Games as a Service is Incompatible with Art | Extra Punctuation

[@theescapist]

If you enjoy Extra Punctuation and want to watch new episodes a week early and support the show, consider joining our Patreon for just $2/month! www.patreon.com/the_escapist

[@rocko7711]

I also miss the days when you bought a game, you owned it. I feel forever scorned because I bought Scott Pilgrim Vs the World and it was taken off our systems

[@rocko7711]

I take it that Toffee does not like the Vet either. I feel like that is universal for all dogs. Mine cries the whole time

[@alex.g7317]

@@rocko7711 imo all because something isnt physical, doesn't mean I don't own it. No. 2 You can buy games that have SD cards like the Nintendo Switch ones...

[@PewPew_McPewster]

To add to Yahtzee's point on art being a snapshot of society, my complaint is that once all these servers shut down, archival of this era of live services games is going to get VERY ANNOYING. You literally can't play some live service games anymore. There is no way to consume them. Cuz they shut down and the servers shut down and no one backed them up and hosted them privately. I can still download Super Mario Bros or dredge up a physical copy. GAAS is actively anti-archival because they don't want you to be able to play without their constant permission.

[@MungkaeX]

But the bean counters and corporate executives can’t monetize that copy of Super Mario Bros year after year, day after day the same way they can a GAAS. Won’t somebody please think of the executives?!?! If we can’t have multiple Billionaires represented among the “gaming” executive class, is it even worth producing video games anymore? While peons like ourselves might argue, “Yes, video games should exist purely for their artistic value; and any monetary compensation should be a reluctantly required secondary concern,” that doesn’t pay major sports leagues enough to use their teams & player likenesses let alone leave enough to focus on the fetishism of shooting guns with none of the ethical or legal baggage that comes with it. The simple fact of the matter is that video games as art like all other forms of art are a niche interest among the general public. We as a society don’t cultivate that appreciation for art at home, school, or anywhere else. It takes thought and critical thinking, and that’s just too hard. It’s the same reason that politicians are increasingly taking more and more extreme positions on various points of policy when any critical thought points to a more middle of the road approach. It’s far easier to say “Yes” or “No” to something than it is dig into the delicate minutia and subtle shades of gray. Sorry for the tangent.

[@no_nameyouknow]

So should we just not have competitive online games? A lot of people enjoy them. The fact is, regardless of archival efforts, nothing lasts forever. Eventually we all die. That doesn't mean we shouldn't live. I love single player games, and I get that there were competitive games on physical media before the internet, but it was a lot harder to find competition and things like 20 vs 20 (or any amount larger than 4) players in a game were nearly impossible unless you rented out a gym and brought in 40 nerds with their PCs.

[@ethan8942]

As someone who’s training to become a museum professional I wonder if there’s somewhere in the corporate copyright loopholes for asking museums to get copies of ways to archive these games in service and then when they’re no longer provide just give them out for free.

[@mdd4296]

@@no_nameyouknow The problem was already solved in the 90s: let the community run the server. You can still play quake 3 arena, doom (1993) death match or cs1.6 today. Either with dedicated server, hosting server or using vpn lan clients such as hamachi... The problem was never the the kind of game something is, the problem has always been the business model. Nowadays you can even leave the game running on steam servers after development shut down.

[@CrysJaL]

People will keep and hack copies of the games, so there's likely to be some record of them. It'll require a bit of prgoramming knowhow to sort out though.

[@manderic5436]

How appropriate that the sponsor be a game that looks like a mobile live service at first glance, but turns out to be a 3d platformer that you pay once for then play.

[@joelcroteau9925]

psst... I don't think it's a real ad.

[@Agent00Pi]

I checked Steam, and was shocked to see it wasn't even listed as "Season 1". You buy it and own it. Amazing.

[@MelMelodyWerner]

@@joelcroteau9925 it is. they sponsored another video.

[@zetsubanned4308]

I was like 87% sure that was a very well-produced bit.

[@thomastakesatollforthedark2231]

@@joelcroteau9925... It is.

[@MilanousMedia]

Ironically it wasn't uncommon for awhile for painters to "patch" their artwork. They would come in and to touch ups and add to them while they were on the wall of the gallery Look to the movie "Turner" starring Timothy Spall they show that

[@Tynansdtm]

Yeah I think there are a ton of famous pieces of artwork that only stopped evolving because the creator died. Even the piece mentioned in this video, the Mona Lisa, has other layers of other versions, seen via x-ray.

