There are lots of arguments and quibbles in the comments around the use of the word "fun," and I can now see why that is, because fun is as nebulous a concept as "art," and though I tried to be careful around the word art, I wasn't around fun. I also brought up games with ASPECTS of "fun" in them and didn't properly address that until This War of Mine, which was done purposefully. "All these games are a bit fun... let's go to a game that isn't fun at all" as a framing device for TWoM, but if you make a comment mid-video, you won't get around to me admitting that these games are still enjoyable so... yeah. I never leave comments until I finish a video, so I often don't think about this type of person. I don't think games need to be entertaining to be successful. Their entire goal may not even be entertainment at all, or entertain you through a non-standard path, such as forcing you to overcome adversity. Games can and should be considered for more than just their ability to be entertaining, and this video is meant to be a collection of some games that eschew just bog standard "fun" in pursuit of a message, a metaphor, a compelling narrative, or to make you work for your entertainment, perseverance being a part of the intended experience. Sometimes games are frustrating, or boring, even compelling!; but not always entertaining. And I won't agree with people who think games need to be entertaining as a rule. Below this comment is a link to an Extra Credit video where they say the same things, but more from a comparative stand point to films or books (and inside of 6 minutes). A different method towards the same persuasive thesis; perhaps it will be more persuasive to those on the fence. EDIT: Also, this isn't a NEW topic, it's been talked about at length over the course of game history, and UA-cam as well. Lots of people have linked to Hbomber's Pathologic video as another example of this, and that's exactly correct. Watch that video as well.
This War Of Mine will forever be ingrained in my heart. I was engaged from start to finish and even as I reached the end and all my deeds good and bad were scrolling by. I wasn't smiling. Thank you for bring this topic to light once again in an industry oversaturated by petty drama and culture wars.
This War of Mine is extremely easy. I just find the soldiers and bad guys and kill them all one by one. The plot you can find in these locations will make your life very easy that the game loses all challenge. I usually have tons of food left when the war is over. So how do I do it? Scavenge with a kill capable survivor. Equip with an axe, knife, shovel or crowbar. Hide in cover, lure your enemies with sound. Assassinate for an easy kill. Learning how to stack item piles is also crucial for efficient item gathering. Craft the essential work areas such as vegetable garden. So so easy.
@@DarthNVious Yeah I've completed the game multiple times (knife stealth attacks ftw) and does reveal some of it's 'gaminess' through multiple playthroughs (and mods) but the initial direction, intention, and memory of my first playthrough is still there
Brother, the intro was very well written with good buildup to the points you’re trying to make throughout the analysis, but damn it was boring ash lol. 3 mins is too long and it felt like I was reading/hearing an essay.
@@adisca2k You put it better than I could. League of Legends is fun. If you're playing something like aram or urf, where people are *less likely* to be toxic and obsessed with winning.
I played This War of Mine for about an hour many years ago. (roughly mid 2016) After a few nights of scavenging I ran into an armed civilian and promptly got my scavenger killed. I never touched the game again. Which feels to me as the most glowing review I can give. The game didnits job in communicating it's narrative and tone. And 19 year old me just couldn't handle it.
a yes, the average traumatic war of mine event, my was that sent out a dude to scavenge and he came back with nothing, everyone was hungry and depressed too, he got desmotivated and i stopped playing lol
I remember most going scavenging in a building with other survivors on the second story. I tried sneaking through and grabbing what I could find on the lower level where they couldn't see me. I messed up. A girl on the upper level saw me, and started shooting with a hunting rifle. I took cover, snuck around, got up there and shot her, thinking I was just defending myself. There were two other survivors up there and while I was prepared to continue the fight, once she had died the others ran in panic, breaking down from grief over their dead sister. I got a bunch of stuff that night that we desperately needed but it really stuck with me. They were exactly like I was. Tucked away, in a defensible building just protecting their own stuff. I was the intruder there. It really made me feel sick and I didn't touch the game for a year or two.
When i played i had a slightly different reaction For context, i was playing the first group (the one with the chef and the girl that smoked too much) and i really needed medicine and food, so i went to scavenge for those, i ended up in a ran down building with three persons there, i sent the girl because the chef was sick and the other guy was watching, but i sent her with just a knife and a pistol, a couple mistakes and after killing one of the survivors she got shot down by a guy with a rifle, i was really pissed off, so i sent my other guy with a shotgun and gunned down the remaining survivors, but after that i felt really bad about it, mainly because i lost a survivor to a stupid mistake, and worst of all, we got attacked in the night as my survivor was retrieving the girl's equipment and corpse, so it was ultimately for nothing, i left the game soon after that because all my survivors were depressed and chef's was only getting worse, but the game got an impression on me
Your struggle? Are you kidding me? This war of mine is based on Sarajevo. A city besieged BY BOSNIAN SERBS. You are the damn perpetrstor and try to claim struggle???
@@NerzJansch2 this just in; Bosnians also struggled in the war their own countrymen created, and they don’t all necessarily agree with the actions of those who represent them.
I will never forget the first time I played This War of Mine. I was still in a video game mindset. I saw mechanics, and I liked the characters, but I wasn't fully invested. It was time to go out to a raid. There were two people in the building. One was out on the balcony with a gun. I snuck in the back, and took him out quietly, knowing that I would be shot if he saw me. This alerted his partner, who came running over, and I got the hell out of Dodge with what little I was able to grab quickly. I expected the second man to search for me. "Stop, criminal scum!" That sort of thing. Instead, he ran up to his dying/dead friend, cradled his head in his lap and said, "Oh god, please don't leave me." I can only describe it as being hit with an emotional truck. I didn't play it too much longer before I called it quits and never picked it back up. Did I enjoy playing it? No. But I will remember that moment for a long, long time yet.
@@Popirnotif you do actually do that, it's going to be very hard to live a life with a woman you love, family you cherish, and a purpose that's meaningful. If you do actually do that in games, I feel sorry for you, and hope you can find what's missing from your heart. Be safe.
My best example of this for me is Rainworld, It’s beautiful, intriguing and heaping with atmosphere but also brutally hard for new players and unapologetically random. You also play as a slug cat 10/10
as some point i need to write an essay comparing the beginner's guide and getting over it, both of them explore the idea of games that aren't for everyone but in different ways
@@superdude10000Don't listen to them, Fear and Hunger is a fun family friendly game, F&H 2 aswell. The appendages are hug tentacles. The game promotes healthy marriages aswell!
Strangely enough, "This War of Mine" for me was a great game I got so invested into. I started doing every single story available, and at some point I learned how to min-max EVERYTHING. Every location, every way I could deal with the military and solo everybody. Every way to kill the market murderers, or what to take when doing the sniper junction. I found myself having fun while solving the game to its bare elements. Sadly, I do realize that wasn't the point when I got the platinum.
To the argument about video games being art. There's the quote: art should not make you happy or be fun, art should make you feel things. Good video games, will make you feel something, just as good art will.
"Fun" has always and will ever be the wrong thing to refer to when it comes to games-as-art. They need not be fun. They do, however, need to be compelling. Those are very different things. And being compelling does not need to be related solely to moment to moment gameplay, mechanics or visuals, or even story - concepts, ideas, expression, and whatever it makes you feel counts.
No, they don't NEED to be compelling to have a place, if an all blue canvas can be considered art, so can an uncompelling game, whether or not it compels you to experience it doesn't mean it doesn't have a right to exist
Unless you identify with the ruling class I can not imagine after watching All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) feeling there's anything but cruelty, misery and waste in war. The main characters are soldiers, but they are not especially proficient, only conscripts who's eagerness fades fast and end up stealing from civilians to survive and ending up dying futile deaths, not all even in a battle. It's beautifully made, but any happy moment is when you can forget you're in the middle of a war and just adds contrast to make you more miserable later.
Imo, the 2022 film took too many liberties, much to the detriment of the plot and historical accuracy. I prefer the book, it's fantastic. However the intro sequence of the film is great
The original 1930 movie is better imo. The kids weren’t conscripts, they joined the war willingly. Because away from the war front and the destruction the country was fervent on the war and was fantasized about. Then the war happened
Spotted a few inclusions of Signalis here, wondered if you’d include it somewhere, but for me - Signalis always been a story of the love, despite the authoritarian society the pair was misfit in
noticed the "this space intentionally left blank" at 24:25 and came to the comments to see if anyone mentioned Signalis. It's such a good game. A heartbreaking masterpiece, and (in my opinion) one of the strongest contenders for video games as art. It's brutal and gloomy and depressing, and carries a lot of interesting themes and messages to ponder - that love is worthwhile even if you know it can't last forever, the evils of dehumanization, how oppressive systems weaponize their people against each other, the futility of trying to control and suppress the human spirit, the ability of love to find a way even in the most terrible of circumstances, the inevitability of death and finality, the importance of finding your own meaning and direction in life. It's a beautiful tragedy. 10/10, life-changing game.
I think it was included in the video since signalis in not fun to play. The horrifically oppressive atmosphere, anxiety inducing nightmare of combat and straight up painful inventory management really hammer in how Elster is willing to do anything to get to Ariane. Thematically signalis would not feel the same if the gameplay was fun.
This War of Mine's filmic counterpart is obviously Come and See. The people who don't like either frequently say things that could apply to either, as well.
Could you elaborate please? I never encountered anyone who dislikes these things (well, I have barely encountered people who have any opinion on This War of Mine because they don't even know it exists, sadly) and Come and See has somehow escaped my notice so far
@@marcog.verbruggen674 Come and See is a late-Soviet film, about a teenager who became a partisan in Belarus during WW II. Sort of a cult classic. If you haven't watched it, I would reccomend to at least try to. It is surreal, even arthouse sometimes, but absoultely unapologetic in it's depiction of monsters which are hidden deep inside of human beings. I'd dare to say that it is much, much harder to digest than TWoM (since there IS some gameplay elements to enjoy in a game and at the very least there is some hope that in the end you will make it through meanwhile Come and See's ending is... different) however this is definitely the first thing that comes to my mind if somebody would ask "What would be TWoM's fim counterpart?". I think what Alexis meant is that these art pieces are "too dark", "overbearing" and "preachy" for some people.
