PS3 Discussion Thread

[Kylaran]

Originally Posted by C.A.

The medium itself changes over time, the context surrounding the art is viewed differently over time, the significance changes over time as well. Art pieces like Manet's Olympia, shocked the art world for its outrageousness, but if you were to show it to someone now, they will never know why unless you tell them.

Mona Lisa is an unfinished work, but its still viewed as a masterpiece and its definitely being heavily studied and treasured. The amount of mystery and sophistication in this unfinished painting can hardly be seen in modern art.

Evangelion losing it significance over time is just like what I've mentioned in the first paragraph. It is exactly what I mean when we are at an age where people look for quantity over quality, they look out for more instead of looking deeper into the single piece. The common audience nowadays will not bother looking up the context, search deeper into the meanings and finding out for themselves the significance. If they can't understand this one, they'll just give it a low rating and carry on to the next, hopefully easier to understand and more 'entertaining'.

So are you saying that if I produce an unfinished product for the Playstation 3 it will provide enough mystery to be considered an art product?

My argument is that you're wrong if you think "timeless masterpieces" are appreciated by the masses. Do you really think a lay person can walk into a museum and understand what makes an art piece so prized by art collectors and historians? No. Just as Evangelion will lose appreciation from all but the those who treasure and appreciate it, so too will other modes of art; your so called traditional "timeless masterpieces" are just as victim to popular ignorance and misunderstanding as anything can be produced today. Just because there's been thousands of years of appreciation for art at the level of high society doesn't mean you can brush off the potential genius of the next video game to come out.

I remember the first time I played Starfox 64 with a rumble pack. Amazing. Actually, I even remember the times when I played SNES as a wee kid. I would go back and play Super Mario any day. Heck, I don't think society will easily be able to forget World of Warcraft as a gaming phenomenon in recent times.

Just because we've put traditional art mediums on a pedestal doesn't mean we can't look to the PS3 and say: look at the hardware capabilities on it, and see if we can push out a game that will be able to change the way games are made. As I said in my first post, it requires a different way of taking a look at art, and how it can be achieved through the technologically developing medium that constitutes so much of the gaming experience. It's much too early to assume that these developments won't have a lasting impact on society, especially considering research into modern visual culture is still in its infancy.

[yeahitschris]

just noticed you can put MP4's into the ps3 . thought it was only .AVI's :d

[C.A.]

Originally Posted by Mueti

While it's fine to interpret "timeless" the way you did - taking social acceptance and importance within a medium into account, you apparently do believe that the lack of both of these factors within today's art is due to a lack of "sophistication and depth", i.e. quality.
That is where you are wrong. Very, very wrong. There is art being created that blows ALL of the supposed timeless masterpieces you are referring to out of the water. You either cannot appreciate those works in the same way as those you are being lectured about or you simply haven't discovered them. Or both, I don't know.
Either way, art is certainly NOT lacking in quality today.

Of course there is quality, but there is more emphasis on quantity than quality. It is what this age of mass production and marketing has created.

Our original argument was that the media required dumbing down the works for the audience. By dumbing down, there is already reduction in quality of the original intentions of the creators.

Let's say if Da Vinci is alive today and is allowed to use modern mediums in his art, would he be able to create great masterpieces? Yes of course.

But would anyone give him 3 years to work on another Last Supper? No I don't think so, his contractors would rather have more pieces of work than just one.

Originally Posted by Kylaran

So are you saying that if I produce an unfinished product for the Playstation 3 it will provide enough mystery to be considered an art product?

My argument is that you're wrong if you think "timeless masterpieces" are appreciated by the masses. Do you really think a lay person can walk into a museum and understand what makes an art piece so prized by art collectors and historians? No. Just as Evangelion will lose appreciation from all but the those who treasure and appreciate it, so too will other modes of art; your so called traditional "timeless masterpieces" are just as victim to popular ignorance and misunderstanding as anything can be produced today. Just because there's been thousands of years of appreciation for art at the level of high society doesn't mean you can brush off the potential genius of the next video game to come out.

