EGM scores. Some pretty big games.

[A Black Falcon]

Again this is an example of you not being able to make a single intelligent argument because you are completely ignorant to the definitions of the terms and examples that I am using.

I really don't care any more if you don't know what a computer game is or what a video game is, I've tried to educate you but your ego always prevents you from learning anything. And that is your problem, not mine. That is going to hurt you in life, not me. So I'm fine with it.

It has nothing to do with ego or you supposedly winning and me refusing to admit it. I am not admitting you "won" because I don't think by any decent standards that you have. This is nothing like the PSP thing where I admitted something. It makes absolutely no sense whatsoever by any standard to say that two games that play the same and for which the gameplay experience is overall pretty much identical are in totally different categories. That just DOES NOT MAKE ANY LOGICAL SENSE.

Anyway, I did not bring up Zork to bring back this arguement. I mentioned Zork because it is obvious that when you say "movies have always influenced games more" and I was closer to the other side, I would mention the best example possible to prove my case (just you do with MGS). And that example is, clearly, interactive fiction. If I wanted the next best thing I'd talk about early adventure games, which play similarly to interactive fiction just with graphics (King's Quest, etc). Same arguement really, as that game is pretty much a text-based adventure, just with pictures...

When have I ever said that using words to describe things in games suck? I even love the little logs in Metroid Prime! For some reason you are bunching up everything I've said into one convenient sound byte. Written descriptions can be fine but they are no substitute for the main story-telling!

I think that this is the first time I've heard you say this...

Of course games are made differently than movies, you don't need to read an article to know that. That was never my point. My point is that you can duplicate movies into games, while you cannot duplicate books into games. Length is not a matter whatsoever, unless your goal is to make a hundred-hour RPG with footage from Star Trek II. And that was not the point either. MGS2 uses movie-like cut scenes to help tell its story, so in that case it is literally duplicating styles and methods from film into video game form. And yet it has more hours of cut scenes than your average movie. Go figure!

No. Games require interaction. Thus, you cannot put a movie in a pc box and call it a game. That would actually be less interactive than reading a novel on a computer screen as you wouldn't even need to flip the pages.

You're right about MGS's influences, but my point is that because they are making something different from movies any influence they do get from them, in the majority, is not going to be straight. It is going to be mixed with many other things, including influences from books. You suggest that movies are the top influence... I don't really think so.

Now you want me to give you a lecture on what it means to be "cinematic"? If you don't know anything about this then don't try to argue against it.

I did the best I could with what I thought it meant, but if you think it's something dramatically different why not...

You keep on saying that yet you still haven't pointed out where I've been ignoring you. Yet another empty accusation.

Your attack on if text-based games were video games dodged the point I was making. That is really not relevant, as I explain above. So by not talking about the issue I raised and instead attacking me on what essentially was a non sequitor, you dodge the issue.

I already invalidated that point of yours, but of course you choose to ignore it.

Attacking a totally different point does not invalidate that.

I'm sure you'd like to think that's the case. I actually know what I'm talking about here while you are totally ignorant to almost every part of this discussion, relying on what you think is acceptable rather than what it generally considered as so.

Just no. And anyway, I'm just about as sure about you not really understanding what I mean as you seem to be with me about you. :)

If you're going to use words then you have to either have visual descriptions for them or written descriptions for them. This you do not understand.

Huh? Sure, you need some kind of description for your words. Which is why, exactly as I said, games use all the tools available to them, with the main two being visual and textual descriptions!

Okay, this is where your entire argument falls into pieces.

Reading subtitles--intended or not--does not make film a written medium. A visual medium is something that uses visuals as its main method of telling a story. Hearing, or reading dialogue does not determine if it's a visual medium or not. If it uses images to visually describe the people, the setting, the things, then it is by definition a visual medium. In the case of "The Passion", the only thing read in the movie is the dialogue. Everything else is "described" visually. There's no narration about the color of people's hair, what the settings look like, or the emotions expressed by the characters. That is all visually told, thus it is a visual medium! That is the definition of a visual medium! If you don't believe me go to your university tomorrow and ask any one of the film professors there.

Now, notice how that is the same exact situation as video games. There is no written description in Baldur's Gate for what the people or town look like because the description is right there in the visuals! All that is written is the dialogue between characters, and it wouldn't make a difference if all of that text was turned into voice acting. That would not change the the status of its medium!

This is also why text-based games are not technically video games, because they do not use visuals as their primary descriptor (if they use visuals at all).

(First, do I need to repeat that I think it is both visual and written? I think I even did it in this post... so let's just skip the fifth or so rewrite of that idea and move on. But make no mistake, that is my primary rebuttal to your thesis here that they are primarially visual.)

Actually, as I've said many times, in some of these games there ARE written description of places. And I think it's a great help, as graphics can't do everything. Baldur's Gate? It doesn't have a lot of them, but it does have some descriptions of places (some voiced in the chapter intros and stuff, some in stuff you read or conversations). So I think that your idea that games are, like films, so focused just on the visual medium is wrong. Otherwise Eternal Darkness would not have those written descriptions of items. As you say, this is something films don't do (and you have slightly different reasons, but we ended up with the same conclusion -- that no films count as being written mediums).

As for Baldur's Gate, I think that there was a lost opportunity somewhat here. I would have loved to see a more adventure-game-like system (or Torment's, with more than BG but still less than an adventure game) with lots of things to click on and get better descriptions. I think that in games such things help set the tone and describe the world much more effectively than just graphics alone can. And, as I played through BGII, I noticed how dissapointingly few the places where I could click to get descriptions were (generally, points that I could in some fashion interact with). So fine, that's a flaw in the game.

Oh yeah, and one of your last points is something very close to what I said in my last few posts, you know: changing text into voice acting does not make massive changes to the way the game works or from what it's influences came from.


That final statement. Hmm... very interesting. I disagree with the fundamental assumption there that electronic games need visuals to matter. I don't think the amount of visuals in the game is relevant in any way for classification, and see no reason why they should (beyond the obvious idea of categorizing them for the kind of visuals they employ -- 2d, 3d, etc -- which is not relevant to the overall categorization I'm talking about).