@@VasiliyOgniovCome and See's production was... brutal, unethical, twisted and would make Stanley Kubrick go "ok, tone the abuse down, by god." the Director never made another film. I recommend looking it up.
French filmmaker François Truffaut famously said "there is no such thing as an anti-war film." The intent being it's hard to have a piece of visual media that doesn't glorify the spectacle of war at least a little. (Think of Gundam. It tries to say war is bad but also says giant mecha war machines are really cool and you should buy model kits). He never saw Come and See...
I love Lobotomy Corporation. It makes me feel anxiety and fear like never before! I don’t feel fun but whatever it is I’m feeling, I can tell you it’s the purest form of it!
I played 20 hours of Pathologic 2 and hated it. I hated how long it took to become an actual doctor. The game has way too much cryptic foreshadowing super early on. Travel sucks and until you start getting money from your job you just have to starve I guess. Murder and organ harvesting are a godsend but organs take up to much space in your bag. It's been a year now so maybe I'll play it with a bit more patience. I did really like the time management and plot tree though.
@@hjumn Hijacking your comment to write about how much I love Pathologic and maybe recommend it as well for anyone reading to try it in the process. I first played Pathologic 2 during covid, which made the experience especially poignant for the time. I am a generally anxious person that often uses video games as an escape, so playing a game that caused so much anxiety seemed like such a contradictory undertaking when I was already anxious and depressed. Yet it turned out to be one of the most memorable games I've ever played and I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't playing. To this day it's one of my favourite games next to things like Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds and Planescape Torment. It would be redundant to just say "Pathologic is not a fun game, it might just not be for you" under such a video, but Pathologic is a well designed game, that does actually want you to suffer mechanically and has underlying themes that support that. (FYI: It does also have what are essentially difficulty sliders.) Hard survival mechanics, slow travel and inventory/time management are parts of that. Not many games would be brave enough to permanently punish you for dying, for example, but it makes every single conversation about death in the game much more meaningful.
@@Twarex01To note, Patho 1 is much harder and much more miserable. Patho 2 is very much game-y in that it gives a lot of tools to enjoy it, Patho 1 is unrelenting in its gameplay loop.
Type 3 fun is a type of fun that involves a lot of risk and suffering, and is not fun at all. You might swear to never do it again. Some examples of type 3 fun include: • Flipping your boat in the middle of a large lake on a windy day • Making deals with God • Activating the emergency beacon on your GPS • Failed polar expeditions • Apollo 13 • Sailing around the world solo
Frostpunk gave me the most anxiety I've ever felt in a game (I haven't played This War of Mine but I'm sure that would take the crown) because I wanted to save *everyone* and I wanted to make every positive moral decision, too. Those decisions were agony to make as I desperately sought enough resources for *all* the people. That final moment at the end of the game where you wait to see if everything was worth it...oh my god. It's one of those games I finished and said, "I am never playing this again," and I haven't, lol. Frostpunk 2 is in the works and I'm really debating whether I want to trade my anxiety for An Experience again. Great video! This is also a topic I've thought a lot about and it's nice to see someone else's perspective.
I think another game that fits this bill is Pathologic, honestly i didn't have even one second of fun playing that game but to say that it was an effective experience is an understatement. It's a miserable fucking game, but when that's what the artist was going for, how can you really criticise it for that? I get why the game doesn't have mainstream success, but it's just got a lot to say and honestly, sometimes you just have to meet art on its terms instead of your own to appreciate it, in fact, that's probably the only way to truly appreciate art.
I started playing it not long ago and I'm still on day one as the bachelor, but I did actually have fun with it. Maybe not by design though. I went to a spot where the ost changed into a total banger of a song so I spent a minute or so just "dancing". Afterwards, I found a church(?) that had impossible architecture and I wanted to try and see if I can take fall damage, so I saved the game and jumped off. Now I can joke that "Pathologic is so depressing, I first died by suicide". Maybe things change in the next days and I've heard the Haruspex is way harder than the Bachelor,but for a start, I think Pathologic does at least let you make a little bit of your own fun
Was about to say this, for how miserable it's to play it, the messages it has to give are the very of art. The revelations of what the powers to be are and the conversation with the creators are just so god damn good.
I'd like to say so... but I was one of the few people that was thoroughly engrossed and enjoyed my time with Pathologic. It's so brutal and hopeless, but it's so cartoonishly hopeless that it loses a lot of the "unenjoyment factor" for me. "It's so painful it's fun", basically.
I feel like the line between engaging and fun are a bit blurry, if something is engaging, it is fun in a way, even if its not a fun derivated from a positive manner, if something is fun, its engaging in a way
@@monikaisdonewiththeinterne2039 It's really interesting that you say this, personally I've always favored the word engaging as a substitute for fun in cases such as these, but I ended up in a fairly heated discussion with my partner the other day over this exact topic and a big source of frustration for them was that I kept using the word engagement to describe games that are compelling but not fun and in their eyes the word engaging implies some level of fun. I wonder if this association is somehow cultural, or maybe it's just down to the individual. Either way, it's certainly interesting.
I never really played Beginner's Guide, but I remember watching some people play it. Never understood it at the time. One of my friends way back when though, found the story and the message very profound. Shortly after playing it, they stopped making mods for various source games, went radio silent for about like 5 years. Comes back under a different name, different personality, working on a game all about "What happens when a concept, hopes and dreams, objects and ideologies die", choosing to have personified characters of concepts like the Death of self-reflection, Death of faith, death of a martyr, and so on and so forth. From what I can tell she doesn't really talk about it or advertise it's existence anywhere. The irony that I promote it behind her back on a video discussing the beginner's guide is not lost on me. But much like fictional Davey, I just want someone who used to be a close friend of mine to get some recognition for the most unigue story I have ever heard, the most bizarre characters I have ever seen, and how she tells this story in such a way that I am emotionally attached to a triple jointed mermaid in a gimp suit... without knowing literally anything about them other than that they died alone in a black hole trying to solve a 4th dimensional rubik cube... And from the mods she used to make, I know she is part of the school of thought of "Make the player feel anything other than joy or happiness". I have literally no idea when of even if anything will come from it, but wait patiently. Going to let the artist cook on this one~
Can be both, but fun is my driving factor. I'm not going to seek out a game that depresses me for an experience. It usually helps if a hard moment or harsh artistic expression is embedded in a wider game experience.
I am SO surprised not to see Pathologic/Pathologic 2 in this list. It fits in the third category, where you suffer from the story and from the gameplay. And sometimes even from visuals and sound design And it's the whole point. You're meant to suffer. Sometimes it is inevitable I'm new to your channel, so if you haven't played these games, I'm super envy to you, as it is a unique experience and I think you're going to like it!
@@StarchieHalo the plot is profound, the world feels unique, and developers say you'll experience "catharsis", which, yeah, happened to me. It's like overcoming your anxiety
@@StarchieHalo The story is great. However, I believe much of the "suffering" is a byproduct of the game being mechanically poor, rather than an intentional design choice. I don't think the developers intended to create such boring and bad gameplay; they simply failed to fully leverage video games as a medium. For comparison, Fear and Hunger makes you feel hopeless and lost, but it doesn't punish you in the same way Pathologic does with its bugs and slow, mostly uneventful gameplay.
In my opinion any way that humans use to express themselves is art using your body in dance, your hand strokes in art or a keyboard for writing. Writing equations on boards on experiments with chemicals. Almost everything we do to show our humanity is art.
Maybe I'm just not tapped into the scene enough but almost every game related "video essay" channel these days seems like a (mostly well-intentioned) regurgitation of Jacob Geller, NakeyJakey, or Tim Rogers. So glad I stumbled across your work! You're a great writer with a voice of your own, this video was fantastic and brought new ideas to the table of a well trodden topic. Please keep up the great work :)
Thank you for this video. It's really interesting topic. It was good to hear about Beginners guide again. Cuz I completed it long time ago and already forgot about it. But more I liked how you tried to understand what it is like when there is war in your country. I'm from Ukraine and can say for sure that none of the games reflects what you feel when it's war outside, how it affects your life, how you getting used to neverending news about death of people, how it's to see that your neighborhood where you spent your childhood is destriyed and ocupied. But some games like This war of mine reallly tried. And thank you for the disclaimer in the end. Really appreciate that you want to help. Love your channel. Looking forward to your next video.
I very much resonated with the "Oh thats a neat setting" of playing shooters as a kid Nowadays, when i played Dying Light, after failing to connect to it the first time around (as a teen then) and despite it trying to be a fun game first, there's one scene that genuinely gets me. Its when you raid the Volatile nest with another runner, he went in alone and got bitten in the process. Meeting up with him, hes wounded and in pain, but gives us the explosives to get rid of the nest. You raid alone, hoping to beat the clock and get back to your friend in time. You hear the explosion going off when you enter the tunnel, youre almost there, there is still hope. You return to the train cart he was hiding in. And the first thing you see, is a feral zombie, recently turned. He didnt make it. That bit genuinely got me and i think that there isnt a thing as an anti-war or anti-suffering game. But sometimes, it gets close, and i think it should be also praised for that
I feel like all the things you said that makes people keep playing games besides for the point of "fun" can still be labeled as "fun". For a game like Signalis for example, the game is very depressing and has a crushing oppressive atmosphere but I have "fun" by interacting with this world and finding out more about the story as I progress.
Honestly I was surprised to see Signalis on this list. It's definitely a bleak game tonally, but gameplay wise it's a pretty typical survival horror game with very fair and forgiving gameplay balance. At least for me, being bleak isn't enough to qualify a game as unfun--if it was you could easily classify some of the most beloved franchises of all time as unfun (Dark Souls, The Witcher, etc.). It has to be punishing and unfair from a gameplay standpoint as well.
