After about 50+ video's this is the first time I've ever heard a swear word uttered on this channel, wow I can definitely feel the emphasis and the seriousness, and I agree. I'm sorry that the community is flooding the forums with defensiveness and reticence, just know that there are just as many, if not more of us, who support and back you! As you've said in a later video, we're not rubes.
I think this belief has risen due to school. In school students are taught how to further study different artistic mediums mainly books. This is good, but many students are forced to analyze works that they don't personally like. This can lead to a student hating the act of analyzing any other work because of the bad experiences they had in school with it.
It could also have to do with the way certain subjects are handled in schools, for example, I remember hating my english classes until we read this one excerpt in one class about the difference between lions and lambs or something like that, I immediately started to recognize some of the imagery and understood some of the concepts the author was trying to get across, but then the english teacher shot almost all of my ideas down because that wasn't the interpretation she was taught, the interpretation I had made sense, I was able to explain why it meant what I thought it meant to me, and I even got some of the main points spot on. The point is, art can be a fairly subjective medium, and the interpretation of things is a fairly personal thing, but teachers approach things like that with a one-size fits all approach at times and don't always encourage students in the right ways.
xertris It's not just being forced to analyze books you don't like. The educational system's need for constant assessments prevents the works under analysis from being read in an enjoyable fashion. The lack of choice in what to read also fosters resentment. Anything analyzed as art in an academic context is ruined as both art and entertainment for most students. And the analysis is usually bunkum. Pretty much all of postmodern thinking is either an attempt to corrupt liberal arts education into an engine of indoctrination or the cynical pursuit of novel dissertation topics at the expense of being interesting, enlightening, or grounded in either reality or the work allegedly being analyzed.
+DanielYellsAtPeople A friend of mine who was a christian got heavily critised for honing in the religious elements of The Wasteland because they didn't gel with what her teacher saw in the poem. On the other hand though another mate from uni got a good mark at school for explaining co-herently why he thought Shakespeare sucked - so it can vary I suppose. However I agree that sometimes it is a problem.
+Nathan Brown Some of it is self perpetuating though Romeo and Juliet tends to be given to teenagers to study because there's violence in it, there's romance in it and the main characters are young people - all things that have a greater chance of appealing to teenagers than something like King Lear.
xetris you made a very good point here. I am studying Computer Science and in some cases there are teachers who teach that bad, that analyzing, learning and discovering does not make fun at all, even if I am interessted in the subject but there are also (very few but still some) teachers who really give you the understanding of why it is important to learn this and that, to discover, analyze and think critically. I attended last semester a game development course and I loved it. Not just because it was about game dev, but because the teacher was truly into game development and you sensed that she was sincere about the importance of learning certain aspects and analyzing them. To conclude all of what I just said - You made a very good point xetris, the society nowadays loses more and more fun on learning just because schools/universities etc. are teaching the wrong way. Big up for this comment!
I think this kind of thinking comes from school. Teachers are forced to teach subjects to students who are forced to learn for the sake of a test. Ironically, the modern education system teaches us to dislike learning. Kids enter school asking questions but leave cynical. I remember being confused by film study in school, and enjoyed the films less because of that unpassionate, forced, confusing study. Now that I regularly watch movies with film enthusiasts, I appreciate film more when I deconstruct it.
In order for something that's not novel to be engaging, it has to better than any other game filling that niché that you've played. If you've played one dog-shit-brown WWII shooter with a regenerating health mechanic, which was all-the-plague for a few years after Medal of Honour and Call of duty; you've played every last one of them. That vein is mined out. In order for it to be engaging, it has to be better than the best example you've seen or it has to do something novel. If you do something new, you don't need to be amazing, merely competent and find a niché nobody else serves. The people who don't like WWII shooters won't like it no matter how many hundreds of people were involved in making it, that niché is already full. There's a very long tail that is mostly not being served. Before the internet, I didn't think I liked music; really. Sure, there was some good video game music here and there; but it wouldn't have occured to me to do nothing and just sit down and listen to it. But if you turned on the radio, it was like some kind of acoustic torture; it was all shit; rap, trance, pop, boy bands. The mainstream genres that were popular in the late 80's and since then, I can't even listen to. With the internet, I found out first that there used to be good music on the radio, then that there was still as much good music as ever been made, it was just cobbled toghether by mostly amateurs and not very popular. Music, like games, has a very long tail; if you just listen to what's popular right now, odds are you're not going to like it, it just happens to appeal to a reasonably large audience. That's why people get "stuck" in decades. What they liked happened to be popular at some time, and they just stuck with that. Natural Selection was a multiplayer only FPS with RTS elements, pitting melee aliens againt ranged marines on the aging Half-life engine (essentially glQuake with coloured light maps!); the only thing remotely close to it was Gloom; I must have played that game for a couple of thousand hours and I only stopped when natural selection 2 was released and reached a good state 10 years later. If that had to appeal to a mass market, rather than becoming a small internet phenomenon, it would never have been made. Team fortress was just some silly mod someone threw toghether from Quake. Who knew people wanted to capture flags in a team based shooter? Minecraft was just a silly little indie game/experiment. Who knew people wanted to build things and explore among millions of ugly pixelated blocks? DOTA was just some silly maps someone threw toghether for Warcraft III. Now we recognize it as a genre (MOBAs) Turret defense was just some silly flash games. Now its a genre. All new genres and variations on genres start out like these little experiments. Most of them fail. But if you're going to be outright better on something that's already formulaic you have to have tens of millions of dollars to blow.
Learning is fun. Figuring out how artistic media work is fun. It shouldn't be a chore. Moreover, some people seem to think that learning is what kids do at school (because they have to), not independent adults (even if they want to). Their loss.
This actually makes me realize what killed reading for me. When I was in elementary school I was struggling. And then in 3rd grade I went to a school that gamified reading. It was called the accelerated reader program. Every time you read a book you could go to the school library and take a test on it, a simple 10 question test. Then you got points. I loved games and I loved this system. At different point levels you would get different rewards and the last threshold was your name was put on a wall in the school. Around 5th grade i was interested in this and learned to love reading. I had not had much prior interest in reading but in 5th grade I started reading a couple great series including lord of the rings. Part of the reason also was a fucking amazing teacher I had in 5th grade. Mrs. Fuller. I will never forget that woman. Then my senior english teacher happened in high school. Dont even remember her name. She over analyzed books, like many curriculum do. She made the practice not fun. I ended up resenting the books she had us dive into. She actually made me hate Fahrenheit 451 (I later resolved this on my own time as an adult). I found myself early in the school year arguing with her and contesting her on her methods of getting through these books and by the end of the school year I had given up all participation. I passed with a C+ but had made honor role the previous school year. I entered her class asking questions and arguing her narrative. I left with a complete dismissal of literary analysis as she had presented it and found the whole practice contrived. Until this video and your comment, I had never given that school year much thought. I hadn't realized why i disconnected so hard from enjoying the material I was to study. And upon realizing this I looked back. I graduated 8 years ago. I have read two books. That school year effectively killed my interest in reading and I think I'm going to order a kindle or something.
Keaton Django I have an english teacher, yes, when he enters class, he basically found a way for all of us to HATE english class, this is what I see running through the heads of the guys in class "why must you make me do this?" what he does is basically projectile write stuff on the board and sometimes it left our hands twitching when we finished, and he did all of that basically without saying a word, it's like you wanna do something, but you get placed on a metaphorical treadmill and are forced to do it at a pre chosen pace, after his class from just one quarter and a STUPID amount of failures, even from those who would be considered the academic gods of the class(at that point I would probably be peak human) and it made us resent having to do any english classes, and we basically preferred to learn our painstaking filipino language instead of english, and by the way, all our first languages are english except for a few people and it basically made us lose interest in the subject and basically say, "why do I bother?"
Horror, for me, isn't a ghost or a zombie... It's the realization that most people could look at all video games as similar to that one shovelware game they played as a kid or that game they played on FaceBook. I have a deep love and passion for video games as a whole and it's horrifying what comes out of developers that have no love for video games.
Going back and watching some of these older episodes in 2019 is sad considering how some of the warnings came true. Love this channel and agree entirely with what they believe games could be
Kind of unrelated to the points this video makes (which *are* important points), I like this episode because of the guest artist's style. Seeing the visual shorthands that EC uses (such as colors of shirts and jackets for people in specific roles) drawn in more detail is really neat. :D
I couldn't agree more. Look on the bright side, though: scholars of literature have been facing the same accusation for centuries now. Too many people think that analyzing and understanding something automatically sucks the lifeblood out of it because it destroys the mystery. Point well taken: those who want to remain on the consumer side are free to stay ignorant and just enjoy. That's fine, but they should not complain about others pushing the boundaries of creating these experiences.
+None of your Business Very true. That or it might be notions that 'art' are associated to what is classically associated as 'high art' (old paintings, classical music, old movies etc) that carries an association of pretentiousness. And some people don't want that pretentious-sounding label on their beloved game. Art is, well, art. I'd happily consider Guardians of the Galaxy a work of art even though it has strong feelings of Buck Rogers in the 25th century with nothing as profound or confusing as 2001 A Space Odyssey. I consider it art because it is a well-executed and entertaining pastiche of classic science fiction.
