations." It is a semi-modern fallacy (most likely, stemming from the semi-modern legal jargon) to insinuate that art must be done by an individual alone, and must be done for his expression alone. If that is the case, then a massive amount of what has been considered art throughout history is not, because a large amount of it was at one time created for society to enjoy, or an institutionalized religion, or a member of royalty that hired you, etc.
Don't care. Post-scarcity environment means human interactions will no longer have weight. My family are basically willing to let me die right now, because I cost money. When I cost zero money, the fact that they suddenly become attached to me and want me in their lives because of family values or whatever becomes meaningless.
Isaiah Jackson
Not a single game ever made has ever held any artistic value. Games are written in short spans during office hours by a committee of writers and governed by hack directors who've are pseuds just like you. This is why no videogame has ever had a meritable narrative that wasn't just a dumbed down version of some shitty anime or western cinema.
Michael Watson
>artistic value Define this, and define art.
Grayson Torres
In the future, expert systems and AI will make it possible for the individual to create video games very easily. The problem is probably oversupply; how to regulate which individuals get access to such technology. But that can probably be solved by expert systems and AI also. Imagine a system of perfect critics who know exactly what the public wants, exactly what it needs, and exactly what ratio of both to sell to them. Imagine these digital critics then act as a filter and a system of deciding who gets to produce in the first place. Video games now are sporadically art. But not too long from now they'll come into their own, it just requires a lot more to happen first.
Jaxson Carter
Artistic value is a consensual profoundness of ideas, expression, and expertise in a piece's entirity. Almost everything is art.
Christopher Brown
Ico Undertale Metal Gear Solid 2
Jayden Miller
Not MGS2 and haven't played the other two. MGS2 was the writer, Tomozaku Fukushima, copy-pasting ideas that were already common in the Japanese vernacular about web compartmentalization at the time, which is hilarious because people think it's this portentous opus. Also, MGS2 is hamfisted in execution with God-awful dialogue.
Josiah Turner
What is the alternative, and how is the alternative better?
Jace Edwards
MGS2 obeys the general conventions of cyberpunk. If you don't like cyberpunk that's fine. Ideas also don't need to be original to be well-executed.
Kayden Taylor
>Artistic value is a consensual profoundness of ideas, expression, and expertise in a piece's entirity. So, why are all video games so far made exempt of having it?
>profoundness of ideas At the seat of a video game is an instinct for life-affirmation, as video games are the precursors to full body immersion simulation and they provide us with worlds to explore, aesthetic elements to convince us of their reality, and the means to interact with them. There are no profound ideas in this to you?
>expression Visual, audial, and mechanical elements must be conceived, drafted, designed / developed, implemented and tested until they arrive at a harmonious state that is what is considered immersive by people. This is not expression to you?
>expertise Designers, developers, testers, the act of playing, the act of finding and also detecting from a critical eye the most immersive formulas. Expertise is not possible in any of these areas to you?
>Almost everything is art, except video games because I say so.
Dominic Campbell
...
Daniel Rogers
The only thing that makes life interesting is the fact that wills and imaginations other than your own exist. Why would you want to subject everything in your experience to the total control of your own will? Do you honestly want to be the god of your own personal but isolated world?
Mason Ross
Better to rule in heaven than serve in hell
Blake Taylor
Metal gear is literally what he described lmao
Ian Morris
Total comfort can never be found in virtual reality, either, brah. It can only be found in oneself. Virtual reality would probably eventually become boring as well with its unlimited "freedom".
Ayden Torres
I would have said Drakengard 3, but it's much harder to explain the virtues of a game like that. The apeing of cinema and genre fiction in MGS2 establishes points of reference and comparison to other media which makes arguing about it easier.
Zachary Green
ehrm ehm
Lincoln Hughes
1. None have done it. You could say why do all Toys or Board Games lack artistic merit too, or it least haven't produced a meritable product yet. 2. No profound ideas there, no. 3&4. They're all inferior or copied; stories, visuals, music—and boy is the music particularly bad. Inevitably, they're simply weak simulacra of more meritable works. The immersion is also far too weak as it stands to immerse anyone; all the stimulus is a weak simulacra. So, in closing; >Amalgam made of inferior and plagarized parts. >Hasn't been able to produce something of merit yet. >Immersion remains a poor simulacra lacking profound virtualization.
Nathan Thomas
So? It doesn't do anything profound or interesting and its best ideas are lifted from other materials and executed poorly. I stand by my statement.
Owen Sanders
>The general trends of human "advancement" is a gradual movement towards complete personal isolation lol no it isn't, it's the complete opposite. Stupid.
Alexander Bennett
>The future of art you'll never get it, OP
Mason Rivera
>They're all inferior or copied Only if you look at each element individually, which you'd be a fool to do, because we don't experience them individually when we play. The actual experience is not at all being referred to in this critique. This point really makes no sense to me, there weren't any video games before video games, and a video game is a very different experience from say looking at a painting or listening to music. Drastically different.
>The immersion is also far too weak as it stands to immerse anyone Have you ever even played a game? What games have you played? What genres do you consider yourself an expert on and what are the notable works in those genres that you see?
Jaxson King
Why would humans be kept alive in a virtual reality if you can simply greatly reduce their numbers, through antinatalist policies, environmental disasters, nuclear warfare or genocide? The future of society lies in the replacement of humans by machines. At this point, you're either a technoapologists, an anti-tech or braindead. All cultural and political talks are here to keep the crowds busy. The only real problem is whether or not we'll let technology replace us.
