"I throw my arms up in disgust. The man is unwilling to spend a beautiful two hours playing flOwer on a fully-loaded free PS3 geeksquaded by the most overqualified nerd out there; there's no hope. Next time I don't want to do something, I'm going to write an essay about how I don't think it's Art, too."I grew up playing video games nearly my whole life, from the age of five or so, starting with a Commodore 64. I've played games up through 2010, and am currently nowhere near Ebert's age. At this point in my life, I would be unwilling to spend two hours playing any game on any system - not when I can read a book, walk my dogs in the woods, cook dinner with my wife, or play an instrument. Maybe there's no hope for me, either.
I thought about those works of Art that had moved me most deeply. I found most of them had one thing in common: Through them I was able to learn more about the experiences, thoughts and feelings of other people. My empathy was engaged. I could use such lessons to apply to myself and my relationships with others. They could instruct me about life, love, disease and death, principles and morality, humor and tragedy. They might make my life more deep, full and rewarding.There are already games that do this, and they are being appreciated as such. However, you are unlikely to see them on the shelf at Gamestop, because making a game that instructs you on life entails making it harder to learn, play, and appreciate, often for no appreciable benefit in entertainment value. You need to railroad the player into whatever message you want to give them, and you need to do so subtly enough, and with enough guidance, that the player will reason their way onto your rails--it's sort of like the Socratic method, with the "questions" being the clues that the game provides.
I have not played Zelda, but is it possible that it could be looked at as a world-exploration game, and that the puzzle (or goal) aspect of it is really just a way of leading you through the world?
The decision of whom or what to rescue in an emergency is not as altruistic as you think. Like every other choice for an objectivist, this one is also simply a question of value. Megalomaniac manipulators like Fontaine don't have much value. Tanenbaum has great skill in genetics and so has high value. The little girls have potential value for the future of the species (what's the point of building a better world, if no one survives to appreciate it?). The splicers' minds are fried so they have no value at all. So when leaving I would take Tanenbaum and the girls, but leave the splicers and Fontaine to his own devices. Killing him is pretty hard and is really not worth the effort, since he does not control the bathyspheres anyway. If he really wants to leave, he can become a Big Daddy, who can walk outside and just float to the surface. I suspect he'll just stay in Rapture and rule it, and I say that's fine with me.posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing at 1:27 PM on July 3, 2010
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Regardless of what is "right" and "wrong," I think it takes a lot of humility to admit that you're fallible.
posted by Herschel at 1:37 AM on July 1, 2010 [5 favorites]