I wonder if anyone would agree with me, but after wachting most, of the episodes I subjectively think that is the best one to introduce new viewers to EC.
I found that analyzing games at first was extremely fun, then it became devastating because I found out what I used to like was actually not as good as I thought it was, but then later as time went on I appreciated doing it because it encouraged me to look at games 1000 times better and I found more things to appreciate about games than what I couldn't appreciate about them before.
This is the best episode I have seen from this channel... and that's saying something. This channel is filled with clever, thoughtful, and interesting videos.
The people who don't want to think about games are likely the same people that don't like thinking at all, those people who are willfully ignorant and belittle others for having passions outside sports or mindless violence. They're the sort of people who enjoyed the airport level in Modern Warfare 2, not because it was jarring and thought-provoking, but because they got to shoot a bunch of people. As much most of us hate the perception that all gamers are bros, we have to remember that it is grounded at least partially in fact. Those people exist, and they're holding us back.
SusCalvin I admit they could have done it better (let's face it, Modern Warfare 2 is no Spec Ops: The Line) but it still wasn't supposed to be enjoyed.
+Ralf Koneberg I agree that Star Wars was a bad example. But if we didn't have artists studying their material to push the boundaries, do you think there would have EVER been amazing light-hearted films like Scott Pilgrim? Or amazing thought-provoking movies about the human condition like Shawshank Redemption? Or great horror movies like Cabin in the Woods? No, I don't think so.
+Pear Lock I absolutely agree with you, I was actually just half serious about my comment, that was just supposed to be an anti-prequels joke. I actually don't hate the prequels as much as everyone else does, they're just FAR worse than the orig trig. Still, every successful movie made is an experience to be had, even if it did horrible, horrible Jar-Jars
Hey guys! I just wanted to show my appreciation for the work you're doing. I'm not what you would call a "gamer" in any sense: you could count the games I've played on the fingers of two hands, and still have some fingers to spare; but the games I have played meant a lot to me, and they remain in my consciousness. Your deep insights into the structure and meaning of games allowed me to appreciate these few titles even more. You are incredibly thoughtful, mature and captivating. So keep up the good work and all the best to you!! :)
yes, I also think that. and nitendo dont stop to creat new thing. and the online pvp game, who can't be only a game that we buy for play 40 hour. today, it is the 3 best "kind" of game.
you know even when nintendo dont make new things it always come with an special touch that makes their characters charming and relatable , because you know how can anyone not love mario , if you show a 5 years old two pictures one of mickey and one of mario i think would be 50/50 the recognition.
+Thomas Dossy uhhh, no? I really doubt he's a character with NO personality, he has very little though... but the character's around him do, and that's what's important
I know this video is two years old at the time of commenting, but i really like this guest artist. Is there any chance of seeing her as a guest artist in the future?
Without the exploration of metaphor, Bram Stoker's Dracula wouldn't exist. He was drawing from the popular perception at the time that the aristocracy fed off the peasants. Dracula is a literal interpretation of the metaphorical perception. If he hadn't been willing to use metaphors, we would never have any of the vampire mythos we do today. Course, that would mean no Twilight...
I believe that games are in the: Games are for fun! Stage. Games have been living for 30-40 years (if you count Atari), movies back when they were only 30-40 years old were just that too. Nobody really thought that movies can be something more, they were just viewed simply as enjoyment. What I am hoping for that games past this stage faster than movies did.
Probably, actually. Overall social enlightenment subsists at a higher level today than the society of the early days of film. If we have this very video here, spreading ideas to people elsewhere, at a pace as fast as now and sooner, then I do believe society will come to accept games as much of a valid art form as film or writing at a quicker pace than before.
I think that games can be for fun, but also other things. Scratch that, let's put things into a box. How about this: games should be enjoyable in some way! Look at Loneliness, it's a great game, really interesting, but it's not 'fun'. It's enjoyable. But, don't get me wrong, I LOVE me a Monday night shooty jumpy fest (AKA: Warframe)
Theo Hamilton I am not saying that games that are purely for fun are a bad thing, hell, they are awesome. I am just saying that I am just waiting for games to be treated as an art form and a new way to express issues instead of a toy and be enjoyable as well.
Andre Cruz Being treated isn't enough. You see, even in film where it is treated as an art form, there isn't much art being produced and widely distributed in film form. Artful movies are difficult to find, and never appear in major cinemas. Also almost all art movies are indie movies. That is the kind of thing we have to prevent from happening in games, if they are to be considered art.
Love the Walter Moers and Cormac McCarthy mentions! They've done some of my favorite books ("The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear" is a long read, but a fun one if you're into zany fantasy.)
+CaitSeith it wasent it was pure propaganda, also every time you buy the game you support gun manufactuers who support illegal wars over seas. And before you start with me i torrented the game I didnt give them a fucking cent.
CaitSeith You comment on a hard topic expect to get answers that disregard your thoughts on the matter, this is how a comment section works. If you don't like your ideas being challanged or discredited I suggest not commenting.
Took me 6 years to find this video, good to know there are other people striking to make games more meaningful...Don’t see big revaluation in this mediums though...but I’ll dedicate my life working on it ☕️
I think it doesn't help that simply put, so many artsy games are simply not fun or engaging. Many are, definitely, but so many of them are literally just you walking around a set as a story is told to you. Sure the story might be engaging and interesting, but there is honestly very little interactivity or gameplay to be had. Like Dear Esther for example, literally all you do is wander around the island and occasionally finding a point where a story is told to you. It's an interesting way to tell us the story, but if all we're doing is being presented with text and narration, the game part seems a bit superfluous. Journey, on the other hand, does it right. You do spend it wandering around the setting as a story is told to you, but you actually have to engage with the game, solve puzzles, complete tasks and suchlike before the story continues. And all without the need for text or dialogue.
I think their main point is that if the culture of gaming embraces its medium as a deep intellectual art form, it'll progress the industry from all angles. I can see why you didn't like Dear Esther, I can understand why a lot of people wouldn't. That game isn't for everyone. But it explored something that helped bring about a new kind of game. I guarantee you the developers of Journey were inspired by Dear Esther. So they took one of the ideas of the game, made it better, and then put a whole lot of their own stuff into it, and made Journey. At a basic level anyway. Dear Esther also inspired The Stanley Parable. You literally only walk through doors and occasionally push a button in that game, but for me, it was engaging, and fun as hell. Maybe not for everyone, but I'd be skeptical of someone who claimed they had no fun playing The Stanley Parable. But the point still stands. If you don't like games like Dear Esther, don't play them, but it's a good thing they exist, because they help make video games better over all. You have to push boundaries to make what's within them better.
The "for some reason" is because they thought the medium was more effective at conveying the story they wanted to tell than a book or movie. You know, the reason people choose different mediums to tell stories in. Sometimes, for example, the creator desires to place the viewer in the position to observe the world around them even if they don't want to interact with it. I dunno what I'd call it, but it wouldn't be a movie. If you have any input at all, even as minor as pressing a button every fifteen minutes for a slightly different dialogue or being able to walk from scene to scene by controlling a character, it isn't a movie. Honestly I'd probably just call it a video game; some refer to gameplay-nonexistent games as 'visual novels' or 'interactive movies' or 'new media' in general, but I don't see the use in inventing a new term for what I see as just a clear subdivision of an existing concept that chooses not to use gameplay as its central focus.
***** Every story's different, Sometimes you don't need or want any more player involvement than being able to look around the environment. Sometimes you just want to offer the player a choice at infrequent intervals. Telling a writer their story would be 'better off' as a movie sounds pretty presumptuous, considering we're talking about theoreticals here. Honestly, most of the time when I hear this complaint, it's someone trying to police what they think video games should be like. Which I think is incredibly unhealthy to do in any art medium.
"Do you think words scrolling down a screen can be considered a movie?" Yes. Am I controlling the rate at which they are scrolling? If not, that's a directorial decision and an element beyond the scope of narrative written form. It'd definitely be an unconventional movie, but a movie all the same. Of course, I could also look at it from the perspective of a novel, because media formats aren't hard categories. It still would also fall into the movie format, though. As for the first bit, who knows? This is a theoretical narrative that doesn't actually exist, so I can't exactly critique its choices in how it distributes its narrative. My point is that I don't think we should be allowed to constrain art and definitively say "no, you're not allowed to do that, make a movie instead."
its amazing that, today, 23 of May, 2018, the exact future depicted here, in 2012, 6 years later, is the reality. Extra Credits knew their stuff. They still do. So glad I found this channel
2 things. 1: that girl really can draw :D 2:It's sad to think companies like Nintendo(who arguably saved video games) do have people who really do care about the video games as a medium, and then you have people who are only in it for the money and create their games like flow charts because they make more money that way (sometimes) see EA
Christian bergna cova True thing... I was kinda happy when the 3DS steamrolled the gaming market for 2-3 years straight. Just hope that the WiiU starts pumping out it's big titles and doing some heavy marketting, so the sales may go up
1:40 I’d like to point out in literature, when you analyze the cliches in a narrative, it can fill somewhat predictable. Although I agree with you guys I just felt a potential counter argument.
