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guest art Marathon continues you
remember a while back when that guy
proposed to his girl in our outro credit
did you know the girl can draw she can
draw it's my pleasure to introduce miss
analy kretchmar her friends call her gab
glad to have you with us today let's get
to it shall we I'm going to be honest
we've been a bit hesitant about doing
this episode I feel like all the stuff
should go without saying but the subject
just keeps popping up week after week
maybe it's better if we just go ahead
and address it here it goes studying
games thinking more intently about games
giving them the same amount of attention
and respect we give any other medium is
not going to make them worse considering
the potential that games have to explore
the Human Condition and investigating
where this medium might go is not going
to make games Less Fun looking at games
as a whole and suggesting that there is
Artistic potential in there we've barely
begun to tap into isn't going to drain
the joy out of playing them and yet for
some reason without fail week after week
we get a handful of people accusing us
of wanting to make games Less Fun that
is ludicrous and it's not necessarily
the accusation itself that bothers me
because when you take it at face value
it's just sort of silly I love how fun
games are we love games we want more
people to enjoy them and we want the
people who already enjoy them to enjoy
them even more I feel pretty secure in
that it's the reasoning behind that
accusation that gets me it's the
suggestion that we shouldn't explore
games further that all of this inquiry
and study and tampering is going to just
ruin our favorite hobby and that is a
claim that needs answering it makes
noing sense look at any other medium
when has study made an entire medium
universally less accessible or enjoyable
when has it made it worse ever take film
filmmakers have been exploring and
developing their craft for decades yes a
small percentage of the films that come
out every year can definitely be called
Art films and that's totally okay if you
don't get into them I think the world is
better for it but they're not for
everybody but that's all right because
there are still piles and piles of
really fun movies coming out every year
no matter how much artistic exploration
has happened within the media that has
never changed and you know what that
artistic drive has actually made the fun
movies even better movies like Inception
the Harry Potter series even Star Wars
wouldn't be half the movies they are
today if it hadn't been for artists
within that Medium spending over a
century pushing the boundaries and
redefining what film can do even the
Transformers Trilogy there's no way in
hell Michael Bay could have made the
Transformers movies as they are today
without the advances made in
cinematography from people consciously
studying filmmaking as an art so unless
you want to go back to Flash Gordon
serials you have to accept the fact that
the study of film making has made even
our high-budget popcorn flicks more
exciting more engaging and overall more
fun the same is true of literature too
over the past 200 years we've made books
more and more engaging and fast-paced
part of this is due to an expanding
audience but it's also due in a large
part to people exploring what could be
done with literature when it finally
came to be a true Mass medium read
lamort dor wow I bet I said that wrong
read that and then read Game of Thrones
I won't make any comparisons about
quality because they're fundamentally
very different works but I think it can
pretty definitively say that Thrones is
the easier read literary device have
come a long way and what about trying to
do something more with the medium what
about trying to explore an idea or an
emotion what about trying to educate
while we entertain to those of you
who've said that doing so sucks the fun
out of a game do you think any of these
films would have been more fun if they'd
avoided exploring ideas do you think any
of these books would have been more
interesting if they had backed away from
looking a little deeper but enough about
other media let's just stand where we
stand Are you seriously trying to tell
us that games would be better if we
never talked about what they mean or how
we might improve them would World of
Warcraft be better if Bartle had never
made his tax omy would Age of Empires be
the same without Mark Toronto's
hierarchy of needs look it up would
Bioshock even work without it being an
exploration of ir Rand look we've been
playing games our whole lives no one in
this show wants every game to try to be
Gaming's ulyses or even Gaming's Blood
Meridian but we would really like to see
a few more mass effects portals Bioshock
even more Call of Duty 4S and yeah we'd
like to see a few more games like Shadow
of the Colossus in there as well that's
why we explore games here because better
games are made by better understanding
the medium we make them in but really
the sad thing is I think there's
something deeper going on here I don't
think most of the people who mail us or
post in the comments with these
complaints are actually suggesting we
shouldn't explore and shouldn't study
because it'll make games less fun not
really I think the real subtext behind
most of it is simply a cry of we don't
want games to change and I get that for
many of us games were our refuge growing
up they were our special thing that the
rest of the world didn't have they were
the place where we found community and
engaged in a better world and many of us
are afraid we're going to lose that
going forward I understand believe me I
even respect it but we can't just keep
this to ourselves forever social games
the Wii and the Casual world have blown
the door wide open and there's no
closing it again there's no going back
to the way things were before but I'll
tell you what we can do we can try to
preserve the things that always made
games great to us we can try and shepher
the medium towards something more and
try to make sure gaming avoids the Trap
of easy quick profit shovelware and
lowquality social cashins and right now
we may not be winning that fight no one
here wants to make games Less Fun quite
the opposite we want to see games become
more engaging but I'll tell you art
games or even the whole concept of games
as art are not the threat the threat
comes from the fact that you no longer
need to love games to be in the games
business the biggest danger icr medium
facing right now is simply becoming
stagnant and safe as the industry
discovers it can sell the same five
titles over and over and over again
every year the greatest Pitfall in front
of us is the idea that you can take
people who care nothing for games have
them clone an existing product and be
more successful than the guys who made
the original even though the knockoff
isn't half as good the biggest threat to
games is not people caring too much but
rather people not caring it's not the
scary Prospect of moving forward it's
what might happen if we don't thanks for
hearing us out we'll see you next week
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