Books like this game? Or books that make you feel like how this game feels?

Books like this game? Or books that make you feel like how this game feels?

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House of Leaves

you're going to have to explain what's literary about this game and what it feels like

Not OP, but hello :)

The game literally includes a bookshelf that shows off his preferences.

If on a Winter's Night a Traveler is one such book.

Adaptation is also referenced on the shelf in a roundabout way seeing as Adaptation is a peculiar and meta adaptation of the novel The Orchid Thief.

It's more a metagame than anything, interesting in some ways. Plays more like an interactive movie.

Any books nearly as tryhard and uninspired as this shitty "game"

Pale Fire, I think

i haven't played this game, but the stanley parable struck me as what it'd be like if italo calvino made a videogame

>tryhard
As if trying hard is a fucking bad thing.

>uninspired
You want another Call of Duty or generic roguelike? Look through the multitudes of repetitive and bland bullshit games going on in Steam, including the AAAs, and keep telling yourself that the people trying new and personal things are the uninspired. You are clearly salty about something.

bro

Try some Robert Anton Wilson.

Meta-fiction to stimulate the shit tastes of pseudo-intellectuals combined with an easily cathartic and confessional ending to rope in those who love melodrama?

Probably some YA shit.

Novelty does not equal to greatness. And it is even worse if an object that is merely a novelty is lauded as something revolutionary because it will draw their eyes away from the truly new and great.

You instantly dismiss meta-fiction as pseudo shit? Fuck man, you're missing out on a lot.

As for the ending, it clearly leaves a lot to be reflected on (if you actually like to do that, instead of crafting your intellectual identity out of simply calling other people "pseuds").

So what great games are being ignored because of this one?

There are a lot of qualities about TBG that make it fantastic in my eyes. But even putting them aside, yes if there are two games of equal substance, I'll take novelty over tired repeats anyday.

The game itself has some of the most obvious metaphors in the world (e.g. he wants to find a 'light' in a dark place - therefore lamp-post) and the whole 'acting on stage' thing. Merely coming into contact with some imagery from Chekhov would destroy all that shit.

The plot of the game is supposed to get you to think about the open-ness of interpretations and all that, but Davey's own interpretations of the games are so high-school level that you can't help but cringe. Umberto Eco did it better in Foucault's Pendulum when he crafted an elaborate conspiracy theory out of tons of real historical research.

The ending a supposedly game--changing twist, but leaves us with a long stretch of the main character ranting about his insecurity and eventually floating off into some 'higher realization' - and that's exactly like the ending of Evangelion. Similarly to Evangelion fans, people turn to it as therapy rather than art. JackSepticEye's LP where he breaks down into tears because the game 'spoke to him' (youtube.com/watch?v=OPP9pdApRQE) has greater literary value because it shows you exactly how people get fooled by this sort of novelty.

when reading the description of this game it sounded like a fun bit of exploration into an unknown game devs trove of unfinished games. I was expecting to experience and interpret them on my own and instead had to have Davey's thoughts and interpretations blasted through my ear-drums and poured like searing hot sulfur in my eyes. I could not enjoy any second of it because of that faggot's shitty voice throughout the entire thing. I hope I never have to read a book like this.

>The game itself has some of the most obvious metaphors in the world (e.g. he wants to find a 'light' in a dark place - therefore lamp-post) and the whole 'acting on stage' thing.
The lamp post symbol is not as interesting as the theme about who put it there. This taps into the process of creating art itself. Not even as an audience interpreting the work, but the creator himself interpreting his own work before, during, and after its creation. You compare to Chekhov, but you're ignoring the aspects of the metaphors that tap into the vidya medium.

>The plot of the game is supposed to get you to think about the open-ness of interpretations and all that, but Davey's own interpretations of the games are so high-school level that you can't help but cringe.
Uuum... Exactly, so you are not satisfied with them and begin your own interpretations alongside Daveys, as well as your interpretations OF his interpretations.

>Umberto Eco did it better in Foucault's Pendulum when he crafted an elaborate conspiracy theory out of tons of real historical research.
OK.

>The ending a supposedly game--changing twist
According to who?
>but leaves us with a long stretch of the main character ranting about his insecurity and eventually floating off into some 'higher realization'
This is such a vague description that it's unclear what aspect you even have a problem with. For me, the higher realisation involved a lot of themes simultaneously. What did you experience?

