Topic: "art" games that are fucking terrible

[popcorn]

madhair I'm on your podcast saying Resident Evil 1 is bollocks.

[FerriswheelBueller]

madhair I'm on your podcast saying Resident Evil 1 is bollocks.

Madhair has a podcast? Kin hell

[St_Eddie]

Am I correct in presuming that What Remains of Edith Finch would qualify as being a terrible and pretentious art game?  Yet, it's one of my personal favourites.  *shrugs shoulders*

Cronenberg and Kubrick are basic bitch tier cinema. Wake me up when you want to get real cineaste

or - alternatively - don't bother making the boring "i'm better than you" post next time it occurs to you to do so

Why are you taking offense, as though I've personally slighted you?  My point was that I don't really understand the dismissive attitude towards artistic games.  It's got absolutely sod all to do with being "better than you" and my post was not directed at you personally (the fact that you're the OP of the thread is irrelevant).  I was just weighing in on the topic at hand with my thoughts by way of a comparison.

[Thursday]

Edith Finch is great, that kind of game done right.

[St_Eddie]

Edith Finch is great, that kind of game done right.

Ah, good.  It's a belter of a game, all right.  In that case, I'm not sure that I've played any artistic games that would qualify.  Perhaps the free indie game/experiment Façade?  Again though, I found it to be a fantastic concept and very interesting to play, despite the limitations of the underlying technology itself.

[Zetetic]

Wonder what its development cost was, given half-a-decade of production, three environmental artists (plus concept artists, and a lead artist, and an animator, two additional animators, a rigger), at least four programmers, at least three people working on sound and so on.

If the only art games that can be 'done right' are those that can be produced by studies that have already won BAFTA awards and are then indulged with huge amounts of time and resources from the same 2-7 major funders, then it's a pointless medium and we should start hurting people for pretending otherwise.

Which is not precisely what anyone has actually said, but it does feel a bit like that's the ultimate implication.

There seems to be less tolerance for generally slightly janky games, but quite a lot of tolerance for fairly stupid games.

(What Remains of Edith Finch was quite good.)

[popcorn]

Madhair has a podcast? Kin hell

I'm going on your podcast next mate.

[peanutbutter]

As far as terrible art games go, it's hard to beat Tale of Tales. I'm not sure how they managed to so effectively con art circles into repeatedly getting their games exhibited when there's people pumping out free crap all the time online that's x100 times as inspired as anything they've ever done. Presumably they already knew people or something?

[Twed]

If the only art games that can be 'done right' are those that can be produced by studies that have already won BAFTA awards and are then indulged with huge amounts of time and resources from the same 2-7 major funders, then it's a pointless medium and we should start hurting people for pretending otherwise.

This is a bit of a random thing to ponder.

[Twed]

I don't really understand the dismissive attitude towards artistic games

I think this is just a thread specifically for taking down the ones we find offensively shitty and pretentious.

[peanutbutter]

I dont rate Edith Finch as highly as some, it's got some incredibly inspired moments but doesn't hold together too well at all for me. What I think it is, is a great use of (presumably quite hefty amounts of) funding to explore possibilities.

[Zetetic]

This is a bit of a random thing to ponder.

Oh.

[Thursday]

My controversial choice would be 30 flights of loving.

Most other "art games" get a backlash, but I've never seen anyone take down that one, so it's probably just that I'm thick.

[Twed]

Oh.

I just don't think that's the conclusion you have to draw. Did the discussion about Gone Home's shitty bike asset spur that thought? To me it means that "art games" should be focused. If anything, I think the easiest route to producing a good one is for it to be one developer's personal vision that doesn't rely on scaling beyond their means. Such a game would be called something like "Undertale".

[popcorn]

I don't really understand the dismissive attitude towards artistic games.

I'm 100% in favour of games taking themselves more seriously (as in as seriously as filmmakers and novelists take films and novels). When I was in the industry there were a lot of people who had Gears of War wallets and hated any sort of discussion about what stories might mean - in retrospect all stuff that foreshadowed the gamergate and then alt-right apocalypse.

But at the same time the world of indie/arty games has coughed up almost more cliches than anything else. Ooh another puzzle platformer that's a metaphor for miscarriage, wowo.