[@spipmusic9919]

Alternatively, read the novel Lanark to get a good pictureof what happens when a painter fails toever stop working on their art.

[@aelechko]

The paintings worked just fine without the touchups though.

[@Graknorke]

the Mona Lisa itself has a few layers underneath the surface. though it was at least eventually left alone instead of being destroyed

[@Oxtocoatl13]

My mom used to do this with her paintings. She would paint something for weeks, then hang it on the wall, the we'd catch her brushing it up every now and then forever.

[@JimJava007]

I have grudging respect for how Ubisoft managed to "solve" their Assassin's Creed dilemma in the most audaciously simple way possible. "Should we keep milking this franchise for all it's worth with live service games, or make a less profitable game to raise fan enthusiasm?" "Yes. To both. We're literally the guys who make Assassin's Creed, we can afford it."

[@secretlythreeducksinamansu3546]

Never even considered that but it makes sense now that you mention it.

[@akirajkr]

Except...we can't assume they are saying yes to both just because they SAID so. Honestly, a Yathzee video touching on this other fucking thing about pre-orders before you even get a ENTITY of what the game is would be as good as this. Like...sure, it'll be a Assassin's Creed game But will it be a Assassin's Creed game about squashing my balls onto a iceberg's end or making ballons for kittens, since apparently everything goes now

[@criizzash]

@@akirajkr That's kind of the point though, isn't it? There's no real identity to these games outside of "Assassin's Creed" that it could be about just about anything and still likely feel the exact same as every other recent one in the series you've played. Honestly if you've played one of the more recent ones, you've played them all. I don't see that drastically changing anytime soon, so if yr'oue into it, you already know what to expect and can just order it now and move on. Not that I think being able to pre-order fuck-all except a name slot for a future game is good by any means. That's probably a bad sign to come.

[@noxteryn]

Ubisoft does a lot of shitty things, but the people who work there are immensely talented and skilled. The accessibility in their games is amazing. The last few, like Ghost Recon: Breakpoint or Far Cry 6 allow you to edit pretty much anything in the game, from the HUD to actual gameplay mechanics. It's great for having a customisable experience. It's as if the games came out pre-modded.

[@zabrak999]

@@noxteryn An Ubisoft PR rep posted this.

[@Twitchy_McExorcism]

Years ago, I remember Yahtzee saying something like "A story is only good once it's ended", and I think that idea applies here too. If I spend a hundred hours building up power, tinkering with my equipment, going on scavenger hunts to find the material necessary for those upgrades, doing quests big and small, making friends and allies, taking part in their little side-stories as part of the over-arching one that brought me to them in the first place, I want it to be because _all of that_ leads up to the part where I and whoever is still alive on my side all band together and bring the fight to the big, evil bastard that started me on that path to begin with, knowing that this is the end and there's no reason to hold anything back, that any items and/or firepower I don't use here was a waste as the showdown with the final boss leads the story to its dramatic conclusion, letting it all go in a moment of cathartic release as the credits roll and I see how my actions shaped this world on my way out the door, onto pastures new. What I _do not_ want is to hear "Congrats on finishing Season 1, that'll be $59.99 to do it all again for Season 2! And 3! And 4! And..."

[@DarthMcDoomington]

This is how I feel about Saints Row even without the live service. Saints Row ended with you going from President of the US fighting Matrix aliens to being President of Space, and then the DLC tied everything up even more with the Saints invading Hell. You can bring back Earth, make a new Homeworld for humanity with a psychotic warrior race for the Saints to fight, or just send Gat to heaven despite his unforgivable sins and reunite him with Aisha. It ended pretty conclusively, you can't escalate from there. Yeah you could have time travel but at this point even time travel isn't an escalation, the Saints already met a bunch of historical figures in Gat Out of Hell. And I've beaten every gang before me, a corporation, a government agency with sci-fi tech, Matrix aliens and fucking SATAN. I don't want a reboot, I don't want a sequel. I just want it to FUCKING DIE ALREADY. THERE'S NOWHERE ELSE TO GO. EVERYTHING AMOUNTS TO EITHER "FIGHT ANOTHER RACE OF ALIENS AND BECOME PRESIDENT OF SLIGHTLY MORE SPACE" OR "INVADE DOUBLE HELL AND DEFEAT DOUBLE SATAN". AND ANYTHING THAT DOES ESCALATE WILL BE SO INCOHERENT AND SURREAL IT'LL MAKE KEN FUCKING PENDERS RUN ON THE SONIC COMICS LOOK SANE. Many, MANY game franchises fail to end on a good note, a good amount fail to even technically end and are just left on a cliffhanger, even good game franchises aren't immune to this. Saints Row avoided that, it ended with a bang, it doesn't need to be brought back to end it on a whimper.

