What does it mean to seperate the art from the artist? It seems to have two meanings which are used as one and the same:
"Am I allowed to enjoy media from bad artists?" Yes, I have made peace with the facts that most creators probably disdain me in one way or another, and abusive behavior is not exclusive to a small group of evil people. Worrying about making good customer choices is an endless pit of misery that helps nothing. One should also keep in mind that for every despicable artist out there, there are many marginalized creators deserving more support; but I think this is a seperate issue which shouldn't be conflated with customer activism.
"The critique of art should be seperated from the artist." Yes, I wholeheartedly agree. Audience has a deeply personal relationship with art, and art critique should always prioritize this relationship over the artist. I have discussed this on detail before(click here), so won't do so here again.
Thus, my answer to the regularly re-heated debate : We should seperate the art from the artist. There is a more interesting question however: What happens when we can't?
Sometimes we reach our personal limits. Everyone can understand creating good art doesn't make a creator morally uptight. Yet still, creators leave a part of themselves in art, so when they cross the line, their mere association might feel to much. Sometimes it's just not the same anymore.
Sometimes, the artist and a fanbase works hard to make sure the art from its artist inseperable. Perhaps the most salient example of this is Harry Potter.
If you have observed how people tend to talk about Harry Potter in media, you would certainly caught the weird tone the discussions have. HP discussions often has. Characters are mentioned as if they are real, the plot is discussed as it is a piece of world history. This is not exclusive to HP, and its wish-fulfillment aspect might make people to indulge in its world and lore a little too much, but what's unique about HP is how this behavior is enabled and endorsed to the staggering degree by the author. The author drops lore bits, celebrates characters' birthdays and muses about events in the story. This is actually nothing too absurd in itself, it could be even cute and tounge-in-cheek. However, the author and fans constantly do this, frequently referencing HP when talk about real politics. To someone lacking any context, it would actually seem like these people are in a very involved role-play, or worse, believe Harry Potter is non-fiction.
No, what's happening here is not that simple. Harry Potter fandom and the author denies the series' from existing as fictional novels, or literature at all. It is treated as a documentary, a reality TV show, and a political manifesto. This attitude is so widespread that even the critics sometimes do this. They say: "The author is no doubt such a reactionary, look at Harry Potter, it is filled with so much of this!" Such critiques fail on two fronts:
Harry Potter as a whole is not a series with a consistent world-building. It takes many assumptions as granted. For example, for a series so much focused on death, most related concepts left blank. The series only make sense if you already know and agree with Christianity, which is notable bacuse series never once discuss religion. Harry Potter is a magic-decorated world from the view of a cis-straight middle-class-turned-rich Brit. What "political themes" present in the book are mostly a cluster of truisms flowing from it. Of course all characters would end up being married at the end of the book, what else are "normal healthy adults" supposed to do?
Harry Potter, or any other art piece, is completely irrelevant to the author's behavior. If the series were just uplifting children's tales, this wouldn't change anything about author being a raging transphobe. Conversely, if the author was the truly vagely progressive person a lot of people thought as, that should have no relevance to HP as piece with neoliberal-misogynst themes.
This shows how truly difficult is to seperate HP from its author. If you have read any Harry Potter content in English, the author's shadow seem inescepable.
Still, it is not impossible. When I read the series when I was a kid, I didn't know anything about the author. As much as knowing about the beliefs of the transphobic author makes me see some parts in the series in different light, I never really needed that knowledge. No one really does. People merely has a habit of thinking literary criticism as something mostly applies to art from the artists they don't like.
I wish people stopped talking about that transphobic millionare when there are much more important issues even in the scope of trans struggles. However if they want to talk about that person so much, they should leave Harry Potter, Fantastic Beast or whatever fiction the author have involved in. Not as a respect to sancity of nostalgia or anything of the sort, but because personal criticism and art critique are entirely different matters. If you are unwilling to seperate art from the artist, then at least try to seperate the artist from the art. This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
Complaining about game-length feels weird, as my favorite games often have play-times surpassing one-hundred hours. I've played at least two games which lasted three-hundred hours. A good part of my childhood has been spent replaying a couple of games over and over. Even when I am busy, spending time on them isn't an an issue in and of itself. However, games like Trails In the Sky (2004),Europa Universalis 4 (2013) or even The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) simply feel good to play, whereas something like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), is not, to me, good enough of a play experience to justify its 200-hour length. I feel, this is often the heart of the issue in most video game critique around length. (The other being people literally not having enough time.) Witcher 3 would be quite amazing if it was a couple dozen or even around sixty hours. The game is good, it can be even considered excellent on all the broad strokes. Taking the role of an expert monster hunter in both action and words is rather promising. Its world isn't a stock medieval-fantasy setting, it often feels right out of a fairy tale. Its dialouge is enjoyable to witness and participate in. The game can present true morally-grey questions and wacky adventures alike with the same grounded, tasteful writing, backed by the might of its top-level production. However as a bridge collapsing under excess weight, it simply does not have the fundamental structures to support hundreds and hundreds hours of fun play. The game isn't lacking in any easily noticable or quantifiable terms, the devil is in the details.
Inventory Mismanagement
What is the purpose of an inventory management system? Usually it's one of the two: Either resource managing is central to the game, as it is most survival games or it acts like a brake in games built on hoarding a lot of stuff, like Bethesda games. In Witcher 3, the inventory is way to small to do hoarding but the resources are so easy to replenish that it is not limiting in a tactical sense. The only thing inventory really achieves is to make you selective in what to take and drop your load regularly. It makes you spend more time in the menu, without being actually engaging in the slightest. A lot of RPGs do not have inventory management at all, and they can just do fine at preventing the player from being too powerful too early. In theory, Witcher 3 also supports such a system. You will not get rich easily by loot, nor there are too many things obtained by gold. And most importantly, critical resources like potions and materials are already either stockable or easily replenishable. Limited inventory feels like it is there mostly because that's what a "western-RPG" typically does.
A Big World You Shouldn't Explore
Witcher 3's game world is huge. And it often feels picturesque as well. However, there isn't too much to do in the world itself. Despite how large it might look from above, the points of interests are actually rather distinct and clear. There isn't much point to wonder around. Quests are neatly structured around your level, which itself is gained mainly by doing quests. As stated previously, there isn't much looting to do, actual important treasures are also tied to levels, and as Witcher 3 is not a game about outlandish armors and weapons, what you will find is mostly similar besides the numbers they number. Random encounters don't give much experience, they worsen the quality of your gear and cost food. Fast travel is quite limited and only useful when you start a destination, but not when you return to towns, which is arguably where fast travel is actually neccesary. A lot of time is spent on foot or horseback, going from point A to point. Skyrim is sometimes criticised for having fast travel because it is said to discourage exploration but it has been always the opposite for me. I feel very different when I want to explore vs when I simply want to get things done, Skyrim respects this difference and supports both approaches. Witcher 3 does neither, the world is mainly consists of story segments but you have to spend a lot of time between those segments. It has many things to collect, many places to arrive, many enemies to fight; but they add up to so little in the end.
Little Room for Growth
Most important things in the game is gated away with levels, but grinding on your own pace is not very doable, and leveling up doesn't feel important. What it mostly does is to make numbers larger, adding slight improvements to your combat skills and opens some dialouge options in minor scenarios. Witcher 3 is not a game about wacky magic or wild combos. This is a game where you are encouraged to fight like Geralt the Rivia, with his tools, his skills and his methods. It actually makes complete sense that he doesn't change much with leveling, by the time the game starts, he is already at the top of his game. Then why leveling exists at all? Why Geralt needs to arbitrarily wait before he is strong enough to hunt some of the monsters, in the trailer he is triumphant against an extremely dangereous monster. Why does he always get bothered with hordes of wolves, bandits and random lake monsters? In a typical RPG, leveling often symbolises ia young adventurer's growth. It doesn't say meaningful about Geralt. I truly feel the game would be infinitely more interesting if you were just restricted by your toolbox instead. It would certainly beat obtaining a simple spreading-flame magic after twenty hours or so.
Conclusion
In truth, Witcher 3 is two games mashed together: One is the story of Geralt, his encounters, his hunting, his choices. And the other is an "triple A huge map game". These two games are fundementally at odds with each other Most of the play exist mainly as a chore to you have to get through in order to emjoy the juicy parts. There is too much downtime in the game to properly maintain a consistent sense of excitement, but also too little that actually feels impactful. What broke the deal for me was not the amount of time spent, it was the feel of accomplishing so little. It was quite disheartning to see clocking at thirty hours and just having finished the first chapter. I strongly believe, if the game was entirely designed in the spirit of Ciri segments; mainly focusing on planned combat sequences, scenery and dialouge, it would reach its true potential. Unfortunately, no matter how creative or impactful they might be otherwise, Witcher series as a whole are weighed down by the conventions of their times; needlessly complex combat, weird quest systems or, in our case, a huge open world map. This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
"I am ace" written under a picture of attraction layer cube This text includes discussions of sexuality and mentions of sex, genitals, porn and descriptions of discomfort associated with them.
Black
At the dawn of my puberty, feelings I have not yet encountered entered my heart. Girls' bodies were now kind of different to look at. An incredible urge to look at them, perhaps even touch. Never understood what that feeling is exactly.
Years later, it is still an unknowable dark hole.