***** believe it or not, its not a clone of bejeweled. Its a clone of a clone of bejeweled that had a similar style. Yet it also has clones. (Such as cookie jam, cupcake mania, candy blast, etc.)
Yes, I did enjoy this video. Also, I love the fact that she Drew Calvin and Hobbes in one frame. I like her style, and they looked pretty good drawn that way.✨ I suppose, in thinking about it, you could say that's saying something considering the bias of how I'm used to seeing them...
WARNING, MINOR UNDERTALE SPOILERS: ... ... Undertale is a great example of an "artsy" game that is still fun. The game has a master crafted characters and story that really explores the medium in many very meta ways, but the bullet hell mechanics are still really fun to play, particularly to the kick ass music.
+notbobby125 Undertale is also a good reason as to why indie developers now have no excuses when it comes to making a poorly designed game. Undertale was made by one person in Game Maker Studio with no coding knowledge. If you don't believe me, check Toby Fox's blog to verify. Hopefully Undertale makes way for two new things to come about in the indie scene: 1) Indie gamers stop overrating games that are mediocre and complain when the game isn't GOTY 2) Indie developers start focusing on making games better rather than taking advantage of nostalgia or graphics to make their game popular. I remember playing a platformer that used magnetism as it's main mechanic. The game had inconsistent physics (How do you even? Just literally move your player down at a consistent force and move them up at a higher force than gravity. It's not that hard.), terrible optimization, a plethora of glitches, lackluster soundtrack, and poor story conveyance that relies on long blocks of text to tell the story rather than the gameplay. This game was praised as one of the best indie games of its time. Wanna know the reasoning people used to back up this claim? Because it reminded them of gaming when they were young. That's literally it. All positive reviews of the game pointed that out and said the magnetism mechanic was new and interesting (Which is a lie as it's been done before).
+RandomAnimeGamer ランダムオタクゲーマー of course there is also Dust an Elysian Tail. one guy designed AND animated a game over the course of 4 years! meaning he can both draw AND code something that you don't see much of in mainstream games. he also wrote it directed it. basically the only thing he didn't do was voice act and composed the soundtrack but he got darn good people to do both of those things. of course a lot of idiots just look at it as being "that creepy furry fantasy made by that basement dwelling pervert" because you know internet = assholes.
And some people say they are trying to make art games, when they are actually making propaganda games...and that you don't like their games because you don't like art, but you really don't like their games because you don't like propaganda.
Frank Johnson Why you talk about white or black? Propaganda is a lie a lie make by few powerful people on the the mainstream audience for their profit. If you have ideas something personal and put it in your art game movie etc this is not propaganda it's talk about your ideas. That's not propaganda. Fox news is propaganda game cannot be propaganda game are fictional they never claim they are real so they can't never lie!
jackyoh971 Propaganda is at it's most effective when it's concealed within something else to get people to consume it. Many people can identify straight propaganda and simply tune it out, but if you instead interweave your political agenda into an otherwise entertaining game, story, or show, you can expose people to your message that would otherwise never look at it. The individual power level of the person making the propaganda is irrelevant. Besides, do you know all the investors and backers of the project? Do you know how they got the job in the first place? Was it skill or connections? Big movements have pawns, and pawns can distribute propaganda, again because you'd reject say "big fox news" but you might listen to one of their minions disguised as "little people" and it works for both sides of the spectrum, because generally the more authoritarian an idea, the more programing, ie propaganda is needed to keep it going due to it's irrationality. As far as white or black propaganda, white is when you promote an idea to benefits yourself or your cause, black is when you spread lies about an enemy.
+jackyoh971 Propaganda is more than just a lie. In fact, the country of the United States itself used propaganda to motivate and inspire the revolutionists to take action. the "Boston Massacre?" About 7 shot, after throwing snowballs with rocks at the soldiers. One soldier was reported to be critically injured, bleeding from his head. 3 Boston Citizens critically injured, 4 wounded. Not even a single casualty that can be found reported. However the "Boston Scruffle" Doesn't sound nearly as good as "Massacre" Propaganda is more than a lie, its a clever selling device. And..is a tool. Like any tool its not good or bad, its the intent of the user.
I wholeheartedly agree it pains me to see how certain developers put no love in their games, or worse, putting enough love into details that obscure it's nature as cashgrabs. On the other hands, once I see these little details that showed the devs went an extra mile, like the FFXV crew complaining about how you almost hit them in a game with no friendly fire or how 2B will twirl away if you try to look up her skirt (just 2 examples from new games I've enjoyed) I feel happy knowing someone out there did this extra work for us players. also kudos for puting Okami among the examples
I can understand the other side of this. It can feel as if we are tapping into something sacred that can't be explained, and that will only hurt us more as we try to explain the unexplainable. Or maybe this study will make games so scientific that they are eventually just the same basic concept every time, as the devs know it will sell. But from the perspective of a designer, you need as much information as possible. Otherwise, the only thing we CAN do is repeat the same games and mistakes, over and over. Tl;dr: We may want to leave things unexplained, but that will only hold us back.
I think you're confusing Art Theory for market research. What they mean by the study of games, or any medium for that matter, is exploration of its potential, not "how does this sell". It isn't a scientific breakdown at all, but rather looking at art through different lenses to find what makes it special in different ways, and also to see things in the art that may not have otherwise been known. I'll take literature as an example, because I have some academic experience with art theory and lit. When I use deconstruction theory to break down _Catcher in the Rye_, I'm not trying to reverse engineer the novel into its constituent parts to copy and paste somewhere else (though this has definitely been done before--like 'the heroes journey' and _Star Wars_). What I'm doing is looking at the work very closely through a specific lens to see if I can observe anything I've never seen before, and enjoy the work more thoroughly because of it. For further reading, I suggest starting by looking up the video by "Inuendo Studios" using art theory to look at _The Beginner's Guide_. Beyond that, look up the wikipedia article on "New Criticism" and branch out from there.
guys, you are amazing, I'm keeping track of you about 2 weeks and learned a lot already Knowlegde is always a good option, and systematically study of one area is the best way to know it better. Knowing it better => Making it better. And yeah, I want more games with the quality of mass effect (one of my favorite series of all time). Games may be included on '7 arts' soon, because its an art, and a hard one. On my college a teacher that loved games said "I love games because they explore all area of computing and more", and that's so true. From projects to algorithms, performance, graphics, sounds, history, psychology, tons of math and physics, well, that's all there. I don't know yours exactly function in game design, but I would love to see you make a serie approaching specific ciences inside the game making. I illustrated some, there's much more and you'll know better than me. This is a great propaganda to bring more scientists to this area, still need lots of research and alternative researchers will bring new points of view what is great, of couse.
"Art making gaming worse", or " 'Art' is not 'Fun' " is a mentality where a person believes that making a game more in-depth and adding layers of meaning and ways to interpret a game makes the overall experience less worthwhile. You can think of it as someone saying, "All these metaphors are getting in the way of me shooting stuff" I guess. Of course, its not that simple. A real hot topic nowadays is "Are games art?", where it is debated whether or not completed games can be categorized as "art". Some believe that gaming is a separate entity entirely from art, and others believe that a game is a form of expression just as a painting or a movie is. Its all very convoluted and murky, but you can just think about people not wanting a big, expansive narrative in a game when you hear "Art is making gaming not fun."
+LittleIslander It's a bit like explaining a joke, once you need to it isn't funny anymore; the fallacy being that jokes are generally pretty shallow, you either get it or you don't. Games, on the whole, aren't that shallow.
+IamCoalfoot Well, I would argue that games, on the whole, are shallow. Not that that's a terribly important distinction, I just wanted to point it out.
+Henrik Munk Madsen You, my friend, have been playing the wrong games then. Demand more from your game makers, spend your money where you'll get a truly immersive experience. The choice and power, lie with you.
+Henrik Munk Madsen what games do YOU play then?i would like to know because if you are playing the right game then it could be shallow but by no means are games as a whole shallow.
At last I have found a series that looks at games as an art medium and not just an entertainment medium. I've just started making a review show on animated movies, animated tv shows and video games from an artistic perspective, so its great to find a show like this that is pretty similar to what I'm trying to do in my videos. Also I love your video format. :)
This episode really spoke to me as I've been a gamer from a young age. It felt like back then I would play an amazing game for years on end, maybe not even beating the thing. Nowadays it feels like I'm expected to be done with a game in a week. I haven't been able to justify many of the purchases I've made from games lately. They all just seem like cash grabs to me, and I really want it to change. I want the next game that I'll feel will keep me entertained for years on end rather then something that dies in a month at most.
All the feels... Care in the primary factor driving change in ANY industry, and there is a real danger when someone who doesn't care is left in charge. This actually summarizes my opinion of life in general, the danger to not caring. Just wow, well said.
Art is EVERYTHING to my eldest daughter, my god she's only 14 years old, but I've seen her work so hard on her drawings, it's all she ever does! Beside watching your videos.
while i agree with the overall content and message of this video... using the modern transformers movies as any sort of example of something well done is quite a bad decision. those movies sucked so badly....