[@starmaker75]

It reminds how long runners in video game usually have there games be self contain or have duology and trilogies at most because trying to do a continues story after a trilogy is well hard to do. Just look at kingdom hearts and metal gear on what happens when a series keeping going with a continuous story that should have probably end a little early and have a new overall story in the setting.

[@daggern15]

The classic adage of dying a hero instead of living long enough to become the villain

[@sdbzfan1]

I think this is why i can never get into comics compared to manga Cancelled or not most comics have history and shit ton of it, while most manga series have beginning middles and ends, this is why long running shonen has such a following and tends to lose more of the adult crowd beyond just its meant for young boys, the older the you are the more critical you are of art and more you start to crave endings but kids dont want endings they want stories, i can remember my childhood fondly but many of my favourite shows as a kid still have endings that werent pick up again unlike most western media

[@michaelpitts9762]

I agree with this

[@Bruno-cb5gk]

there's another big issue, since they're based around constantly adding content, the game will keep recieving more stuff even when it has all it needs. This results either in feature creep or repetitive content.

[@Veevslav1]

Power Creep. Always the Power Creep to sell the new stuff and make MOAR MONEY!!!! Attach that to nerfs of the old stuff to make shiny new shiz look better!!!

[@imightbebiased9311]

@@Veevslav1 This is the point I bring up with stupid-ass NFT content. Very few companies get game balance even close to right. Even fewer get it to that point once content updates are included. Now you think YOU are gonna be able to thread that needle while there are theoretically hundreds of thousands of dollars of customer income that are at stake? If someone has an uber expensive skin for a character that just got nerfed to F-tier in the latest patch and that tanks their actual income do you not see how you're going to have riots on your hands?

[@ICantSplel]

Remember GTA online was people driving around in cars, and shooting at each other.

[@bit_ronic]

@@ICantSplel at least the existence of gta online meant that they left gta v alone without fucking it up with flying cars, they did the same thing with rdr2, too, rockstar released the game to critical acclaim, and left the online portion as the sandbox for take two so their higher management doesn't screw around with the actual game. ubisoft seems to be doing the exact same thing with assassin's creed, and honestly, i hope it works out, cause i always felt that it was ubisoft's passion project, people may criticize ac unity all they want, but you could clearly see that ubisoft was passionate about making it with how immersive and detailed the world was.

[@ZombieOfun]

@@Veevslav1 Destiny 2, for as much as I still play the game, struggles immensely with this. The game design seems to be a constant arms race of making players more powerful and boss encounters designed specifically to counter what makes players powerful in other content

[@MistromLuthane]