I remember the first time I played Starfox 64 with a rumble pack. Amazing. Actually, I even remember the times when I played SNES as a wee kid. I would go back and play Super Mario any day. Heck, I don't think society will easily be able to forget World of Warcraft as a gaming phenomenon in recent times.

Just because we've put traditional art mediums on a pedestal doesn't mean we can't look to the PS3 and say: look at the hardware capabilities on it, and see if we can push out a game that will be able to change the way games are made. As I said in my first post, it requires a different way of taking a look at art, and how it can be achieved through the technologically developing medium that constitutes so much of the gaming experience. It's much too early to assume that these developments won't have a lasting impact on society, especially considering research into modern visual culture is still in its infancy.

Seems like you didn't get the point, because you're still using examples that supports my argument.

Like what you've said, the common lay person nowadays would not be able to appreciate such high art, this is the exact reason why art is now presented in more accessible, less sophisticated common art.

Art in history were items that can only be appreciated by the rich and powerful. But like many things, such luxuries have become available to the masses and so the average quality has dropped to become more marketable.

Let's make this simple:

Art in the past: high treasured individual pieces that were given time to produce. Quality over quantity.

Modern art: Besides high fine art, the general art is mass produced, dumbed down and made easily accessible to all audience. Quantity over quality.

Of course, fine arts still exist today, but like you mentioned, the lay person doesn't appreciate any of these. Instead the lay probably would enjoy popular media arts, which are heavily subjected to dumbing and censorship.

My argument has always been that modern visual culture is dumbed down for the audience and that quantity is valued over quality. Has modern, popular visual culture reached the stage to be called high art? If it hasn't, since its still in its infancy, then my argument is not wrong.

[Keroko]

Originally Posted by Kylaran

I'm sorry, but I just can't agree with this. I think the number one problem for most people in today's society is that they're finding it difficult to transfer from previously quite well established models of working society to the modern ones. In terms of narratives, I don't think there's -anything- wrong with using a cliche storyline, but changing the mode of narration so that many elements underlying it have created a new product. A storyline is not necessarily an isolated aspect of a game; often, it has to be combined with character design, voice acting, and some aspects of gameplay (for example, the party system for combat in RPGs).

Oh don't misunderstand. Cliche and easy-to-understand doesn't automatically mean bad, it just means that it's... well... cliche and easy-to-understand.

Originally Posted by Kylaran

Let's take for example Tales of Vesperia. I bought the game the week it came out in Japan for PS3, and I've enjoyed it immensely. The storyline is, as everyone will say, a tad bit cliche, but what makes the story so enjoyable is the strong cast of characters. The way they talk to each other at critical moments, they way their personalities add both support and frustration to other characters - this is what makes the story so well told. Story progression isn't defined by the writing and what events take place, but what the characters do during those events. Take for example the dialogue between characters after combat, during which the character(s) that killed the most enemies say some kind of phrase. What they say is incredibly entertaining, and suits their personalities very well. It's not part of the storyline, but I think that it's an important in demonstrating the relationship behind these characters in a way the storyline may not necessarily be able to. These are just some of the fine details that enhance the story overall, without being traditionally considered an aspect of what story is. (Do I even need to mention that the sub-par quality of English voice acting for video games and anime fail to bring out the emotions behind the characters? Just compare the voice acting in famous Pixar films, and how they're capable of successfully enhancing the story, but how voice acting in English games can be completely unsuitable for the character's personality.)

It's funny that you mention Vesperia, because Vesperia is surprisingly complicated once you look beyond the surface. Take Yuri for example. On the surface he's just a badass hero, but what happens when we look beyond the surface?

He goes against everything regular heroes stand for ('save even the worst enemy', 'honorable combat' and all that) and has even killed unarmed opponents. He goes beyond the moral code that heroes adhere, killing people because the law couldn't. His quote "you can't deny lives were saved because those bastards were put down" opens up a can of morality debate the size of which can fill whole threads. Is Yuri justified in his actions? Can he go against the law? Why shouldn't the law apply to him? And so on.

