On August 19 2010 00:03 Tal wrote: I guess in its own way, Tetris is a kind of art. Perfect in it's simple way - and so perhaps it will be remembered far in the future. What it doesn't do though, is have a big impact on someone's life - it's a lot of fun, but I guess you wouldn't call it profound.
I see the artwork and music as being a part of the experience - it's just not just the gameplay which matters- it's the whole package. And maybe that becomes more of a 'guided experience' as you put it, but that experience seems to have incredible potential for art. I can imagine something along the lines of FF7 or Shadow of the Collosus really being something special. But I'm not sure if it will happen - as you point out, there's a lot of 'holywood style rubbish' about these days.
You're putting definitions on 'perfect' that shouldn't really be there. Perfect means something that is flawless at its task; but a perfect hammer is not also a perfect nail. You can't pin down a perfect game as a 'guided experience'; a choose-your-own-adventure book is also a 'guided experience'. 'Having an impact' is even more vague. You're mentioning gameplay, graphics, music, all of that; what does it all add up to? When all is said and done, what is the perfect game perfect at? Can it not be perfect if it isn't profound? But I could always argue that Tetris is profound in a quite different way than SotC. Books, paintings, movies, many of those are very much profound. You're going to need a better definition. In the end, though, it seems fairly obvious that a perfect game will never be made. I think it's more interesting to speculate as to whether developers can make games without obvious flaws (e.g. grinding in RPGs)
Perhaps part of the answer is that it's so easy to dissect elements of a computer game. Since it's made up of so many distinct parts, it's just begging for people who masquerade as 'video game critics' to divide and comment upon. As an aside, this kind of half-assed reviewing just seems kind of silly to me:
Gameplay: 3/5 Story: 2/5 Music: 5/5
Really? So I should buy this game if I love listening to a few good tracks over and over and should just skip through the cutscenes to the kind-of-average gameplay? Thanks for the info, buddy.
In other spheres of art, it's generally take it or leave it. The entire work is presented as a complete piece, which you take in as is. It's much more uncommon to hear "yeah I liked his brushwork overall, but that upper left corner, not so much..."
Another part of it is that a game spans many hours of experience, and may include multiple playthroughs. It's probably normal for an average movie nowadays to cost more than a major computer game, and that's only for a couple hours of passive entertainment. What I'm getting at is somewhere along the line, since less expertise and budget are being allocated over a lot more ground, it's inevitable to get a couple of weaker links somewhere in the chain.
I think you'll find that many of the people who rate games would uprate games with minimal or zero story, simply because there's nothing they can criticize and itsartritelol. Indeed I believe that's one of the more lasting trends nowadays. I would guess that if you are looking for something approaching critical perfection, it would be easier to search among games with minimalist plot/storyline, like most indie-ish games nowadays.
You'd also need a healthy circle of critics. There is such a thing as critical quality, even though I am unable to define it. You could review 10,000 books and 10,000 pieces of music and still be a shitty lit/music critic. However I doubt the same can be said of the state of video game reviews online.
Commercial games are a major undertaking, and so the studios need professionals to create each element and to piece it together. There will be conflicts between what someone envisioned and what is delivered, and loads of compromises are made in the name of cooperation, achieving targets on time, internal politics etc.
Don't forget that in the age of classical music, if I'm not mistaken, famous composers were sponsored by wealthy patrons and royalty to basically just do their thing. They didn't have to meet deadlines and budgets, listen to the ramblings of some nerds online, shove some crap in for ADD-riddled adolescents, and think about saving some shit up for when they owned a studio themselves. They put their heart and soul into their work and never settled for anything less than what they viewed as perfection, something which I doubt many game designers actually do.
On August 19 2010 00:03 Tal wrote: I guess in its own way, Tetris is a kind of art. Perfect in it's simple way - and so perhaps it will be remembered far in the future. What it doesn't do though, is have a big impact on someone's life - it's a lot of fun, but I guess you wouldn't call it profound.
I see the artwork and music as being a part of the experience - it's just not just the gameplay which matters- it's the whole package. And maybe that becomes more of a 'guided experience' as you put it, but that experience seems to have incredible potential for art. I can imagine something along the lines of FF7 or Shadow of the Collosus really being something special. But I'm not sure if it will happen - as you point out, there's a lot of 'holywood style rubbish' about these days.
You're putting definitions on 'perfect' that shouldn't really be there. Perfect means something that is flawless at its task; but a perfect hammer is not also a perfect nail. You can't pin down a perfect game as a 'guided experience'; a choose-your-own-adventure book is also a 'guided experience'. 'Having an impact' is even more vague. You're mentioning gameplay, graphics, music, all of that; what does it all add up to? When all is said and done, what is the perfect game perfect at? Can it not be perfect if it isn't profound? But I could always argue that Tetris is profound in a quite different way than SotC. Books, paintings, movies, many of those are very much profound. You're going to need a better definition. In the end, though, it seems fairly obvious that a perfect game will never be made. I think it's more interesting to speculate as to whether developers can make games without obvious flaws (e.g. grinding in RPGs)
Good point well made. The word perfect actually really doesn't get across what I'm trying to say, so I have to modify it far too much. What I'm actually asking about seems very unclear.