Its worth commenting on the idea of art as narrative and art as experience. Bioshock is narrative art. The visuals, the music, the atmosphere, and aspects of the gameplay serve the critique of Randian Objectivism from a narrative standpoint. Not so much the PLOT of Jack's experience within Rapture (though it is an element) so much as the story of Rapture itself and diagnosing its failings. Despite this, Bioshocks gameplay as frankly aged like milk. Its a stiff shooter, and while fun can still be extracted from it, its hard to deny that as a shooter that is closer to 20 years old then it is to 10, it will largely be remembered for that story, and not for the experience of playing it. But then theres art as experience, and this is something that I think is worth examining, because its largely unique to Gaming. Is a game without a focus on story any less "art", or more to the point is it considered inherently less valuable as a cultural landmark, when its focus is on its gameplay and the feeling of playing it? Does the idea of art necessitate a statement of thought, or can it get by with a statement of being through the flow state of its action? It seems like a pointless question, as art is usually heralded through virtue of its messaging, but thinking that way denies the mechanical artistry of something less narratively focused. It assumes that Return of the Obra Dinn or Papers Please is inherently greater than an experience like Shovel Knight or Street Fighter because it has something to say about life directly. But Shovel Knight is a masterfully put together tribute to the halcyon days of the 2D platformer, and despite its good but not especially deep story, its use of mechanical depth and ability to string its gameplay ideas and compound upon them is nothing short of mechanical artistry. Meanwhile, Street Fighter has endlessly attempted to polish the foundation of the fighting game genre, and has endeavored for DECADES to provide a level of precision and depth of play (to varying degrees of success, but GENERALLY rather positive) that creates such ardent fans of the scene, and by extension creates the meta narrative of the fighting game subculture. These are games that will likely be remembered and actively enjoyed as games for all time (I mean people are still playing Sf2 and third strike, and its not because SF has objectively gone downhill, as alot of people still also play 5 and will likely play 6). To set these experiences aside as inherently inferior simply because the focus and passion was set in the gameplay and not in the story or its message feels like the wrong conclusion to come to. And I realize that Yahtzee is NOT saying this inherently, but it comes to the cultural idea (at least in the West, I wont speak to other regions) of art being exclusively high concept and difficult but rewarding to decipher. And there's nothing wrong with that kind of art, I fuckin love Bioshock, and learning about Randian Objectivism through my journey to connect deeper to Bioshock was and still is incredibly rewarding. It make-a me feel smarter. But the way people, especially critics, speak of art tends to exclude simpler experiences. Just food for thought. Maybe Im dumb.

[@BerenElendilAPGaming]

No amount of explanation that thorough speaks to someone who's dumb. Friend, if games are art, you're one hell of a curator.

[@MistromLuthane]

@@BerenElendilAPGaming thank you! Thats very kind!

[@moMothman99]

Very well put together 👏👏

[@KyriosHeptagrammaton]

My thoughts exactly

[@WeebJail]

no no, you're confusing how narrative works in games. the thing is with games the story IS the experience. your experience as a player is inherent to the effect bioshock has as art. you can't separate the two. the game is the experience. to address your other examples, shovel knight is art because it's ABOUT a point in time in gaming, FROM a point in time in gaming. that's what makes it art. how we all experience it is part of what makes it art. street fighter is arguably art, but not from anything on behalf of the game, it's the observer that made it art. as a standalone piece of work it's just a bunch of dudes fighting. there isn't anything profound about the game itself. the question you should be asking here is, is super mario brothers art? and that's debatable

[@boarfaceswinejaw4516]

i think this is particularly accurate with World of Warcraft, or hell, Warcraft as a setting. Whilst Warcraft nowadays is universally known as the "generic fantasy setting", there was once upon a time when it took genericness and made something unique aesthetically and stylistically out of it. Metzen's Concept art shows that. The warcraft rts games continued with this aesthetic, and the third game even had a pretty damn good story for what was primarily an RTS. Then World of warcraft came along, originally intended to be a side-venture. An mmo set in the World of Warcraft, the amount of work put into every crook and cranny, the locations, music, armors, character customization options, its nothing short of art. an absolutely impressive amount of work to make every location feel unique, and even some of the questlines were rather fun and intriguing, even if the nature of an MMO made most of them play out mostly the same. Now world of warcraft is dying, and the RTS franchise is already dead, especially after wc3 reforged retro-actively skullfucked the third entry. World of Warcraft meanwhile is busy carving off bits and pieces of its own lore like kebab to feed an increasingly disillusioned fanbase, and realizing they are running out of meat they are now stuffing each kebab with 95% sawdust.

[@SaulGoodman3D2049]

I'm not much of a fan of WarCraft beyond having played and enjoyed the 3rd game, but was WoW meant to be a side venture? When the Orc campaign in Frozen Throne was a straight up real time CRPG, it felt like a statement of intent from Blizzard; that this was gonna be WarCraft from now on.

[@bird3713]

Bro that storyline for Warcraft 3 still impresses me to this day. Prior to War3, the storyline had been "evil orcs attack from other planet". Warcraft 3 told us how they got there, why they were fighting, and then united 3 races from 2 continents into a battle against a force that we didn't know existed in the previous games, but *it all made sense*. It was the best example of expanding existing lore that I've ever seen.

[@boarfaceswinejaw4516]

@@SaulGoodman3D2049 I'm pretty sure the intent was to make a fourth warcraft game later down the line, with the MMO being a side thing, sort of like how Warhammer online was primarily a side-thing, not intended to advance the plot line. I'd bet the idea that the Lich King would be killed, not as a result of a story climax, but as a result of getting ganked by a thousand randos was never the intent.

