GeekNights Tuesday - Losing: PAX Australia 2014

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we present the full audio of Rym's second PAX Australia lecture: Losing.

Winning is good, and losing is bad. We strive to win, and this is the basis for most of the games we play. Challenges are binary: we either overcome them, advancing the story, or fail, and must try again. But, what if we were to toss this conventional wisdom aside? Do we really only have fun when we win? Have you ever had that moment in a game where epic and total failure was the most memorable part? What kinds of games would arise if we strove to make losing, instead of winning, the point?

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Starfox

MrPeriod said:

The whole thing, FINALLY

Now when do we get winning? ^_~

Luke Burrage

Is there a video of the whole thing?

Dazzle369

Luke Burrage said:

Is there a video of the whole thing?

HMTKSteve

If losing was the point wouldn't said losing be winning by definition?

Churba

Luke Burrage said:

Is there a video of the whole thing?

Yes, but as far as I know it's not really uploaded anywhere we can easily get to yet.

Rym

There is video of the first half(ish):



I have video of the rest: I just haven't had time to edit the slides in and render it out.

Rym

HMTKSteve said:

If losing was the point wouldn't said losing be winning by definition?

Depends on what you mean by win.

Rym

Starfox said:

MrPeriod said:

The whole thing, FINALLY

Now when do we get winning? ^_~

I didn't record the audio (Marantz batteries didn't survive my travel and didn't charge that morning). But I do have video and shitty audio.

BUT, it's just me giving a solo version of this exact talk with mostly these exact slides:


Which itself is just a revamp of an even OLDER lecture on the same topic:



I may upload a few segments or clips from the Winning talk, but honestly, I didn't say anything new: I just said it all in a different way.

Lord_Doitsu

I just want to see the Fist of the North Star clips you showed.

Apreche

Lord_Doitsu said:

I just want to see the Fist of the North Star clips you showed.

Watch them in order.

Lord_Doitsu

AH HAHAHA! Thanks dude!

Dazzle369

I want to know how you practice the fist of the north star, without just having piles of bodies to practice on.

Do I poke here or here....

Apreche

Dazzle369 said:

I want to know how you practice the fist of the north star, without just having piles of bodies to practice on.

Do I poke here or here....

Piles of bodies.

Dazzle369

LOL In this post-apocalyptic era, there's no shortage of bodies to sacrifice in the name of.. practice.

Kenshiro in the early years, when he would poke and they didn't die

*poke poke* "Omae wa mou shindei.. poo, JUST KEEDIN" ^___^

open_sketchbook

Maybe in the early years, he was a very unsuccessful acupuncturist instead of a very successful bandit exploder.

Rym

Second half of the Losing lecture.




The camera died near the end, but I had the good audio for the whole thing at least.

Luke Burrage

Great, now I'll watch the whole thing. Listening without seeing the slides was only half the experience, so I stopped after 5 minutes.

chaosof99

Since I'm at home because I'm sick I finally got around to watching this.

At the very end Rym says the following:
"Games should be fun. Games should ALWAYS be fun. Games should NEVER NOT be fun."

I highly disagree. This statement might be true for orthogames, but definitely not for ideogames. Games as a narrative device should not always be fun because that limits what kinds of stories can be told. Similar not all movies or books should be fun because that would cut out genres like horror or tragedies. The same is true for ideogames. I don't think you would call Five Nights at Freddy's a fun game. There are very few examples of games so far that are attempting to not be fun on purpose outside the horror genre (I'd call Spec Ops: The Line an example here), but that is unexplored space that is inhibited by the notion that all games MUST be fun.

Apreche

chaosof99 said:

Since I'm at home because I'm sick I finally got around to watching this.

At the very end Rym says the following:
"Games should be fun. Games should ALWAYS be fun. Games should NEVER NOT be fun."