All this talk about BG2 really makes me want to play it. I thought I had, but then I realized that I played BG2 Dark Alliance on Xbox. A great game, but, at least from my understanding, a different one.
Does anyone know where I can get BG2? I don't mind paying for it, but I'd really prefer to download, rather than wait for a disc to come in the mail. =\
I'm not sure about perfect but Cave Story is a games thats pretty perfect for what it was trying to accomplish, and I wouldn't change anything about it.
On August 18 2010 13:32 nttea wrote: I'd consider Baldurs gate 2 to be the most "perfect" game i've ever played, don't think you can get any closer than that imo.
Can i have your babies, please? I mean that... Yes Baldurs gate 2 were the most polishes... Most awesome... Most pretty game. And you can still play it today! (I even got it installed with widescreen patch, running it in high resolution).
Tetris, minesweeper, and such will be the only games that could be considered flawless. Compare them to something like that BG2, surely there's a ton of bugs and minor plot holes if someone really goes looking for it. And you could always try to refine the content, add or remove something, really hard to say what details would make it the best experience possible...
Or SCBW, there's ton of technical issues. Netcode could be much better, there's many many annoying bugs like sprite limitations, flying drone glitches or whatever. On balance and such, who's to say something's perfect, it's mostly subjective in that in the end...
I guess something's perfect in 1 way when you can go to the game designer and he will say, that he wouldn't want to change or further polish anything. But even that doesn't mean everyone will like the game.
Having worked in the video games industry, I can say a "perfect" (I'm assuming you mean a game without technical flaws) game would be impossible to produce within a reasonable time-frame and budget constraint. The last project I worked on, at it's peak had over 16,000 open defects logged in the database. Each of these defects, when fixed, has the possibility of affecting another area of the game, creating even more defects, causing even more work. Combine that with pressure from publishers to meet schedules, and there's some choices that have to be made, and more often than not, that choice is left up to producers, not developers. That's also the reason behind Day 1 patches for nearly every major game release, there are still a huge number of bugs left in the game, they're just the ones that were decided to be least "urgent."
Online games are especially notorious, because when tackling any given issue in game, the number of factors to take into consideration increases exponentially.
That's just technical issues from a QA monkey's PoV.
I don't think the idea of "perfection" is really a good way to measure games...new games are created learning the lessons from previous ones, just like many other entertainment and art forms.
Like a treat or a chocolate - one might taste good, but perhaps another even better one will be created when creators better understand tastebuds, the mind, the chemistry and biology of the ingredients, etc.
And when it comes to "flaws" or parts that you don't enjoy, it's subjective. Unless someday we have AI's creating skinner boxes/games specifically for a particular person's preferences...yikes.
On August 18 2010 13:32 nttea wrote: I'd consider Baldurs gate 2 to be the most "perfect" game i've ever played, don't think you can get any closer than that imo.
Fun blog to read. Nice to see so many BGate fans! Without doubt a damn near perfect single player experience. Still flaws such as too much money, easy thieving etc as mentioned. Hard to not take advantage of this free candy.
A tribute to Baldur's Gate via Starcraft, wut? -->A bit off topic and partial spam: + Show Spoiler +
Been meaning to create a TL.net blog myself about a SC mod that pays tribute to these classic and damn near perfect rpgs, but haven't gotten around to it (nor figured how to create a blog here lol). The mod is called Planar Erratus and if you love BGate, Torment, Arcanum, you'd get a kick out of PEAI and its nostalgia. I'll admit RTS and RPG don't mix too well, but I feel the mod did a good job capturing the D&D atmosphere. While there's plenty of combat involved, you won't win by just building large throw away armies. You'll need to think a bit to break through enemy lines. Anywho.. been a bit busy lately and it has sat idle now for awhile. This might be the first mention of this mod outside the limited exposure of the BWAI forum, but would love to throw some ideas around with some other Bgate fans and respark the flame again.
For all the BG newbs who want to play the full story with patchs and resolution mod. It makes things much more enjoyable. Also skipping BG1 and Tosc would be a shame.
Buy BG1+Tales of the sword coast + BG2 + Throne of Baal Then:
On August 19 2010 10:31 MrBitter wrote: All this talk about BG2 really makes me want to play it. I thought I had, but then I realized that I played BG2 Dark Alliance on Xbox. A great game, but, at least from my understanding, a different one.
Does anyone know where I can get BG2? I don't mind paying for it, but I'd really prefer to download, rather than wait for a disc to come in the mail. =\
there is no legal download available i picked up BG1+expansion+BG2+expansion in one pack for $20 each on its own DVD way better than the 6 CD and 5 CD sets i got with the original games , swapping the discs over was a real pain in the ass
EPT
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