Journey's good.

[Thursday]

I just don't think that's the conclusion you have to draw. Did the discussion about Gone Home's shitty bike asset spur that thought? To me it means that "art games" should be focused. If anything, I think the easiest route to producing a good one is for it to be one developer's personal vision that doesn't rely on scaling beyond that means. Such a game would be called something like "Undertale".

Yes, I mean for me Gone Home's main failure isn't the jank, it's that at it's core it's a pretty hokey coming of age story. A higher budget wouldn't have solved that.

[St_Eddie]

Journey's good.

Aye, Journey is a very good game.  As is Flower from the same developer.

[Zetetic]

Did the discussion about Gone Home's shitty bike asset spur that thought?

Not specifically.

Such a game would be called something like "Undertale".

That seems so dreadfully limiting to me - because that's a hell of a lot of polish. And not everything will turn out to be worth that.

Getting Over It is a slightly unfair counterexample to pick - because clearly a fair bit of work has gone into it, and it makes a feature of its various bits of trashiness (most obviously building its world out of assets with almost no sense of cohesion and the protagonist being a generic Bryce-model or something). And it is focused. But it's also very cheap, and I think there's something wonderful in the tools and the like existing to enable those sort of things.

Maybe Anatomy or Diesel Train Simulator would be better examples. I don't know. I guess I don't want scale or something like that to have to always been abandoned in favour of polish.

[Twed]

I don't understand the hang-up about budget/effort/scale. There are so many good art games being made at every level, from PICO-8 to stuff that hits the front page on Steam. Some of the best art games are essentially folk art.

[Zetetic]

Perhaps I'd like to know what you're thinking of. Perhaps I should start an actual thread to discuss them in, even though goutpony's mostly fucked off to be with the apocalypse.

If I do, there better be at least something a bit shit about these good games.

[Twed]

I could probably show you 20 game developers who produce what would qualify to most as art games.

http://vacuumflowers.com/projects/ to begin with.

[Noonling]

The Stanley Parable is massively overrated. It's a decent game but jeez from the amount of love it gets you'd think its the Second Coming of the babby Jesus.

Is Undertale an art game? 'Cause that was a whole load of wank. Couldn't even finish it.

EDIT: Oh god I just looked up The Stanley Parable and at full price its £10. I wouldn't pay more than £2 for it. I think I got it for free.

[The Boston Crab]

Art games aren't games. They're interactive software. They're as much a game as using the self-service checkout is a game.

[Phil_A]

As far as terrible art games go, it's hard to beat Tale of Tales. I'm not sure how they managed to so effectively con art circles into repeatedly getting their games exhibited when there's people pumping out free crap all the time online that's x100 times as inspired as anything they've ever done. Presumably they already knew people or something?

Oh god yeah, I remember starting a thread on here about The Path years and years ago. Absolute trash clearly designed by the kind of wankers that believe lowering oneself to "enjoy" a mere "game" created for entertainment is something beneath contempt.

So many art games have come along in the decade since then that integrate the message with the gameplay in often satisfying ways, without trying to pretend they aren't part of the same medium as Pac-Man and Mortal Kombat. I suspect the Tales Of Tales crew thought the people buying their products were idiots and they were bringing high culture to an intellectually bereft arena, but the truth is they wouldn't have known a decent game mechanic if it bit them on the arse.

Funnily enough, it turns out if they treat your audience with absolute contempt they won't want to invest in your product. Check out this load of passive-aggressive wank:

https://www.polygon.com/2015/6/22/8826145/tale-of-tales-studio-will-no-longer-make-games-after-commercial

Famous for creating challenging digital experiences that broadened the theoretical scope of electronic gaming, Tale of Tales pointed to a series of unfortunate events that finally knocked them out. When funding for video games in Belgium was cut off, the team elected to try and make a more traditional game that would appeal to traditional gamers. The result was Sunset, an adventure game set in a fictional South American country during a period of upheaval.

"We studied [other, successful games] and figured out how to make our next project more accessible," the post said. "At least more accessible to people who actually play and buy games (the others, we decided, can just go to hell for the moment since they apparently didn’t care as much about us as we do about them).