I highly disagree. This statement might be true for orthogames, but definitely not for ideogames. Games as a narrative device should not always be fun because that limits what kinds of stories can be told. Similar not all movies or books should be fun because that would cut out genres like horror or tragedies. The same is true for ideogames. I don't think you would call Five Nights at Freddy's a fun game. There are very few examples of games so far that are attempting to not be fun on purpose outside the horror genre (I'd call Spec Ops: The Line an example here), but that is unexplored space that is inhibited by the notion that all games MUST be fun.

This is why I hate using the word fun. Worst word ever, especially for any discussion of games or art.

But lets just replace the word fun with enjoyment. You should never not enjoy a game you are playing.

Five Nights at Freddy's might cause you stress, or terror. But you enjoy those feelings even though they are not typically regarded as positive feelings. You watch a sad movie, it makes you feel sad. But you enjoy feeling sad. You liked having those feelings. It was a good movie, you would watch it again. Even though sad is not typically regarded as a positive feeling, it is quite easy to enjoy a work of art that conveys such a feeling.

Part of the real problem in this discussion, again, comes from our limited vocabulary. Let's say I am playing Super Meat Boy and I keep dying in a very hard level. You would say I feel anger. Now let's say I play Silver Surfer and keep dying, you would also say I feel anger. That's because we only have one word, anger/angry. They are actually two subtly different feelings. One is the anger of being mad at yourself for not improving, and not being able to accomplish your goal. The other is the anger at the game for being brutally unfair. The first is actually a positive feeling, the second is not.

Works of art, especially games, can bring about the entire range of human emotions. But if they are bringing about truly negative ones, or causing actual emotional pain, then you should avoid them.

chaosof99

I am aware of what was meant. I also understand the limitation of vocabulary, but I think it can be worked around. For example I would call the effect of deaths in Super Meat Boy "angering", or perhaps I could feel challenged by them. I would call the deaths in Silver Surfer "frustrating", a word I would not use for Super Meat Boy.

The problem I have is that the "games should be fun" is a meme that has spread far and wide and I believe that it is false and in fact keeps games as a form of art back to a certain extend because people get this idea implanted in them and because of it refuse to explore the narrative power games can have for anything other than "fun". I was just a little annoyed that you guys were also perpetuating that meme despite examples earlier in the lecture of at least one game that is decidedly, and intentionally, not fun.

Rym

Name a game that isn't fun and is worthwhile to play.

Rym

chaosof99 said:

I don't think you would call Five Nights at Freddy's a fun game.

Bullshit. It's extremely fun. That's why it's so popular. See also: haunted houses and roller coasters.

chaosof99

Rym said:

Name a game that isn't fun and is worthwhile to play.

I already did in my first post in this thread. Spec Ops: The Line.

Rym said:

chaosof99 said:

I don't think you would call Five Nights at Freddy's a fun game.

Bullshit. It's extremely fun. That's why it's so popular. See also: haunted houses and roller coasters.

I do not classify the feeling of terror and paranoia as "fun". They are somewhere entirely different on the emotional spectrum. You can also gain feelings of liberation and empowerment from horror games such as this, but those mostly come afterward. However, the act of playing FNAF is not fun at all as far as I can tell.

Rym

chaosof99 said:

Rym said:

Name a game that isn't fun and is worthwhile to play.

I already did in my first post in this thread. Spec Ops: The Line.

That game was fun. Realizing what it was doing, playing through it, considering it afterward, arguing about how well it was executed: all fun.

chaosof99 said:

I do not classify the feeling of terror and paranoia as "fun". They are somewhere entirely different on the emotional spectrum. You can also gain feelings of liberation and empowerment from horror games such as this, but those mostly come afterward. However, the act of playing FNAF is not fun at all as far as I can tell.

Dude, you really missed the point. People call haunted houses fun. They specifically seek those scary experiences out for enjoyment. The net experience of FNAF, which is identical to a haunted house, is fun. The "afterward" is a part of the game's experience: you don't get to just discount it. It is literally effected by the game itself.

For some people, haunted houses aren't fun. They get too scared. The net is a negative, not a positive, experience. Those people shouldn't play FNAF, and they shouldn't go to haunted houses. They won't have fun. Those things aren't FOR them.