And yet, Vesperia has often been described as having a 'generic Tales' storyline. This is because Vesperia is only as deep as you want it to be. You don't have to concern yourself with Yuri's morales, or any of the other deeper events in the game, and see a Tales story the same as any other.

Personally, I believe this was done for a reason. After all, you wouldn't want to lose the fans you already have, but even then game creators are artists too. They want to push the edges, and they did so with Vesperia, albeit under the covers.

Tales is actually a good example that artists still try to create a complex scenario even these days, but it also demonstrates how little the masses care for it. Very few pick up on just how complex the world of Vesperia truly is.

[rainnydaiis]

Originally Posted by yeahitschris

just noticed you can put MP4's into the ps3 . thought it was only .AVI's :d

Yeah both Avi's and MP4's work on the PS3. But the thing is if the MP4 isn't correctly coded it won't work what so ever. The PSP coding and the PS3 coding seems to be quite different seeing that my PSP will notice some MP4 files but my PS3 says they're corrupted. Avi is probably your best bet because its almost impossible to screw up the coding on an Avi.

[yeahitschris]

Originally Posted by rainnydaiis

Yeah both Avi's and MP4's work on the PS3. But the thing is if the MP4 isn't correctly coded it won't work what so ever. The PSP coding and the PS3 coding seems to be quite different seeing that my PSP will notice some MP4 files but my PS3 says they're corrupted. Avi is probably your best bet because its almost impossible to screw up the coding on an Avi.

yeah, i like to get .AVI for my ps3 and watch it on there, if there is none i'd go to MKV and stream it

[rainnydaiis]

Yeah, the codecs that PS3 offers is really horrible. It really should come out with a codec patch or something.

[zebra]

Irrelevent, but d'oh: Leonardo would raise more money with his engineering skills, if he would live today

I think all of you are right in one way or another.

Originally Posted by C.A.

Art in the past: high treasured individual pieces that were given time to produce. Quality over quantity.

Wasn't being an artist a job that left you pennyless? I'm not an expert. But the art that actually made money were commisions, like portraits. So an artist would get told what to paint and how it should look. Non-assigned art was not reliable as an income source. I know, artists dig art - not money, but they had to eat something. To do art for the sake of it and to produce a masterpiece with time, is the ideal isn't it?
Well, and Leonardo didn't only do one painting in 3 years time. He had other projects too (as far as I know, can be wrong ).

Fulfilling the demands of the market doesn't necessarily mean to abandon quality imo. Look at Shakespeare. He wrote for the Queen and had to take her taste in account. He also made sure to entertain the common folk with a lot of violence and sex puns. Because he wanted to get paid. He did what he was asked for and still created timeless masterpieces. And he was also under time pressure.

It's not easy, so of course most products fail at that. Just like a lot of games today. For quick cash quality gets often abondoned. There still are masterpieces, and even timeless ones imo. But the majority of the market is doo-doo. But of course true masterpieces don't surface everyday. It's what makes them special after all.

Also regarding the appreciation of a product (sticking to Shakespeare since I'm more into literature lol):
Do Shakepeare's plays or sonnetes get appreciated - as the great creations they are - from the pupils that are forced to read "Romeo and Juliet"? No. Did the audience of his time appreciate his works as milestones in literature and theater? No.
Appreciation doesn't say much about how great a work really is. Maaaaaany masterpieces in the past haven't been appreciated as such before the artist was long dead.

I think games should be entertaining as first priority, but that doesn't exclude any depth or quality. Games need to be sold, but isn't quality the cherry on the top? What makes the difference between alright and awesome?
Game designers don't need to reinvent the wheel, but eye candy alone is not enough.

[Kylaran]

Originally Posted by C.A.

Of course there is quality, but there is more emphasis on quantity than quality. It is what this age of mass production and marketing has created.

Our original argument was that the media required dumbing down the works for the audience. By dumbing down, there is already reduction in quality of the original intentions of the creators.

