DeadlyNinja
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Hecker wasn't just saying games should be art, he's saying games SHOULDN'T BE FUN. I'm sure he would enjoy Atari's ET remade with the Crysis Engine.
"Artsy" Wii? A Rant *spinoff
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tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
If it would be like that than he never made a game that quilifies as art and never build a game he liked either because he doesnt want games to be fun but he wants games to be art. So he basically spent all those years only building shit games from his POV. I wonder how he feels now, after realizing he never made anything he liked in all those years. Maybe he should have become a painter.
No, he isn't just trying to get attention. By your reasoning it would seem that since a great game could be made out of the performance needed Geometry Wars then the Wii and GCN are quite overpowered and have WAAAY too much memory.
The fact is that art comes in many forms -- and not all art are oil paintings. You have water colors as well as scupltures, jewelry, music of many varieties, and so forth. Telling a scultpure artist that he has to make due with a paint brush and some pigment because another artist found them suitable isn't realistic at all.
And to get to the substance of what he said:
Chris said:
Key words that pop out to me:
Intelligent
Complicated AI
While not applicable to ALL games -- GW is a good example of a pretty "dump" game in the mold of Galaga and such from the Atari generation! -- the fact is AI and the actual gameplay are aspects holding back gaming. And the Wii isn't going to see the sort of progressions a normal console would as developers have been working on the core hardware for half a decade now. Not to mention the Wii is overpriced for what is in there. For what they are charging consumers they could have offered a much better hardware package for developers to work with (and still break even on hardware), but alas complete GCN BC and making a killing on each unit came ahead in the end.
So the question is how do developers and publishers respond. Do they support it due to the install base or do they marginally support it because it doesn't match with their vision for the industry and their internal investments as companies so they put more weight elsewhere. And will consumers buy non-Ninny games in droves or will the trend of the GCN and n64 (where first party rule supreme and 3rd party gets the shaft). Wii has many questions in the future, and by all means taking out the "piss and vinager" from Chris' comments the fact is what he says is true for the most part.
I think the Wii is underpowered compared to the other systems, but that is the only thing that is true about what he said. The Wii is not a garbage system, just because it doesn't have the same horsepower. Art does come in many forms, so to say Nintendo and the Wii does not take the medium seriously, is a pretty bold and ignorant claim.
What you're all not realizing is that Miyamoto ran over his dog.
Twice.
Twice.
Wanna quote that?
"Oh noes! Someone actually said something negative about the Wii! Slander him!"
The fact some of you are not even interacting with his points indicates that what he said may have some substance.
I think he's mainly complaining about the low-clock, miniature, cheap, highly obsolete CPU that runs inside Wii. It is, after all, basically 7+ year old march (excluding the very limited SIMD additions). It is certainly much less than double Cube.
Obviously that CPU is ridiculously slow for a game that uses complex AI on a very large scale. Look at what SupCom is doing to robust dual core x86 chips.
It is, after all, basically 7+ year old march (excluding the very limited SIMD additions). It is certainly much less than double Cube.Obviously that CPU is ridiculously slow for a game that uses complex AI on a very large scale. Look at what SupCom is doing to robust dual core x86 chips.
Except he's never released a game to the public which in a way shows he treats it like an art where its never good enough to be released. Really check out the guy's website at d6 and its not a surprise he would make a comment like this.
It's ok. If the Wii does end up like the DS Lite, dominating all, Hecker will be developing games for it. In the end, money and marketshare rule.
As technology moves on, more becomes possible, which the artists use. What we're seeing here is comparable to the movies, with XB360 and PS3 offering new Technicolor technology, where Nintendo are offering only B&W for their movie makers. Or Nintendo are offering colour-separation overlay (flat chroma-keying) with stop-motion minitures, where XB360 and PS3 are offering alpha-blended CSG effects.
If there's a new or improved medium that affords artists even more expression, they want to use it. Tying in with Joshua's post, do movie-makers want to create cheap B&W movies because lots of people have B&W TVs installed, or do they want to express themselves using the artistry of colour even though less people have colour sets?
I'm with joshua on this one. The comments weren't made to be contraversial. They were designed to get other develoeprs and nintendo's attention. Only fans will make it contraversial.
On the games as art side, basically he's saying it's not powerful enough to push the limits of art and or other areas of need such as AI to make an artistic game.
When it comes down to it, he's pissed off Wii isn't more powerful then it is and obviously it's making things tough for him to port over certain titles. It cracks me up to see people here just dismiss what he's saying even thoughhe has a ton of development expeience and knows what he's talking abotu on a technical level. Sure some of what he says is opinion, but it's opinion based on what? Fanism, no of course not. it's based on him workig with the hardware directly.
When it comes down to it. Wii is essentially an over clocked game cube with a dual core CPU. The first person I heard say that was someone I know working on a to be announced Wii game. It's very telling when Nintendo told developers to prototype their Wii games on GC dev hardware because it's essentially the same.
There's a lot of people here being way too over sensitive.
On the games as art side, basically he's saying it's not powerful enough to push the limits of art and or other areas of need such as AI to make an artistic game.
When it comes down to it, he's pissed off Wii isn't more powerful then it is and obviously it's making things tough for him to port over certain titles. It cracks me up to see people here just dismiss what he's saying even thoughhe has a ton of development expeience and knows what he's talking abotu on a technical level. Sure some of what he says is opinion, but it's opinion based on what? Fanism, no of course not. it's based on him workig with the hardware directly.
When it comes down to it. Wii is essentially an over clocked game cube with a dual core CPU. The first person I heard say that was someone I know working on a to be announced Wii game. It's very telling when Nintendo told developers to prototype their Wii games on GC dev hardware because it's essentially the same.
There's a lot of people here being way too over sensitive.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Than he obviously chose the wrong profession.
But does having more special effects make your movie more art worthy? I'm no movie freak so I might be wrong but im pretty sure that most movies that go, and went down in history as good movies are movies more based on good story and good camera work and acting than movies relying on special effects.
I dont see how more power/tech is a must for creating art. Ofcourse it can help, but its not like Wii suddenly is a n64 and you cant produce anything goodlooking at all, its still stronger than ps2/xbox/gc.
But where is the limit of art? who decides when something is art? He might think ps3/x360 are needed for art, I might think that ps3/x360 are still way to slow to create what is art in my vision. Or I might think art could be created on Wii as well. Art is being created in every day and age and with the limitations of that day and age. Artists have always managed to work with the limits so I really dont see why suddenly with games you can only create ''art'' games with high specs.
Oh and wasnt spore coming to the DS? ofcourse it will probably be a scaled down version but imo that shows the concept is scalable. I wouldnt be suprised if the game actually is designed to be running on something like xbox/ps2/gc or a pc wich is more or less equivilant.
Sure, but movies are somewhat different to games. Actors all look the same in movies. A better comparison would be making movies with characters that area small collection of squares, characters that are a selection of a few well-drawn images, or characters that are full 3D and emotive human beings. Imagine the great movies of the world told with stick figures. Think they'd be as engaging?
I think the idea here is a move towards emotive games, where they're not something you do for fun per se, but something you get an emotional experience. That's very hard with characters that can't express themselves through subtle facial expressions. You're limited in the types of stories you can tell when the technology is limited. Your not likely to make people gasp in horror, or cry from happiness, with Spectrum graphics! In Hecker's POV, the Wii hasn't provided the potential for this new generation of emotive expression, or what-have-you. Story on it's own is not enough. Implementation is just as important. Take a great book and listen to it read out by a chap with a dull voice in a monotone...
he was talking in comparison to the other two console manufacturers.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I dont really agree on your movie point. I understand what you are saying but compared to games we arnt at a level anymore were characters dont look very realistic. Characters in ps2/xbox/gc games usually look detailed enough to give a sence of reality.
You got a point about emotive games, but I think sound and the camera views might be even more important than the expression itself. For example zelda TP doesnt exactly has great facial expressions but because of the way its put on the screen and the small sounds that go with it you do feel the emotion. I even dare to say this might be better than realistic expressions because they try to be realistic but never are totally realistic so they look a bit awkward. Atleast thats the feeling I got in hl2, expressions looked great but I couldnt help always feeling a bit strange because they just didnt seem exactly right. Wich also brings to the point that spore isnt emotive at all. Atleast not true the gfx and I dont think the AI in a game like spore can do alot for the emotive factor.
You got a point about emotive games, but I think sound and the camera views might be even more important than the expression itself. For example zelda TP doesnt exactly has great facial expressions but because of the way its put on the screen and the small sounds that go with it you do feel the emotion. I even dare to say this might be better than realistic expressions because they try to be realistic but never are totally realistic so they look a bit awkward. Atleast thats the feeling I got in hl2, expressions looked great but I couldnt help always feeling a bit strange because they just didnt seem exactly right. Wich also brings to the point that spore isnt emotive at all. Atleast not true the gfx and I dont think the AI in a game like spore can do alot for the emotive factor.
And after that, he put pupeteer strings on the dog's body, played with it, motion captured that sick scene, then end-result being around 10 millions copies of Nintendogs sold, for which Hecker never saw a dime...
Back on topic, I remember games like FF7 Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Zelda Ocarina of Time, Captain Blood... being described as "art". All of those came on systems far less powerful than the Wii. While it can be influenced by its time, art is intemporal.
Have you seen this guy's methodology to prove his point ?
Just classy. This guy is basically an attention whore, and the Internet fanboys of all stripes (Nintendo faithfuls always ready to jump to the throat of anyone disliking their idolized company, and Nintendo haters always looking for ammunition) are giving it to him in spades.
To be fair on me, it's not my point
I'm not making it. It's the viewpoint of Hecker and whoever which I'm trying ot explain on their behalf. There's this idea that Wii hasn't got what it takes to create the next-step in emotional, artistic experiences. I'm not getting involved in whether they're right or not! But I can see that, looking at something like the Heavy Rain demo and seeing where emotional acting in characters could go, I think that's beyond last gen and probably Wii. It could perhaps be carried effectively enough in cutscenes not to matter much. However if you're a dev wanting to create a game where the facial emotions of your character are controlled, and where in play you read the facial expressions of other characters, Wii might well look limited. It'd would be the same feeling as being a director who wants to work with this new-fangled colour because you feel using different colours in different scenes can affect the mood of your movie, and yet only being able to use B&W and having to make do with the so far okay techniques but which lack that artistic pzazz.His argument that great power and technology is required to create serious or artistic falls flat. We've invented digital photography, photo manipulation and 3D graphics, but people still paint and draw by hand. Since 3D animation hit the scene, is hand drawn animation no longer art? New technology can create art and open new avenues, but art would still exist without it. So the Wii does not cater to his particular needs as an "artist." I'm sure the avenues opened by the Wii controller will suit other people just fine. Their work is no more or no less art then what he'll do on another machine. He can say the machine is underpowered, but that's the only thing he's saying that makes any sense.
... And all is said ! ... Kudos to you.
Some (including Hecker obviously) seem to have difficulties to trully understand the path chosen by Nintendo and its strengths.
A better comparison would the evolution of animation from flipbooks to the primitive animation of Steamboat Willie, the rudimentary color animation of Merrie Melodies, the feature film animated movies of the early Walt Disney (Snow White, Pinnochio), animated films of the 80's and early 90's enhanced with other special effects (Lion King), primitive CG films, and advanced, lifelike CG films (Shrek 2). IMO, the passing generation of consoles is about the level of 80's/90's animation, while the new generation is more at the primitive CG level.
The PS2, Xbox, and GC can all do "emotive." They just can't do "lifelike." But you know what? It deesn't matter, because in video games, the emotive parts happen in cutscenes, which often are CG. And if not, well, Gamecube could already do some very nice realtime cutscenes. A big emotive moment has to be a one-time, heavily scripted event, i.e. a cutscene. So new games can do realtime cutscenes or in-game cutscenes better than old ones. Whoopee.
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