He wasn't necessarily saying they were good. They are an example of how movies can continue to be stupid fun, and in fact be even more of that, because some talented auteurs developed new techniques of the craft decades ago. Bay's Transformers series is honestly crap unless you're willing to ignore most of it and just eat popcorn to exploding robots, but if you know about cinematography at all, you can see how it inherits valuable ideas from more serious work in the past.
The movies sucked big Predacon balls, we all see that. But, did you ever imagine you would see Optimus Prime they way he ended up? I look at the original cartoons, and then the movies, and think... damn.
Fernando Cruz "did you ever imagine you would see Optimus Prime they way he ended up?" no. i was so disappointed. and then i watched the second movie....and my disappointment was even greater. i dont think i watched the third movie....i hope michael bay goes on a trip with jj abrams, and they both decide to quit movies for good and do something productive with their lives instead of ruining franchises.
sabin97 Dude, I meant how frickin' huge he look! Before, he was like a giant brick, but now, you can see every little part of him. I used to think, "Oh, yeah, he's a robot. So what?" Now, he looks like a beast, especially with that boost he got! And even if the movies suck, eventually, somewhere down the line, some guy is probably gonna' want to re-make Transformers and make them look completely retarded, to the point where you're wondering what's real anymore. Man of Steel. 'Nuff said.
Fernando Cruz "ome guy is probably gonna' want to re-make Transformers and make them look completely retarded" someone already did. his name is michael bay. and i really hope he retires from movies(and takes abrams with him).
I'm not sure but they repeatedly state that he is a designer and i think they once said that he worked at a company called Rainwater (Rainmaker?) games.
Ok after a bit of searching it seems he worked as a designer on Call of Duty and a consultant on Farmville. It isn't easy to find info on much else than his academic work.
Love the videos, but I feel like this is one where you missed the mark a bit. The problem isn't that people are afraid of losing anything. The problem is that every day Joe's are getting tired of self-proclaimed "game connoisseurs" shitting all over games that they genuinely enjoy or even love. If you expected deep character development or a meaningful plot line from COD or Transformers... frankly...you're an idiot. That was never the point of those titles, and that was obvious from the onset. It's the same reason that people are taking big steamy dumps all over Destiny, when in truth, Destiny delivered on what Bungie knows best. Vauge non-specific lore, vast universes with a feeling of depth, and solid ultra fun shooter mechanics. By the end of the 3rd halo we still didn't really know who we were, how we became whatever we are, or even really why we are continuing to kill aliens, and yet, it was fun! This obviously assumes that we haven't read any books or other lore but still, why do people expect anything different from destiny? People have gotten into a bad habit of slaughtering good games because they didn't deliver on things that they should have never been expected to deliver on. That is where people are getting tired of the dried up arguments like "COD is the same thing every year". And yet. You still bought it. Because it's fun. But how often to here people celebrate what COD is doing well?
My big problem with destiny is the cash grabs they tend to do with the DLC, and the fact that there's so little variation or depth in the base game that it even gets to the point of the big bosses being reskins of normal enemies with more health and damage output. COD does manage to consistently put out good games, but the issue is they very rarely do something creative, they just bleed the same concept dry for years on end, which means that the core experience gets stale after a while
The mentality that Extra Credits has on games, as demonstrated by this video, makes me really want to see you guys talk about the trailer for Hatred and what the devs have been saying about its purpose.
OK OK OK OK tv is ruined. there's 4 types of things on TV. 1 a shitty action show. 2 kids cartoons(some of are great). 3 News. 4 SEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
1:15 Isn't it so suiting how Calvin and Hobbes make a cameo in a rant about art? If you know the calvin and hobbes story, why there isn't any merchandise about it, and all that other stuff, it's implicitly thought provoking, and you see it as more than a joke. Maybe that was the artist making an implicit little reference to a real life event, or it might just be a coincidence, I have no idea, but i love that, THANK YOU for putting Calvin and Hobbes there.
+Zoogoo40 I don't know what most people think a "religion" is. But I found out that having a relationship with someone friendly who can handle everything is a very nice thing to have, even when some people look like they want to kill me, because they think that' too good to be true and my life proving otherwise makes them angry.
As far as religion goes, taking it literally is absurd. For instance, there's a lot of christians whom take the bible literally when the text was MEANT to be questioned, People were meant to stop and ask 'Okay, hang on a moment, that's not right.', but it seems to have failed in that to some extent. I should rephrase my thing to say literal religion is terrible.
+Zoogoo40 Um, with all due respect, what does this have to do with the video? Religion didn't come up. At all. So, why bring up a divisive and, as you yourself hinted at, causes angry, hate-fueled comments on both sides of the argument?
+Zoogoo40 i completely agree with your second comment. my mother, being the intelligent woman she is, even realized this at a very young age. however, going back to your first comment, i don't think that the exploration of religion is a good metaphor for the exploration of games. while games are tangible things that can explore abstract concepts or ideas, religion is a mix of abstract ideas, beliefs, and explanations for what may be, or may have been, inexplicable. religion is an (albeit temporary) answer to the mysteries of life and death, but with exploration, some of these questions can be (also perhaps temporarily) answered using science and/or logic. (wow. did i make any sense there? sorry for that mostly meaningless ramble.)
Excellent video, I'm a big fan and I think you often prove a lot of very good points. Really makes me think of gaming as a whole and how I've seen it evolve in my life time. I'm happy you aren't deterred from exploring different views and ideas with games just because of the haters out there. I'm reminded of a quote "If video games have taught me anything, it's that if you encounter enemies you're going the right way" Thank you for the thought provoking entertainment :) -Tasty Birds
After about 50+ video's this is the first time I've ever heard a swear word uttered on this channel, wow I can definitely feel the emphasis and the seriousness, and I agree. I'm sorry that the community is flooding the forums with defensiveness and reticence, just know that there are just as many, if not more of us, who support and back you! As you've said in a later video, we're not rubes.
I agree with you.
I think this belief has risen due to school. In school students are taught how to further study different artistic mediums mainly books. This is good, but many students are forced to analyze works that they don't personally like. This can lead to a student hating the act of analyzing any other work because of the bad experiences they had in school with it.
It could also have to do with the way certain subjects are handled in schools, for example, I remember hating my english classes until we read this one excerpt in one class about the difference between lions and lambs or something like that, I immediately started to recognize some of the imagery and understood some of the concepts the author was trying to get across, but then the english teacher shot almost all of my ideas down because that wasn't the interpretation she was taught, the interpretation I had made sense, I was able to explain why it meant what I thought it meant to me, and I even got some of the main points spot on. The point is, art can be a fairly subjective medium, and the interpretation of things is a fairly personal thing, but teachers approach things like that with a one-size fits all approach at times and don't always encourage students in the right ways.
xertris It's not just being forced to analyze books you don't like. The educational system's need for constant assessments prevents the works under analysis from being read in an enjoyable fashion. The lack of choice in what to read also fosters resentment. Anything analyzed as art in an academic context is ruined as both art and entertainment for most students.
And the analysis is usually bunkum. Pretty much all of postmodern thinking is either an attempt to corrupt liberal arts education into an engine of indoctrination or the cynical pursuit of novel dissertation topics at the expense of being interesting, enlightening, or grounded in either reality or the work allegedly being analyzed.
+DanielYellsAtPeople
A friend of mine who was a christian got heavily critised for honing in the religious elements of The Wasteland because they didn't gel with what her teacher saw in the poem. On the other hand though another mate from uni got a good mark at school for explaining co-herently why he thought Shakespeare sucked - so it can vary I suppose. However I agree that sometimes it is a problem.
+Nathan Brown
Some of it is self perpetuating though Romeo and Juliet tends to be given to teenagers to study because there's violence in it, there's romance in it and the main characters are young people - all things that have a greater chance of appealing to teenagers than something like King Lear.
xetris you made a very good point here. I am studying Computer Science and in some cases there are teachers who teach that bad, that analyzing, learning and discovering does not make fun at all, even if I am interessted in the subject but there are also (very few but still some) teachers who really give you the understanding of why it is important to learn this and that, to discover, analyze and think critically. I attended last semester a game development course and I loved it. Not just because it was about game dev, but because the teacher was truly into game development and you sensed that she was sincere about the importance of learning certain aspects and analyzing them. To conclude all of what I just said - You made a very good point xetris, the society nowadays loses more and more fun on learning just because schools/universities etc. are teaching the wrong way. Big up for this comment!
I think this kind of thinking comes from school. Teachers are forced to teach subjects to students who are forced to learn for the sake of a test. Ironically, the modern education system teaches us to dislike learning. Kids enter school asking questions but leave cynical.
I remember being confused by film study in school, and enjoyed the films less because of that unpassionate, forced, confusing study. Now that I regularly watch movies with film enthusiasts, I appreciate film more when I deconstruct it.
In order for something that's not novel to be engaging, it has to better than any other game filling that niché that you've played. If you've played one dog-shit-brown WWII shooter with a regenerating health mechanic, which was all-the-plague for a few years after Medal of Honour and Call of duty; you've played every last one of them. That vein is mined out. In order for it to be engaging, it has to be better than the best example you've seen or it has to do something novel.
If you do something new, you don't need to be amazing, merely competent and find a niché nobody else serves. The people who don't like WWII shooters won't like it no matter how many hundreds of people were involved in making it, that niché is already full. There's a very long tail that is mostly not being served.
