The Video Game Critic

This is an old thread, almost the forum as microcosm, and to use Chief Justice Robert's words, at times very inartful itself.

Came across this article the other day:
http://sploid.gizmodo.com/video-breaks- ... 1715503010

Its focused on movies, but the idea is computers and CGI reached a point 10 years ago when they could not just insert some CGI into a scene, but create the entire scene within the computers. An example used is the two Hulk films. The first film inserts a digital Hulk into a real scene, the second puts a much more graphically refined Hulk into a completely artificial scene, with fire and smoke and what not....because they can. The article (or actually, the article is about a video, so the video's author's) point is that doing so creates a sort of uncanny valley where while it all so spectacular and impressive, its so unreal our suspension of disbelief is assaulted we become very aware of watching a movie, and therefore, its emotional resonance goes down ... a lot.

Which made me think about video games, and Ebert again since, whether he meant to or not, its become part of his legacy as not just one of the premier movie critics of the 20th century, but the movie critic who did not see 'art' in video games. I wonder if this was part of it...that he (and by extension, many) have their suspension of disbelief assaulted by polygons and pixels? Yet he did not say an animated film could not be art, did he?

Second, by playing lots of games, are gamers more or less likely to become emotionally moved by a video game? We are so used to engaging in a video game world, does it change things for us?

Third, could an FMV renaissance shift the idea of video games as art?

I personally don't see an uncanny valley while watching films with lots of CGI at all, i'm much more likely to be moved by a game by playing several.

I agree with Vexer the more games you play the more likely you are to be moved by the poignant ones, are they art ? Not sure, can they be moving ? Definitely so.

I can remember being appalled at the airport level in Modern Warfare 2 especially the fact I had to stand by and observe the slaughter.

Bioshock when I first harvested a little sister I genuinely felt bad and didn't harvest another throughout the rest of the play through. This may be due to the fact I'm a father of a little girl and you become naturally protective but boy I felt bad.

Panzer Dragoon *SPOILER* when your dragon sacrifices itself at the end, but you see evidence it might have survived I was genuinely relieved that it (hopefully) managed to stay alive *SPOILER END*

Regarding the uncanny valley effect I agree. Despite how great the effects are and how much I enjoy blockbuster movies I am frequently snapped out of the immersion. I'm more wowed by the effects and think that they look awesome but frequently you become aware it's CGI. I read great article somewhere about Jurassic Park kept mixing the effects up between traditional and CGI to keep you engaged and to stop you being trained to zone in on the CGI effects.