Can literature ever catch back up to movies and video games?

Can literature ever catch back up to movies and video games?

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As entertainment - never.
Basically, fiction literature is only useful to pseuds now

>mediums

haha yeah user books are not mediums at all

the plural of medium is media

spec ops was p neat tbqh

Fuck off shitskin

Virgin gamer shill jew

I apologize for the outburst, friend. It's been a tough day

>game forces you to kill innocent people to progress
>WOW DUDE YOU KILLED THOSE INNOCENT PEOPLE, YOU SICKO. REALLY MAKES YA THINK ABOUT AGENCY AND THE HUMAN CONDITION.

Man that movie was fucking bad.

Still 100 years ahead of all other mediums

Damn what happened to Winston? He had really good comics from like 2009 to 2013. Great art, regular uploads, the funny ones were funny, the sad ones were sad, the philosophical ones were philosophical, and so on and so forth. They degenerated into redditcore nonsense though. Sad.

>not linking apocalypse now

Maybe that explains it?

Do music and physical/digital paintings belong in the running for "most tragic/dark media"?
Not just whiny bleak rock or johnny cash songs, but classical pieces and Argentine tango about grief, sorrow, loneliness, confusion, disaster?

My true answer to the OP is: audio books which skip through time and space rapidly, unlike a paper book. The classical writing style is constrained and dying. See historical series and writing by "extra credits" for what books need to become to stay enriching and relevant, rather than painfully slow and tasking.
Though variety in prose, and other aspects which can be experimented with, have an extremely valuable place. As you can likely tell from childish, verbose, writing - I think that structure and skill in writing is an important skill to understanding communication and the order of informaiton. If we're to save books in this overbreeding world of plebs then they need an new, accessible form.
Thoughts?

If we ever have an apocalyptic event severe enough to wreck the electrical system for decades, but not so bad as to completely destroy civilization . . . maybe?

I played Spec Ops because I heard it was totally like, fantastic, top of the line storytelling.

It was about on par with a good episode of 24. This is the critically acclaimed top of the line storytelling that is available for gaming. The best writing I've ever experienced are the comic parts of Fallout 2, and that shit is basically an Always Sunny episode.

At least Civ and Crusader Kings lets you build your own story and use your imagination, stories on rails are almost always shit.

Dwarf Fortress AAR's and/or progression are always great too That is truly where gaming excels over literature.

looking to AAA games for interesting story-telling is a waste of time

There are lots of game with exceeding complex narrative, even ones that utilize the mechanics available in them to push it further (pic-related is the pinnacle)

Bioshock Infinite was the best example. A Game That Has Finally Brought Gaming into its own.

What shit

I have liked Life is Strange alot, at least Tell Tale is able to understand what that aspect of the medium is about.

Bioshock Infinite made strange concessions for the sake of marketability that negatively affected the consistency as a narrative.

>weakening the mid-game choices that could've made the subversion stronger
>flooding the combat to weaken its part in the narrative
>trying that hard to tie a bow on an almost great ending

Life is strange is okay, but TellTale fail to use the ability to craft any environment to their advantage. I think they could work hard on that and introduce more mechanics to convey specific parts (like The Beginner's Guide)

Fallout 3. But we're off topic.
Also Bulletstorm is absolutely tragic, rich and beautiful though it's not AAA, the team was small upon first release.

Hey I have a relevant question: Was Metro 2033 better as a book or as a game?

game

>Fallout 3
I'm sorry, but I'm not sold on that one. I haven't been able to follow a bethesda campaign through (sometimes they have good side-quests though, and Skyrim was a great allegory for the american civil-war, when it wasn't talking about the dragon)

Define "not sold"? It's a decent story experience, sides and main. Better for a kid's mind than a call of duty game at the least.
Define great?

Magnum Opus of videogame storytelling is and shall ever be Metal Gear Solid 2. Its narrative content cannot, I repeat, cannot be replicated and be as impactful on another medium.

It certainly was the most daring. I think it was a bit too po-mo though, and the last fight looked like it was forced on the developers by suits.

I mean great as in a powerfully emotive and carefully constructive narrative that puts itself before the sale of 'the product'. A big issue is how games define their maturity through ratings.

Maybe i'm just not someone that likes their work, though.

