What are some books like the story of Spec Ops: The Line...

Video games are more like a culmination of all art forms, or more often, just a selection of them. Personally I hate the "interactive animated movie" direction many of them are going. It is a waste of the medium and does nothing except directly copy the worst medium; film. It's mainly big companies that do it, they think too narrowly and lack originality so assume just making bad films is the way to go. They've unfortunately influenced the user base and industry at large, however.

inifinity jest

My War Gone By, I Miss it So.

They werent. It didnt make a ripple. The only ones triggered were the Polygon and RPS staff.

Matterhorn, except it is much better, since Spec Ops was shit.

Dismissing walking simulators """"""interactive animated movies""""""" is completely misunderstanding what the medium can be. Movies (and most art) is inherently uninteractive, so its not just a mashup or selection of them.

Are there growing pains? Yes. Is the culture around them fucking terrible? Sure. But the fact that you're too uneducated and stupid to appreciate and understand the finer ones does not make them just bad films.

I wasn't talking about walking simulators, they're few in numbers but generally shit too.

I was talking about games that amount to an animated movie with a few bits of non-challenging combat and quick-time events. You can have a challenging and mechanically-orientated game whilst still having strong setting and narrative elements. That's the point, you can because it's a video game. Not doing so is a waste of the medium and you should shit up something else.

>calls other people stupid
>"Movies (and most art) is inherently uninteractive"

consider this: pausing a scene in a movie to study it

>they're few in numbers but generally shit too
Most everything is generally shit. Just because you've played the Stanley Parable and Ethan Carter doesn't really constitute as having any breath in the walking simulator area.
>was talking about games that amount to an animated movie with a few bits of non-challenging combat and quick-time events.
Stuff like Uncharted? I mean, pop-culture will always be lowest common denominator garbage. I don't think that's going to ever change.
But then you've disitilled something, not interacted with it. A frame out of context is not a movie, it's an unit of a movie. Compare it to a single brushstroke on a painting, or one note in a musical piece. It's the same way that examining a sculpture up close, then from afar, then at a differect angle ect. is not interacting with it.

What's your favorite walking sim? Mine's The Beginner's Guide (also favorite game) followed by Goblet Grotto. I like them, because, walking sims have a freedom to their level design that more mechanically intensive works cannot use.

Pic-related might be what I consider the most important moment in gaming aesthetics.

I think The Beginner's Guide is much more interesting from an analysis standpoint. I've played it once and will probably never play it again. It's interesting to discuss, but honestly, It has interesting ideas, but it's pretty far gone into the postmodern hole.

I haven't played Goblet Grotto, but I'm downloading it right now.

If you want an experience, try kittyhorrorshow's work. It's a bit hit-and-miss, but they're honestly all interesting in their own way. Start with anatomy, that's probably her most accessible work.

>I've played it once
pic-related should give you an Idea of how much I liked the game (and not I didn't just leave it on all night). It's po-mo, but not in the way a lot of cynical-deconstructive works are pomo. I hope to write an autistically long essay on it eventually.

will try kittyhorrorshows's stuff. before playing Goblet Grotto, read the hieroglyphics chart.

shit, forgot the picture

I loved a few parts of the game, especially the house cleaning scene, but I can't play the game without having the taste of metatextual semen in my mouth. I don't fault you for liking it though.

I believe the way you define interaction is much different from how I would, and your view is flawed. I would appreciate it if you could explain your stance a bit, because I don't see how video games are interactive while other forms of art "inherently are not".

I'm not sure what you're getting at with the distilled thing, either, and why is it suddenly out of context? Is your criteria that the whole art must be interacted with all at once? Because video games would not meet that.

Interaction implies that the objects manipulate each other. Pausing the movie is a matter of convinience, not you affecting the movie. You might be affecting your experience of the movie, but the move itself does not have a pause built into it.
It's the same with books, you have the option of not reading, turning back pages ect, but the text remains the same. Now in video games, the text doesn't remain the same. We can directly affect it. We can choose to linger in a place that we are interested in. We can interact with other people in the game world. We can make decisions in how the story folds out. For an easy to understand sense, think evil-good morality systems. Now, obviously they're fucking stupid, but this can be scaled up and actually made into something beautiful. The art emerges from interaction, not observation.

I'm sorry for being very rambly and incomprehensible.

And no, art does not need to be interacted with all at once, but I'm trying to say that by pausing the movie, you're not watching a movie anymore.