Well, not entirely accurate. I am conceptually aware what that is, it is a feeling I am supposed to have. The feeling every other kid is supposed to have...
Why then it is still so weird? A complete dark hole.
Women are so pretty, always feels nice to hold hands, to give and receive headpats, to be physically close, to snuggle, to kiss, to feel each other's bodies, to sleep together...
But between legs? A complete dark hole.
Penis is much more even so, presumably heightened by dysphoria. Everything about them is so weird. Why would anyone touch them, or insert them in their bodies? Or desire the liquids that come out from them. Salty, people say. No, I only feel the stench.
Just a sweaty, smelly, sticky, scary dark hole.
Gray
Why scary? I do not hate sex. I did not have a trauma causing an aversion. But my understanding is just like an academic textbook: Coldly describing as a physical act, as a social relationship, as a literary trope, something provenly exist, yet remains mysterious, as it can't be experienced first hand.
Like a gray recording of an alien sighting by an old camera.
Yet, like aliens, it lives vividly in imagination. And, like aliens, sex is something too otherworldy, it is not part of my dream world. Scarlet of romance, rose of passion, icy blue of future, orange of connection, forest green of joy, even lavender of fetishes but... no sex.
Presumably it could be brown, white, pink and red but in my world... it is just gray.
Why do I have a sex drive? Wood in the cold, wet, rusty stove. It would be more useful anywhere else. As it is, it just feels rotten, uncomfortable. But also wasteful and broken, the stove might be fixed with some work, the wood might be warmed up with some effort. If I tried harder, I feel, I could light the fire. And with the warmth of romance, there seems to be something close to an ember. That makes me feel guilty even more. I am not trying hard enough.
As it is, only smoke comes up, a feeble, gray smoke.
For years, I have put up a massive facade to prove my masculinity but even something beyond that. I joked about bedding people, constantly roasted other boys and got roasted by them with "gay", "masturbated", cared about size of my junk, had a giant stash of porn my friend gave me, long expected to marry one day and have kids. Because that's just you do, as a boy. But also, I still had this connection, a connection that have always haunted me.
An ash-gray thread that's too thin to follow, but too strong to tear. A gray-asexual I am.
White
I wish when I saw a picture of an attractive woman I had Proper feelings of a woman-loving-woman. That rushing feeling of desire I am sensing in most people. It is impossible not to sense this. A secret party you are not invited to, but one so massive that it is impossible not to detect, one I am casually expected to be part of, and something feels off that I am actually not. It is impossible to not feel like something is missing about me.
Some parts are left blank on my character sheet, a white empty space.
I wish I was an adequate partner. My lovers tell me this is not a problem. That might be correct too, since they have met and took a liking in me as a shapeless internet being. They could also have other partners for that stuff. Yet, it is impossible not to feel like I am depriving of feelings they could have with me, and that they have to tolerate something lesser to be able to form a bond with me. Certainly, many thinks what seperates friend from a partner is sex. The trejectory any and all relationships go to. The peak of human connection. The event that consummates the marriage. And look at me, a virgin complaining about sex. Even if I looked pretty, most other people would flat out fulfill my lovers' needs better, someone who is not a weirdo. This is just something I always have to live with, something that always hits on my face, something that always leaves a shadow behind me.
A blinding white light I can never escape from.
Most animals want sex And for more social ones, it fulfills needs and desires beyond procreation. The omnipresensce of sex cannot be explained with such innocent causes however, it developed as a part of ideology of the capitalist society, namely, the sex as the core truth of an individual. A human is not a true person unless they define themselves and act through a sexuality, so that they can be optimized for a productive heterosexuality. Not as mere partner preferences: but body parts, brain, apperance, healthcare, adulthood, gender, personality, legal placement, and all of the activities which might possibly seen as sexual. To be openly "asexual" then, is to reject this optimization, and so, define yourself as less then a full person. This is much more than self-identification: To be nude is to be sexual, unless you are a medical subject or a criminal. Insufficiently attractive cis women and effeminate cis men are deemed asexual unless they can conform into being regular heterosexual agents. Trans people are in a more interesting situation, they are being repressed into stop their transition, but also the transition itself is pipelined into a fetishized and medicilized process to acieve heterosexuality. Trans people who fail at both are rendered inhuman, asexual creatures. An asexual trans woman is then, a true eldritch horror of this societyç
The same horror a white guy with a white face and a white coat in the white building feels when he is talking about how hormones may decrease your libido.
Having a marginalized sexual identity is to be excluded from having an essence, and lacking an essence is to be a soul deprived of a body. Endlessly searching for a body, we fight against ourselves, and everyone else to fit in one. We fight, because to canonize ourselves in the society, we are expected to give up our agency. The language of validating an identity ofen emphasizes past lives, trauma, workings of nature and fate while denying an identity emphazises actions, choices, vanity and re-identification along the lines of former. "You are not [label], it's just [verb], real [label] have [painful condition]" and "[label] is [description of vain action], you are actually [another label] but just [verb]" are ever-present sentences in the Discourse. Even communities who push back against open essentialism does not escape this. Trans communities are positive towards self indentification for example, but the collective trans identity is still heavily centered around medical processes and destined-by-the-stars narrative. So called "micro-labels" can also be see in this light: Many of us feel that our experiences are not relevant unless we can catalouge them in detail and naturalize them into time-transcendent capsules. I myself contexualized my asexuality the same way in this very text! But the backslash against them is even more indicative of an essentialist thinking: Why would anyone be riled up at words that presents no harm to them and makes the people who use it happy? It always comes down to what is a "real identity", what is a core truth, something that can be traced back to a documented pain, a productive purpose of existence, the established scientific and political language, and most importantly; brain wires. While this behaviour can certainly escalate intro bigorty, I can relate to this desire, the desire to have a stable place in a society.
Essentialism is a sweet white sugar, white as the light shining on Foucault's bald head.
Purple
How much of our agency it's worth to destroy to fit in? As painful as wondering aimlessly can be, trying to squeeze in to something I am not would be much more painful. I am just a sex-averse weirdo and there is that. Sure, it is often quite alieanating, but I have pretended someone I am not for way too long, and it is a mistake I won't do again, especially not so that my life can be appopriated for some reactionary narrative on sexuality.
I have embraced my eternal ethereal existence, flying in a lonely purple heaven, sometimes scary, but sometimes oddly pleasant.
Pleasant, yes. Let people treat me like an alien, I will also welcome them as such. Let the light of expectations tries to blind me, I will turn my past to an umbrella that will protect me. Let I be the wrong kind of sapphic woman, my partners love me, they love me for who I am. Let people call me incel, my lovers yearn for my touch.
My fire might be feeble, but when it can be lit, it has pretty purple flames.
This might seem like narcissism, but I have really felt I have been free of a burden I have been carrying so long. It's the exactly same feeling I have felt discovering my gender. It didn't "obscure my identity" like some believes, on the contrary, I have at peace with my love of women as I haven't been before. I am still very insecure, but I am aware that I don't have to be, I can be confident too and it is thanks to people talking about things and people giving names to experiences like me.
I am a colorless, boring plant, but with enough care I can have cute purple flowers.
It hurts not having one, but I don't need a core truth for myself. I don't need to use my insecurities as a foundation, I don't need to find a medical condition to make this more legitimate.. Something about my birth, something I saw, or just an aversion, it doesn't matter. If I change in the future, the feelings I have now won't lose any worth. This is not a report of a blood test. This is my story, with all of its troubles and wonders. I am just some kind of asexual.
It is my black, gray, white and purple of my life. This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
The eight generation of Pokémon games Pokémon Sword/Pokémon Shield(2019, SwSh for short) made the volcano-erupting decision of not having National Dex, which means no Pokémon(mon for short) transfer from older games, but also -- for the time being -- they will certainly not implement all of the older mon for this generation in any way. Hardware limitations, and the realities of game development makes this a foregone conclusion. Examining the paterns of large game development, a project like this is usually granted only three years at maxiumum, and such projects are usually considered a loss by the executives, even when they bring good money. Since Pokémon is an already cash-cow franchaise with a pretty solid fan base and hard to ruin formula, there is very little incentive for them to grant money just to have largest number of Pokémon possible. Also, how many people actively transfer their mons in the first place? We can bring personal anectodes all day, but the dev team clearly decided that it's not popular enough to warrant further development. Such decisions happen all the time in game dev, it feels bad when it happens, but no game cannot reasonably cater to every niche, and yes, absolutely needing to have every Pokémon is a niche demand, especially considering the series' immense customer base who is just looking out a casual, relaxing game to play on the go or as a gift to kids. Furthermore, even if they have been granted abundant budget and time for the development of titles with increasingly growing number of mons, that just means more and more months of stressful labor for the workers. Even on the hypothetical of introducing new mons very slowly, their projects would still grow bigger and bigger, leaving no time for Game Freak to develop anything other than Pokémon. Lastly, bigger projects with bigger budgets do not often result in better creations, on the contrary, it adds more maangement issues, which game companies are bad at by a overwhelming majority. They can postpone the issue, for several generations perhaps, but there needed to be a culling at some point. And it's actually better that it happened now, as there would be even more mon to left behind later, and the game can have larger percentage of all Pokémon while still retaining a reasonable number.