Great job on this video. Within just a couple minutes, I was thinking of Jacob Geller's video and was glad to hear you reference it and it's adjacent topics. Very cool.
Personally I always interpreted The Beginner's Guide as a story about the two sides of IRL Davey, divided in the game into "Coda" and "Davey", as a way to personify his journey as a game developer
Great in-depth explanation of why games like Scorn and Pathologic should appear more often. They have bleak worlds and harsh themes, sending important messages to their players; but who's going to listen? Scorn was discussed as a DOOM-like before it got released, and people were disappointed. They didn't find the game "fun", and at the same time, the protagonist they played as was tormented in a disturbing and brutal world. What fun would be had there? Ultimately, people should understand that video games are a medium to carry messages as well as product to be consumed and art to be admired, in different proportions based on each specific title, and each message requires an audience to either accept it or not, and hopefully generate meaningful discussions in any case. You cannot send a dark, but important message using fun and light "instruments", the same way you wouldn't seriously argue about economics, politics, etc. with a drunken person while you yourself are sober. The other side needs to be receptive to the message you're communicating, and sometimes, they need the push towards the state of mind in which they'll become receptive.
This is the main reason I love GTFO, you get levels that when you first try them feel impossible, but the more you try them the more possible the level feels, until you manage to beat it and it feels great. Also if you haven’t done R8B4 PE yet, I pray for your sanity 🙏
I like that Roblox refers to it as experiences instead of games, even though it's not perfect The word game in itself implies fun, but a lot of these are sometimes not a game or are more than that
@@reimuhakurei2123 oh, there's a difference? I guess both are good alternatives. I don't play Roblox anymore and left before experiences were a thing, I just hear about it
Gears 2 had me in pieces. I was still at the age where I hadn't figured out every narrative trick, and tho I had a suspicion it wasn't gonna be a good ending.. I was floored by that one scene.
I know Library of Ruina "approaching the end" ambiance when i hear one. That being said Lobotomy corp is good example of an adversity game, the gameplay causes the opposite of flow state with large stretches of nothing happening followed by brutal difficulty spikes, honestly playing through it feels like a job. But ballcrushing difficulty does work well for games message
I swear, I don't know how your channel isn't gigaenourmous. Every video is a pure essay on art and videogames. I love your work, please keep on doing your best, Superdude.
The Beginner's Guide is awesome. Glad someone is finally talking about it. I remember back when I played it, I came up with a whole theory about the story. Basically that I thought Coda was transgender and female turned male specifically and the games were some kind of coping mechanism and Davey just never figured that out nor did he even know Coda was trans. I forget most of the details of the theory but that was the gist of it. It's probably the only game that I ever thought about so much that I actually started theorizing about it.
both what you gain from finishing said not-fun-games and the suffering you experience throughout playing them are way more intense when played by yourself; You need to be in the right headspace to do so but it is really worth it
@@zephiask1758 idk man i love Lobotomy Corporation by its genuineness of tying its miserable gameplay to its incredible story, but i 100% feel like i lost more than what i gained by the time i finished it. Not that any FromSoftware game will ever reach the amount of "massive tears of joy by overcoming adversity" as this game did, but i lost much more on it ... Which i did get back by playing the rest of the series. Play Project Moon games, wont ask twice
You better believe Imma beat the snot out of any non-fun game that comes my way. Oh, you want to teach me a lesson about the human experience and the biases of my own cultural lens? Not while you still offer more Steam achievements, idiot *spits* One of the many reasons why I respect “The Beginner’s Guide” as much as I do
I used to be like this. Losing made me angry. I'd think it was the game being dumb, but mostly I was just angry with myself for failing. I got quite far into Demon's Souls and quit on one particularly brutal boss. Years later I played Dark Souls and something clicked. I stopped trying to brute force my way through it and listened to what the game was telling me non verbally. I completed all the following games, went back to Demon's Souls and killed that boss that made me quit in 3 tries. I learned a lot from FromSoftware, but they also ruined most games for me. If it's not difficult but fair, it's boring.
It's nice seeing This War of Mine brought up. It's so close to a game you want to triumph over and it repeatedly reminds you that Doom Guy isn't in your shelter. Even if you have the game's equivalent, Roman, he's just as dangerous to the people in the way of your survival as he is to the very people you're trying to keep alive. Every inch you think the game is giving you is just hiding petal mines.
I think perhaps there is a category error here. I think focusing on "entertaining" rather than "enjoyable" is something of a mistake. Things like the out wilds induce a lot of different emotions in a lot of different ways. Lisa manages to both be mechanically entertaining while also having a narrative which drives you to be empathetic to some rather intense pain. Both those things are enjoyable experiences, things that you appreciate the time spent with them. I think videos games, by their nature as games, are predisposed to invoke fun, it's hard to have an engaging interactive medium that doesn't hit a brain's fun centers, but that doesn't mean video games have to be all about the fun.
I get his point and somewhat agree with it, but find your point on distinguishing enjoyable better. Dark Souls is hard and for as much adversity you overcome, I still find it "fun" or in this case, enjoyable, same with Lies of P, Sekiro or other punishing games. I find that this video sort of pushes that dichotomy between "fun" and art since I don't find that some of those examples necessarily lacked "fun". Whether the intention of the developer is to be fun is a different matter since we do also have story games without orthodox gameplay framed as interactive media and neither do developers need to make a game "fun" to get their point across if they have one, but reception to enjoying a game as a medium hinges on how it's presented to the consumer and how effectively it's done.
the beginners guide makes ma cry every time i watch someone play it. the way the game is formatted is amazing. Also for games you call adversity games, I have fun all the way through. i don't play for the thought of the adrenaline rush, just the fact of knowing more/getting better is the fun, whether you win or lose.
I’ve been feeling this exact way. I found myself analyzing what games are for and what they represent when I was playing death stranding. It’s the same quests as every game but with the superfluous aspects taken out. It makes you experience the rawness of “content”
Absolutely amazing video. The way you were able to communicate your thoughts and articulate them coherently in such a way was near perfection. The different games you talk about, their narratives, the emotions they portray and the meaning that you attribute to each of them, the moral and philosofical questions you raise about the very concept of attributing meaning to these things, as well as how your own perspective might be flawed, and the way you communicate your own thoughts and emotions was just superb. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this video the way you did and delivering these messages the way you did. So, once again, thank you very much for this video, and please keep doing your best to make stuff like this. Or don't, it's entirely up to you, just know that, whatever you choose, this video will live on in my memory as a deeply emotional experience, and a very captivating one at that. Sorry for the long comment, but I truly felt the need to communicate to you my own personal opinion on this work of art you've produced. I want to thank you once again for making this.
Video games are absolutely art. When I realized this, I reached the end of Telltales The Wallking Dead S1, I never cried from a game before that, and there has not been a game since that made me cry so much.
I was so deeply thrilled and confused by the beginners guide, absolutely a horror game! The questions you asked here are really important and something I thought about a lot, thank you!
This war of mine: “I wouldn’t hurt someone else for my own gain!” Me: *Laughs in supermarket soldier event* *Laughs in backstab noises.* *Laughs in Assault Rifle and Morale boost.* Also *LAUGHS IN MILITARY BASE* *LAUGHS IN TOTAL SOLDIER DEATH* *LAUGHS IN MOUNTAINS OF FOOD MEDS AND AMMO* *LAUGHS IN MORALE BOOST* This War Of Mine is capable of really awesome moments, so long as you target those who deserve it.
One of my favorite adversary games ever has gotta be Lobotomy Corperation. It was in the back of my mind the whole time I watched this video. If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend it but I can’t tell you that much about it if you want to go in blind, other than it’s a colony simulator/horror game that REALLY emphasizes the “not caring about your workers” aspect of colony simulators. It also has a great story and is INSANELY challenging. I wouldn’t say it’s a not fun game, but fun isn’t the main emotion project moon wanted you to feel, it can even feel boring at times. But the pay off for sitting for the boring sections at times is amazing. Once again, highly recommend!
While this war of mine can be an agonizing experience, once you learn the meta it can actually be kind of fun. I don't know, or think this was the intended experience but it definitely makes the game a lot more "consumable" once you figure out how to survive effectively. I PERSONALLY wouldn't say it weakens the message any but its debatable whether or not I got the intended experience out of it.
The first time I ever thought about thos concept was when I stumbled upon and played pathologic for the first time, running around aimlessly, lost, and confused and having to figuire out everything the brutal world and dismal lay of everything just hit so hard.
The topic's unfortunately been poisoned by talentless hacks who use "MY GAME'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN" as an excuse to make boring-ass shit. The reality is, if you're not making a fun game, you gotta replace it with something equally compelling, and that's harder than just making a fun game.
As a rain world enthusiast, the game is a fantastic work of art, forcing you to think and behave like the animas that infest civilization’s festering carcass to survive, wandering through the ruins of dying gods. It also has a lot to say about religion and the meaning of life. Unfortunately, playing it, at least until you master its mechanics, is the video game equivalent of having a short Scottish man crush your balls with a hydraulic press while singing the Scottish national anthem.
@@twixchexmix yeah, it’s basically cancer until you get the hang of it. I’d recommend practicing the movement and learning the creature AI- it’s gonna work wonders on your experience.
On the topic of adversity games the greatest feeling I have ever felt while playing games was when I beat 11 Bits studios Frostpunk for the first time and managed a deathless, non-crossing the line run. The pride of being told by the game “good job” and being able to do the right thing in the apocalypse is something I don’t think many other games can match . But yes video games can be art . Infact they are a one of a kind art because unlike books, tv shows , movies etc they put you in the drivers seat of the story which can allow for far more personal and far more visceral experiences then any thing else .