Before the internet, I didn't think I liked music; really. Sure, there was some good video game music here and there; but it wouldn't have occured to me to do nothing and just sit down and listen to it. But if you turned on the radio, it was like some kind of acoustic torture; it was all shit; rap, trance, pop, boy bands. The mainstream genres that were popular in the late 80's and since then, I can't even listen to. With the internet, I found out first that there used to be good music on the radio, then that there was still as much good music as ever been made, it was just cobbled toghether by mostly amateurs and not very popular. Music, like games, has a very long tail; if you just listen to what's popular right now, odds are you're not going to like it, it just happens to appeal to a reasonably large audience. That's why people get "stuck" in decades. What they liked happened to be popular at some time, and they just stuck with that.
Natural Selection was a multiplayer only FPS with RTS elements, pitting melee aliens againt ranged marines on the aging Half-life engine (essentially glQuake with coloured light maps!); the only thing remotely close to it was Gloom; I must have played that game for a couple of thousand hours and I only stopped when natural selection 2 was released and reached a good state 10 years later. If that had to appeal to a mass market, rather than becoming a small internet phenomenon, it would never have been made.
Team fortress was just some silly mod someone threw toghether from Quake. Who knew people wanted to capture flags in a team based shooter?
Minecraft was just a silly little indie game/experiment. Who knew people wanted to build things and explore among millions of ugly pixelated blocks?
DOTA was just some silly maps someone threw toghether for Warcraft III. Now we recognize it as a genre (MOBAs)
Turret defense was just some silly flash games. Now its a genre.
All new genres and variations on genres start out like these little experiments. Most of them fail. But if you're going to be outright better on something that's already formulaic you have to have tens of millions of dollars to blow.
Learning is fun. Figuring out how artistic media work is fun. It shouldn't be a chore.
Moreover, some people seem to think that learning is what kids do at school (because they have to), not independent adults (even if they want to). Their loss.
This actually makes me realize what killed reading for me.
When I was in elementary school I was struggling. And then in 3rd grade I went to a school that gamified reading. It was called the accelerated reader program. Every time you read a book you could go to the school library and take a test on it, a simple 10 question test. Then you got points. I loved games and I loved this system. At different point levels you would get different rewards and the last threshold was your name was put on a wall in the school. Around 5th grade i was interested in this and learned to love reading. I had not had much prior interest in reading but in 5th grade I started reading a couple great series including lord of the rings. Part of the reason also was a fucking amazing teacher I had in 5th grade. Mrs. Fuller. I will never forget that woman.
Then my senior english teacher happened in high school. Dont even remember her name. She over analyzed books, like many curriculum do. She made the practice not fun. I ended up resenting the books she had us dive into. She actually made me hate Fahrenheit 451 (I later resolved this on my own time as an adult). I found myself early in the school year arguing with her and contesting her on her methods of getting through these books and by the end of the school year I had given up all participation. I passed with a C+ but had made honor role the previous school year. I entered her class asking questions and arguing her narrative. I left with a complete dismissal of literary analysis as she had presented it and found the whole practice contrived.
Until this video and your comment, I had never given that school year much thought. I hadn't realized why i disconnected so hard from enjoying the material I was to study. And upon realizing this I looked back. I graduated 8 years ago. I have read two books. That school year effectively killed my interest in reading and I think I'm going to order a kindle or something.
Keaton Django I have an english teacher, yes, when he enters class, he basically found a way for all of us to HATE english class, this is what I see running through the heads of the guys in class "why must you make me do this?" what he does is basically projectile write stuff on the board and sometimes it left our hands twitching when we finished, and he did all of that basically without saying a word, it's like you wanna do something, but you get placed on a metaphorical treadmill and are forced to do it at a pre chosen pace, after his class from just one quarter and a STUPID amount of failures, even from those who would be considered the academic gods of the class(at that point I would probably be peak human) and it made us resent having to do any english classes, and we basically preferred to learn our painstaking filipino language instead of english, and by the way, all our first languages are english except for a few people and it basically made us lose interest in the subject and basically say, "why do I bother?"
Love the art for this episode. Gab's style reminds me a bit of Tim Burton's. Has she done guest art for any other EC episodes?
Yeah, I think. I may be wrong, but as I remember "Hero's journey (Part 2)" had art being done by her. The art style has changed slightly, but okay
Horror, for me, isn't a ghost or a zombie... It's the realization that most people could look at all video games as similar to that one shovelware game they played as a kid or that game they played on FaceBook.
I have a deep love and passion for video games as a whole and it's horrifying what comes out of developers that have no love for video games.
Same. Side note, I love your profile pic.
Going back and watching some of these older episodes in 2019 is sad considering how some of the warnings came true. Love this channel and agree entirely with what they believe games could be
Bring that artist back sometimes. That was fascinating, detailed, simplistic, adorable, and a dozen other things that I want more of.
Kind of unrelated to the points this video makes (which *are* important points), I like this episode because of the guest artist's style. Seeing the visual shorthands that EC uses (such as colors of shirts and jackets for people in specific roles) drawn in more detail is really neat. :D
Yes, someone appreciates Calvin and Hobbes
(Funny thing is that that series is both deep and funny)
I couldn't agree more. Look on the bright side, though: scholars of literature have been facing the same accusation for centuries now. Too many people think that analyzing and understanding something automatically sucks the lifeblood out of it because it destroys the mystery. Point well taken: those who want to remain on the consumer side are free to stay ignorant and just enjoy. That's fine, but they should not complain about others pushing the boundaries of creating these experiences.
+None of your Business Very true. That or it might be notions that 'art' are associated to what is classically associated as 'high art' (old paintings, classical music, old movies etc) that carries an association of pretentiousness. And some people don't want that pretentious-sounding label on their beloved game. Art is, well, art. I'd happily consider Guardians of the Galaxy a work of art even though it has strong feelings of Buck Rogers in the 25th century with nothing as profound or confusing as 2001 A Space Odyssey. I consider it art because it is a well-executed and entertaining pastiche of classic science fiction.
I wonder if anyone would agree with me, but after wachting most, of the episodes I subjectively think that is the best one to introduce new viewers to EC.
I found that analyzing games at first was extremely fun, then it became devastating because I found out what I used to like was actually not as good as I thought it was, but then later as time went on I appreciated doing it because it encouraged me to look at games 1000 times better and I found more things to appreciate about games than what I couldn't appreciate about them before.
This is the best episode I have seen from this channel... and that's saying something. This channel is filled with clever, thoughtful, and interesting videos.
@4:17 I cried a little, love you guys.
My day is made anytime I see Calvin and Hobbes anywhere outside of actual comic itself.
Same here!
The people who don't want to think about games are likely the same people that don't like thinking at all, those people who are willfully ignorant and belittle others for having passions outside sports or mindless violence. They're the sort of people who enjoyed the airport level in Modern Warfare 2, not because it was jarring and thought-provoking, but because they got to shoot a bunch of people. As much most of us hate the perception that all gamers are bros, we have to remember that it is grounded at least partially in fact. Those people exist, and they're holding us back.
CallMeCactusSok The airport scene was a bit railroaded and silly.
SusCalvin
I admit they could have done it better (let's face it, Modern Warfare 2 is no Spec Ops: The Line) but it still wasn't supposed to be enjoyed.
Ok i agree but i did enjoy that airport level :)
this video was beautiful. You all have the greatest minds in gaming, Extra credits team!
I had no idea this was a complaint people had, what a stupid complaint, I’m glad you’re addressing it
2:05 I think most people agree that it would benefit us a great deal if Star Wars were EXACTLY half the movies they are today.
+Ralf Koneberg
I agree that Star Wars was a bad example. But if we didn't have artists studying their material to push the boundaries, do you think there would have EVER been amazing light-hearted films like Scott Pilgrim? Or amazing thought-provoking movies about the human condition like Shawshank Redemption? Or great horror movies like Cabin in the Woods? No, I don't think so.
+Pear Lock I absolutely agree with you, I was actually just half serious about my comment, that was just supposed to be an anti-prequels joke. I actually don't hate the prequels as much as everyone else does, they're just FAR worse than the orig trig. Still, every successful movie made is an experience to be had, even if it did horrible, horrible Jar-Jars
+Ralf Koneberg Great word play, although since the force awakens 3.5 movies... that's something very comedic.
+Don Korb oh, OH! oooooooooh.......
I see what you did there.....
2:09
Did you notice that only the prequels were left?
Hey guys! I just wanted to show my appreciation for the work you're doing.
I'm not what you would call a "gamer" in any sense: you could count the games I've played on the fingers of two hands, and still have some fingers to spare; but the games I have played meant a lot to me, and they remain in my consciousness. Your deep insights into the structure and meaning of games allowed me to appreciate these few titles even more. You are incredibly thoughtful, mature and captivating. So keep up the good work and all the best to you!! :)
I think indie games are saving the industries
I mean... who thought shovel knight wasn't good?
yes, I also think that.
and nitendo dont stop to creat new thing.
and the online pvp game, who can't be only a game that we buy for play 40 hour.
today, it is the 3 best "kind" of game.
you know even when nintendo dont make new things it always come with an special touch that makes their characters charming and relatable , because you know how can anyone not love mario , if you show a 5 years old two pictures one of mickey and one of mario i think would be 50/50 the recognition.
I don't love Mario. He's a flat, boring character with no personality.
+Thomas Dossy uhhh, no? I really doubt he's a character with NO personality, he has very little though... but the character's around him do, and that's what's important
+Thomas Dossy did I? XD
tbh I don't remember
1:30 you know they're really serious when they say f*ck
That wonderful Calvin and Hobbes reference a minute in made my day :) Great episode, too.
And the ones 5 min in too
I know this video is two years old at the time of commenting, but i really like this guest artist. Is there any chance of seeing her as a guest artist in the future?
Without the exploration of metaphor, Bram Stoker's Dracula wouldn't exist. He was drawing from the popular perception at the time that the aristocracy fed off the peasants. Dracula is a literal interpretation of the metaphorical perception. If he hadn't been willing to use metaphors, we would never have any of the vampire mythos we do today. Course, that would mean no Twilight...
I believe that games are in the: Games are for fun! Stage.
Games have been living for 30-40 years (if you count Atari), movies back when they were only 30-40 years old were just that too. Nobody really thought that movies can be something more, they were just viewed simply as enjoyment.
What I am hoping for that games past this stage faster than movies did.
Probably, actually. Overall social enlightenment subsists at a higher level today than the society of the early days of film.
If we have this very video here, spreading ideas to people elsewhere, at a pace as fast as now and sooner, then I do believe society will come to accept games as much of a valid art form as film or writing at a quicker pace than before.
James Furukawa true that, true that
I think that games can be for fun, but also other things. Scratch that, let's put things into a box. How about this: games should be enjoyable in some way! Look at Loneliness, it's a great game, really interesting, but it's not 'fun'. It's enjoyable.
But, don't get me wrong, I LOVE me a Monday night shooty jumpy fest (AKA: Warframe)
Theo Hamilton I am not saying that games that are purely for fun are a bad thing, hell, they are awesome. I am just saying that I am just waiting for games to be treated as an art form and a new way to express issues instead of a toy and be enjoyable as well.
Andre Cruz Being treated isn't enough. You see, even in film where it is treated as an art form, there isn't much art being produced and widely distributed in film form. Artful movies are difficult to find, and never appear in major cinemas. Also almost all art movies are indie movies. That is the kind of thing we have to prevent from happening in games, if they are to be considered art.
Love the Calvin and Hobbes references in this one. Who's in for Calvinball?
Zsnakeistaken s
Zsnakeistaken me!
I always crack up when something you talk about is illustrated literally in the vid, e.g. 2:40 "Expanding audience"
Love the Walter Moers and Cormac McCarthy mentions! They've done some of my favorite books ("The 13 1/2 Lives of Captain Bluebear" is a long read, but a fun one if you're into zany fantasy.)
"The biggest threat is that you no longer need to love games to be in the gaming business"
so true
i love the art in this episode. did the artist draw any other episodes??
i dont think she did
and (opinion) for me ,for the better
Yeah, she did the second part of the heroes journey.
I think it's because the games that games journalism sites choose to champion as art in games are almost all un-fun
CaitSeith I didn't have much fun with the CoD shooter corridors.
+CaitSeith it wasent it was pure propaganda, also every time you buy the game you support gun manufactuers who support illegal wars over seas.
And before you start with me i torrented the game I didnt give them a fucking cent.
CaitSeith You comment on a hard topic expect to get answers that disregard your thoughts on the matter, this is how a comment section works.
If you don't like your ideas being challanged or discredited I suggest not commenting.
At 2:43 is that a sketch from a Walter Moers book? Cos it looks like one and Walter Moers is one of my favorite authors. Amazing.
Yep, I thought the same, so pretty sure it is :)
It is. Hildegunst von Mythenmetz
Yup, that's him!
Man, I love that guy.
Took me 6 years to find this video, good to know there are other people striking to make games more meaningful...Don’t see big revaluation in this mediums though...but I’ll dedicate my life working on it ☕️
Just a happy little note to say, I love the art in this episode.
i did not
I love the drawing style in this video:)
I think it doesn't help that simply put, so many artsy games are simply not fun or engaging. Many are, definitely, but so many of them are literally just you walking around a set as a story is told to you. Sure the story might be engaging and interesting, but there is honestly very little interactivity or gameplay to be had. Like Dear Esther for example, literally all you do is wander around the island and occasionally finding a point where a story is told to you. It's an interesting way to tell us the story, but if all we're doing is being presented with text and narration, the game part seems a bit superfluous.
Journey, on the other hand, does it right. You do spend it wandering around the setting as a story is told to you, but you actually have to engage with the game, solve puzzles, complete tasks and suchlike before the story continues. And all without the need for text or dialogue.
I think their main point is that if the culture of gaming embraces its medium as a deep intellectual art form, it'll progress the industry from all angles. I can see why you didn't like Dear Esther, I can understand why a lot of people wouldn't. That game isn't for everyone. But it explored something that helped bring about a new kind of game. I guarantee you the developers of Journey were inspired by Dear Esther. So they took one of the ideas of the game, made it better, and then put a whole lot of their own stuff into it, and made Journey. At a basic level anyway. Dear Esther also inspired The Stanley Parable. You literally only walk through doors and occasionally push a button in that game, but for me, it was engaging, and fun as hell. Maybe not for everyone, but I'd be skeptical of someone who claimed they had no fun playing The Stanley Parable. But the point still stands. If you don't like games like Dear Esther, don't play them, but it's a good thing they exist, because they help make video games better over all. You have to push boundaries to make what's within them better.
***** Movies don't tell stories by examining disparate elements of a setting. Video Game - Gameplay does not = Movie.
The "for some reason" is because they thought the medium was more effective at conveying the story they wanted to tell than a book or movie. You know, the reason people choose different mediums to tell stories in.
Sometimes, for example, the creator desires to place the viewer in the position to observe the world around them even if they don't want to interact with it.
I dunno what I'd call it, but it wouldn't be a movie. If you have any input at all, even as minor as pressing a button every fifteen minutes for a slightly different dialogue or being able to walk from scene to scene by controlling a character, it isn't a movie.
Honestly I'd probably just call it a video game; some refer to gameplay-nonexistent games as 'visual novels' or 'interactive movies' or 'new media' in general, but I don't see the use in inventing a new term for what I see as just a clear subdivision of an existing concept that chooses not to use gameplay as its central focus.
***** Every story's different, Sometimes you don't need or want any more player involvement than being able to look around the environment. Sometimes you just want to offer the player a choice at infrequent intervals. Telling a writer their story would be 'better off' as a movie sounds pretty presumptuous, considering we're talking about theoreticals here.
Honestly, most of the time when I hear this complaint, it's someone trying to police what they think video games should be like. Which I think is incredibly unhealthy to do in any art medium.
"Do you think words scrolling down a screen can be considered a movie?"
Yes. Am I controlling the rate at which they are scrolling? If not, that's a directorial decision and an element beyond the scope of narrative written form. It'd definitely be an unconventional movie, but a movie all the same.
Of course, I could also look at it from the perspective of a novel, because media formats aren't hard categories. It still would also fall into the movie format, though.
As for the first bit, who knows? This is a theoretical narrative that doesn't actually exist, so I can't exactly critique its choices in how it distributes its narrative. My point is that I don't think we should be allowed to constrain art and definitively say "no, you're not allowed to do that, make a movie instead."
its amazing that, today, 23 of May, 2018, the exact future depicted here, in 2012, 6 years later, is the reality.
Extra Credits knew their stuff. They still do. So glad I found this channel
2 things.
1: that girl really can draw :D
2:It's sad to think companies like Nintendo(who arguably saved video games) do have people who really do care about the video games as a medium, and then you have people who are only in it for the money and create their games like flow charts because they make more money that way (sometimes) see EA
and yet its soooooo satisfying when nintendo has more money than any of those companies put together XD
Christian bergna cova True thing... I was kinda happy when the 3DS steamrolled the gaming market for 2-3 years straight. Just hope that the WiiU starts pumping out it's big titles and doing some heavy marketting, so the sales may go up
Hailstormful I hope so too i want a reason to buy a WiiU so I can get Bayonetta 2 and support Nintendo :)
Hailstormful man i remember when the 3DS was a complete failure then in like 2 years it skyrockets in sales.
ADerpGiraffe :3
Super Smash Bros. 4, that's one game, but it's the only reason you need.
“I find the insinuation that I can't ask questions and have fun condescending"
Everything we do, as humans, is an art form. Without the art and analysis we will never create new and interesting things.
Best part of the video was the Hildegunst von Mythenmetz cameo. Love you guys.
1:40
I’d like to point out in literature, when you analyze the cliches in a narrative, it can fill somewhat predictable. Although I agree with you guys I just felt a potential counter argument.
This had the best writing in the E.C. series so far, good job.
5:18 *cough* *cough* candy crush *cough* *cough*
***** believe it or not, its not a clone of bejeweled. Its a clone of a clone of bejeweled that had a similar style. Yet it also has clones. (Such as cookie jam, cupcake mania, candy blast, etc.)
Yes, I did enjoy this video. Also, I love the fact that she Drew Calvin and Hobbes in one frame. I like her style, and they looked pretty good drawn that way.✨
I suppose, in thinking about it, you could say that's saying something considering the bias of how I'm used to seeing them...
1:16 Calvin and Hobbes!
This art style, while different from the norm, is great.
Love the Calvin and Hobbes in there as well.
WARNING, MINOR UNDERTALE SPOILERS:
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...
Undertale is a great example of an "artsy" game that is still fun. The game has a master crafted characters and story that really explores the medium in many very meta ways, but the bullet hell mechanics are still really fun to play, particularly to the kick ass music.
now that I think of it
how many episodes do what extra credits say?
can anyone even count that much?
It's like Toby Fox watched Extra Credits!
+notbobby125 How is that a spoiler?
+notbobby125 Undertale is also a good reason as to why indie developers now have no excuses when it comes to making a poorly designed game. Undertale was made by one person in Game Maker Studio with no coding knowledge. If you don't believe me, check Toby Fox's blog to verify. Hopefully Undertale makes way for two new things to come about in the indie scene:
1) Indie gamers stop overrating games that are mediocre and complain when the game isn't GOTY
2) Indie developers start focusing on making games better rather than taking advantage of nostalgia or graphics to make their game popular.
I remember playing a platformer that used magnetism as it's main mechanic. The game had inconsistent physics (How do you even? Just literally move your player down at a consistent force and move them up at a higher force than gravity. It's not that hard.), terrible optimization, a plethora of glitches, lackluster soundtrack, and poor story conveyance that relies on long blocks of text to tell the story rather than the gameplay. This game was praised as one of the best indie games of its time. Wanna know the reasoning people used to back up this claim? Because it reminded them of gaming when they were young. That's literally it. All positive reviews of the game pointed that out and said the magnetism mechanic was new and interesting (Which is a lie as it's been done before).
+RandomAnimeGamer ランダムオタクゲーマー of course there is also Dust an Elysian Tail. one guy designed AND animated a game over the course of 4 years! meaning he can both draw AND code something that you don't see much of in mainstream games. he also wrote it directed it. basically the only thing he didn't do was voice act and composed the soundtrack but he got darn good people to do both of those things. of course a lot of idiots just look at it as being "that creepy furry fantasy made by that basement dwelling pervert" because you know internet = assholes.
The art for this episode is amazing. I'm only just going through the series for the first time, but I truly hope that this artist comes back.
And some people say they are trying to make art games, when they are actually making propaganda games...and that you don't like their games because you don't like art, but you really don't like their games because you don't like propaganda.
+Frank Johnson You really don't know what the word propaganda mean....
jackyoh971 White propaganda or black propaganda? I'll tell you about either.
Frank Johnson Why you talk about white or black?
Propaganda is a lie a lie make by few powerful people on the the mainstream audience for their profit.
If you have ideas something personal and put it in your art game movie etc this is not propaganda it's talk about your ideas.
That's not propaganda.
Fox news is propaganda game cannot be propaganda game are fictional they never claim they are real so they can't never lie!
jackyoh971 Propaganda is at it's most effective when it's concealed within something else to get people to consume it. Many people can identify straight propaganda and simply tune it out, but if you instead interweave your political agenda into an otherwise entertaining game, story, or show, you can expose people to your message that would otherwise never look at it. The individual power level of the person making the propaganda is irrelevant. Besides, do you know all the investors and backers of the project? Do you know how they got the job in the first place? Was it skill or connections? Big movements have pawns, and pawns can distribute propaganda, again because you'd reject say "big fox news" but you might listen to one of their minions disguised as "little people" and it works for both sides of the spectrum, because generally the more authoritarian an idea, the more programing, ie propaganda is needed to keep it going due to it's irrationality. As far as white or black propaganda, white is when you promote an idea to benefits yourself or your cause, black is when you spread lies about an enemy.
+jackyoh971 Propaganda is more than just a lie. In fact, the country of the United States itself used propaganda to motivate and inspire the revolutionists to take action. the "Boston Massacre?" About 7 shot, after throwing snowballs with rocks at the soldiers. One soldier was reported to be critically injured, bleeding from his head. 3 Boston Citizens critically injured, 4 wounded. Not even a single casualty that can be found reported. However the "Boston Scruffle" Doesn't sound nearly as good as "Massacre" Propaganda is more than a lie, its a clever selling device. And..is a tool. Like any tool its not good or bad, its the intent of the user.
The good ol' Hildegunst von Mythenmetz at 2:43, awesome.
1:16 ah Calvin and Hobbes. To this day I still don't know the proper way to pronounce "Hobbes"
Like hops but instead of the p sound it's the b sound
It's like hobble
Was that... Hildegunst von Mythenmetz just now? I am impressed. I am incredibly moved and impressed.
The art reminds me of Tim burton for some reason
I wholeheartedly agree
it pains me to see how certain developers put no love in their games, or worse, putting enough love into details that obscure it's nature as cashgrabs.
On the other hands, once I see these little details that showed the devs went an extra mile, like the FFXV crew complaining about how you almost hit them in a game with no friendly fire or how 2B will twirl away if you try to look up her skirt (just 2 examples from new games I've enjoyed) I feel happy knowing someone out there did this extra work for us players.
also kudos for puting Okami among the examples
I can understand the other side of this. It can feel as if we are tapping into something sacred that can't be explained, and that will only hurt us more as we try to explain the unexplainable.
Or maybe this study will make games so scientific that they are eventually just the same basic concept every time, as the devs know it will sell.
But from the perspective of a designer, you need as much information as possible. Otherwise, the only thing we CAN do is repeat the same games and mistakes, over and over.
Tl;dr: We may want to leave things unexplained, but that will only hold us back.
I think you're confusing Art Theory for market research. What they mean by the study of games, or any medium for that matter, is exploration of its potential, not "how does this sell". It isn't a scientific breakdown at all, but rather looking at art through different lenses to find what makes it special in different ways, and also to see things in the art that may not have otherwise been known.
I'll take literature as an example, because I have some academic experience with art theory and lit. When I use deconstruction theory to break down _Catcher in the Rye_, I'm not trying to reverse engineer the novel into its constituent parts to copy and paste somewhere else (though this has definitely been done before--like 'the heroes journey' and _Star Wars_). What I'm doing is looking at the work very closely through a specific lens to see if I can observe anything I've never seen before, and enjoy the work more thoroughly because of it.
For further reading, I suggest starting by looking up the video by "Inuendo Studios" using art theory to look at _The Beginner's Guide_. Beyond that, look up the wikipedia article on "New Criticism" and branch out from there.
Chris McCartney I completely agree with what you're saying, I was just noting the counterargument
guys, you are amazing, I'm keeping track of you about 2 weeks and learned a lot already
Knowlegde is always a good option, and systematically study of one area is the best way to know it better. Knowing it better => Making it better. And yeah, I want more games with the quality of mass effect (one of my favorite series of all time).
Games may be included on '7 arts' soon, because its an art, and a hard one. On my college a teacher that loved games said "I love games because they explore all area of computing and more", and that's so true. From projects to algorithms, performance, graphics, sounds, history, psychology, tons of math and physics, well, that's all there.
I don't know yours exactly function in game design, but I would love to see you make a serie approaching specific ciences inside the game making. I illustrated some, there's much more and you'll know better than me. This is a great propaganda to bring more scientists to this area, still need lots of research and alternative researchers will bring new points of view what is great, of couse.
What the hell does "Art making games worse" even mean...? I don't even understand the pretense here?
"Art making gaming worse", or " 'Art' is not 'Fun' " is a mentality where a person believes that making a game more in-depth and adding layers of meaning and ways to interpret a game makes the overall experience less worthwhile. You can think of it as someone saying, "All these metaphors are getting in the way of me shooting stuff" I guess. Of course, its not that simple. A real hot topic nowadays is "Are games art?", where it is debated whether or not completed games can be categorized as "art". Some believe that gaming is a separate entity entirely from art, and others believe that a game is a form of expression just as a painting or a movie is. Its all very convoluted and murky, but you can just think about people not wanting a big, expansive narrative in a game when you hear "Art is making gaming not fun."
+LittleIslander It's a bit like explaining a joke, once you need to it isn't funny anymore; the fallacy being that jokes are generally pretty shallow, you either get it or you don't. Games, on the whole, aren't that shallow.
+IamCoalfoot Well, I would argue that games, on the whole, are shallow. Not that that's a terribly important distinction, I just wanted to point it out.
+Henrik Munk Madsen
You, my friend, have been playing the wrong games then.
Demand more from your game makers, spend your money where you'll get a truly immersive experience. The choice and power, lie with you.
+Henrik Munk Madsen what games do YOU play then?i would like to know because if you are playing the right game then it could be shallow but by no means are games as a whole shallow.
Really loved the art style of this episode. Make sure you bring her back
Love the art in this video. Send my complements to the artist.
the words "fast-paced" and that RD pic MADE this.
This video is, unfortunately, more relevant than ever...
At last I have found a series that looks at games as an art medium and not just an entertainment medium. I've just started making a review show on animated movies, animated tv shows and video games from an artistic perspective, so its great to find a show like this that is pretty similar to what I'm trying to do in my videos.
Also I love your video format. :)
wow I love the art in this :)
"You no longer need to love games to be in the gaming industry."
Very well said, very good writing and art on this series.
1:32 That's like first time in forever I hear swearing in EC.
Not saying it's bad, just saying. Just saying.
+Ethan Zhu It's happened once or twice. I think they throw it into the script to indicate that something really bothers them.
+GriffinPilgrim I'm suprised he swore, the only other time he swore was in call of Juarez the cartel, and cojtc is awful, and disgraceful.
This episode really spoke to me as I've been a gamer from a young age. It felt like back then I would play an amazing game for years on end, maybe not even beating the thing. Nowadays it feels like I'm expected to be done with a game in a week. I haven't been able to justify many of the purchases I've made from games lately. They all just seem like cash grabs to me, and I really want it to change. I want the next game that I'll feel will keep me entertained for years on end rather then something that dies in a month at most.
I think I know who the better artist for this show is
As someone who was named after calvin and hobbes, im loving the inclusion at 1:14
What is that weird thing between his shoulders and his head? And also between his arms and his palm? Why aren't they floating like usual?
If you search the episode with the proposal outro,
the name of the episode is "Gamifying Education" ^^
I
it's good to see a game that understands how crazy ayn rands ideas really are
TheGlock30owner
i think you underestimate human capacity for warfare. how many?
Don't eat from the tree of knowledge...
I'm so happy primer got listed as a pure "art" film, it's my favorite time travel movie of all time
I don't know, i think I wouldn't mind cutting out a certain half of the star wars series
just the tree first or the tree newest i dont even know anymore!
+Plinio Melo Three first, I assure you.
wait you mean a episodes "I" "II" and "III"
+Plinio Melo Unequivocally and absolutely. Regardless of your opinion of Episode 7, it's not comparable to to the Prequels in being sheer crap.
of course it didint have jar jar binks
All the feels...
Care in the primary factor driving change in ANY industry, and there is a real danger when someone who doesn't care is left in charge. This actually summarizes my opinion of life in general, the danger to not caring. Just wow, well said.
calvin and hobbes ftw
Art is EVERYTHING to my eldest daughter, my god she's only 14 years old, but I've seen her work so hard on her drawings, it's all she ever does! Beside watching your videos.
while i agree with the overall content and message of this video...
using the modern transformers movies as any sort of example of something well done is quite a bad decision. those movies sucked so badly....
He wasn't necessarily saying they were good. They are an example of how movies can continue to be stupid fun, and in fact be even more of that, because some talented auteurs developed new techniques of the craft decades ago. Bay's Transformers series is honestly crap unless you're willing to ignore most of it and just eat popcorn to exploding robots, but if you know about cinematography at all, you can see how it inherits valuable ideas from more serious work in the past.
The movies sucked big Predacon balls, we all see that.
But, did you ever imagine you would see Optimus Prime they way he ended up?
I look at the original cartoons, and then the movies, and think... damn.
Fernando Cruz
"did you ever imagine you would see Optimus Prime they way he ended up?"
no. i was so disappointed. and then i watched the second movie....and my disappointment was even greater. i dont think i watched the third movie....i hope michael bay goes on a trip with jj abrams, and they both decide to quit movies for good and do something productive with their lives instead of ruining franchises.
sabin97 Dude, I meant how frickin' huge he look!
Before, he was like a giant brick, but now, you can see every little part of him.
I used to think, "Oh, yeah, he's a robot. So what?" Now, he looks like a beast, especially with that boost he got!
And even if the movies suck, eventually, somewhere down the line, some guy is probably gonna' want to re-make Transformers and make them look completely retarded, to the point where you're wondering what's real anymore.
Man of Steel.
'Nuff said.
Fernando Cruz
"ome guy is probably gonna' want to re-make Transformers and make them look completely retarded"
someone already did. his name is michael bay. and i really hope he retires from movies(and takes abrams with him).
People who claim this are the same people that criticise great films for not having enough, and I quote "car chases and shooting"
you should make games
James already does.
what has he made?
I'm not sure but they repeatedly state that he is a designer and i think they once said that he worked at a company called Rainwater (Rainmaker?) games.
yeah I knew he was a designer but I wanna know what they make
Ok after a bit of searching it seems he worked as a designer on Call of Duty and a consultant on Farmville. It isn't easy to find info on much else than his academic work.
Love the bionic arm at 1:13!
Love the videos, but I feel like this is one where you missed the mark a bit. The problem isn't that people are afraid of losing anything. The problem is that every day Joe's are getting tired of self-proclaimed "game connoisseurs" shitting all over games that they genuinely enjoy or even love. If you expected deep character development or a meaningful plot line from COD or Transformers... frankly...you're an idiot. That was never the point of those titles, and that was obvious from the onset. It's the same reason that people are taking big steamy dumps all over Destiny, when in truth, Destiny delivered on what Bungie knows best. Vauge non-specific lore, vast universes with a feeling of depth, and solid ultra fun shooter mechanics. By the end of the 3rd halo we still didn't really know who we were, how we became whatever we are, or even really why we are continuing to kill aliens, and yet, it was fun! This obviously assumes that we haven't read any books or other lore but still, why do people expect anything different from destiny? People have gotten into a bad habit of slaughtering good games because they didn't deliver on things that they should have never been expected to deliver on. That is where people are getting tired of the dried up arguments like "COD is the same thing every year". And yet. You still bought it. Because it's fun. But how often to here people celebrate what COD is doing well?
My big problem with destiny is the cash grabs they tend to do with the DLC, and the fact that there's so little variation or depth in the base game that it even gets to the point of the big bosses being reskins of normal enemies with more health and damage output. COD does manage to consistently put out good games, but the issue is they very rarely do something creative, they just bleed the same concept dry for years on end, which means that the core experience gets stale after a while
The mentality that Extra Credits has on games, as demonstrated by this video, makes me really want to see you guys talk about the trailer for Hatred and what the devs have been saying about its purpose.
Fight the AAA.
man I wish I could like this more than once. I care and I'm glad others do to keep up the good work :)
OK OK OK OK tv is ruined. there's 4 types of things on TV. 1 a shitty action show. 2 kids cartoons(some of are great). 3 News. 4 SEXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
1:15 Isn't it so suiting how Calvin and Hobbes make a cameo in a rant about art? If you know the calvin and hobbes story, why there isn't any merchandise about it, and all that other stuff, it's implicitly thought provoking, and you see it as more than a joke. Maybe that was the artist making an implicit little reference to a real life event, or it might just be a coincidence, I have no idea, but i love that, THANK YOU for putting Calvin and Hobbes there.
she can draw.............ish
Oh snap. You guys referenced Bartel's Taxonomy way back in this video. Did not see that coming.
Religion.
The more explored it is, the less ground it holds for those whom believe it.
*Takes shelter from the comment war*
Anything that asks questions > Religion
+Zoogoo40 I don't know what most people think a "religion" is.
But I found out that having a relationship with someone friendly who can handle everything is a very nice thing to have, even when some people look like they want to kill me, because they think that' too good to be true and my life proving otherwise makes them angry.
As far as religion goes, taking it literally is absurd. For instance, there's a lot of christians whom take the bible literally when the text was MEANT to be questioned, People were meant to stop and ask 'Okay, hang on a moment, that's not right.', but it seems to have failed in that to some extent.
I should rephrase my thing to say literal religion is terrible.
+Zoogoo40 Um, with all due respect, what does this have to do with the video? Religion didn't come up. At all. So, why bring up a divisive and, as you yourself hinted at, causes angry, hate-fueled comments on both sides of the argument?
+Zoogoo40 i completely agree with your second comment. my mother, being the intelligent woman she is, even realized this at a very young age. however, going back to your first comment, i don't think that the exploration of religion is a good metaphor for the exploration of games. while games are tangible things that can explore abstract concepts or ideas, religion is a mix of abstract ideas, beliefs, and explanations for what may be, or may have been, inexplicable. religion is an (albeit temporary) answer to the mysteries of life and death, but with exploration, some of these questions can be (also perhaps temporarily) answered using science and/or logic.
(wow. did i make any sense there? sorry for that mostly meaningless ramble.)
Excellent video, I'm a big fan and I think you often prove a lot of very good points. Really makes me think of gaming as a whole and how I've seen it evolve in my life time. I'm happy you aren't deterred from exploring different views and ideas with games just because of the haters out there. I'm reminded of a quote "If video games have taught me anything, it's that if you encounter enemies you're going the right way"
Thank you for the thought provoking entertainment :)
-Tasty Birds
I feel like if we take every guest artists depiction of him and overlap them we will get a real picture of what dan looks like
i feel like gab can be a really good anime/manga drawer
+arad fir or animator
Whats the name of that game with the orange cover that has little eyes with swords, horses swords etc that apears on 3:52?
It's called 'Patapon', mate! I believe it was a psp exclusive though.
3:51 could anyone tell me the name of the "atapo" game? I don't know what it is, but I feel like I've played it before.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patapon
Found it.
"She can draw". Bit of an understatement there. Moar Gab!
Same accusation as "it's just a movie" "it's just a cartoon" "it's just an anime"