Let's say if Da Vinci is alive today and is allowed to use modern mediums in his art, would he be able to create great masterpieces? Yes of course.

But would anyone give him 3 years to work on another Last Supper? No I don't think so, his contractors would rather have more pieces of work than just one.
Seems like you didn't get the point, because you're still using examples that supports my argument.

Like what you've said, the common lay person nowadays would not be able to appreciate such high art, this is the exact reason why art is now presented in more accessible, less sophisticated common art.

Art in history were items that can only be appreciated by the rich and powerful. But like many things, such luxuries have become available to the masses and so the average quality has dropped to become more marketable.

Let's make this simple:

Art in the past: high treasured individual pieces that were given time to produce. Quality over quantity.

Modern art: Besides high fine art, the general art is mass produced, dumbed down and made easily accessible to all audience. Quantity over quality.

Of course, fine arts still exist today, but like you mentioned, the lay person doesn't appreciate any of these. Instead the lay probably would enjoy popular media arts, which are heavily subjected to dumbing and censorship.

I don't see how this argues against my position at all. My point is that complexity still remains when it is valued and appreciated by those that are appreciative of many of its finer qualities. But the fact that accessibility has changed also means that mere quality cannot simply be determined by the time it's taken to produce and the general depth of the product.

The time used to create a product is completely irrelevant to its depth and quality. They are independent dimensions of each other - Da Vinci producing masterpieces now compared to before is necessarily a product of its time. You admitted just now that he could produce masterpieces, so you've agreed that it doesn't matter whether or not it took him three years or a couple of months (I'll have you know that games take years to make, so I find this temporal element to the production process to be completely irrelevant.). That is, your argument for time is not about the amount involved in production, but such the comparison between the legacies of established works of high art versus modern works.

Now that we've established quality as a separate element from time, let me just say that what we have originally disagreed upon is the word "timeless" in your earlier post. My specific point in bringing up Da Vinci's art is to illustrate what I believe to be true of all fine things: those who are connoisseurs are the ones that reveal the sophistication in a work of art and try to demonstrate that it must be a piece that needs to be introduced to future generations. The common people from centuries past are just as dumb (I would reckon even less educated) than the general populace is today; the fact that there's increased access and a wider scope of what is interpreted as art in modern times does not mean that the dimension of quality necessarily has to be shrunken to accommodate for this. It may become more difficult to identify and appreciate the masterpieces, but that says nothing about whether or not quantity or quality are inverse properties of one another.

I just think that it's premature to attribute timelessness to works in modern art, exactly because the current generation of artistic works is still changing, and that once we have specialists who are capable of dissecting the monumental breakthroughs in, say, the development of games as an artistic medium, only then will we be able to judge if something is timeless or not. I don't disagree that much of what is produced today is produced in mass, but I think failing to see how even mass production can have its masterpieces that could very well be a timeless example of artistic brilliance to future generations is a fault of the old perspective of looking at art.

My argument has always been that modern visual culture is dumbed down for the audience and that quantity is valued over quality. Has modern, popular visual culture reached the stage to be called high art? If it hasn't, since its still in its infancy, then my argument is not wrong.

Art in video games and anime doesn't have to be high culture for it to be complex and quality.

Originally Posted by Keroko

Oh don't misunderstand. Cliche and easy-to-understand doesn't automatically mean bad, it just means that it's... well... cliche and easy-to-understand.

It's funny that you mention Vesperia, because Vesperia is surprisingly complicated once you look beyond the surface. Take Yuri for example. On the surface he's just a badass hero, but what happens when we look beyond the surface?

He goes against everything regular heroes stand for ('save even the worst enemy', 'honorable combat' and all that) and has even killed unarmed opponents. He goes beyond the moral code that heroes adhere, killing people because the law couldn't. His quote "you can't deny lives were saved because those bastards were put down" opens up a can of morality debate the size of which can fill whole threads. Is Yuri justified in his actions? Can he go against the law? Why shouldn't the law apply to him? And so on.