When this video started I thought of Jacob Geller. And then you mentioned Beginner's Guide. This is a HUGE compliment and I dig this video a ton, very great stuff and I have definitely subscribed! :)
I don't think there's really any issue with using the current definition of games, because the main aspect of games is that we can directly interact with them to "finish" the product, like the last piece of a puzzle, even if it's just by walking around and interacting with a few objects. Games treated as art instead of fun escapism could fall under the "amusement" in the definition, where the artistry is what amuses us, but a better word would probably be entertainment that some definitions use as it is more general It's funny you posted this video not long after I basically just had a discussion on this very same topic, and I didn't subscribe long ago either. Love your content
17:20 "If it weren't for losing winning wouldn't mean anything" I actually disagree with this sentiment (in a friendly way) I've never found enjoyment or satisfaction in adversity games. I don't get to the end of a challenging section and feel this great sense of satisfaction or accomplishment, instead its just a feeling of "thank God that's finally over." Some highly acclaimed and extremely well regarded games turned out to be some of my most loathed gaming experiences because of that feeling. But contrast that with cozy games like A Short Hike or Lil' Gator Game. These sorts of games have no lose condition and yet I find them highly satisfying to complete. The impossibility of losing actually made them more satisfying to complete simply because I could lose myself in the steady stream of discovery, delight, and forward progress. Anyways, just my perspective. Great video!
Pathologic 2 is the game that absolutely solidified my belief that a game doesn't have to be fun. That game is brutal, but tells one of the best, most interesting stories I've ever experienced.
I wish you had touched on a game that is genuinely devoid of all fun. Not just narratively, but also mechanically. I don't know if I can think of any off the top of my head, but that form of art I think is also worth discussing. Things that feel almost like they only have meaning to the creator
I think Neverending Nightmare may be a good contender. It's horror, but it's rough. Also, I mention a couple of times That Dragon, Cancer. That likely fits your bill.
I’m surprised Pathologic wasn’t brought up, even if just in passing. That game is built from the ground up to make you suffer and struggle to so much as scrape by, and has a pretty interesting and unique narrative buried under all its intentional and unintentional jank and obtuse systems. I’d recommend it, if you’re a glutton for punishment.
This video had a lot of good things to say about games and art as a whole in general. I think was made very well. Especially its moments talking about dark souls and Celeste.
me + my migraine in my dark room say thank you for not having the flashing I appreciate thoughtfulness like that you are truly a Superdude. EDIT: subbed liked belled bc content so good too thanks
As a person who “quit” art ? The worst thing was watching how people latch onto whatever they want. It seems to darken my life til this day. People often tell me they “don’t know what to latch onto “ when I talk & it’s resulting in less talk, & then TOO MUCH TALK. whatever
um dos meus canais favoritos falando de outro que adoro, jacob, que grande dia de se viver, todo criador de arte e conteúdo de verdade eventualmente se cruzam!!!!
I just want to recommend Celeste to everyone, it is such a touching video game, it is so beautiful and i felt like crying just at the sight of Madeline reaching the top of the mountain and the short sample of the wondreful perfectly fitting soundtrack which conveys so much emotion when I hear it, it makes me feel as if im comforting a long lost loved one. I HIGHLY recommend trying out this game to anyone who likes a bit of a challange, but may be struggling in life, and is feeling a bit down, perhaps lonely. The game is not a cure but it is art, and you can enjoy it and it makes you feel powerful, loved and understood.
It is interesting how some games trys to invoke emotions from players through unconventional means sometimes. Nothing wrong with conventional fun as it is like eating comfort food, but there are also games that also does not focus on conventional enjoyment such as oneshot where you the player is being talked to the main character and you bond with niko and it gets super meta that made it so unique. In the end the most important thing is having an experience that leaves a strong imprint on you
We Europeans have a VERY different way looking at war. USA has more or less NEVER fought inside of it's border for a few hundred years, generations die out, and so does the family "stories" from hard times... It becomes "forgotten".. Then there is that whole glorification of ww2 in US education. It BLOWS MY MIND every time I am in a conversation with a US citizen, how different our education is on modern history... We focus a LOT on why it happened and the lives of civilians during that time. The battles, when, who, where and all that is more "common knowledge" covered pretty fast. Now go play "Fear and Hunger"... xD
thats why americans are so obsessed with a certain set of towers. they consider it the worst thing to literally ever happen because yeah... to THEM its literally the worst thing that has ever happened (that is still relatively fresh in their memory).
Do games need to be fun? No. However, games that are fun shouldn’t be devalued by games that attempt to do something different or “more profound.” Games should be valued on their own terms. What was the intention when making this game? If it was trying to be fun, it should be judged by how fun it is. If it was trying to say something or elicit a specific emotion, it should be judged on that instead. My way of judging a game does unfortunately fall apart when you don’t know the intention of the game. Additionally, sometimes a game will turn out loved for something entirely unintentional. Look at Resident Evil for example. It was a development that innovated due to limitations. That first game wasn’t at all what the developers intended it to be, but people loved it anyway. I had to say this because it felt like you, perhaps unconsciously, viewed these not fun games as somehow more valuable than games that try to be fun. I know that wasn’t at all your point, and maybe I’m misreading the video, but I’d be interested in what others think.
That's a fair assessment. While it is not my intention to value one type of game over the other, I think games as entertainment are more common than games as art or emotional vectors, so this video is championing those. Games as entertainment isn't the perspective of this video, so my wording may be overly dismissive.
@@superdude10000 Totally. Games that aren’t purely for enjoyment are important and we need videos like yours that point out how special they are. While I do still stand by everything I said in my comment. I realized after posting that it could be viewed as punching down at a relatively new and unexplored art form. Which wasn’t my intention. Your video was excellently put together btw.
I'm a little surprised you didn't give an honorable mention to the long dark. A game you can't truly "win." It's harsh and brutal, but also calm and uncomplicated. Sure, you can sit there with the wiki and a notebook and carefully plan out every single day, but you can also use your intuition and explore the quiet, cold Greatbear island
@@poyomano5792 It's a turn-based game with set systems. It's quite easy once you know it's tricks, even a chill experience. Problem is people either can't be bothered to learn or, more often, don't know the extent of what can be learned. Add to this that it's hard to find good beginner guides for the game as YT and game journo articles are a no-go for the most part. The official Discord would be the best place to ask for help if you were interested in that.
There are lots of arguments and quibbles in the comments around the use of the word "fun," and I can now see why that is, because fun is as nebulous a concept as "art," and though I tried to be careful around the word art, I wasn't around fun. I also brought up games with ASPECTS of "fun" in them and didn't properly address that until This War of Mine, which was done purposefully. "All these games are a bit fun... let's go to a game that isn't fun at all" as a framing device for TWoM, but if you make a comment mid-video, you won't get around to me admitting that these games are still enjoyable so... yeah. I never leave comments until I finish a video, so I often don't think about this type of person.
I don't think games need to be entertaining to be successful. Their entire goal may not even be entertainment at all, or entertain you through a non-standard path, such as forcing you to overcome adversity. Games can and should be considered for more than just their ability to be entertaining, and this video is meant to be a collection of some games that eschew just bog standard "fun" in pursuit of a message, a metaphor, a compelling narrative, or to make you work for your entertainment, perseverance being a part of the intended experience. Sometimes games are frustrating, or boring, even compelling!; but not always entertaining. And I won't agree with people who think games need to be entertaining as a rule.
Below this comment is a link to an Extra Credit video where they say the same things, but more from a comparative stand point to films or books (and inside of 6 minutes). A different method towards the same persuasive thesis; perhaps it will be more persuasive to those on the fence.
EDIT: Also, this isn't a NEW topic, it's been talked about at length over the course of game history, and UA-cam as well. Lots of people have linked to Hbomber's Pathologic video as another example of this, and that's exactly correct. Watch that video as well.
ua-cam.com/video/HgzpgOJ2ubI/v-deo.html&ab_channel=ExtraHistory
This War Of Mine will forever be ingrained in my heart. I was engaged from start to finish and even as I reached the end and all my deeds good and bad were scrolling by. I wasn't smiling.
Thank you for bring this topic to light once again in an industry oversaturated by petty drama and culture wars.
This War of Mine is extremely easy. I just find the soldiers and bad guys and kill them all one by one. The plot you can find in these locations will make your life very easy that the game loses all challenge. I usually have tons of food left when the war is over. So how do I do it? Scavenge with a kill capable survivor. Equip with an axe, knife, shovel or crowbar. Hide in cover, lure your enemies with sound. Assassinate for an easy kill. Learning how to stack item piles is also crucial for efficient item gathering. Craft the essential work areas such as vegetable garden. So so easy.
@@DarthNVious Yeah I've completed the game multiple times (knife stealth attacks ftw) and does reveal some of it's 'gaminess' through multiple playthroughs (and mods) but the initial direction, intention, and memory of my first playthrough is still there
Brother, the intro was very well written with good buildup to the points you’re trying to make throughout the analysis, but damn it was boring ash lol. 3 mins is too long and it felt like I was reading/hearing an essay.
this video is the question of whether should you insert yourself into something or see it for what they simply are
There are 2 very separate audiences for both, the problem is wanting both sides money.
I dont think the two are necessarily mutually exclusive, both can be true.
I can do both
Idk why he never mentioned league of legends in the "no-fun games" bundle.
Because it isn't the game itself that isn't fun, it's the people that plague it.
That's easy.
It's because, in its purest essence, League is not in fact a game.
It's a crime.
Is plainly taking rat poison a game? Exactly.
... Mine is fizzling acid (DoTA 2)
@@adisca2k so lets assume you're all muted, no1 is trolling griefing etc. is the game fun then? not really imma be honest
@@adisca2k You put it better than I could.
League of Legends is fun. If you're playing something like aram or urf, where people are *less likely* to be toxic and obsessed with winning.