[caption id="attachment_1587" align="alignnone" width="960"] All pokemon up to gen 7[/caption]However, even if devs had the license to do literally as they desire, putting all the mons for the sake of having all of the would not be good. Too much stuff in a game can result in conflicting, confusing, redundant design that overwhelms the player. This happens in narrative too, a story can have too many characters; too many plot arcs; too much tension, too much prose... More does not always mean better. In a good monster-collection game, there needs to be enough mons to make diverse teams, face various enemies, seeing a variety of new mons for each area in the game, and from the perspective of "collecting them all", there needs to be enough so that a player needs to actively focus on catching to not miss them. However, after a certain point, the amount of mons of starts to become a hinderance. The effort to create memorable mons and make each of them exicting to carry around becomes more difficult as when there are too many mons gives diminishing returns. In short, "How many mons" is an important and interesting question to any mon-collecting game.
But how did the series answer this? For the most part, with grace:
Even with limited colors and pixels, Pokémon designs have always been distinct: The designs routinely shift between cute and edgy, cool and goofy, majestic and down-to-earth, familiar and strange; quickly creating a lasting first impression.
There are a lot of variation for player's liking: typing, stats, moves etc.
Lots of different catching experiences: fishing, Safari, catching legendary mons etc
The game encourages the player to catch more by creating obstacles and giving out items as reward (ex. needing mons to use moves like Surf and Fly, rewards for catching certain amount of mon)
Exploration is rewarded with new mons, such as getting Eevee from a relatively hidden entrance of a building.
Pokémon got only stronger in those aspects in each iteration, the games have always been vibrant, filled with life and nailed the vibe of spending time with your pes. However, even in its early days, there were looming issues that were going to create trouble when as series progressed.
Redundancy
Let's use a certain group of Grass types as examples. The 1st gen introduced Bellsprout and Oddish lines. These two Pokémon have quite a few similarities:
Both are Poison-Grass types found in early game
They have nearly identical movesets
Both evolve with a Leaf Stone in third stage
Victrebell has higher base stat total but that becomes equal in later games.
Victrebell has a strong move called Wrap, which becomes trivial in later games.
Bellsprout line is faster and stronger, both more frail.
Oddish line is bulkier and slower
In gen 1, Bellsprout line is somewhat better, but in later generations Victrebell's speed became more and more lacking for being in a proper fast attacker, and thus Vileplume has became a little bit more useful overall.
Thankfully Victrebell posseses a distinguishable physical attack stat which became useful in later generations and even gained swallowing moves as fun gimmicks, so they have eventually became nearly equally powerful, but still distinct.
The first gen dodges, for the most part, the redundancy problem with having those two lines version exclusives but still has issues which would worsen as series move on.
Both Bellsprout and Oddish lines are weaker than Bulbasaur line, which has not only has the edge of being a starter, and also are better than them in literally every single way.
Gen 2 adds weather meachanics, and some mons are designed to take advantage of Sun. All Grass types can learn Solarbeam, a strong move that normally requires a turn to setup but harsh sunlight weather bypasses that. There are also moves like Morning Sun which gets more powerful in sunlight, both Oddish and Bellsprout lines can learn them.
2nd gen also adds Sunkern line, which is weaker than both of them by a great margin.
Oddish line gains Bellosom as a distinctly sun-oriented mon, but it actually has very little to seperate from Vileplume aside from the fact that it's somewhat worse with worse distrubited stats and lack of a Poison type.
Gen 3 introduces Pokémon abilities, and so, super majority of Grass types which are not starters now has Chlorophyll, making them faster in Sunlight. This is actually a huge blow to our fellow sun-themed mons. On the other hand, Gen 3 also finally saw a number of more unique Grass-types like Shroomish line.
Gen 4 introduced more Chlorophyll mons, notable in the form of Roserade which is one again better than the turnip and the bell.
Notable in Gen 5 is Lilligant, which is very close to Bellosom in design and role but straight up better.
Bulbasaur line gets Chlorophyll in Gen 5 and a Mega evolution in Gen 6, because why not, just add more salt to the wound.
At least, they have chilled on adding more sun sweeper Grass-types in the end, probably realising too much is too much.
it usually does not get as bad as this case for most other Pokémon, but the core issue remains. For example, early-game birds all have their own quirks, but how many can reside in the same game without feeling redundant?
this is not to argue from the perspective of a specific metagame or way to play a game, but rather when pokemon with very similar niches are in the same game, some just won't get as much as attention as others. it becomes harder to incentivize using a pokemon and makes obtaining them not exiciting as they can be, especially as power creep becomes more and more appearent. Even if, let's say, someone wants to have a full grass type team, they would want to have pokemon that does different things. Vileplume, Victrebeel and a host of similar mon just does not differentiate enough, the games so far does not give you a reason to look after a Sunflora, besides the fact that you just want to have that mon in particular.
Developers must have caught the wind of this problem early. Version exclusivity(the issues with them aside) is a way to keep mons from steal spotlight from each other. Bellsprout and Oddish lines are such in Red/Green/Blue/Yellow(1995-1996). Second gen games integrated the old gen as much as they could, but third gen games flat out did not allow you to transfer from older games. Implementation hurdles were the official reason, but it is not implausable to think that perhaps "let's not steal attention from a brand new batch of Pokémon" was also a motivator. Instead, most older pokemon were relegated to remakes of the first gen games. Even with larger obtainable mon count in Emerald(2004), the attention was firmly given to third gen games. Fifth gen games Black/White(2010) also put some restrictions, it did not allow the player use anything besides the newest mons until post-game; so the players enjoyed a large batch of new Pokemon without conflicting desires of carrying old favourites around. Fourth, sixth and seventh gen games freely mixed old and the new, but as a cost, amount of new mons stayed somewhat low, most notable being only 81 in Pokémon X/Y(2013). These gen games usually gave a new spin to old mons to keep them fresh, with new evolutions and regional variants.
It's good that SwSh is as it is right now, the redundancy problem is lessened significantly in that game. Yet this alone does not eliminate the issue, especially for future titles.
[caption id="attachment_1589" align="alignnone" width="500"] belsprout, oddish and exeggute are dancing[/caption]
Evolutions
As a core aspect of Pokémon, evolution is important to consider in "total mon number", If done right, it makes the mon growing alongside in your journey all the more exicting, if done wrong, it means lots of dev work that brings little to the game.
Three-stage evolution is good for mons whom player encounters early, two-stage is good for middle game or mon who develops early, one-stage is good for strong or mysterious pokemon. It can be a story unto itself too, such as feeble Magikarp turning into the terrific Gyarados with great patience and perseverence. Different evolutionary branches from one Pokémon is a very economic way to add biodiversity. Clamperl can evolve into two mons with contrasting roles. Evolving Nincada is even a better example, it gives two completely different mons at once. They can also add neccesary power to old lines, mons like Honckrow and Togekiss. Different methods of evolution, even when they are somewhat of a hassle, can bring a unique flavor to Pokémon.
On the flip side, certain implementations can prove truly problematic. Think of mons like Metapod or Kakuna, whose sole duty is to be cocoons for the baby bugs. They are relevant for only a couple of levels, which often amounts to a single area of the game, and are not even that exciting to use in the meantime. GF later addressed this by not having such passive Pokémon as middle stages, even cocoon-like mons are usable and spend a meaningful time in that stage. Even so, when devs decide to add Caterpie line, Metapod needs to come too, the legacy design always bringing devs more busywork.
No legacy design must cause more problems than Nidoran line though. Two Nidoran lines share movepools and abilities. Nidoking and Nideoqueen are just distinct enough to avoid redundancy, but the former stages are not. Meaning adding them, just always means adding 4 extremely similar mon. This is the stuff that goes into the overall count, having to account blocks of pokemon makes the question "Is this line is coming to next game" would be honestly content with a single, generic line of Nidoran that branches into two paths (perhaps justified by a regional form), but that does not seem something devs would ever do.
Sometimes, a pokemon can have too many stages. Especially when mon does not really get propotionally stronger, or not even reaching 100+ in any of its base stats. Fifth gen in particular a bit got carried too much when it came to three stage evolutions. Even as a huge fan of Vaniluxe, I can say that it probably does not really need three stages. This issue was also addressed in later games, evolutionary lines are given considerably sparingly, turns out two stages are usually just ideal most of the time. Alas, this does not mean mostly forgettable middle stages of past lines stop being an issue.
In some cases, three-stage evolutions can be encountered too late, and getting fully-evolved mons can feel like pure grind without any sense of journey or wonder. The worst example could be Beldum line in Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald. It is obtained at level 5, and is quite tough to level up. You only get the mon post-champion, which means every fight worth having has mon at level 50+, making Metang useless too. Thankfully, Metagross is quite powerful, but I don't think anything would feel amiss if it was just a single-stage evolution.
Still, no Pokémon creates pure busy work as baby Pokémon does, mon whom are added as pre-evoluions to older mon and are often very weak. They are cute and fit well with the introduction of breeding in their debut generation, but have became quickly redundant in ways few other mon truly are, in multiple ways:
Often, the player needs to go out of their way to breed them, with specific items whose sole purpose is to breed these mons. (later they added additonal effects, but not still worth enough to actively pursue)
They are too weak and useless even against lowest level wild mons
Breeding them does not gain anything new like new moves or abilites, and in old gens it actually made you miss certain moves.
Usually mon with baby evolutions are not strong enough to make pre evolution feel meaningful.
They can often be evolved pretty instantly which makes the process of having them in the first place, somewhat moot.
they often look too similar to their parents and said parents already look pretty cute
the worst among them must be Phione, which might take the prize for the most redundant mon ever:
Must be optained by breeding Manhapy, which is not easy to obtain as per mytical Pokémon.
It looks extremely similar to Manhapy, so much that one can be easily confused for another if you don't exactly remember.
It is not powerless, but it is just a downgraded version of Manhapy, an average Water-type in a world of average Water-types, while you already have Manhapy.
It can't be used in any fight where strong legendary mon are banned, as does Manhapy, so it can't enter anywhere the former can't already enter
To top it off, it cannot be evolved into Manhapy. Hope you have fun with your discount Manhapy.
I am not against the concept of baby mons. Tyrouge is a good one for example, it's not completely defenseless, and has a function of binding 'Hitmon's together, and is actually looks like a child version of them. Mon like Munchlaxand Riolu are alright, but something like Igglypuff is truly perplexing. Actually, all of them are okay themselves, just have them be cute in side games, anime or as merchandise, there is little need for most of them in mainline games. Wynaut provides a good case for this argument. On the on hand, it is just a weak version of Wobbuffet and the latter can be found much easier. On the other hand, it is quite adorable and has an entire secret island dedicated to it. This Pokémon is an eleborate joke, and that's amazing, but the joke is only relevant in RSE. Why not just keep it where it is actually relevant?
Evolutionary stages also overall contribute poorly to enemy variety. There are quite a few fights in series where the opponent just has evolutionary stages of same mon and that is never exciting to face. Even when they are not used in this way, they can be bothersome, for example when trainers have absurdly high-leveled first-stage mons. (Which to be fair, this is an issue with trainer design rather than mons themselves.)
[caption id="attachment_1588" align="alignnone" width="800"] family pic of wobbuffet and wynaut[/caption]
Altrenate Formes
More problematic than evolution stages are the different forms of the same mons. Often, a player will likely use or even able to obtain only one form of the mon at the same time, yet they still neeed to be implemented all the same. Some forms are merely cosmetic changes, like Spinda's patterns. Some mons change form with an item or a certain activity, gaining different properties in the process, Rotom's forms for example. Even more complex is when mons change form in-battle, like Castform or Aegislash. Sometimes, the extra work of adding different forms can be equal to just adding two different mons all together. Cosmetic gimmicks are cool and good, but they can just remain in their respective games and not overstay their welcome. Vivilion's wings were special when we saw it for the first time, but not so much today.
Reigonal forms can definitely cause double work. In Sun/Moon, many mons had Alolan forms as well, radically different from their regular forms. However, because people could transfer those old forms, the old forms needed to be implemented too. SwSh did rightfully away with this, and in the future they can be even bolder in giving old spin to new mon without worrying about ever-growing workload.
What about Mega Evolutions? They are functionally just different forms after all. They are certainly impactful(a detailed discussion of Megas is out of this article's scope), while they do justify the work to put them in, they might come in conflict with other mechanics. Consider the Dynamax mechanic in SwSh, would Megas also need seperate Dynamax forms as well, as they are technically the last-stage of a mon? Charizard would need three different Dynamax forms. Wouldn't that overly privilege some Pokemon, even more than it alreaasy does? On the other hand, it would be redundant to have the two mechanics side by side on same mon, likely making the frieshly designed and hyped Max Charizard look weak. The bad thing is, it is even more awkward to just have some Megas but not others, requiring a considerable effort to implement them. As much as leaving them saddens me, that's the right decision overall.
Effort To Raise Pokémon
While the series is amazing at making the player catch monsters, actually using them later is a different story.
A problem in the past entries was that it was quite a chore to make a functioning team. The games are quite stingent on experience points. It's impossible to casually train a team of 6, or even 4 or 5 Pokémon just with fighting trainers as the player goes along, they need to hit the grass and grind, which can take quite a while. While the level cap is 100, getting several mons above level 50 is truly a hurdle. Day Care only mariginally helps with this issue, expecially the fact that it doesn't progress when player is idle. It doesn't help that most newly obtained mon are often quite below where they need it to be useful, on the extreme you have newly hatched mons at level 1. Adding troubles of teaching them cool moves, the chores of breeding, EV training etc. the games makes it daunting to use lots of different Pokémon save for a section of hardcore players who spend a lot of time on it.
The games did also struggled to give players reasons to use different mons. Despite the characters claiming how cool it is to use lots of various Pokémon, the opposite is true. Raising a single mon absolutely breaks the game. Even on speedruns, where the players avoid fighting as much as they can, the single Pokémon they use can easily go over level 50 by the time they are facing Elite Four. Actively raising more than 3 mons brings very little benefit to the player. It does not help that there are always some high-level legendary mons easily available for service.
However, the series got slowly but surely improved on this. First, series started to offer post-game challenges, like Battle Frontier for example. Tough challenges that makes the player engage in mechanics and build a good team. Later, TMs became reusable, breeding mechanics were simplified, EV training became easier, the game started to be more open about its deeper mechanics. Most importantly since the introduction of team-wide Exp Share in XY, extensive cave bootcamps became a history. Building a party finally became a fun activity, like most other RPGs!
The series gradually introduced more non-battle utility and interactions with Pokémon. Certain more are useful at finding items, catching mons, breeding etc. There are various minigames across the series: Contests, Pokémon sports, berry minigames, various modes where players can just play with their mon like pets.
There are still improvements to be made. For example, the opponents can be bolder in challenging the player. Although, their overall design has considerably improved over the years, the fact that they still get obliterated by the starter Pokémon. Raising new wild mons can be encouraged even further by presenting challenges that requires new tactics to overcome. Wild mon levels and variations can be fine-tuned for a better progression. They can bring back walking alongside your mon from Heartgold/Soulsiver, it could be so nice with the improved 3D graphics.
But, it is incredibly hard to hone the game mechanics when there is an ever-growing amount of mons to be accounted for. What's the point of encouraging the player when there are just so mons, so many redundancies that most of them will inevitably left behind? Maintaining pacing, level design and competitive balance, making unique visual designs, creating challenges, creating new battle mechanics, managing conficting aspects would be nightmare. Surely they can just dump all mon into wild areas and opponents without any thinking behind it and call it a day, but that's not peak game design exactly. Even if the devs have limitless resources to put what they want, humans have limited attention and memory span, they can engage with so much content before they are overwhelmed and stop caring. Maybe I am just a corperate shill, but it seems to me that not caring about Pokémon in a Pokémon game is a larger problem to consider than making sure that player will be able to say "I have ALL 900 Pokémon!"
Uncatchables
In Pokémon games, not all of mons are obtainable by in-game means. There are version exclusives, and evolutions which can be only obtained by trade, or doing something which requires online conection. There are also unique mons or regular mons with unique moves only available via events. In the past, and a signifiscant amount of mons were only available via transfering older games. How much of these Pokémon are truly "in the game?"
From the persective of a single-player experiences, such mons are really "social bonuses", or "extra content packs", the player cannot really engage with these mons in the single-player, at best encountering them as opponents. This was the sole truth for playing alone in the days before "online". However, for "pokedex completion" having friends was not enough, those friends should also intend to complete the game, otherwise multiple hardware and multiple copies of games were always neccesary. That's not enough obviously, the player physically has to be right place and the right time, otherwise say goodbye to those Mythicals. Those requirements got worse as series progressed. Even in these days with online storages, events and methods of cheating; "completing Pokédex" is still expensive and time-consuming chore, especially one starts from ground zero.
There is little engaging about this. It's not even gameplay, just slowly transfering data. Sure, it's fun to use cool mons you have trained in the past but if the issue is just collecting mons, the only satisfaction is to have the boxes filled with many, many Pokémon. Collection for the sake of collection, just to being able to feel like "completed" something, and doing the same thing again and again in the every game?.. Why the series should priortize satisfying this feeling over literally any other concern? Frankly, Pokémon deserves better than just being a dull series that exploits such feelings of us.
And when it comes to "Gotta catch' em all!", this is the first time where players can reasonably achieve this with in-game efforts, provided they have an internet connection. This is actually "catching" mons, you know, playing the game normally, and having fun, and fair to new players also.
For competitive players? A shake-up like this is amazing for any competitive scene. New things to adapt, discover, less mon to leave behind, and more importantly, everyone has the same material to work. No more worrying about the teams with six Arceus'es from the hell dimension against your local-bred teams; what you get is what you got.
So, How Many Pokémon?
How many mons should there be in a new title? Let's compare and contrast titles across generations. We will look into single-player available(S), regional pokedex(R), total(T) (Numbers might not be exact, error margin is like +/-15 probably, counting is hard)
Yellow: 137(S), 151(T)
Crystal: 222(S), 251(R, T) but has 100 in Pokédex before the credits
Emerald: 204(S), 202(R), 386(T)
Platinium: 402(S), 210(R), 493(T)
White 2: 434(S), 300(R), 694(T)
Y: 477(S), 153(R), 721(T)
Ultra Moon: 520(S), 403(R), 809(T)
Sword: 370(S), 400(R), 436(T), total includes upcoming Pokémon Home transfers
Pay attention to the difference in S and R count in older games. They correspond to number of Pokémon unobtainable until post game. So they are not only irrelevant for most of thecontent of the game, but also often has very unintiutive ways(a video example) of obtaining that just transfering them might be easier. SwSh on the other hand, has all 370 available no strings attached. Especially considering the arduous development of the game, it is really impressive, still not falling behind most other titles.
400 overall seems like a very good number. If, let's say, 100 new pokemon is added in a new generation, then they can rotuinely select and shift 300 old mons, and if devs avoid excessive favouritism, every upcoming came can have large number of wildly different Pokémon.
SwSh seems to left very positive first impressions on a lot of people and the game indeed seems like it deserves the praise it gets. I hope devs don't back down from the decision of no national dex, it would be truly saddening to future titles lose its vibrancy and fun. Sometimes, less is more.
[caption id="attachment_1590" align="alignnone" width="1200"] Alcremie Gigantamax form[/caption]This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
n late 2000s and in 2010s, video game graphics have matured tremendously. It has become a rare instance where a professionally developed (regardless of the budget) game is truly off putting to large groups of people. There are easy to access tools to make expressive, appealing visuals for your games; certain quality standards has become more and more accepted. And of course, graphics had always a lower priority compared to a captivating gameplay. When a game is popular on PC for years and years, there is a good chance it's partly due to how friendly the game is to older systems. The enormous triumph of Gameboy and Wii owes to their low graphical capabilites. People still cherish old games, despite, and sometimes because of their old-fashioned graphics. As the average hardware has reached a certaim threshold of power, the limitations to making a game visually presentable has been largely eroded, as a result, computer graphics have surpassed merely being tolerable. Today, they are quite alright, even in the most humble smartphones.
This is an overwhelmingly positive progress, but there is a concerning side effect. Graphics, and visuals as whole has lost some spark. Even game magazines, despite how hyped up they usually are, had lost some of their excitement on this issue over the years. Tech-driven hype, at least on non-VR, non-3D side, has lost steam; due to simply how we perceive visuals: There is an incredible difference in rendering an object with polygons vs 200 polygons, 300 polygons vs 1000 polygons... but 10000 polygons vs 20000 polygons? 30000 polygons? 50000? After a certain count it starts to give diminishing returns. However, I wouldn't say this is the only reason. Rather, I would argue that, in the process of standardization, the industry as a whole actively made visuals less interesting, ironically while trying to chase the glory of the early 2000s. But.. why? For this, let's discuss a game where visuals make me really excited: Ori the Blind Forest(2015) is a gorgeous game. A screenshot from any moment of the game is worthy of a physical frame on the wall. From color composition, careful management of lightning and shadows, great cohesion in character designs, background and user interface to the tiniest details in the pixels; the game is filled with awe and wonder, but with a kind that wants to feel the player welcome rather than being overwhelmed. Not only that, it brims with life: The dim lights on the lab, Ori's own movements, how the game communicates the weather and the mood of the scene with the most subtle changes. One could say that the game is like being in an animated movie, but this is quite an understatement. Rather, it's as if player themselves is directing the animations, creating a whole alternate reality from drawings.
The feelings the visuals achieve to create do not entirely come from images alone. The controls, the sounds, the level design all play the same rhythm with the visuals. The game's difficulty for instance, is just right enough so that, a player can both linger enough in a level enough and savor the visuals for quite a while, but also make the player master the controls so that they can gradually learn to go blazing fast and dominate the landscape. When Ori takes a hit, its brief "ah!" and seconds of flashing red on its body both communicate the pain clearly without being disturbing, telegraph the invincibility frames and show how adorable Ori is at the same time. Many more examples can be given, but it can be seen that the graphics of the game are not just concened with presentation, they are baked in the language of the game. This is what makes the graphics in Ori the Blind Forest truly special, beyond just high fidelity and eye-candy effect.
Games often build a degree connection between their visuals and rest of the game as they develops naturally, but in some cases, it seems that the direction of visuals is actively towards abstracting this connection. Blizzard games certainly feel like this for example. Beginning with Warcraft 3(2002), all of their games started to share an art direction of easy-to-eyes, vibrant, expressive in-game graphics that don't lose too much quality on old system, coupled with highly detailed and photorealistic cutscenes with a slight cartoony streak which again, saves them from being dated. It is a very succesful style; very easy to make it distinct, appealing, and to maintain compared to pure photorealism, easily surpass most low-budgeted cartoony styles in polish, creates an easily distinguishable brand without needing to be unique, and adaptable to nearly anything. It is too successful for it's own good, it feels like a pretty package for the game, doesn't really add to it; negative or positively. Despite all of its glitter, the art direction in those games is lackluster when it comes to conveying emotion and character on its own, instead either relying on widely recognizable visual tropes or dazzling the players with excessive detail in cutscenes. Blizzard visuals always impress me for a short while, then it makes me feel there is something missing, a thing that a game like Bloodborne(2015), Celeste(2018) or even a game like Super Meat Boy(2010) has.
Isn't this at least a little vain? Seasoned programmers and artists working hundreds of hours with the most proffesional equipment, creating software for computers with the most powerful graphical processing unit and copious amount of memory space, so that we can see the our protagonist'sbody hair waving in the wind in our video game. A huge achievement for the research field, but in practice, all it achieves is to mildly impress people in trailers and have the same function as the graphics of Fortnite(2017), filling the basic duties of visuals, and carry little personality of their own. And among visual styles, photorealism perhaps has been misused the most this way. a close up beard shot from Uncharted 4[/caption]First, let's establish what 'photorealism' is. It is not just when a game tries to be life-like. A game can be realistic, i.e. visual objects can feel like they have a tangible existence. However a gameWs art direction can be both realistic and stylized. For instance, Gone Home(2013) is rather down to earth with it is visuals, but has a cartoony feel that is not concerned too much with fidelity. Photorealism however, takes being "real" to its conclusion, its aim is to look like a as if recorded in a camera in a real life, a scene from the game looking like a photograph or a moment from a live-action movie. Looking realistic was a goal for video game graphics as old as graphics themselves, but photorealism only became feasible after technology has been developed to a certain point. Though there are earlier attempts of photorealism, notably with Full Motion Videos, it really became a thing in late 2000s when games slowly figured out how to look realistic in close detail without drenching themselves in brown. Then it evolved to its point of today, where we can savor the player character's body hair, every milimeter of dirt on their armor, the smallest detail on the guns with their full glory.
What does this exactly achieve? Well, it can put them ahead in competition, provides a good justification for sequels, looks cool in trailers, gives an incentive for updating game systems, serves as tech demos. What about the game itself? Despite how strict and demanding the style is, it is often treated as default for a big action game, with actual questionable improvement of the game's experience. As much as I have criticized Blizzard graphics, they are at least indeed pleasant-looking and recognizable. Photorealism is not only at the mercy of the hardware but also it can only look nice and impressive as the scenes it is imitating from real life. A water stream, a garden, sun rising behind mountains can be made truly awesome, but muddy soliders or gray apartment blocks? What does being able to see every little detail provides us? A game can have a gritty, broody or scary tone without photorealism. Telltale Walking Dead(2013-2019) games are serious and filled with gore as they can be without being over-the-top, yet they are cel-shaded, and this allows the games to depict visuals as detailed as they need while being cost effective and being able to have more control over the visual tone.
What does photorealism truly achieves is have precious moments from the game that truly looks like movies. A real oportunity for the PRESTIGE. Look at Last of Us(2013), Red Dead Redemption 2(2019) or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare(2019), how truly GREAT they are. I am not entirely ironic here, such games have truly impressive moments. However, those moments are fleeting; because in the end, a game not trying to look like a game is a desperate fight against itself, only in brief shots and cutscenes I get to have that "wow" effect. This creates a conflict between the gameplay and the visuals, and it's usually what this makes such graphics actually off-putting to me. The fact that gameplay systems did not have a drastic change over the years only excerbates this: One second there is a cutscene with faces with perfect motion capture, on the other there is an enemy who absorbs very real-looking bullets from a very real-looking gun like a sponge, barely even twitching its very real-looking body. Same guns, same covers, same skill trees, same stealth, same level design; all at least near two decades old. Those gameplay systems were designed with the graphics of it's day. FPS pioneers were maze games, jumping became more pronounced in those games as 3D spaces expended vertically. Then, as the graphic power increased, the gameplay become slower and in more cramped spaces to show show the objects in detail. But towards mid 2000s, the gameplay systems which proved their merit just reused again and again while graphics evolved. That is perfectly fine in itself, but photorealism does not forgive such stagnation. Red Dead Redempton 2 goes extra mile to make everything "naturalistic" as possible, but because it conflicts with the fundemental game systems underneath, it can feel even more artificial at times.
All that being said, photorealism is just a style, and can be used well. Until Dawn(2015) is an apt example. The game goes out of its way to mimic horror movies. Its limited interaction helps to maintain the movie-like feel, photorealistic visuals feel meaningful and build the identity of the gaöe. The appeal of racing games often comes from the extreme detail on the cars coupled with precise physics engines, they exist to be car porns. However debatable its success is, L.A. Noire(2011) at least tries to use its motion capture technology in the gameplay. All of these examples prove that truly good visuals are the ones in harmony with other elements of the game.
Graphics matter. They posses an incredible power to shape our games., both for good and bad. And so much effort goes into creating them, they are major reason for crunches, bloating budgets, delays, two-digit gigabyte patches. Graphics don't have to be amazing, some games don't have any graphics at all, but if we are putting so much effort into them, They deserve better than to be "fine" with occasional "screenshot-worthy" moments. The technology we have can be much more than just more blood for the altar of marketing, it can provide us with truly special experiences, like Ori. This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
I love The Room(2003) a lot. The alien world presented in a
late 90s city aesthetic, the way Johnny becomes alive in the screen,
the daring sex scenes, the impeccable dialogue, the naturalistic scenes,
how the dramatic music is juxtaposed with everything else, and all the
other small details create a magnificent experience we will perhaps be
able to see only in this movie. I usually can’t remember movie quotes,
even after watching them several times, but the dialogue in this movie
is very easy to remember despite how mundane the conversations often
are. The combination of the great dialogue and bizzare visuals create
many, many perfectly memorable scenes. Whether it’s the small talk in
the flower shop, two guys throwing a ball at each other in a weak
attempt to replicate how humans actually play sports, Johnny throwing
the plastic bottle to the floor, the sex scenes which manage to erase
all the sexual tension from the movie; all scenes bring their unique
flavor while also building up to a unified tone. The acting undoubtedly
play a huge part in this. When you pick apart scene by scene, most of
the acting is — albeit filled with golden moments — nothing legendary on
its own; but together they all contribute to the otherworldly, surreal
feeling that’s present in every shot of the movie. Of course, Tommy
himself dominates pretty much every scene he is in, creating all the
memetic scenes we love. For me it’s more than “weird funny speaking”, it
doesn’t really make me burst out laughing, but rather I am simply
amazed at the character that comes alive in Johnny’s acting. It is a
truly brilliant performance, had Johnny been “just himself” or tried to
act more restrained it would not be the same way. The end result is as
it is right now only because he really wanted to act as a nice person
who got inexplicably betrayed by his lover. As video creator Hbomberguy
puts it in his video (link),
the movie is an honest representation of the way misogyny operates in
how cis straight men view relationships. Had movie been more “competent”
in certain ways, for example had it succeeded to connect people with
Johnny as a unjustly wronged man, it would be actually a worse movie. It
would speak to many guys who “can’t just understand women”, and
criticisms of such a depiction would be regarded as cynical. I can
pratcially hear people saying “Are you saying men don’t get betrayed or
what?” and feeling really smart about it. By being “worse”, it’s much
more wholesome, bizzare, memorable experience that is also a honest
examination of men-women relationships and much easier to dissect
without someone feeling like being insulted. Dare I say, The Room is a “good” movie.
Multiple copy-pasted Johnny’s throwing the bottle at the roof scene
Now, someone (which I admit to exaggerate for the sake of argument) might say:
Great art is a product of great minds. And art is
essentially a transmission of ideas and emotions from the creator
towards the audience. A work of art consists of two things: Intent, the
underlying concepts, themes, the premise etc, and the execution: the way
creator transmits the intent. So, if the intent is great and it is
communicated well, then the the work is good and creator is talented. If
you happen to enjoy something in any other combination, then it’s just
bad art you like, accidentally.
A more accurate model of art would be someone shouting poetry they
wrote a while ago, but now does not fully remember to a stranger across a
busting, crowded street. Perhaps the listener doesn’t know the
language, perhaps they can’t even hear at all. Perhaps there is a music
playing. Perhaps, there are two people having a heated argument. If the
“poem” is to be alive as an artwork and not mere ink splattered on
paper, the street itself and the condition of the listener are as
important as what the poet wrote and how they are shouting it. A
unintenional interpretation is never true accidents in the vein of
forgetting to save your file or putting wrong laundry to the washing
machine, people will always hear things in the ways you did not
intend. On the process of the creation, far it be from the flawless
plans, or — even worse — whimsical inspirations of great minds,
decisions are often made on coincidences, the particular mood of
creators, compromises on not only with resources at hand, but with team
members and one’s very own conflicting opinions. After many hours of
meticulous planning, careful execution, discussions and retakes; they
all fail, as art is human, that’s what art makes so special
[1]. They are not computer programs that are expected to give
predictable output, where unexpected result is to be simply cast aside
as error.
Speaking of computer programs, despite being built on them, in video
games the mistakes of the machine themselves become genuine expressions.
In Pokémon(1995-2018+) series, there are “X Items” which increase a certain stat of a ‘mon by certain amount during the battles. In Pokémon: Red/Green/Blue/Yellow(1995-1998)
games, instead of raising the value, X accuracy simply removed the
check for accuracy. This mistake did not result in an inferior game
overall, many simply did not care enough for X items and for others, it
was an opportunity for new strategies. Its existence brings a legitimate
question about the place of move accuracy in the design: As the later
installments brought more and more ways to deal with the accuracy,
removing the accuracy check outright proved to be the most popular
method. However, one can also make the argument that getting rid of
accuracy too easily would take the risk from using poweful moves, remove
the thrill that chance factor provides, and make certain mechanics like
sleeping even more broken, so a balance is necessary. Perhaps then, the
glitch isn’t necessarily inferior, but also neither reveals a fatal
flaw; instead it creates a different and equally valuable experience. In
video games, this phenomena happens all the time(link),
even in works which aren’t (in)famous for its bugs, it’s not always
easy to differentiate oversights from “intended features”, and it’s not
rare to see glitches later being adopted as “true mechanics” by the
developers. In “Are video games art?” discourse people often brought
examples of games which held as brilliant creations; but for me
something like out-of-bounds glitch is precisely what makes video games
so unique, complex, messy and human, like what art is at its core…
I can hear a certain objection:
If we have it your way, then we can’t differentiate
between a picture made with effort and dye poured over paper or random
outputs from a computer. You imply that skill or effort isn’t relevant.
Creators should not limit our personal relationship with art, but
this doesn’t really imply we need to treat art like something which
sprung the existence out of thin air. All works carry a part of their
creator, accepting author as “dead” does not contradict this. Rather,
it’s a natural conclusion of this thought, the meta context does not
rule over my experience, but rather becomes subservient to it.
Definitely, what makes The Room what it is now is deeply
connected to who Johnny Viseau is and the fact that he wanted to make a
drama movie. Enjoying the movie as an anonymous comedy flick is also
perfectly fine, but to me, this context makes it all better. Best art
truly comes from what’s deeply personal, and The Room is a
“mistake” that was born from the depths of a man’s heart, and shaped
with the honest effort of the cast. This separates it from creations
which are “deliberately bad” or “random”, even as parodies, they
sometimes succumb to feel cold. A good example are the games whose wacky
glitches were the main appeal are funny, they often don’t have the
charm and the lasting appeal of bugs in Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion(2006),
as they are in a context where they transcend being mere accidents.
Trainwrecks can be interesting to look at, but they eventually need to
be cleaned up; artistic media is on the other hand is meaningful with
its failures as much as its successes. Bioshock Infinite(2013) is a game that I don’t have many
positive feelings about. It is too fast and frantic, wastes its own
setup for a less interesting conclusion, somewhat emotionally empty,
overall vastly inferior to Bioshock 2(2010). Yet, Bioshock Infinite
is certainly competent. The creators were excellent at tension
escelation, creating an alive city, using visuals to struck the player
in awe while indulging in relentless gore, the music, the character
writing, the voice acting, the controls, the guns, the machines, the
cinematography of cutscenes… and many more little things. And this isn’t
merely a matter of opinion, they are just able to hit certain notes for
a certain player base. There isn’t too much magic to it, just hard
work and experience. Popular things are popular because they are
competent. However… doesn’t this refute me? If there is a reliable
metric for art to create a range of feedback from a range of groups of
audience, then what I am rambling about here? Then, there is a merit to
this random quote[2] from Twitter:
“…. there is no GOOD fantasy literature. There is fantasy literature you LIKE, and that’s great, I’m not saying that’s wrong…”
In similar vein, maybe I am just wrong about Bioshock Infinite?
Maybe people are wrong about liking trash? Maybe endless debates
between music genres are meaningful? I might just have the wrong mood or
mindset, or my tastes might not be trained enough to appreciate good
art? I mean, classics are classics for good reason, after all…
No.
First of all, “skill” cannot be isolated from the context which art resides. From today’s perspective, Half-Life(1997)’s
complete rejection of cutscenes, at times excessive dedication to leave
the player on their own, tight first-person platform sequences feels
outlandish. Especially US military not only being depicted as an
antagonist but doing so in a manner that’s eerily accurate to its real
life behavior seems downright absurd for a big budget game of today, but
yet it was the state-of-the-art PC game of its year. In 1997, it was
the next stage for FPS games and 3D engines. If the same exact game has
been released in 2007; it would be seen as outdated, unprofessional,
lacking of content, perhaps controversial for its portrayal. In 2017, it
would be seen as an avant garde indie project, a call back to the past,
and most likely too “sjw” for some. In all cases, audience are
certainly different, but developers have exact skill for level design,
3D modeling, sound design and writing, and for the sake of argument,
same mindset. Even so, a “Half Life” of 1997, 2007 and 2017 would still
be not the same games. They have the same pixels but they point to
different people, a different world, a different time, a different
existence. The fact that even marginal differences in time, place,
socioecological background, life experiences, beliefs, momentary mood,
art viewing habits, the platform which art is being viewed by and other
many minor hard to predict elements all not only influence how people
judge the quality but also shape the very existence of art in society in
the first place makes it very daunting — I would say, impossible — to
find metrics for judge the whatever true goals art should exists for,
unless we just decide — as people who try to define rules for art often
do — the people who experience art is completely irrelevant to this
discussion.
Even if we could find an objective — or inclusive enough — mission
for art, it would mean nothing, because all it achieves is to make
people enjoy art less. “This isn’t good but I really like it.”, “I just
enjoy trash sometimes”, “I like this more but I just have a bad taste.”,
“You may not like this, but it’s still very important.” are
some of the phrases I commonly encounter. (Often in jest, but just as
commonly with full sincerely). Adding (however subtle) social pressure
to keep art from the person only scrubs all meaning from it. Instead of
being transgressive, de-personalized art is a tool of conformity.
Instead of being the voice of the silenced, it becomes a tool of
propaganda for status-quo. Instead of personal catharsis, it exists as
source of pre-approved thoughts and feelings. Before gaining the heart
of the reader, de-personalized art aims for “higher”, more prestige,
more numbers, more approval… Any kind of set standards stop improving
art and instead art becomes a mere tool to reproduce these standards.
Obviously, art cannot become truly de-personalized, so what I am talking
is hypothetical; but the idea of what art means for mere individuals is
a secondary concern was and is a quite a common opinion. Aristocrats,
radical thinkers, many academics, the Church and stakeholders of
intellectual properties all love their standards, their values, their
rules, their “refined taste”, they all contempt “trivial”,
“unambitious, “lazy”, “shallow”, “mediocre” art.
The words “good” or “bad” are extremely loaded when it comes to
media. If they were only easy shorthands for a group of personally
chosen metrics, something like “I liked the bad movie” would be entirely
fine. Unfortunately, there is definitely a collective crutch to our
relationship with media, if we weren’t so obsessed to separate “great”
art from others, then why there are so much content about praising
extremely popular media and drag-down hated ones? The moment a person
starts to be slightly conscious about media, they have a chance to bow
to the tyranny of the masterpiece, where “I liked the movie
because it had cool special FX” is no longer an acceptable take, now it
must be “groundbreaking”, “classic”, “meaningful”, “important”. So, “bad
art” now instead describes the opposite: “wretched”, “cheap”,” lazy”,
“immoral”, but still “great” in the opposite the way. “Liking trash” is a
powerful phrase because not only one makes it clear that they share the
same values on which metrics make a work of art great, but it also
saves oneself from the greatest curse of all: Mediocrity!
In most contexts, “mediocre” really seems to be worst insult for a
work of art. “Forgettable”, “lackluster”, “not a masterpiece”, “flawed”,
“average”, the opposite of “great”, art which is blamed to a serve no
purpose other than itself. “Mediocre” art comes in two flavors: The
first kind is “derivative” and “safe” one, it does not challenge the
audience enough, often “done for cash”. The second is “failed
experiments”, it challenges the audience too much, too “unfamiliar”,
“interesting but unpolished”. Either way, they fail at being “great”.
Here, it’s assumed that money is merely something keeps art from
reaching it’s “true” purpose, but marketability, or simply getting a
paycheck, is just another external goal, like spreading propaganda,
honoring your commisoner sultan, playing an instrument to be cool and
attractive or doimg calligraphy because that just what your family has
always did. And a lot of popular “mediocre” media is excellent at being
marketable, it takes serious skill to depict realistic issues while
avoiding saying anything controversial about them, to use flashy parts
to keep the audience from thinking too much about details, landing a
edgy but still family-friendly and uncontroversial humor, coming up with
witty quotes, memorable shots, cool merchandise-friendly designs while
consistently maintaining a certain degree of fun. Sure, popularity isn’t
an indicator of merit, it’s mostly an indicator of advertising power
and luck, but the content still needs to be advertisable. In that way
Marvel movies are skilled, competent, “objectively good” art; in the way
a more flawed older superhero movie is not. Prioritizing standards over
personal connection will not only encourage conformism among the
audience, but creators as well. This is true for the designs of the
beautiful mosques of certain periods, explicitly mission-oriented art
movements and the commodification of art alike, the difference is that
commodification clearly enforces conformity on an unprecendented scale
and magnitude, as capitalism does. When it comes to this, people often
want to have their cake and eat it too: “Oh, objective standards matter,
but this popular trash doesn’t follow my standards!” No, your
standards are also derived from how you feel about art, if you enforce
impersonal standards, then in the end your own personal standards will
also get invalidated: Spiderman Into the Spider Verse(2018)
is a movie a lot of people like a lot. I have never witnessed people
talking so passionately about a superhero movie before, yet it was one
of the less profitable Spiderman movies(for comparison: link1, link2).
If the mission is to make the most money, there is an ironclad rule:
“live action is better than the animation”, animation is doomed to the
second kind of “mediocrity”, it is still too challenging for a lot of
people. As with any area of life, class society will favor certain goals
and thus will reward certain skills over others. Purposely engaging
with art with the same logic only ends up validating mediocrity,
ironically in the name of escaping it.
Still, there is a clear difference between true art and
trash, a fine dinner and fast food, unique and generic, touching and
fleeting. By through rigorous study of classics we can cultivate a good
taste to seperate wheat from the chaff, truly great works still have a
brilliance which puts them above all others, and this is identifiable in
even if we are not able to give exact formula for the beauty.
Reducing art to certain metrics of competency does reduce its meaning
in another way, because whatever human mind produces, nature does it
better, as former also is a product of other. [3] A real tree is more
detailed, more lively, more vivid than a drawing; and it’s something you
can touch and smell. Real people are infinitely more complex than the
best written characters, they have an existence outside of limited words
in a paper. An action VR game has the comfort to be away from actual
danger, but it can’t ever give the thrill one’s whole body feels on a
rollercoster. The director who knows how to make their audience cry is
an amateur compared to a doze of the right hormone. Should art be tasked
to hold a candle to the shadows of societies when studying history,
sociology, anthropology directly enlighten us much better? Are little
nuggests of thought art provides can be a match for tomes of philosophy
and political theory? If art is primarily a show of brilliance, then it
is condemned to be a mere imitation of life.
But it isn’t. There is more to Bioshock Infinite than its
goals and achievements. When I listed of the things the game had gotten
right, there was a twist. You see, I actually enjoy the game quite a
bit, just not particularly for any of the reasons why it’s “competent”.
Even though most of the game doesn’t sit right with me, it is still
valuable as it is. It made me challenge and reevaluate my tastes, made
me think about how games do stuff, when it game the chance to slow down
and take a breath, it showed me how different it could be. Even though
I’d prefer Bioshock 2 in a reductive one-to-one comparison, I am glad Bioshock Infinite
is what it is. Works of art becomes what they are with its strong and
weak points together, just like people who create them. Every piece of
art carries the mark of a human: An amqteur drawing of a tree, a game
which routinely enter “worst 10 games of all time” lists, the music
perfonmance in the shower, the most stereotypical wish-fulfillment
fantasy fanfiction, a short film which solely exists to advertise
knock-off cellphones… They all bring something with them. This means
neither it is necessarily worth giving attention to just about anything
nor all art is equally valuable. There is certainly something that makes
certain art truly special above others: It’s the bonds we forge with
them.
It is hard to figure out what makes art great because these bonds are
undeniably personal. We can talk about traits, styles, genres people
commonly enjoy and draw certain rules about art from them: “Study real
people for characters”, “don’t let exposition break the pace”, “12 rules
of animation”, “emergent gameplay” etc. However such rules can only
describe some patterns of enjoyment, the process of forging bonds is
truly where art becomes magic; personalized, hard to define, impossible
to contain, creates a life on its own. This bond might be the homely
feeling when turning page of a book, the film which helped you in the
dark period of life, the song that witness your undying love, the show
which made you learn to draw solely for making fan art of your favourite
character, the game who practically taught you a foreign language.
What’s the most important masterpiece one will never watch compared to
the soap opera they are so passionate that they can be distracted from
their otherwise dull life? [4] The “cringe” fanfiction a teenager
regularly posts might be more magical to them than “the classic” they
are obligated to read and “appreciate.” No amount of professionalism and
mastery alone can create such bonds, it is only born during the
experience between person and the art, special for each person and that
‘person’ in the moment, for the creator and the audience alike. What’s
the point of calling someone’s taste’s “bad”, if they are happy about
enjoying something? Why a work of art being able to reach a person is a
bad thing? Or, why disliking a popular thing has to be about being edgy?
Why attempt to destroy the magic, especially when capitalism trying its
best to do so?
Just like magic, the true bonds between us and art are impossible to
be co-opted by the capitalism, so instead it replaced by a pale
imitation. Just as how commericalized magic is depersonalized, formulaic
and often expensive remains of what’s been destroyed long ago that
enables us to buy crumbles of spirituality, art is being stripped away
from the person to sell the crumbles of humanity back at them: Not only
property-holders are self-declared arbiters of how we access the art,
but also one’s entire relationship with it. The toxicity of fan
communities, fandom rivalries, the state of media criticism are not
bugs, they are features: A real gamer has the real gaming equipment and
only plays real games with other real gamers. A consumer making a choice
— often because they need to manage their money and time — means they
hate everything they left behind. Art elitists say they want to further
art, but how does exactly enforcing a true/false art dichotomy help
literally anything when it is already done so quite effectively? Once
again, why destroy the magic?
For me, the goal of art critique is not only examine our relationship
with it but also enhance it in a way. Whether by finding new angles for
appreciation, exploring our discomfort for a better understanding of
ourselves or simply finding catharsis by finding our feelings in words, a
great media analysis is able to strengthen our bonds or even creating
new ones! This isn’t to say that negative analysis is bad — far from it,
i have myself complained about fake positivity in the very last
article, (link) — however there is a
difference between being negative and destructive. A critique does not
need to attack the very concept of liking something, as if personal
enjoyment or dissatisfaction are harmful ideas that needs to be
debunked, a art is a battle to win or lose and making a critique is an
arena to prove one’s mettle. They don’t have to be “nuanced”, “fair” or
“neutral” — I, myself, very much prefer criticism that comes from the
heart — but they shouldn’t further the masterpiece/atrocity dichotomy.
There is more to say about a work than being a 10/10 gifts of the gods
or THE WORST THING EVER. A critique may contain many mistakes; it might
be dishonest about the subject material, go into too much hyperbole,
unable to support it’s points well and so on, but the worst thing it can
do is make the audience leave with less emotions and thoughts instead
of more, to contribute to render expressing sincere love and hate for
something passe, and to succeed in breaking personal bonds between the
person and art.
Now, it’s time to embrace my own biases: It’s quite hard for me to
carry strong negative opinions about art. At worst, I find something
mildly dull or unapproachable, but even then most art is at least
conceptually interesting to me, even if it’s not just interesting enough
to experience in full. This doesn’t mean I don’t empathize with
cathartic hatred nor claim any sense of superiorty in my view, but it’s a
feeling I rarely foster towards art. It’s very likely that this feeling
is what makes me so averse to the any notion of standards, masterpieces
and atrocities in arts. It follows from here that for me, “good art” is
the one I enjoy to experience. My ode to the Room in the
beginning isn’t an mere attempt to be a contrarian, it is able to
connect to me so I don’t find any value in disregarding as a failure. If
pre-assumed notions of quality is useless to explain my feelings, then I
find them useless. However, even outside of my bias coming from being a
complete nerd, my stance still has a merit, because I have truly never
seen any application of de-personalization that did not end up in
shaming people out of enjoying art or push them to conformity. Thus, I
say that if you also feel a need to hierarchize your experiences, you
should say “no” to the tyranny of the masterpiece.
Even so, you must still have some conception of art being
plainly terrible. Clearly, certain works deserve condemnation, not
praise.
No, I am very firm about the uselessness of objectivity in art, this
should be clear. However, I do think we can have some objective
standards for media. If we accept media as the instrument for
art and should exist for the benefit of the audience and their creators
then we can set such goals to media:
First, we should be able to access and decipher the contents. A
falsely printed comic, a broken software and a story behind the paywall
are all terrible. As discussed, media certainly can create new
understandings for art but if there is no understanding, then we can
safely call the media a failure.
Second, it shouldn’t create patterns of harm: Causing seizures,
triggered trauma due to untelegraphed inclusion of sensitive topics,
setups for addiction, verifiable spread of misinformation or hate speech
are examples of such. This extends to the creators too. No media is
worth destroying their creators in the process.
Third, media should not be a tool of validation for actively
terrible people, even if their creation is just about cute puppies. The
world has enough people who aren’t abusers or fascists that suspending
their validation by the society won’t be the end of art.
It might seem there is a contradiction in my rhetoric, but if we hold
art as something dynamically exists between the media and the person,
it all makes sense. As an example, let’s compare a novel that presents
reactionary ideas and Adolf Hitler’s paintings. One can read the former
and can make a multitude of interpretations: The text might be in
support of the reactionary ideas, deconstruct them, contain
contradictory or unrelated themes, be worth experiencing due to it’s
other qualities and so on. It’s usually not a good idea to morally judge
its readers based on a single interpretation,relationship between art
and the person is complex, but we can learn something about the readers
based on their opinions, for example the way they frame the story’s
depiction of abuse. Even so, definitely there is a dynamic being we can
hate, love, be critical or bored of, but it’s quite tough to call the
book bad without a clear pattern of harm.
Hitler’s paintings are the opposite. For someone who has never heard
of Hitler, they would be just unassuming normal drawings they might like
and dislike; but for everyone else the paintings’ existence is
completely overshadowed by their creator for good reason. There is no
connection with what paintings are, they only exist as painted blocks of
a Nazi, they are media without art. So, if someone expresses adoration
for the paintings, it’s quite fair to be suspicious, did the truly get
past the whole Adolf part so easily? As the answer is quite literally
concerns our safety, even if someone was really giant art-lover, we can
be sure about calling those paintings objectively bad media.
In the same vein, a lot of art we like exist within objectively bad
media, this is a fact we are facing as more and more stories worker
abuse and despicable creators come to light. Something that might be
beloved in the past might be now empty. Without ‘the person’, there is
no art, when connection is severed, the work of art as previously known
is no more. Just as often however, people still embrace the art despite
the media. Yes, we shouldn’t “let people enjoy” just about anything, and
we should be conscious about our financial support, but the problems of
the media is greater than individual creators. Most media is bad,
because society which creates them is bad, but just as we can find good
people in the bad society, we can find good art in bad media. This fact
just adds another good reason against the tyranny of the masterpiece: No
art is so bad that it is nothing but an artifact of the society, but
also never so good that it can escape the society.
Then, what would a post-masterpiece society look like? It would
certainly would be a post-capitalist one. People bringing the trash out
from the depths their hearts with no care any rules or taboos, no worry
of any approval, no desire of greatness. Imagine modding communities,
art posting sites, blogs dedicated to extremely niche tastes but without
limitation of the capital. Weird, plain, beautiful, ugly, inspiring,
gross… Just their creation, unfiltered, probably unpolished, open to
anyone interested. Or only for their in-group, or just themselves.
Either way, all the chains between art and person is broken. A beautiful
chaos of trash manifests after complete ruin of “artistic standards”,
as there is no one to enforce them left. For now however, they still
haunt us and will do so for quite a while. Until then, we can at least
reject their authority with completely embracing our bonds with art.
Please create and enjoy “so bad it’s good”, “cursed”, “fun trash”,
“happy accident”, “problematic fave” art, don’t hesitate being
contrarian, no more “guilty pleasures”, let all of your love be genuine! This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Acelin, Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson, MasterofCubes, Makkovar, Otakundead and Spencer Gill.
[1] I am not implying any kind of specialness of “humanity” here, if
there were other species who are creative enough for art, art would also
mirror them too.
[2] The quote includes a part about judging genres, that’s a whole another beast I won’t attempt to tackle here.
[3] Hopefully it is clear enough in the paragraph, but I don’t argue
in favor a nature/human dichotomy. “Nature” itself is a heavily loaded
word, here it just has a meaning of “systems in universe which humans
observe, interact and are part of.”
[4] I am not setting up a false dichotomy of “genuine” vs
“pretentious” art here. A person can be just as easily bonded to an
arthouse movie or surrealist painting, it’s precisely the existence of
such bonds render hierarchies of “artistic value” worthless.
"I am ace" written under a picture of attraction layer cube
All pokemon up to gen 7[/caption]However, even if devs had the license to do literally as they desire, putting all the mons for the sake of having all of the would not be good. Too much stuff in a game can result in conflicting, confusing, redundant design that overwhelms the player. This happens in narrative too, a story can have too many characters; too many plot arcs; too much tension, too much prose... More does not always mean better. In a good monster-collection game, there needs to be enough mons to make diverse teams, face various enemies, seeing a variety of new mons for each area in the game, and from the perspective of "collecting them all", there needs to be enough so that a player needs to actively focus on catching to not miss them. However, after a certain point, the amount of mons of starts to become a hinderance. The effort to create memorable mons and make each of them exicting to carry around becomes more difficult as when there are too many mons gives diminishing returns. In short, "How many mons" is an important and interesting question to any mon-collecting game.
belsprout, oddish and exeggute are dancing[/caption]
family pic of wobbuffet and wynaut[/caption]
Alcremie Gigantamax form[/caption]
a close up beard shot from Uncharted 4[/caption]First, let's establish what 'photorealism' is. It is not just when a game tries to be life-like. A game can be realistic, i.e. visual objects can feel like they have a tangible existence. However a gameWs art direction can be both realistic and stylized. For instance, Gone Home(2013) is rather down to earth with it is visuals, but has a cartoony feel that is not concerned too much with fidelity. Photorealism however, takes being "real" to its conclusion, its aim is to look like a as if recorded in a camera in a real life, a scene from the game looking like a photograph or a moment from a live-action movie. Looking realistic was a goal for video game graphics as old as graphics themselves, but photorealism only became feasible after technology has been developed to a certain point. Though there are earlier attempts of photorealism, notably with Full Motion Videos, it really became a thing in late 2000s when games slowly figured out how to look realistic in close detail without drenching themselves in brown. Then it evolved to its point of today, where we can savor the player character's body hair, every milimeter of dirt on their armor, the smallest detail on the guns with their full glory.