[General Discussion] Games as Art

While I would personally go with Bradylama's idea that games are like an experience and that its delivery can be considered art, I do realize that I'm kind of skirting the problem of how you would define a videogame.

So, I would argue this: You can't have a videogame without having an established art medium. Otherwise, the game simply wouldn't be able to communicate with you. Unlike sports and such, there is more to a game than just limitations. You don't have boundaries and infinite action within them - you have very specific actions that a game allows you to take. In other words, the game designers are still mostly in complete control of what you can or cannot experience (Save for mods and emergent gameplay of course) because they are in control of what actions you can take and what consequences those actions can invite.

I suppose the main thing comes down to whether you would consider a choose your own adventure book to be capable of being art, because games are essentially an expansion on that. There are key differences though, like how not every choice would necessarily bring you forward as in a choose your own adventure book (You could choose to, say, stand there and punch at the air without progressing), but I think for this argument the concept can be seen as the same. What do you guys think about that?

Jam it back in, in the dark.

The problem with Indigo Prophecy is that its director seemed to be in love with the "illusion of choice," something that I do enjoy ("Yeah, I sliced and diced 'em") but can't get behind as the driving methodology behind a game.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I've played Raw Danger and it's a great game. It does more or less do the same thing as Indigo Prophecy, though (The difference being it doesn't go to shit at the end). Your choices for the different endings tend to happen right AT the ending, and this is true for the first guy you play as as well as the scientist.

And Sexninja, the point is not that Indigo Prophecy allows you choices at the end just that it allows choices all through the game, none of which really make a difference. Plus, the choices that you get at the end tend to come in what order you do things. It's not really "Will you do this? Or this?" so much as it is "Since you did this, this happens." And again, unlike Raw Danger this is the only time you get choices at all. Hence, the "illusion of choice." Raw Danger does it, but the choices are actually made by you and the consequences make sense, too, so it's forgivable.

I think it's a bit misleading to say choices you make at the beginning affect the ending, though. Your choices usually DO have some kind of effect, but they tend to be immediate (At least, for that point in time, not necessarily for you the player).

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

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2. and the first guy josh you mentioned.
If you will leave with/without in chopper stepahanie, you will get different ending of the whole game(the tower scene will not come, so will the fate of disc will e unknown), since his actions trigger later scenarios and events so IT does matter the end and the whole game.

3. Further more his actions can only unlock Keith in the END.

I know this, and this is exactly what I was referring to. Your actions do have an effect, and it's great. I'm just saying that your ending choice does occur right before the ending like in Indigo Prophecy, Raw Danger just does it better. You choose to go on the helicopter, thus you chose to end the game that way. You choose to keep going, and thus have locked yourself on the path to getting on the girl's father's helicopter. It's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just that in Indigo Prophecy your choices weren't that clear cut (And in some cases it wasn't clear that you were making a choice by doing something), so it sucked.

I brought up its similarity to Fahrenheit because you claimed that choices in the beginning of RD affect the ending, where usually this is not actually the case. If the game ends early because you chose to do something, that's still making a choice right before the end. It's all just semantics really, but I wanted to make sure you understood what I was referring to.

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I said 'works better' because every game with complexity of choices msierably fails to achieve to do so. I am amazed how budget title RD came from nowhere acheives the complexity so smartly.
How many games we have played like this?
In order to make every choice connected to later parts and endgame, developers screw the whole game like fahrenheit, and thats why its etter be avoided.
Execute it perfectly or don't bother.

I think you're confused here. Fahrenheit didn't even try to connect choices to the endgame. There essentially WEREN'T choices, you were just fooled into thinking there were. The only choices you got were near/at the end, and most of them weren't even clear on what kind of effect they would have. And I'm not talking Fallout Junktown style, I mean "Do you kill these soldiers first or the AI?" It just felt sloppily put together. There was a choice before that that DID have an effect, but even then it was easily overwritten.

If anything I think Raw Danger did try to do this in some ways, though small. For example, treating Stephanie badly will have her not refer to you as her boyfriend later, and whatever you call the doctor in the school girl's scenario will carry over to his. It's nothing major, but it can be done and Fahrenheit certainly didn't even try. Raw Danger's choices that affected the ending came when you were facing that potential ending, but they did so in a way that made sense. That's why I liked it.

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