Your personal definition of "fun" is ridiculously narrow and pedantic, and I stand by my assertion that people should only ever play games that are fun.

chaosof99

Or perhaps your definition of fun is overly broad to the point that it approaching meaninglessness. But thanks for dismissing me as "pedantic"

Rym

chaosof99 said:

Or perhaps your definition of fun is overly broad to the point that it approaching meaninglessness. But thanks for dismissing me as "pedantic"

Do people claim to go to haunted houses to have fun?

Why do people go to haunted houses? If you ask someone who just went to a haunted house if they had "fun," would they say yes?

chaosof99

Rym said:

chaosof99 said:

Or perhaps your definition of fun is overly broad to the point that it approaching meaninglessness. But thanks for dismissing me as "pedantic"

Do people claim to go to haunted houses to have fun?

Why do people go to haunted houses? If you ask someone who just went to a haunted house if they had "fun," would they say yes?

Does everybody say they had fun? Does the fact that some people are absolutely terrified by Five Nights at Freddy's, who wouldn't classify it anywhere in the vicinity of fun, make it a bad game? Or are emotions an inherently personal and subjective thing with people having different experiences from the same situations?

I'd say games need to be engaging to be good. Fun is one form to engage the audience. It is by far not the only form nor should it be.

Rym

chaosof99 said:

Does everybody say they had fun? Does the fact that some people are absolutely terrified by Five Nights at Freddy's, who wouldn't classify it anywhere in the vicinity of fun, make it a bad game?It makes it a bad game FOR THEM. For those specific people, and only for those specific people.

Which was the point of my talk.

chaosof99 said:

Or are emotions an inherently personal and subjective thing with people having different experiences from the same situations?

Umm... Yes? Some games are fun for some people and not for others. All I said was that if you don't have fun with a game, either the game is bad or the game isn't a game for YOU.

chaosof99 said:

I'd say games need to be engaging to be good. Fun is one form to engage the audience. It is by far not the only form nor should it be.

But I didn't say the converse. I said that individual people shouldn't play games that they don't find fun.

chaosof99

Rym said:

All I said was that if you don't have fun with a game, either the game is bad or the game isn't a game for YOU.

I believe this to be a false dichotomy. There are games and narratives who are no fun at all, yet are fulfilling and worth experiencing. I had no fun playing Spec Ops: The Line. The gameplay is a slog, the game berates you for the actions that you take, the explicit options in the game are ultimately hollow, and while you have the implied option to turn it off it also alludes to your self-generated sense of duty, trapping you in it. Yet I believe it to be one of the best games I ever played exactly because of this and how it confronts you with those facts and how they stack up to other games. It is designed to not be fun.

Similarly I had no fun reading The Great Gatsby. I hate all the characters in it and the story has no sense of relief or even ultimately a point to it, and all of this appears to be highly intentional. It's still a great novel despite me hating it and me not having any fun with it.

I also had no fun watching Sucker Punch. I found it despicable despite its overt attempts at creating "fun" action scenes. I turned the film off in the middle and only continued watching after I had the actual purpose of the movie and its context and pretty much its content, explained to me. Perhaps that is my personal failing for not getting it, but the movie basically also overtly condemns people who usually watch these kinds of films and those that would actually find this movie fun. Thus I chalk up my turning off the film as a natural reaction to someone who didn't get it and wasn't a despicable human being. I don't consider Sucker Punch a well made film, but I get what it is attempting to do. Now the question for you is, was Sucker Punch for dudebro dumbasses who usually watch these kinds of films, or for people who actually hate those kinds of "hot chicks kicking ass in pseudo-pornographic scenes" films? Was it for both? Does it make a difference whether you "get" the film?


I think there is a space within narratives and experiences which aren't fun but are still worthwhile to be created and experienced.

chaosof99

At this point I would like to point to a video by Campster, one of my favorite video game critics, in which he discusses "fun" and what it means for video games: