The New Debate on Games as Ert
A raging war of words that never seems to disappear for long, the eternal question “are games ert?” has reared its many-spectacled head yet again. On the first side we find those who passionately believe in the idea that games are indeed ert, and wish them to be viewed as such. On the other, the stridently dubious, who feel that games are not ert, and either cannot ever be it, or at least have many steps to go in order to become it.
It is well understood that ert is important and a big deal. Many people pay respect to ert– and as such, if games became ert, then respect would be paid to games. This means we could talk about what we do in good company by saying “oh, I make video games,” and our interlocutors would respond “oh, yes, games– they are a kind of ert, aren’t they?” And we all know that this is certainly not the case right now.
To confuse matters further, there is also a contingent who have spearheaded a kind of backlash against the question itself– games, they counter, should be about something else– having “fon,” apparently, and thus it is lamentable that anything else (especially ert) would be the concern of those who make games, particularly because the quality of being “fon” interferes with, or somehow contradicts, the quality of being ert. Which begs another important question: can games be both ert and fon at the same time?
Many further symposiums, blog posts and ert-fon diagrams will be necessary to answer the question definitively.
Levity | February 8, 2010
Reader Comments (30)
The big problem with games is that there are so many different kinds and the fact that they are interactive. A film, a book, a sculpture are not, by their very nature, interactive. A game, on the other hand, by its nature, is. So it becomes more difficult to identify, by its interactive nature, whether or not it can be considered art. If we do deem it art, we have to concede that the user is part of creating the aesthetic, and not simply an observer.
Yes, it will take a long time to answer the question definitively. For now, the answer is very much subjective.
FON IS JUST A WORD
We need to mix great writing with grand imaginative worlds. I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream was the perfect example: Its world was very weird, showed a lot of imagination, and had a lot of strange twists. I think it should be the precedent for future games.
Problem is, repetitive games are becoming increasingly common: Madden, Halo, Gran Turismo, rhythm games, casual games, W.W.II F.P.S.s, all, sell millions--and companies would much rather make a guaranteed giantic profit than take a chance on an obscure game. These companies do, occasionally, make concessions to the hard-core market by producing games like Beyond Good and Evil 2 and A Boy and His Blob; but I suspect that such games are, only, made in order to maintain the illusion of variety, whether to appease us or their stockholders, rather than because the executives care.
This has the potential for a crash, just, like in 1983 and '94--in those days, companies had produced a lot of shitty games, the market was oversaturated, and imaginative title were buried under piles of terrible shovelware--sounds familiar?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9joAb4XMaUs&feature=related makes a good point: Microsoft and Sony are trying to appeal to the masses--jocks, casual gamers, older players, etcetra--but, unfortunately, the common man is fickle. Their audiences will, eventually, move on, and when that happens, the X-Box, and Playstation will become unprofitable, and be cancelled, while their creators return to creating things like business software, and televisions. Nintendo--having focused on video games--will be the last source of hardware, and, though this sounds like a good thing--since we will not have to worry about exclusives--but it is a terrible likely outcome. Nintendo will be angry at the companies who supported its competitors, and refuse to allow them to develop games for its sytems. We might, very well, find ourselves with, either, very few games, or an impossibly large number of competing consoles, each with a, completely, different set of games. Each console, in the latter case, would be made by a game company--and the more resources a company puts into hardware, fighting the competition, and marketing for the hardware, the less it has for software. This is very disturbing.
Ert is in the eye of the beholder.
was playin SF4 the other day with my older brother and i challengd my brother i never loose SO we were playing and then i started to lose then my brother said i was a failure and dispointmnet to him so i started to cry
SF4 made me cry so it must be the citizen cane of video games also the graphics are good
PS: Sorry to be pedantic, but that's not what "beg the question" means.
I mean most people don't even get what Werhal's Sorp Can screen prints are about and yet they're perfectly willing to dismiss them as a meaningless stunt. Why? Because instead of just admitting that they don't understand it they prefer to believe that it can't have any significance or greater meaning. No Werhal's the problem, he's the one who's stupid (or a liar, or a scam artist).
Of course you're going to argue games should be just fon if you can't appreciate ert.
Are games roommates that play with rubber duckies in a bathtub, or is a game a high school dropout-cum-former bike gang member-cum-Mayor of Cool?
In my own observations, I find the concepts of fon and ert to be inseparable from the larger concept of norfte. Who here would deny that without our cultural norfte we would be barely more than savages?
I think it lays out the problem very well. Now to find the game, or anything really, that fills the region in the center. Such an item would be so great it would make Obart commit suicide in remorse. Then the rest of the world would join hands and sing in harmony.