>and that's exactly like the ending of Evangelion.
OK.

>Similarly to Evangelion fans, people turn to it as therapy rather than art.
So you're annoyed that some people find art therapeutic?

>JackSepticEye's LP where he breaks down into tears because the game 'spoke to him' (youtube.com/watch?v=OPP9pdApRQE) has greater literary value because it shows you exactly how people get fooled by this sort of novelty.
>fooled
So the person who was experiencing real emotion and catharsis was being fooled? What difference would it make at that point if it was genuine or not? Feels are feels, user.

If you want that sort of interesting exploration experience, The Witness may be a better game for that. Although it does have a lot of mysticism-touting audio tapes around.

played that one, but thanks.

mostly just butthurt that I spent money on the piece of shit and could have refunded it if I didn't pause it to run an errand for an hour.

>the whole 'acting on stage' thing
What did you make of this?

>the creator interpreting his own work before, during, and after its creation.

That very thing itself has existed since T.S. Eliot decided to dump a whole load of 'footnotes' at the end of the Wasteland. It's not special to the vidya game medium.

A thing I liked would be the aesthetic, and I thought the Tower was interesting, but like said, it would be better as an art object in itself. But the aesthetic of emptiness and commentary has appeared since Beckett and Absurdism.

>interpretations of his interpretations

That can apply to pretty much any meta-fiction that has the author's comments in it. But I don't give a shit about making interpretations of interpretations unless it ties into the narrative in a powerful way. One example of this would be Woody Allen's frequent use of people talking pseudo-intellectually about Art and Literature in his films. And those are powerful because they usually pull out of the interpretation to show how the people who make it are placed within a larger cycle that they can't explain or are unaware of, despite their own intellectuality.

>art as therapy

I'm not annoyed. But a person can find anything therapeutic if he happens to find it in a bad spot. From puzzle-solving to MLP. The problem comes when you conflate therapy with criticism. I love Eva myself, for example, but I'm well aware of the humongous lack of characterization and flaws that it has when you compare it to even some works that were released in the past century.

>fooled

Okay, I used the wrong word there. I would say more like - 'enthralled'. Feels are feels, but feels aren't all there are. There must be an intellectual basis to criticize things. On the other hand, when you watch the video you can see how he grasps upon the obvious as profound because it calls out to his personal experience, but he is unable to cement exactly why that is so. That's a sign that a person is merely brushing across the ideas without realizing how they fit or fail to fit.

If you've watched Synecodche New York, you'd know how obvious the symbol is. 'Acting' personas, or playing various social 'roles' - anxiety and all that standard stuff. The dialogue itself is embarassingly confessionalist in the same vein as that movie.

Basically your entire post can be summarised as
>some books and movies have done it better

I'm not going to argue against this. What I will argue is that games have not, and I for one am glad to see this sort of work move into vidya, for more people to be exposed to in a new format.

You come across as though you'd prefer it just doesn't exist, and I can't understand that given your supposed appreciation of meta-narratives in other mediums.

Personally, I found those interpretations of interpretations, and most of the symbols of the game, very tied in with the narrative. I found the whole experience wonderfully contained and powerful. So did lots of other people.

I fucking LOVE that movie. (Do you hate it because the symbology was obvious?)

But again, the difference with TBG, being a game, is you get to LITERALLY play a role in the drama. So yes, there is the layers of presentation within the characters of the story, but then there is ALSO the stage of your own first-person inner dialogue. Not to mention the stage we are both performing on now in discussing the work.

No, you were saying that the game did these things, and that was what made it special. I said that these things weren't special. And, even then, there is no point to criticism without comparison.

Since the things that were supposedly special aren't special at all, then the thing that saves the game has to be the content itself. The technique. But the dialogue is painfully bad and unsubtle. It chooses to tell everything it has rather than leave things out. It has a lot of potential if you culled about 80% of the writing. What a waste of all those interesting graphical assets.

And my comparisons raise some other differences. In the Woody Allen example, I was saying how the interpretation and mere commentary on it is not the end all, unlike what most people think. There needs to be that artistry that opens it up. Like how the beautiful cinematography of Manhattan makes the prattles of it's pseudo-intellectual characters seem small in a visceral and direct way.