[@boarfaceswinejaw4516]

@@bird3713 Exactly. Like, warcraft went from having the most underdeveloped bad guys to having one of the most well developed ones. And each faction made sense, and you never had the "dubious morality" moment, which is already extraordinarily rare in any piece of fiction dealing with full scale warfare. Every time I sit down and play warcraft 3 I imagine what wc4 could have been. Would Sylvanas try to unite undead and the living, would Arthas find redemption, could peace between night elves, horde and the alliance persist? Then Wow threw all of that out the window in favor of forcing conflict. The horde allowing undead and warlocks is akin to German neo-nazis dressed in stormtruppen outfits being allowed in Israel Post-ww2. Its frankly bizarre.

[@FanFicnic]

“We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective.”

[@greywolf9783]

Thanks I hate it

[@alex.g7317]

I dissagreen't

[@Canadamus_Prime]

And that is very very sad.

[@vallejomach6721]

Eisner then went on to buy Portsmouth F.C... We have no obligation to make history. - ✅ Check We have no obligation to make art. - ✅ Check We have no obligation to make a statement. - ✅ Check To make money is our only objective. - ❎ Oops!

[@the_letter_5579]

"We live in a society" - Ghandi

[@EllieBerryPie]

I will actually say this is one thing that I feel Minecraft kind of addresses by making each version of it's self easily accessible, to view it as a creative work at different times in it's existence. TV shows, comic books, and any form of serialized art can either be judged as an artistic whole when (or if) they finish, or you can take a specific point and see how it changed to reflect that specific point in time. The problem I see with life service games, which is mostly due to them being massive multiplayer games, is that often only the game in it's currant state is accessible.

[@alexlee4154]

Leaving this here for when microsoft tries to fuck us out of being able to do this anymore

[@TVlord5]

Great point! That is one thing I love about Minecraft is when I get the urge to play I can play with all the new features and variety added just to keep kids coming back but good just to see what new things there are to play....or I can go back to a beta build before NPCs outside of animals and monsters were added and it feels empty and alone which is a completely different vibe

[@NotThatGuy_YepThatGuy]

That last bit is why I stopped playing destiny 2

[@The_Viktor_Reznov]

As much as Minecraft is not for me, I applaud how it's made. The only proper way for a "game as a service"/ "live service" game to exist. Every update is available, every update works independently, they cannot remove something they added. It's a single purchase game that gets constantly updated without removing previous versions.

[@jmurray1110]

Only in Java though the main game (bedrock) forces you into the newest version Yes Java cane first but it’s obvious Microsoft priorities bedrock because they make more money Also they are taking the piss with the chat filter

[@Di7manya]

I feel like a bigger problem is that the profit motive behind GAAS is not really to provide an experience but rather keep players "engaged", but not in any meaningful way, just in a keep playing/giving me money way. What matters most is how many hours (and money) people spend in game, not their enjoyment of it. Like that Platinum games guy said about them moving on from "well designed" single player games to focus on more monetizable Live service games. The people in charge don't want you to enjoy their games or tell any meaningful story or innovate in the medium, they just want people to log in every day and spend money on whatever MT they can shove down the player's throat. And they have to keep pumping out "content" to keep the money coming. Nobody has 1000+ hours of story to tell in the same game/universe especially if you are never allowed to let it end (like how in superhero comics they reboot or restart the characters every few years). So you inevitably end up either repeating yourself or making fluff that is just there to fill up time and make the "to-do list" of missions longer. That's why so many Live service games are filled with repetitive sidequest with MTs that let you "skip the grind". If there was any meaning to them, you wouldn't want people to skip them. Endings have to remain vague so you can return to the open world and finish up all the busywork once the story is over. That's why they brag about how long their games take to complete. Very few games even have any kind of remarkable side missions either. From the top of my head only the Witcher 3 and Nier: Automata actually had side missions with well developed stories that develop the themes of the game, even if they mechanically weren't super innovative, the story behind them made them stand out. Witcher 3 received actual expansions with incredible stories and not just a few new copypasted missions to keep the thing going forever. Blood and Wine is so satisfying because in the end, the story fully ends. Geralt's journey is complete, he is done. In the case of Assassins Creed one of the lead writers left after Brotherhood (I think it was that or 2) and Ubisoft just refused to actually continue the story the games were setting up since it was more profitable to milk the concept till the end of time. The main protagonist of the series just dies in AC3 and games continue as if nothing had happened without adressing any of the plot threads that had been set up.