Movies and Vidya, Paintings and Music, these are only different manifestations of a message. Books are the message within the message of a message, just like any other type of art.
What should they become, to stay relevant in a world in which the flashiest, most colorful and culturally appreciable parrot are the norm?
Can they evolve, while staying true to themselves?

Excuse my englando, I'm still learning.

As a kid I was pretty lost. The transition from the sea-base to facility in which you fight raiden - was completely unclear. Then the transition to New York?? How? The Snake section didn't feel very tied in, cool as it was. Why was there a Vampire? His death was cool.
MGS3 was far more coherent. Surely that's a better story? The Saboteur has a very good story and delivery. How could a book ever be as effective as SotC?

The last of us is mostly a meme but I was very impressed by the ending. Having the main character completely fail and reject the lessons of the story was way more daring than I expected of a video game.

Books will be fine.

Artists from visual media still look to them for esoteric inspiration, they still last and can be appreciated for much longer than you think, and most of all they are indexable, searchable, and full of valuable observations, which makes them indispensable in the digital age.

Plus the trade of writing, whether writing agreements, specifications, dialogue, contracts, stories, or literature, will never go away. It might be subcontracted to increasingly sophisticated AI tho

maybe not as art but literature has more easy, fun degeneracy

Surely I answered your question and gave an example? They need to speed up (possible by being audio only/read), be more accessible and change their approach time and space and thought to one which is only possible in dreams and words, which games are doing and video-media is afraid of.

As for your Englosch, just be more careful references. You use the word "they" but in a new line, presumably referring to books, twice.
Lay off the attempts at being poetic until you're more confident in the function of thoughts that: emerge but make sense in feeling which they will -invoke- (-not- just feeling to you) while being less literal.

Anyway, Planescape Torment and Sunless Sea are the most fantastic motivations for the OPs question.

I never understand the man vs technology or man vs no god. Why would you fight technology and why would you dwell on something that is not

You're not the sharpest tool in the shed, are you

it is as rei said.
our societal preoccupation is in immersive escapism. literature is a purer art form because of the simple fact that it takes a good writer to create good literature. and a good writer is someone who can read well, write well, concentrate, sit still, is intelligent, meditative, etc. consider the barriers of entry.

the problem isn't with literature. fo literature is writing made into art. the problem is with society's appetites. a way of life that clashes with the very act of tuning off all electronics, picking up a book, and reading. its simple on paper, but how many people find ways to not read and still entertain themselves

explain it to me

games and movies still need writers. The society is to blame is the easy cop out of people who would not have found an audience even when books were the only entertainment

yes but games and moves =/= literature as literature.

This. Mgs2 is like the muholand drive of videogames.

Why is this a problem?

>used words in a 'literary' way to describe his like for spec ops

hmmmm

The inferiority of video games isn't that they can't tell a good story, which a lot of people ITT seem to think. The real problem is that video games are heavily limited in the kind of themes and ideas they can explore, so they tend to not be interested in that aspect of the art at all.

Basically, games want to be fun. If a book isn't fun, you'll still read it, and if a movie isn't fun, you'll still watch it (if you're not a pleb). But if a game isn't fun, you'll put it down. This is true even if you're really into games. The fact that they require actual effort, rather than passivity, means that if the effort doesn't give constant rewards, you'll move on to something else.

So, if a game wants to explore something deep, it's largely limited to these ironic analyses, like that of Spec Ops, because they have to be fun. The Heart of Darkness game is not fun. It's some tense boat travel and some talking, up until the end. Spec Ops is fun. It's non-stop shooting and killing up to the twist finish. The Heart of Darkness game is impossible to make because it's not fun, so in order to these ideas, Spec Ops does this whole ironic thing where the character is supposed to feel manipulated and shit because they were having so much fun. Spec Ops is not the only game to do this. Undertale does it. I'm sure dozens of other games have done it.

Not all games have to do this irony thing, but they are pretty limited in what they can explore. Papers Please is this really good exploration of this bureaucratic state job in some ways. It's stressful, it's got a good story, etc. But it's not tedious. You can't explore the tedium of the job, because nobody would play that game. Basically, Papers Please is fun, and that undermines a LOT of what Papers Please is trying to say.