I don't think that it shouldn't exist. I simply don't think that it should be called a masterpiece or a powerful experience or whatever hyperbole people love to throw out. Since the medium itself is so devoid of anything, they stick themselves to all these small works.

I also think that the symbols are tied into the narrative, but that doesn't really say much. Even if the symbols are tied into the narrative, if the narrative itself is bland and its use of those symbols is bland then it doesn't really matter.

And popularity is not an indicator for quality.

I hate it because it was a boring sad old white guy film with the added quirks that Kaufmann threw in. Symbology is one thing, but it does not subsist on itself, but the characterization of a dull and sad man is the laziest thing in the world - given how many times that narrative has appeared in the past. It was around since John Updike & Norman Mailer, and tons of books nowadays are nothing but sad guy stories.

>No, you were saying that the game did these things, and that was what made it special.
You mean unique? Yes, in the vidya marketplace. Definitely.

>There is no point to criticism without comparison.
Completely disagree.

>the things that were supposedly special aren't special at all
Do you mean unique? Again, they ARE unique in vidya. So if it was the decision about whether to play a game or read a book, then you might have a point. But if it is about what game to play, no other game has accomplished anything like this. I think that is special.

>the dialogue is painfully bad and unsubtle. It chooses to tell everything it has rather than leave things out.
We already covered this. It is inviting you to bring competing narratives the whole way through.

>And my comparisons raise some other differences. In the Woody Allen example, I was saying how the interpretation and mere commentary on it is not the end all, unlike what most people think. There needs to be that artistry that opens it up. Like how the beautiful cinematography of Manhattan makes the prattles of it's pseudo-intellectual characters seem small in a visceral and direct way.
You already said the visuals of TBG are striking... I think they do open up the narrative a lot more. I think the connection is very well done.

>I simply don't think that it should be called a powerful experience
So if people find it subjectively powerful... You want them to lie?

>Since the medium itself is so devoid of anything...
Exactly, which is why we should encourage more of this if we appreciate the direction it is heading.

>I also think that the symbols are tied into the narrative, but that doesn't really say much.
From previous post:
>I don't give a shit... Unless it ties to the narrative.
Fucking moving goalposts.

Again, we are just left with your personal label of "bland", which is fine, but just as vapid as other opinions of it being powerful.

So basically you don't want the same form of story to be told twice? And yet you don't like novelty for novelty sake...
Fuck, you're a hard nut to crack.

Someone besides me mentions TBG here for once

The two most important characteristics in the work is the use of mechanic as metaphor and an interest in digital sculpture.

Also the dialogue trees have some fairly beautiful moments. It's Veeky Forums because is shows a various degrees of misinterpretation and allows the audience (but doesn't force) to move past the superficial narrative to one that is sublime and is the most impressive translation of Eliot's idea of The Mythic Method in interactive media available.

There's a difference between novelty on the level of experimentation in technique, like the surrealists throwing together words for the sake of it, and novelty on the level of providing a new and powerful glimpse into a character's psychology through, but not limited to, experimental techniques.

No matter how many times sad old guy appears, he's gonna be sick of his loveless marriage, feeling alienated from his kids, and fearful of death. Does Synecdoche New York really pull away from any of these things? Sure, the execution is different, but in the end it’s all about the same old death and memento mori stuff. It doesn't show it in any sublime way, for example, with the cinematography of a Tarkovsky film. Of course I can pre-empt that you’re going to say the whole theatre within a theatre thing is that new take. But it still ends with that weepy sad guy going into death kind of thing that is so characteristic of those kinds of works. And the dialogue itself doesn’t have any of the poesy that many other better scripts do, due to it having those usual scenes like Cotard weeping about loneliness and all that. Pretty much the same flaw exists with the entirety of Kaufmann’s work, where he pushes for melodrama and paper thin characterization but tries to off-set it by appealing to his quirks.

>inviting to bring competing narratives

That’s the worst excuse I’ve heard for bad writing to exist. It’s like if you create a movie with bad dialogue and flimsy characters, you can simply escape by making it a meta-narrative and have the audience ‘be brought into’ how bad it is through getting them to ‘have competing narratives’.

>exactly why we should encourage more of this

Once again, I never said we should purge it from existence. I’m merely pointing out flaws that exist. You can grab all the cool stuff that you want from it for later development, but if you’re going to talk about the whole experience, you have to address these flaws.

>the visuals of TBG are striking

The visuals are immediately striking, but that’s all on an aesthetic level. If you make this gigantic dark tower and tie it to something as obvious as dark feelings, then there’s nothing much. Manhattan contrasted the romantic scenery with the horrible characters in the plot itself, and it also specifically tied itself to the romantic delusions of a certain character within that cast.

>You want them to lie?

Now that’s just hyperbolizing my statement. There’s a way to critique something with a clear head, cut away from all the emotional experiences. There are works that’ve ‘made me think’ for maybe a few days afterwards. There are works that have made me cry. But there are few works that have stuck years and years later and still hold up due to being so powerfully intertwined to my experience and growth, such that I can understand new things year after year. I was merely using ‘a powerful experience’ as one of the critical standard terms that people fling about, but anything hyperbolic counts.

>symbols tying to narrative

Okay I will make this clear once and for all. Things tying to narrative is okay. Symbols tying to narratives is okay. But if you have a melodramatic scene that takes place in the rain, where rain is obviously linked up with sadness, and you have a movie that makes more subtle uses of the rain and weather to tell different states of mind – like an Akira Kurosawa movie – then it’s obvious that one is better than the other.

did you notice how he used drastically different texture resolutions (and frequently no texture) in the same level in a clearly systematic way?
Or his very specific use of colors to reinforce themes?
Are you interested in the camera angles he selects for the beginning of each level?

All of these things are subtleties that are important to the whole of the work.

If you're looking for books like it, the is a particular passage in Portrait of an Artist that is structurally similar to TBG about a villenelle

This Japanese porn novel is better than your shitty indie game.

No, for me the powerful new accomplishment was the Borgesian regress into death (and therefore meaninglessness) that persists in spite of the toiling away at trying to MAKE something immortal and meaningful.

Sorry, it's hard for me to out into words... But the sheer scope of the theatrical project in the warehouse added such power to the point about the futility of such endeavours. Ultimately, for me the existential hit of that movie was that it created so much effort and momentum within itself in trying to escape from the finale, but all of those efforts were merely part of the spiral towards the inevitable.

I've never seen another piece of art pull it off with the same kind of forcefulness and watertightness, and I was quite in awe of it.

You think the work is about a 'regress into death'?

>That’s the worst excuse I’ve heard for bad writing to exist. It’s like if you create a movie with bad dialogue and flimsy characters, you can simply escape by making it a meta-narrative and have the audience ‘be brought into’ how bad it is through getting them to ‘have competing narratives’.
Completely agree, if it was an excuse made in hindsight, and not a conscious element of the design in the first place.

>you have to address these flaws.
What flaws? You have only offered examples of other works being great, and vague statements about this game having nothing powerful to offer.

>The visuals are immediately striking, but that’s all on an aesthetic level.
Dusagree. They are striking and connected to the themes in an intellectual level as well.

>There’s a way to critique something with a clear head, cut away from all the emotional experiences.
I think we have entirely different values about critiquing. Especially when something is aiming to elicit emotion. Again, feels are feels. It's like, if something makes you cry, but then you say "it was actually inferior so it SHOULDN'T have made me cry". But it did.

>There are works that’ve ‘made me think’ for maybe a few days afterwards. There are works that have made me cry. But there are few works that have stuck years and years later and still hold up due to being so powerfully intertwined to my experience and growth, such that I can understand new things year after year.
TBG is all of those things for some people. So they say so. Deal with it.

>if you have a melodramatic scene that takes place in the rain, where rain is obviously linked up with sadness, and you have a movie that makes more subtle uses of the rain and weather to tell different states of mind – like an Akira Kurosawa movie – then it’s obvious that one is better than the other.
OK, well maybe we need to agree to disagree because for me TBG was in the latter camp.

Borges wasn't a writer of Death. Despite his constant fixation on the Labyrinth, he took the act of reading as pure play emanating from the subtle joy of his style, mixing together erudition with Irony. His heaven was in the form of a library. Do not rope Borges into this simply because the movie contains an infinity of mirrors and fictional doubles.

The movie is merely a sick child's take on the master from Argentina. It always draws away from the ecstasy of Borges' symbols into its own mundane solipsism, the trite worries of Kaufmann or those that feel like him. To compare both is a stain to Borges' name.

I think the work is about a lot of things.

Good pieces of art have their own agenda, but also room for the audience to get many experiences out of them. They are relationships, and the audience brings something to the table.

One of the themes I got out of the man's efforts to try to make a piece of art that could encapsulate an entire life and consciousness. I think this also had a lot to do with his mid life crisis and health concerns (remember the opening) where middle aged men realise they are going to die.

The project, therefore, was a (perhaps unconscious) attempt to create something immortal. Some existential theorists have claimed that much art serves this purpose, to overcome death.

And yet, in doing the work, he could NEVER pinpoint himself. The more he tried to represent himself on the stage, the more he moved to a new place that was directing this drama, and a new level needed to be represented. So the work could never actually capture him, and he could never escape the fact that he was a man in a body that was going to die. He was always outside his art.

And maybe his work continued on age the film, which would mean his fear of personal death would have encouraged the creation of something greater that could outlive him. Or maybe it was just the inevitable end of all things, and his effort were futile.

Anyway, that's a bad explanation of one theme I took from the movie.

What's it called friend?

>his heaven was in the form of a [infinite] library
And Kaufman's was an infinite theatre.

You draw the parallels yourself and then forbid them to be extrapolated?

Kaufmans work was depressing compared to Borges. You think that means they have nothing in common?

Some people like to play with Death, user.

sorry, I'm functionally retarded and thought you meant The Beginner's Guide

after re-reading the thread, it's clear you weren't

No harm done, I appreciated the (accidental) invitation to write out another description of my take on the film. All good practice.

Alas, Kaufman did not understand the nature that places Borges and Kafka in eternity is their all encompassing world, the former, of ornate academics, and the latter, of corridors merely full of laughter and paradox. Kaufman could not build such a world because his emotional neediness came through. When his own emotional banalities entered into the work, the curtain fell on the infinite stage, and it merely became his own chicken dance. Such a man was forever a grasper, and could never even touch the corners of infinity.

>all encompassing world of ornate academics
>all encompassing world of corridors merely full of laughter and paradox
>all encompassing world of emotional neediness

Works for me.

You do know Kafka wrote The Trial, right?

>it shouldn't have made me cry

No, I don't particularly care about that. What determines my emotional disposition towards something is based on my own biases and environment. On the other hand, what I care about is that even after the feelings should pass, the work continuously builds me up year after year no matter how many times I return to it.

>TBG is all of those things for some people. Deal with it.

I will accept that. But, honestly, if you witness a work done better overall, then the previous work will simply be wiped from your memory. In the end, more important than emotion is affecting memory, and that is done through a certain intellectual rigor - making everything fit. If a great character has touched you, then you cannot help but see the actions of that character when you meet with people in real life.

I just have to ask you, have there been moments whereby, in your life, when coming across certain things, that your mind draws back to TBG's characters or setting or anything? Not just other meta-fiction and books, but palpable moments of life and interaction. And beyond merely creating a recollection, did it actually precipitate something in your disposition or actions?

>I just have to ask you, have there been moments whereby, in your life, when coming across certain things, that your mind draws back to TBG's characters or setting or anything? Not just other meta-fiction and books, but palpable moments of life and interaction. And beyond merely creating a recollection, did it actually precipitate something in your disposition or actions?
Yes.

The music has come back to me during scenes of my life, and then I have been struck with feelings of detachment from my experiences with the same sense of melancholy that I got with that game. Not a thought but a feeling, but to describe the feeling would be like how it would feel to try to communicate the meaning of what I am doing in my life but not being able to.

I was also inspired by the game to keep writing, and when I feel like I can't be bothered or I have nothing to say then thinking about TBG has been inspirational to me.

I also find the symbol of the gate (where one switch must be pressed inside and both doors are closed), as well as the level that was a macroscopic version of that symbol with a whole lifetime inside it, keeps coming back to me like a riddle I want to solve. It comes up when I am thinking of difficult transitions.

Honestly, I am amazed that people who are into philosophy and gaming could possibly find the experience of TBG underwhelming.

It fails as a game because it's not fun and it fails as a story because it's so painfully melodramatic and hokey.

...

Pale fire

Listen to Davey Wreden as himself whine in your ear for 90 minutes about what a shitty friend he is while you walk through cool but viciously depressing fake indie game sets