"Nevertheless, even within Sunset’s carefully constructed context of conventional controls, three-act story and well defined activities, we deeply enjoyed the exploration of themes, the creation of atmosphere, the development of characters, and so on. Abandoning some of our more extreme artistic ambitions actually made work easier and more enjoyable. And that’s when we should have realized that we were on the wrong path. Because whatever we enjoy is never, ever, what the gaming masses enjoy."

If that wasn't enough, here's the bloke's Patreon page. He's like the games industry equivalent of that Swedish post-modernism comic which has fifty identical panels of a bald bloke sat a desk.

https://www.patreon.com/MichaelSamyn

Throughout our involvement with videogames we have continuously attempted to “make games for people who don’t play games.” We wanted to use videogames as a mature medium and work with subject matter and form that could be appreciated by anyone, whether they’re familiar with games or not. After a decade or so we realized that this plan wasn’t working.

Only gamers play games. That was true ten years ago. And it remains true today. So it was time to move on.

What is true is this guy is a charlatan and no-one is buying his snake oil any more. Many, many others have long since surpassed his cack-handed attempts at integrating artistic ideas into games, people who actually care about games and are pushing the medium forward.

[peanutbutter]

I suspect the Tales Of Tales crew thought the people buying their products were idiots and they were bringing high culture to an intellectually bereft arena, but the truth is they wouldn't have known a decent game mechanic if it bit them on the arse.

Tbh I'd say it is a somewhat intellectually bereft arena in some ways. Actually liking games in some manner would be a pretty important starting point for wanting to make a good one though.
I do feel like a lot of art/tech crossover stuff tends to be just people looking for an easy gimmick to launch themselves with.

My controversial choice would be 30 flights of loving.

Most other "art games" get a backlash, but I've never seen anyone take down that one, so it's probably just that I'm thick.

It's initial price was like $2 wasn't it?
Tbh I never saw it as anything more than a proof of concept for non linear narrative in indie games and thought it was fun enough. Damn near every bit of positive praise Virginia got a few years later felt like it was coming from people that didn't realise Thirty Flights of Loving had just about covered it all (asides from the bullshit bits) way better way cheaper and way easier several years earlier.

The Stanley Parable is massively overrated. It's a decent game but jeez from the amount of love it gets you'd think its the Second Coming of the babby Jesus.

It's _okay_, I think a lot of the hype it got was down to a combo of getting to an audience of people who mustn't have seen a Charlie Kaufman film and who would lap up anything with a British accent narrating it. The guy's next game, which is a pretty blatant "oh shit I've writers block, to the point the only thing i can think about making is about writer's block' was quite fun imo, I'd love to hear how much of the end game was actually built from failed attempts he had at making a follow up to the Stanley Parable.






Not that anyone seems that peeved, I dont mind much, but the guys behind Kentucky Route Zero are taking forever with that final act. Every act has taken an exponentially longer amount of time to make, I feel. Kinda feel bad for them, there's nearly a decade of their lives sunk into this thing now and theres no way the ending isn't going to be shat on.

[The Boston Crab]

They should have just writ a book and drawn some pictures in the middle on the glossy pictures fuckin waste of a life

[biggytitbo]

Detroit become human makes you walk to your certain death in a near holocaust scenario and its terrible because your main way of escape from this is a convoluted series of button prompts.

[Twed]

In the art game I'm developing you are gaffer taped to a radioactive witch, and various things come out of the environment to spook her which makes her start tumbling. It's called "Gaffered to a Radioactive Tumblingwitch"

[Thursday]

The Stanley Parable is massively overrated. It's a decent game but jeez from the amount of love it gets you'd think its the Second Coming of the babby Jesus.

Is Undertale an art game? 'Cause that was a whole load of wank. Couldn't even finish it.

EDIT: Oh god I just looked up The Stanley Parable and at full price its £10. I wouldn't pay more than £2 for it. I think I got it for free.

Feel like most games in this thread shouldn't be called "art" games. They're mostly just... games from indie devs/small studios and tend to have more of a focus on mood/atmosphere/story than traditional game mechanics.

[FerriswheelBueller]

Has anyone played The Unfinished Swan?

That were good as well. Interesting arty/indie game. Got it a few years ago for PS4, about 4 quid I think and well worth it