And yet, Vesperia has often been described as having a 'generic Tales' storyline. This is because Vesperia is only as deep as you want it to be. You don't have to concern yourself with Yuri's morales, or any of the other deeper events in the game, and see a Tales story the same as any other.

Personally, I believe this was done for a reason. After all, you wouldn't want to lose the fans you already have, but even then game creators are artists too. They want to push the edges, and they did so with Vesperia, albeit under the covers.

Tales is actually a good example that artists still try to create a complex scenario even these days, but it also demonstrates how little the masses care for it. Very few pick up on just how complex the world of Vesperia truly is.

Spoiler for Spoiler for Vesperia:

I see a lot about the traditional deontological vs. utilitarian conflict in Yuri and Flynn (Not sure how to spell his name in English). The fact that the "hero" of the story chooses to murder as an act utilitarian. Not exactly a purely original source of conflict in the main character, but I do think the way it's being brought out in the story is particularly interesting. There's an interesting multi-dimensional aspect to the story indeed. Sounds to me like a challenge of the traditional interpretations of what constitutes being a hero: the ends or the means.

[MakubeX2]

Well, free demo for Bayonetta is up on the American PSN Store.

People here are now welcome to get it to see if it's as bad as those detractors making it out to be, be it techincal or gameplay wise. The said detractors might also want to try it for themselves, just so to see what else about it they can nitpick about.

[Duo Maxwell]

Originally Posted by MakubeX2

The said detractors might also want to try it for themselves, just so to see what else about it they can nitpick about.

No point, really. If they want to, anything can be bad.

On the other hand....
White Knight Chronicles Goes International In February

[yeahitschris]

Originally Posted by MakubeX2

Well, free demo for Bayonetta is up on the American PSN Store.

People here are now welcome to get it to see if it's as bad as those detractors making it out to be, be it techincal or gameplay wise. The said detractors might also want to try it for themselves, just so to see what else about it they can nitpick about.

i tried it, i thought it was fun. a borrow for me though.

[MakubeX2]

Originally Posted by Duo Maxwell

No point, really. If they want to, anything can be bad.

I mean them pointing forward more valid example of the game's shortcomings in their arguments instead of relying on the same old excuse of it being a "rubbish fanservice game ripping off DMC and Ninja Gaiden".

[2H-Dragon]

Originally Posted by yeahitschris

i tried it, i thought it was fun. a borrow for me though.

Same here, it's good fun, but just a borrow from me(though I might impulse buy it ). I just can't be arsed to buy singleplayer games anymore.

That said the demo was good fun. Still wondering for who the easy/very easy is supposed to be(I'm guessing people with a disability o_O) . The combo system was easy in use, the dodging felt nice 2. I like how the bullet time is based on skill rather then a cheat button.

The graphics where somewhat disappointing(played the 360 version), but style makes up for it. The last action game I played was NG2, so I kinda missed the gore. :O People complained about the gore of NG2, but it just made the game more stylish in a ninja kind of way. xD

[Duo Maxwell]

So it's worth the wait after all:
Yakuza 3 is coming stateside

[chikorita157]

Yesterday, Sony released Firmware 3.15 which allows Playstation 3 play PSP mini games on the big screen and also allow transfer of data via ethernet including save data and music. This is useful to people who wants to replace their fat PS3 with a slim one, but it does delete the game content, but it keeps the media files after they are transfered.

[yeahitschris]

you guys think the GOD OF WAR for the ps3 worth it? have not completed any of those games yet.

[Sides]

Are you asking about the God of War Collection or what we think about the upcoming God of War 3?

[Shadow Kira01]

White Knight Chronicles International Edition will be released a week prior to Star Ocean 4 International, sounds pretty good..

Since PS3 firmware 3.15 seems to be doing fine, I will probably get the PS3 Slim next week.

[yeahitschris]

Originally Posted by Sides

Are you asking about the God of War Collection or what we think about the upcoming God of War 3?

the God of war collection. eh friend getting me that for x-mas and in return im putting in $50 towards his ps3 fund lol