I played This War of Mine for about an hour many years ago. (roughly mid 2016)
After a few nights of scavenging I ran into an armed civilian and promptly got my scavenger killed.
I never touched the game again.
Which feels to me as the most glowing review I can give.
The game didnits job in communicating it's narrative and tone.
And 19 year old me just couldn't handle it.
a yes, the average traumatic war of mine event, my was that sent out a dude to scavenge and he came back with nothing, everyone was hungry and depressed too, he got desmotivated and i stopped playing lol
I played it, and beat it. The secret is to play alone.
@@pedroemo5477you got demotivated id say thats pretty immersive then lol. I enjoyed the game
I remember most going scavenging in a building with other survivors on the second story. I tried sneaking through and grabbing what I could find on the lower level where they couldn't see me. I messed up. A girl on the upper level saw me, and started shooting with a hunting rifle. I took cover, snuck around, got up there and shot her, thinking I was just defending myself. There were two other survivors up there and while I was prepared to continue the fight, once she had died the others ran in panic, breaking down from grief over their dead sister. I got a bunch of stuff that night that we desperately needed but it really stuck with me. They were exactly like I was. Tucked away, in a defensible building just protecting their own stuff. I was the intruder there. It really made me feel sick and I didn't touch the game for a year or two.
When i played i had a slightly different reaction
For context, i was playing the first group (the one with the chef and the girl that smoked too much) and i really needed medicine and food, so i went to scavenge for those, i ended up in a ran down building with three persons there, i sent the girl because the chef was sick and the other guy was watching, but i sent her with just a knife and a pistol, a couple mistakes and after killing one of the survivors she got shot down by a guy with a rifle, i was really pissed off, so i sent my other guy with a shotgun and gunned down the remaining survivors, but after that i felt really bad about it, mainly because i lost a survivor to a stupid mistake, and worst of all, we got attacked in the night as my survivor was retrieving the girl's equipment and corpse, so it was ultimately for nothing, i left the game soon after that because all my survivors were depressed and chef's was only getting worse, but the game got an impression on me
As a Bosnian it feels Nice that people finaly recognized our struggle from such a art from like video games
Can’t wait for the Americans to remember they had a part in this war with Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7: Kosovo Crisis
MOJA BOSNA PONOSNAAA
Your struggle? Are you kidding me? This war of mine is based on Sarajevo. A city besieged BY BOSNIAN SERBS. You are the damn perpetrstor and try to claim struggle???
@@NerzJansch2 this just in; Bosnians also struggled in the war their own countrymen created, and they don’t all necessarily agree with the actions of those who represent them.
@@NerzJansch2 bozo doesn't know "Bosnian" includes multiple peoples
I will never forget the first time I played This War of Mine. I was still in a video game mindset. I saw mechanics, and I liked the characters, but I wasn't fully invested. It was time to go out to a raid. There were two people in the building. One was out on the balcony with a gun. I snuck in the back, and took him out quietly, knowing that I would be shot if he saw me. This alerted his partner, who came running over, and I got the hell out of Dodge with what little I was able to grab quickly. I expected the second man to search for me. "Stop, criminal scum!" That sort of thing. Instead, he ran up to his dying/dead friend, cradled his head in his lap and said, "Oh god, please don't leave me." I can only describe it as being hit with an emotional truck. I didn't play it too much longer before I called it quits and never picked it back up. Did I enjoy playing it? No. But I will remember that moment for a long, long time yet.
Am I evil for purposely causing stuff like that for my amusement ?
@@Popirnot No you're just an edgy teenager it will pass
@@Popirnotif you do actually do that, it's going to be very hard to live a life with a woman you love, family you cherish, and a purpose that's meaningful. If you do actually do that in games, I feel sorry for you, and hope you can find what's missing from your heart. Be safe.
@sirllamaiii9708 Jesus, it's not that serious, relax.
@@Popirnot Is it? Who are you to say? I have seen you, I know you. Breathe.
My best example of this for me is Rainworld, It’s beautiful, intriguing and heaping with atmosphere but also brutally hard for new players and unapologetically random. You also play as a slug cat 10/10
I love rain world, it’s one of my top 5
@@cianhuelle hell yea!
It’s like a sequel to mr gimmick 😤
Rain world still the only game I ever played that I seriously considered quitting not because it was boring, but because of skill issue
@@moosesues8887 haven’t heard of it!
as some point i need to write an essay comparing the beginner's guide and getting over it, both of them explore the idea of games that aren't for everyone but in different ways
Getting Over It is meant to inflict pain and, as proven by streamers, it's fun to watch others to take that pain.
"So no Fear and Hunger?"
*Breaks Skateboard*
I have been told to play it, so I'll check it out soon.
lol fr!
glad it wasn’t just me who thought of fear and hunger lol
Fear and Hunger is the only game I legitimately couldn't finish due to skill issue. Actually no that's Pathologic as well.
@@superdude10000Don't listen to them, Fear and Hunger is a fun family friendly game, F&H 2 aswell. The appendages are hug tentacles. The game promotes healthy marriages aswell!
Strangely enough, "This War of Mine" for me was a great game I got so invested into. I started doing every single story available, and at some point I learned how to min-max EVERYTHING. Every location, every way I could deal with the military and solo everybody. Every way to kill the market murderers, or what to take when doing the sniper junction. I found myself having fun while solving the game to its bare elements. Sadly, I do realize that wasn't the point when I got the platinum.
To the argument about video games being art. There's the quote: art should not make you happy or be fun, art should make you feel things. Good video games, will make you feel something, just as good art will.
"Fun" has always and will ever be the wrong thing to refer to when it comes to games-as-art.
They need not be fun. They do, however, need to be compelling. Those are very different things. And being compelling does not need to be related solely to moment to moment gameplay, mechanics or visuals, or even story - concepts, ideas, expression, and whatever it makes you feel counts.
This is why I love S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl despite it being janky
No, they don't NEED to be compelling to have a place, if an all blue canvas can be considered art, so can an uncompelling game, whether or not it compels you to experience it doesn't mean it doesn't have a right to exist
@@irgaming2140something that is bad still exists, but that doesn’t mean that’s how it should be
@@riastradh and who are you to say how things should be?
@@irgaming2140 part of the group being asked to spend money
Unless you identify with the ruling class I can not imagine after watching All Quiet on the Western Front (2022) feeling there's anything but cruelty, misery and waste in war. The main characters are soldiers, but they are not especially proficient, only conscripts who's eagerness fades fast and end up stealing from civilians to survive and ending up dying futile deaths, not all even in a battle.
It's beautifully made, but any happy moment is when you can forget you're in the middle of a war and just adds contrast to make you more miserable later.
Imo, the 2022 film took too many liberties, much to the detriment of the plot and historical accuracy. I prefer the book, it's fantastic. However the intro sequence of the film is great
TIL there's a remake of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)
Also saving private Ryan, that shit was horrific.
@@awsome1010101 there's also a 1979 adaptation
The original 1930 movie is better imo. The kids weren’t conscripts, they joined the war willingly. Because away from the war front and the destruction the country was fervent on the war and was fantasized about. Then the war happened
Spotted a few inclusions of Signalis here, wondered if you’d include it somewhere, but for me - Signalis always been a story of the love, despite the authoritarian society the pair was misfit in
noticed the "this space intentionally left blank" at 24:25 and came to the comments to see if anyone mentioned Signalis. It's such a good game. A heartbreaking masterpiece, and (in my opinion) one of the strongest contenders for video games as art. It's brutal and gloomy and depressing, and carries a lot of interesting themes and messages to ponder - that love is worthwhile even if you know it can't last forever, the evils of dehumanization, how oppressive systems weaponize their people against each other, the futility of trying to control and suppress the human spirit, the ability of love to find a way even in the most terrible of circumstances, the inevitability of death and finality, the importance of finding your own meaning and direction in life. It's a beautiful tragedy. 10/10, life-changing game.
I think it was included in the video since signalis in not fun to play. The horrifically oppressive atmosphere, anxiety inducing nightmare of combat and straight up painful inventory management really hammer in how Elster is willing to do anything to get to Ariane. Thematically signalis would not feel the same if the gameplay was fun.
This War of Mine's filmic counterpart is obviously Come and See. The people who don't like either frequently say things that could apply to either, as well.
Could you elaborate please? I never encountered anyone who dislikes these things (well, I have barely encountered people who have any opinion on This War of Mine because they don't even know it exists, sadly) and Come and See has somehow escaped my notice so far
@@marcog.verbruggen674 Come and See is on youtube if you wanna se it.
@@marcog.verbruggen674 Come and See is a late-Soviet film, about a teenager who became a partisan in Belarus during WW II. Sort of a cult classic. If you haven't watched it, I would reccomend to at least try to. It is surreal, even arthouse sometimes, but absoultely unapologetic in it's depiction of monsters which are hidden deep inside of human beings. I'd dare to say that it is much, much harder to digest than TWoM (since there IS some gameplay elements to enjoy in a game and at the very least there is some hope that in the end you will make it through meanwhile Come and See's ending is... different) however this is definitely the first thing that comes to my mind if somebody would ask "What would be TWoM's fim counterpart?".
I think what Alexis meant is that these art pieces are "too dark", "overbearing" and "preachy" for some people.
@@VasiliyOgniovCome and See's production was... brutal, unethical, twisted and would make Stanley Kubrick go "ok, tone the abuse down, by god."
the Director never made another film. I recommend looking it up.
French filmmaker François Truffaut famously said "there is no such thing as an anti-war film." The intent being it's hard to have a piece of visual media that doesn't glorify the spectacle of war at least a little. (Think of Gundam. It tries to say war is bad but also says giant mecha war machines are really cool and you should buy model kits).
He never saw Come and See...
I love Lobotomy Corporation. It makes me feel anxiety and fear like never before! I don’t feel fun but whatever it is I’m feeling, I can tell you it’s the purest form of it!
omg project moon mentioned
its fun though
@@reddytoplay9188 to the masochists yes, to the normal person no
@junpei6180 HEY I KNOW YOU, STUPID ASS PATHOLOGIC PLAYER NOW YOUR EYES BEEN OPEN BY PROJECT 'PEAK" MOON
Its fun. You are engaged in the game. You enjoy playing it. That is fun.
Fun is subjective. If you didnt have fun you wouldnt play it.
The Pathologic subreddit in a nutshell. Great channel name btw
I played 20 hours of Pathologic 2 and hated it. I hated how long it took to become an actual doctor. The game has way too much cryptic foreshadowing super early on. Travel sucks and until you start getting money from your job you just have to starve I guess. Murder and organ harvesting are a godsend but organs take up to much space in your bag. It's been a year now so maybe I'll play it with a bit more patience. I did really like the time management and plot tree though.
@@hjumn Hijacking your comment to write about how much I love Pathologic and maybe recommend it as well for anyone reading to try it in the process. I first played Pathologic 2 during covid, which made the experience especially poignant for the time. I am a generally anxious person that often uses video games as an escape, so playing a game that caused so much anxiety seemed like such a contradictory undertaking when I was already anxious and depressed. Yet it turned out to be one of the most memorable games I've ever played and I couldn't stop thinking about it when I wasn't playing. To this day it's one of my favourite games next to things like Disco Elysium, Outer Wilds and Planescape Torment. It would be redundant to just say "Pathologic is not a fun game, it might just not be for you" under such a video, but Pathologic is a well designed game, that does actually want you to suffer mechanically and has underlying themes that support that. (FYI: It does also have what are essentially difficulty sliders.) Hard survival mechanics, slow travel and inventory/time management are parts of that. Not many games would be brave enough to permanently punish you for dying, for example, but it makes every single conversation about death in the game much more meaningful.
@@Twarex01 I agree! It's a masterpiece, but it's not for everyone.
@@Twarex01To note, Patho 1 is much harder and much more miserable. Patho 2 is very much game-y in that it gives a lot of tools to enjoy it, Patho 1 is unrelenting in its gameplay loop.
Type 3 fun is a type of fun that involves a lot of risk and suffering, and is not fun at all. You might swear to never do it again. Some examples of type 3 fun include:
• Flipping your boat in the middle of a large lake on a windy day
• Making deals with God
• Activating the emergency beacon on your GPS
• Failed polar expeditions
• Apollo 13
• Sailing around the world solo
Love some type 3 fun.
Frostpunk gave me the most anxiety I've ever felt in a game (I haven't played This War of Mine but I'm sure that would take the crown) because I wanted to save *everyone* and I wanted to make every positive moral decision, too. Those decisions were agony to make as I desperately sought enough resources for *all* the people. That final moment at the end of the game where you wait to see if everything was worth it...oh my god. It's one of those games I finished and said, "I am never playing this again," and I haven't, lol. Frostpunk 2 is in the works and I'm really debating whether I want to trade my anxiety for An Experience again.
Great video! This is also a topic I've thought a lot about and it's nice to see someone else's perspective.
Frostpunk is a race against the clock, time and ressource management. if you manage to stay ahead its actually quite simple.
Once you know where to cut corners and use the mechanics it becomes much easier.
I think another game that fits this bill is Pathologic, honestly i didn't have even one second of fun playing that game but to say that it was an effective experience is an understatement. It's a miserable fucking game, but when that's what the artist was going for, how can you really criticise it for that? I get why the game doesn't have mainstream success, but it's just got a lot to say and honestly, sometimes you just have to meet art on its terms instead of your own to appreciate it, in fact, that's probably the only way to truly appreciate art.
I started playing it not long ago and I'm still on day one as the bachelor, but I did actually have fun with it. Maybe not by design though. I went to a spot where the ost changed into a total banger of a song so I spent a minute or so just "dancing". Afterwards, I found a church(?) that had impossible architecture and I wanted to try and see if I can take fall damage, so I saved the game and jumped off. Now I can joke that "Pathologic is so depressing, I first died by suicide". Maybe things change in the next days and I've heard the Haruspex is way harder than the Bachelor,but for a start, I think Pathologic does at least let you make a little bit of your own fun
Was about to say this, for how miserable it's to play it, the messages it has to give are the very of art. The revelations of what the powers to be are and the conversation with the creators are just so god damn good.
@alejandrovallejo6763 it really is, as miserable as it is to play, it's such an effective experience
i played through "2" and always reference it as the best stress simulator
Tbh mostly just surprised at the lack of pathologic (so far) in the discussion
who tf knows wtf pathologic means go back to the dictionary nerd
I'd like to say so... but I was one of the few people that was thoroughly engrossed and enjoyed my time with Pathologic. It's so brutal and hopeless, but it's so cartoonishly hopeless that it loses a lot of the "unenjoyment factor" for me. "It's so painful it's fun", basically.
@junpei6180 Pathologic 1. Haven't played 2, yet.
They can be "Engaging" instead of strictly fun.
I feel like the line between engaging and fun are a bit blurry, if something is engaging, it is fun in a way, even if its not a fun derivated from a positive manner, if something is fun, its engaging in a way
@@monikaisdonewiththeinterne2039 It's really interesting that you say this, personally I've always favored the word engaging as a substitute for fun in cases such as these, but I ended up in a fairly heated discussion with my partner the other day over this exact topic and a big source of frustration for them was that I kept using the word engagement to describe games that are compelling but not fun and in their eyes the word engaging implies some level of fun. I wonder if this association is somehow cultural, or maybe it's just down to the individual. Either way, it's certainly interesting.
I never really played Beginner's Guide, but I remember watching some people play it. Never understood it at the time.
One of my friends way back when though, found the story and the message very profound. Shortly after playing it, they stopped making mods for various source games, went radio silent for about like 5 years. Comes back under a different name, different personality, working on a game all about "What happens when a concept, hopes and dreams, objects and ideologies die", choosing to have personified characters of concepts like the Death of self-reflection, Death of faith, death of a martyr, and so on and so forth.
From what I can tell she doesn't really talk about it or advertise it's existence anywhere. The irony that I promote it behind her back on a video discussing the beginner's guide is not lost on me. But much like fictional Davey, I just want someone who used to be a close friend of mine to get some recognition for the most unigue story I have ever heard, the most bizarre characters I have ever seen, and how she tells this story in such a way that I am emotionally attached to a triple jointed mermaid in a gimp suit... without knowing literally anything about them other than that they died alone in a black hole trying to solve a 4th dimensional rubik cube...
And from the mods she used to make, I know she is part of the school of thought of "Make the player feel anything other than joy or happiness". I have literally no idea when of even if anything will come from it, but wait patiently. Going to let the artist cook on this one~
She sounds like a great artist, that game sounds like it would be right up my alley
Can be both, but fun is my driving factor. I'm not going to seek out a game that depresses me for an experience. It usually helps if a hard moment or harsh artistic expression is embedded in a wider game experience.
I am SO surprised not to see Pathologic/Pathologic 2 in this list. It fits in the third category, where you suffer from the story and from the gameplay. And sometimes even from visuals and sound design
And it's the whole point. You're meant to suffer. Sometimes it is inevitable
I'm new to your channel, so if you haven't played these games, I'm super envy to you, as it is a unique experience and I think you're going to like it!
That sounds awful, why would anyone play that
@@StarchieHalo the plot is profound, the world feels unique, and developers say you'll experience "catharsis", which, yeah, happened to me. It's like overcoming your anxiety
@@StarchieHalo Has some of the best writing in gaming ever.
@@StarchieHaloIt's like why ppl still playing Fear and Hunger, some ppl just wanted to experience the games.
@@StarchieHalo The story is great. However, I believe much of the "suffering" is a byproduct of the game being mechanically poor, rather than an intentional design choice. I don't think the developers intended to create such boring and bad gameplay; they simply failed to fully leverage video games as a medium. For comparison, Fear and Hunger makes you feel hopeless and lost, but it doesn't punish you in the same way Pathologic does with its bugs and slow, mostly uneventful gameplay.
In my opinion any way that humans use to express themselves is art using your body in dance, your hand strokes in art or a keyboard for writing. Writing equations on boards on experiments with chemicals. Almost everything we do to show our humanity is art.
this is beautiful man
I'm so happy to see, this war of mine, Darkest Dungeon, on the thumbnail, but specially. Signalis!!!
Maybe I'm just not tapped into the scene enough but almost every game related "video essay" channel these days seems like a (mostly well-intentioned) regurgitation of Jacob Geller, NakeyJakey, or Tim Rogers. So glad I stumbled across your work! You're a great writer with a voice of your own, this video was fantastic and brought new ideas to the table of a well trodden topic. Please keep up the great work :)
Despite the well worn topic, this was really well made and easy to follow, awesome stuff.
Thank you for this video. It's really interesting topic. It was good to hear about Beginners guide again. Cuz I completed it long time ago and already forgot about it.
But more I liked how you tried to understand what it is like when there is war in your country. I'm from Ukraine and can say for sure that none of the games reflects what you feel when it's war outside, how it affects your life, how you getting used to neverending news about death of people, how it's to see that your neighborhood where you spent your childhood is destriyed and ocupied. But some games like This war of mine reallly tried.
And thank you for the disclaimer in the end. Really appreciate that you want to help.
Love your channel. Looking forward to your next video.
Art is anything that moves you. That’s my definition. Very broad and very vague. Because Art can be anything
To be good art no games don't need to be fun, but to be a good game it does need to be fun at least for me
2022. The only games I had installed, out of that big library, were This War of Mine and Darkest Dungeon.
I had to click on the video.
I very much resonated with the "Oh thats a neat setting" of playing shooters as a kid
Nowadays, when i played Dying Light, after failing to connect to it the first time around (as a teen then) and despite it trying to be a fun game first, there's one scene that genuinely gets me.