Every medium has to deal with the link between accessible and depth, and games just haven't figured it out yet. Everything has to be fun, and there's only so much you can explore when everything is fun.

As one of the rare people to have read the book before the game, the book. The game does a great job and really paints the world better than the book though. If you have to pick between the two I'd say the game desu desu

>fallout 3
>decent story
surely you are joking, right?

>But it's not tedious. You can't explore the tedium of the job, because nobody would play that game
youtube.com/watch?v=2LtiHla1dNg

your opinions are as gay as your typing style

I said decent story experience, half quoter. The main story wasn't glorious but it was revealed and offered to the player nicely.

It was utter shit and should be actively avoided.
"Have you seen my dad? Middle aged man?" The story.

Man vs technology explores the relationship between people and the changing technological landscape. Technology is a shaper of social change l, whether good or bad. It's not so much fighting against technology as exploring the ways technology changes society and what impact it has on individuals, particularly in light of the accelerated technological change occuring today.

Man vs no god is basic nihilism. How does a person deal with lack of inherent meaning in the universe, etc. Many people have trouble coming to terms with the lack of a god.

it was a meme game heavily shilled by its developers on /v/.

That said, video games are generally an inferior vehicle for telling a story. A video game is about making a story, not telling one, not reading one or listening to one. The player should feel as though what he is doing within the game is impactful, changing the world. Video games are a safe space to play out the power fantasy.

9/10ths of narrative heavy games I've played, even the few with interesting narratives, would have been better as films or books. And the majority of them would have been sub-YA level literature, the writing on average is absolutely awful, full of B movie tier plot holes, poor characterization, zero introspection, ect. This of course is because the industry's writing caste is full of the trash that couldn't hack it in Hollywood and couldn't get published by anything but a vanity press.

Your average D&D Gamemaster is a more compelling story teller than your average professional video game writer.

The metal gear submarine crashes through downtown. The scene got cut because of 9/11.

What does Veeky Forums think of KOTOR 2?

It's hailed on /v/ as one of the best written video games.

I have no problems with the actual dialogue or characters, but it illustrates a major problem with vidya: you cant complete a narrative without the budget for art, programming, design. Thus a 10/10 game becomes 6/10 with its high points being the narrative content, which doesnt even have a real ending.

I haven't seriously played games in about 3 years. I haven't touched a game at all in about 6 months. They're so childish these days it's unreal.

its meme. all flaws are pushed to the side because of the cuts. on the paper and pathos wise ep 3 maybe better than KOTOR 2

because escapist immersion doesn't solve anything. it detracts from man acting in the world as a agent of change, from examining his problems and tackling them head on, from taking the time to sit down and read the thoughts of the learned

The point was that you could just stop to play the game though.

For the most part strategy and arpg are outside this criticism. Any narrative game is childish unfortunately.

>good story
Fuck off pleb.
Something like Hylics or Vagrant Story has better form, style, and narrative than most books you've read.

abloobloo fun is bad *masturbates self to greeks*
wow ur so mature

I seriously hope this post is either bait or part of a false flag operation.

thats not infinite jest

Neither.
Sorry, some of us aren't pretentious teenagers.

Says he whose post reeks of 12 year old destined to become a basement dweller and "video game activist".

>we wuz artists

I don't think games are art, they're games.
When I was 12, you were a one-night stand waiting to happen.

So superior "form, style and narrative" to works of art exists outside of art?

Sick burn, by the way.

Yes, art is largely awful.

I'm 32, I'd rather play video games then watch sports night after night like my father, or stare at netflix with my wife getting drunk like all my friends. This naturally in addition to reading.

dullards who can't to imagery from prose need to be stimulated on no less than three senses to immerse themselves, typical for thumb-twaddling babbies.

fact: if you can't land sick rails on quake 3 arena you have no business calling yourself patrician

wow so mature

...

the codex will die in your lifetime.

my post still holds truth

Not at all.

In the 19th century a gentleman rode horses, was an adequate fencer, had knowledge of chess and the opera, and was versed in the classics and language.

Vidya is pathetic compared to these pursuits, but it still holds that these men were not dullards like some ivory tower captive who grew pale reading books and doing nothing.

then i challenge you to a duel with words

debate me

Getting drunk while reading is fantastic, however.

Nope. Hookah however...

f'dora

>Fallout 3
New Vegas is objectively better

>In the 19th century a gentleman rode horses, was an adequate fencer, had knowledge of chess and the opera, and was versed in the classics and language.

Or he was an absurd, opium-addicted swine with a thin veneer of culture.

SOTL is Heart of Darkness with a shitty game attached mixed with some Inferno.

My friend told me to play that shit so I gave it a try actually expecting something and was totally blown away with how horribly it was executed. It's seriously shit and the fact that you couldn't simply make the choice to not do it (HURR DURR YOU DIDN'T HAVE TO KEEP PLAYING THE GAME HURR DURR LUL) was pretty fucking poor. At any time in the military you can disobey orders. You are stuck with the consequences of your actions but it can still be done. Something as simple as offering a choice and then giving you shit over what you chose would've been better than "lol this is the only thing you can do you are the daemons"

Fuck off. That isn't choice. That isn't morality. That isn't anything but some false empathy for fucking pixels on a screen that do not exist anywhere else.

You completely misread my post. I said that video games CAN have a good story, but they lack thematic depth. This is mostly because the need for the "game" part to be as accessible and fun as possible, which limits the kinds of stories and themes than can be explored. Paper Please is an example of the basic fun of the game undermining the whole idea of such a stressful, tedious existence.

It's just that accessibility is even more baked into the form of video games than with film or lit. Even a hardcore gamer will lose patience quickly if the gameplay systems aren't "fun" (which usually means skinner box-y). With lit and film, you can work your way up the accessibility "tier-list" and eventually stuff that would've bored you to tears when you were younger becomes fascinating and exciting. But with games, this sort of tier list barely exists. If gameplay isn't consistently exciting, then people will put the game down. Even though potentially, if a game wants to explore a certain idea deeply, it might at some point actually have to force the player to do things which just aren't fun. And it's easy to accept "non-fun" parts in a passive medium, but when you have to actually input actions it becomes worse than boring. It becomes tedious and miserable.

So, most games are just entertainment. Nothing worthwhile to think about. Like I said in my last post, some games like Undertale and Spec Ops try to be deep by having you do fun things and then saying "haha all that fun was bad," but, while this is powerful, there's a pretty limited scope of ideas which can be explored that way.

While I'm writing this all out, I want to say that there is another class of games that's worth playing (imo). This is the sort of game which wants you to learn its rules and language. Examples are Antichamber, The Witness, Dark Souls, Ico, Morrowind (?), Stalker (?) etc. These games don't say anything meaningful about "the human condition," but I think there is something worthwhile about exploring these worlds which are internally consistent and unformulaic. If they don't teach you anything about your world, they at least teach you a lot about their world, and this can definitely be edifying and satsifying

Video games are the least immersive form of entertainment because you're constantly thinking out how to game the mechanics.

Books are where its at, unless you're an autist who has to analyze every aspect of the author's grammar, punctuation, word choice, etc.

You're trying too hard to figure out the correct cynical perspective to have on something, just so that you can scramble to it and show off. Once you stop doing that you will be an adult.

If you liked the game that is fine but it was absolute shit and a glib facsimile of actual quality in both the realm of morality and storytelling.

>they lack thematic depth
Why?

Why do games have to be fun or accessible? Vagrant Story was neither.
You're delusional. Typical college freshman.
>"the human condition,"
Yup, freshman.

See Pic

>Why?
Pretty much why I said. It's the same reason blockbusters lack thematic depth. It has a lot to do with accessibility. Maybe try and name a game that has a lot of thematic depth in your opinion? I haven't played either of the games you listed.

>Why do games have to be fun or accessible? Vagrant Story was neither.
I remember this game, but I only played a couple of hours. I'm pretty sure that the reason it is neither fun nor accessible is more to do with the effect of time than anything else. But I'm sure it was trying to be fun back when it came out. Anyway, you haven't made an argument about it's themes or ideas so maybe you just mean that it has a fun story while being a total bitch to play in the 2010's?

>"the human condition,"
That's a pretty useful term to make it clear what I meant about those games just being about learning their own rules and systems. That their ideas aren't anything universal or applicable to life even if the games are still worthwhile.

But obviously your're just missing the point on purpose or you literally have autism so meh