Its when you raid the Volatile nest with another runner, he went in alone and got bitten in the process. Meeting up with him, hes wounded and in pain, but gives us the explosives to get rid of the nest.
You raid alone, hoping to beat the clock and get back to your friend in time. You hear the explosion going off when you enter the tunnel, youre almost there, there is still hope.
You return to the train cart he was hiding in.
And the first thing you see, is a feral zombie, recently turned.
He didnt make it.
That bit genuinely got me and i think that there isnt a thing as an anti-war or anti-suffering game.
But sometimes, it gets close, and i think it should be also praised for that
The ending dream of Disco Elysium straight up made me ugly cry
I feel like all the things you said that makes people keep playing games besides for the point of "fun" can still be labeled as "fun". For a game like Signalis for example, the game is very depressing and has a crushing oppressive atmosphere but I have "fun" by interacting with this world and finding out more about the story as I progress.
Honestly I was surprised to see Signalis on this list. It's definitely a bleak game tonally, but gameplay wise it's a pretty typical survival horror game with very fair and forgiving gameplay balance. At least for me, being bleak isn't enough to qualify a game as unfun--if it was you could easily classify some of the most beloved franchises of all time as unfun (Dark Souls, The Witcher, etc.). It has to be punishing and unfair from a gameplay standpoint as well.
Great job on this video. Within just a couple minutes, I was thinking of Jacob Geller's video and was glad to hear you reference it and it's adjacent topics. Very cool.
"Video games are art"
**Arianne suffering in a pool of her own blood in the background**
Personally I always interpreted The Beginner's Guide as a story about the two sides of IRL Davey, divided in the game into "Coda" and "Davey", as a way to personify his journey as a game developer
This isn't the first time I've heard these points made, but your recital left me with chills. Sub well-earned, friend.
Great in-depth explanation of why games like Scorn and Pathologic should appear more often. They have bleak worlds and harsh themes, sending important messages to their players; but who's going to listen? Scorn was discussed as a DOOM-like before it got released, and people were disappointed. They didn't find the game "fun", and at the same time, the protagonist they played as was tormented in a disturbing and brutal world. What fun would be had there? Ultimately, people should understand that video games are a medium to carry messages as well as product to be consumed and art to be admired, in different proportions based on each specific title, and each message requires an audience to either accept it or not, and hopefully generate meaningful discussions in any case. You cannot send a dark, but important message using fun and light "instruments", the same way you wouldn't seriously argue about economics, politics, etc. with a drunken person while you yourself are sober. The other side needs to be receptive to the message you're communicating, and sometimes, they need the push towards the state of mind in which they'll become receptive.
This is the main reason I love GTFO, you get levels that when you first try them feel impossible, but the more you try them the more possible the level feels, until you manage to beat it and it feels great. Also if you haven’t done R8B4 PE yet, I pray for your sanity 🙏
I like that Roblox refers to it as experiences instead of games, even though it's not perfect
The word game in itself implies fun, but a lot of these are sometimes not a game or are more than that
Roblox places or experiences
@@reimuhakurei2123 oh, there's a difference?
I guess both are good alternatives. I don't play Roblox anymore and left before experiences were a thing, I just hear about it
beautifully done video. I wish I could say more in a coherent way but I’m going to be thinking on this for a long time. Thank you
Free time can be spent solving sudoku or talking a walk through the park, and they are both valuable
My god, that bit where the dad finds a toy for his kid after scavenging instantly put me in tears. That fucks me all the way up.
Gears 2 had me in pieces. I was still at the age where I hadn't figured out every narrative trick, and tho I had a suspicion it wasn't gonna be a good ending.. I was floored by that one scene.
I know Library of Ruina "approaching the end" ambiance when i hear one.
That being said Lobotomy corp is good example of an adversity game, the gameplay causes the opposite of flow state with large stretches of nothing happening followed by brutal difficulty spikes, honestly playing through it feels like a job. But ballcrushing difficulty does work well for games message
I swear, I don't know how your channel isn't gigaenourmous. Every video is a pure essay on art and videogames. I love your work, please keep on doing your best, Superdude.
This is a really nice essay, dude. Can’t wait to see more of your work
The Beginner's Guide is awesome.
Glad someone is finally talking about it. I remember back when I played it, I came up with a whole theory about the story. Basically that I thought Coda was transgender and female turned male specifically and the games were some kind of coping mechanism and Davey just never figured that out nor did he even know Coda was trans. I forget most of the details of the theory but that was the gist of it. It's probably the only game that I ever thought about so much that I actually started theorizing about it.
I love not fun games but I hate losing so I'm in this endless cycle of wanting to play not fun games but never playing them
Yea, same thing for me.
both what you gain from finishing said not-fun-games and the suffering you experience throughout playing them are way more intense when played by yourself; You need to be in the right headspace to do so but it is really worth it
@@zephiask1758 idk man i love Lobotomy Corporation by its genuineness of tying its miserable gameplay to its incredible story, but i 100% feel like i lost more than what i gained by the time i finished it.
Not that any FromSoftware game will ever reach the amount of "massive tears of joy by overcoming adversity" as this game did, but i lost much more on it
...
Which i did get back by playing the rest of the series.
Play Project Moon games, wont ask twice
You better believe Imma beat the snot out of any non-fun game that comes my way. Oh, you want to teach me a lesson about the human experience and the biases of my own cultural lens? Not while you still offer more Steam achievements, idiot *spits*
One of the many reasons why I respect “The Beginner’s Guide” as much as I do
I used to be like this. Losing made me angry. I'd think it was the game being dumb, but mostly I was just angry with myself for failing. I got quite far into Demon's Souls and quit on one particularly brutal boss. Years later I played Dark Souls and something clicked. I stopped trying to brute force my way through it and listened to what the game was telling me non verbally. I completed all the following games, went back to Demon's Souls and killed that boss that made me quit in 3 tries. I learned a lot from FromSoftware, but they also ruined most games for me. If it's not difficult but fair, it's boring.
was very surprised to hear a Gamelan in the background! A very pleasant surprise, though.
It's nice seeing This War of Mine brought up. It's so close to a game you want to triumph over and it repeatedly reminds you that Doom Guy isn't in your shelter. Even if you have the game's equivalent, Roman, he's just as dangerous to the people in the way of your survival as he is to the very people you're trying to keep alive. Every inch you think the game is giving you is just hiding petal mines.
I think perhaps there is a category error here. I think focusing on "entertaining" rather than "enjoyable" is something of a mistake. Things like the out wilds induce a lot of different emotions in a lot of different ways. Lisa manages to both be mechanically entertaining while also having a narrative which drives you to be empathetic to some rather intense pain. Both those things are enjoyable experiences, things that you appreciate the time spent with them. I think videos games, by their nature as games, are predisposed to invoke fun, it's hard to have an engaging interactive medium that doesn't hit a brain's fun centers, but that doesn't mean video games have to be all about the fun.
I get his point and somewhat agree with it, but find your point on distinguishing enjoyable better. Dark Souls is hard and for as much adversity you overcome, I still find it "fun" or in this case, enjoyable, same with Lies of P, Sekiro or other punishing games. I find that this video sort of pushes that dichotomy between "fun" and art since I don't find that some of those examples necessarily lacked "fun". Whether the intention of the developer is to be fun is a different matter since we do also have story games without orthodox gameplay framed as interactive media and neither do developers need to make a game "fun" to get their point across if they have one, but reception to enjoying a game as a medium hinges on how it's presented to the consumer and how effectively it's done.
the beginners guide makes ma cry every time i watch someone play it. the way the game is formatted is amazing. Also for games you call adversity games, I have fun all the way through. i don't play for the thought of the adrenaline rush, just the fact of knowing more/getting better is the fun, whether you win or lose.
I’ve been feeling this exact way. I found myself analyzing what games are for and what they represent when I was playing death stranding. It’s the same quests as every game but with the superfluous aspects taken out. It makes you experience the rawness of “content”
Absolutely amazing video. The way you were able to communicate your thoughts and articulate them coherently in such a way was near perfection. The different games you talk about, their narratives, the emotions they portray and the meaning that you attribute to each of them, the moral and philosofical questions you raise about the very concept of attributing meaning to these things, as well as how your own perspective might be flawed, and the way you communicate your own thoughts and emotions was just superb. I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this video the way you did and delivering these messages the way you did. So, once again, thank you very much for this video, and please keep doing your best to make stuff like this. Or don't, it's entirely up to you, just know that, whatever you choose, this video will live on in my memory as a deeply emotional experience, and a very captivating one at that. Sorry for the long comment, but I truly felt the need to communicate to you my own personal opinion on this work of art you've produced. I want to thank you once again for making this.
Video games are absolutely art. When I realized this, I reached the end of Telltales The Wallking Dead S1, I never cried from a game before that, and there has not been a game since that made me cry so much.
I was so deeply thrilled and confused by the beginners guide, absolutely a horror game! The questions you asked here are really important and something I thought about a lot, thank you!
This war of mine: “I wouldn’t hurt someone else for my own gain!”
Me: *Laughs in supermarket soldier event*
*Laughs in backstab noises.*
*Laughs in Assault Rifle and Morale boost.*
Also
*LAUGHS IN MILITARY BASE*
*LAUGHS IN TOTAL SOLDIER DEATH*
*LAUGHS IN MOUNTAINS OF FOOD MEDS AND AMMO*
*LAUGHS IN MORALE BOOST*
This War Of Mine is capable of really awesome moments, so long as you target those who deserve it.
Surprised Pathologic didnt make it into this video
One of my favorite adversary games ever has gotta be Lobotomy Corperation. It was in the back of my mind the whole time I watched this video. If you haven’t played it, I highly recommend it but I can’t tell you that much about it if you want to go in blind, other than it’s a colony simulator/horror game that REALLY emphasizes the “not caring about your workers” aspect of colony simulators. It also has a great story and is INSANELY challenging. I wouldn’t say it’s a not fun game, but fun isn’t the main emotion project moon wanted you to feel, it can even feel boring at times. But the pay off for sitting for the boring sections at times is amazing. Once again, highly recommend!
While this war of mine can be an agonizing experience, once you learn the meta it can actually be kind of fun.
I don't know, or think this was the intended experience but it definitely makes the game a lot more "consumable" once you figure out how to survive effectively. I PERSONALLY wouldn't say it weakens the message any but its debatable whether or not I got the intended experience out of it.
Appreciate it for using a Gamelan track for the bgm
I thought this video was gonna be about rainbow six siege
The first time I ever thought about thos concept was when I stumbled upon and played pathologic for the first time, running around aimlessly, lost, and confused and having to figuire out everything the brutal world and dismal lay of everything just hit so hard.
Hope you take care of your mental health after this video
Good stuff as always!
"Fear of cold" is one of my favourites from Jacob Geller too
Darkest Dungeon ligit give me a mental breakdown every session but I keep coming back
The topic's unfortunately been poisoned by talentless hacks who use "MY GAME'S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE FUN" as an excuse to make boring-ass shit.
The reality is, if you're not making a fun game, you gotta replace it with something equally compelling, and that's harder than just making a fun game.
As a rain world enthusiast, the game is a fantastic work of art, forcing you to think and behave like the animas that infest civilization’s festering carcass to survive, wandering through the ruins of dying gods. It also has a lot to say about religion and the meaning of life. Unfortunately, playing it, at least until you master its mechanics, is the video game equivalent of having a short Scottish man crush your balls with a hydraulic press while singing the Scottish national anthem.
Yeah I need to play that game
this reminds me that i havent touched this game in nearly a year after only being 10 hours into a playthrough, guess this is a sign to get back on it
@@twixchexmix yeah, it’s basically cancer until you get the hang of it. I’d recommend practicing the movement and learning the creature AI- it’s gonna work wonders on your experience.
two games that would have fit perfectly into this conversation are Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor and The Longing
On the topic of adversity games the greatest feeling I have ever felt while playing games was when I beat 11 Bits studios Frostpunk for the first time and managed a deathless, non-crossing the line run. The pride of being told by the game “good job” and being able to do the right thing in the apocalypse is something I don’t think many other games can match .
But yes video games can be art . Infact they are a one of a kind art because unlike books, tv shows , movies etc they put you in the drivers seat of the story which can allow for far more personal and far more visceral experiences then any thing else .
When this video started I thought of Jacob Geller. And then you mentioned Beginner's Guide. This is a HUGE compliment and I dig this video a ton, very great stuff and I have definitely subscribed! :)
i sucked at this war of mine but god every few years i replay it to remind me of just how war isn’t just cool guys and guns
I don't think there's really any issue with using the current definition of games, because the main aspect of games is that we can directly interact with them to "finish" the product, like the last piece of a puzzle, even if it's just by walking around and interacting with a few objects. Games treated as art instead of fun escapism could fall under the "amusement" in the definition, where the artistry is what amuses us, but a better word would probably be entertainment that some definitions use as it is more general
It's funny you posted this video not long after I basically just had a discussion on this very same topic, and I didn't subscribe long ago either. Love your content
17:20 "If it weren't for losing winning wouldn't mean anything"
I actually disagree with this sentiment (in a friendly way) I've never found enjoyment or satisfaction in adversity games. I don't get to the end of a challenging section and feel this great sense of satisfaction or accomplishment, instead its just a feeling of "thank God that's finally over." Some highly acclaimed and extremely well regarded games turned out to be some of my most loathed gaming experiences because of that feeling.
But contrast that with cozy games like A Short Hike or Lil' Gator Game. These sorts of games have no lose condition and yet I find them highly satisfying to complete. The impossibility of losing actually made them more satisfying to complete simply because I could lose myself in the steady stream of discovery, delight, and forward progress.
Anyways, just my perspective. Great video!
Same
Pathologic 2 is the game that absolutely solidified my belief that a game doesn't have to be fun. That game is brutal, but tells one of the best, most interesting stories I've ever experienced.
I absolutely adored this video.
I wish you had touched on a game that is genuinely devoid of all fun. Not just narratively, but also mechanically.
I don't know if I can think of any off the top of my head, but that form of art I think is also worth discussing. Things that feel almost like they only have meaning to the creator
I think Neverending Nightmare may be a good contender. It's horror, but it's rough.
Also, I mention a couple of times That Dragon, Cancer. That likely fits your bill.
I’m surprised Pathologic wasn’t brought up, even if just in passing. That game is built from the ground up to make you suffer and struggle to so much as scrape by, and has a pretty interesting and unique narrative buried under all its intentional and unintentional jank and obtuse systems. I’d recommend it, if you’re a glutton for punishment.
This video had a lot of good things to say about games and art as a whole in general. I think was made very well. Especially its moments talking about dark souls and Celeste.
me + my migraine in my dark room say thank you for not having the flashing
I appreciate thoughtfulness like that
you are truly a Superdude.
EDIT: subbed liked belled bc content so good too thanks
im loving the gamelan music playing in the background :3
Super back at it again talking about topics in videogames that we dont think about too much otherwise
As a person who “quit” art ?
The worst thing was watching how people latch onto whatever they want. It seems to darken my life til this day. People often tell me they “don’t know what to latch onto “ when I talk & it’s resulting in less talk, & then TOO MUCH TALK. whatever
um dos meus canais favoritos falando de outro que adoro, jacob, que grande dia de se viver, todo criador de arte e conteúdo de verdade eventualmente se cruzam!!!!
Wait. I was subscribed? Great essay, much appreciated.
There's a game studio that's literally called "Not Fun Games". Their game, "MetaWare High School" is worth looking into :)
I just want to recommend Celeste to everyone, it is such a touching video game, it is so beautiful and i felt like crying just at the sight of Madeline reaching the top of the mountain and the short sample of the wondreful perfectly fitting soundtrack which conveys so much emotion when I hear it, it makes me feel as if im comforting a long lost loved one. I HIGHLY recommend trying out this game to anyone who likes a bit of a challange, but may be struggling in life, and is feeling a bit down, perhaps lonely. The game is not a cure but it is art, and you can enjoy it and it makes you feel powerful, loved and understood.
It is interesting how some games trys to invoke emotions from players through unconventional means sometimes. Nothing wrong with conventional fun as it is like eating comfort food, but there are also games that also does not focus on conventional enjoyment such as oneshot where you the player is being talked to the main character and you bond with niko and it gets super meta that made it so unique.
In the end the most important thing is having an experience that leaves a strong imprint on you
We Europeans have a VERY different way looking at war.
USA has more or less NEVER fought inside of it's border for a few hundred years, generations die out, and so does the family "stories" from hard times... It becomes "forgotten"..
Then there is that whole glorification of ww2 in US education.
It BLOWS MY MIND every time I am in a conversation with a US citizen, how different our education is on modern history...
We focus a LOT on why it happened and the lives of civilians during that time.
The battles, when, who, where and all that is more "common knowledge" covered pretty fast.
Now go play "Fear and Hunger"... xD
thats why americans are so obsessed with a certain set of towers. they consider it the worst thing to literally ever happen because yeah... to THEM its literally the worst thing that has ever happened (that is still relatively fresh in their memory).
games can be art just as much as paintings can
As a Balinese, hearing a Balinese Gamelan Music as a BGM in a video games essay feels so weird, but also beautiful
Do games need to be fun? No. However, games that are fun shouldn’t be devalued by games that attempt to do something different or “more profound.”
Games should be valued on their own terms. What was the intention when making this game? If it was trying to be fun, it should be judged by how fun it is. If it was trying to say something or elicit a specific emotion, it should be judged on that instead.
My way of judging a game does unfortunately fall apart when you don’t know the intention of the game. Additionally, sometimes a game will turn out loved for something entirely unintentional. Look at Resident Evil for example. It was a development that innovated due to limitations. That first game wasn’t at all what the developers intended it to be, but people loved it anyway.
I had to say this because it felt like you, perhaps unconsciously, viewed these not fun games as somehow more valuable than games that try to be fun. I know that wasn’t at all your point, and maybe I’m misreading the video, but I’d be interested in what others think.
That's a fair assessment. While it is not my intention to value one type of game over the other, I think games as entertainment are more common than games as art or emotional vectors, so this video is championing those. Games as entertainment isn't the perspective of this video, so my wording may be overly dismissive.
@@superdude10000 Totally. Games that aren’t purely for enjoyment are important and we need videos like yours that point out how special they are.
While I do still stand by everything I said in my comment. I realized after posting that it could be viewed as punching down at a relatively new and unexplored art form. Which wasn’t my intention.
Your video was excellently put together btw.
They have to be engaging, but that doesn’t have to necessarily be through fun. It can be through fear, hate, disgust, joy, exhilaration.
I'm a little surprised you didn't give an honorable mention to the long dark. A game you can't truly "win." It's harsh and brutal, but also calm and uncomplicated. Sure, you can sit there with the wiki and a notebook and carefully plan out every single day, but you can also use your intuition and explore the quiet, cold Greatbear island
>"Not fun games"
>Darkest Dungeon
Bro that's one of the most fun games ever
Cant be. Its full of stress
My ass. That game is genuinely just UNFAIR and stressing... i still love it tho, but still.
@@poyomano5792 It's a turn-based game with set systems. It's quite easy once you know it's tricks, even a chill experience. Problem is people either can't be bothered to learn or, more often, don't know the extent of what can be learned. Add to this that it's hard to find good beginner guides for the game as YT and game journo articles are a no-go for the most part. The official Discord would be the best place to ask for help if you were interested in that.
Yeah it's pretty fun
Wow this is one of the greatest videos on UA-cam