[@Willie_Pete_Was_Here]

rip Platinum Games. They made some good shit

[@parkeryourefired]

Can’t wait until the Renaissance chapter in my art history class when I can refer to Da Vinci as “my dude”.

[@ACuriousTanuki]

I'm regularly reminded of a quote from Joan Rivers: _“Your anger can be 49 percent and your comedy 51 percent, and you’re okay. If the anger is 51 percent, the comedy is gone.”_ Replace "comedy" with "art" and "anger" with "business", and the quote perfectly applies to games (and many other things). Game dev requires people who focus on the Business side to ensure the project can complete and the dev team can continue to exist to work on future projects. The moment Business becomes the primary motivator on a project though the Art very quickly evaporates away and we're regularly left with cynical, soul-less, vapid, half-baked, and often predatory cash-grabs. I don't know that it strictly ties into games-as-service, but it's very much a common issue with them. A game that is regularly updated and expanded can be artful (just as an ongoing book, tv or film series can be), but a game-as-service that exists primarily as a vehicle to justify the ongoing in-game cash shop is not.

[@Scarhwk]

I don't know. Wasn't Shakespeare in it for the money and babes? Art is just something that tends to happen when you're trying to entertain, and the best art tends to be the best entertainment. I agree that plenty of otherwise good art has been ruined by business considerations, but the interplay is more complex than "more business -> worse art."

[@Nasrudith]

​@@Scarhwk Yeah, ironically some artists are known for going down the drain once they get creative freedom from editors and corporate as well. And not just commercially but being critically panned. Maybe the sin is more in trying to force it? Shakespeare had a good volume of his plays as sequels but he wasn't straightjacketed into franchises.

[@ACuriousTanuki]

@@Scarhwk it's not about "more business means less art" - they aren't single sum - it's about goals and motivations, and obviously it's not a clearly objective determination. As you said though, Shakespeare was first and foremost "trying to entertain", not trying to get paid. Obviously he needed to get paid to keep working, but making money wasn't the primary motivator for writing. No sane person thinks "I can get rich if I just write 30+ plays" (I don't think Shakespeare was ever particularly wealthy from his works). He produced such a broad and long-lived body of work because we wanted to write and to entertain, and because he had themes and ideas he wanted to explore with his audience. Contrast this with a theatre owner, whose primary interest is selling tickets. They want the plays they host to be good, since that'll bring in larger audiences, but that doesn't provide any insight into how to make a good play. Falling into psychology traps like FOMO and outrage farming might give a bump to sales, but they can only go so far if the play itself is hot garbage. So much of AAA game dev today is more "We need a highly monetizable platform, who can we pay boatloads of money to to do that for us?" than it is "We have a creative vision of an experience we want to share with our audience". This isn't to ignore the passionate artists who work within game dev, they're just ultimately overruled and overcome by people in suits looking to maximize cash flow, and the end result is AAA producing a steady flow of "meh" games with ever-more-aggressive monetisation. "AA" and Indy ftw (?).

[@ACuriousTanuki]

@@paulmememan508 thanks, that's a more concise response than mine 😄 Distinguishing the different objectives of "art" and "business" really is the crux of it.

[@ACuriousTanuki]

@@Nasrudith another line that regularly comes to mind is "excellence is the exception". Just trying to make art doesn't mean it will be successful, have broad appeal, or a significant long-term impact - yet another reason why simply throwing money at a problem isn't a universal solution.

[@dorpth]

Man, it was depressing enough realizing that enough time has now passed that a lot of younger gamers no longer remember the days before DLC, but soon we'll reach a point where some don't remember the days when buying a game meant you actually owned the game.

[@tealablu3759]

I’m 27, and I used to have cd ROMs. At one point my cousin gave me a lot of his old CD ROM’s that he was getting rid of. My favorite was called Pharaoh. My mom accidentally donated that game (really accidentally, she felt awful when she realize that she gotten rid of it by mistake). I convinced/guilted her into buying me the download for it. I still play it to this day, even though it was made in the early 2000s. Hell, my current computer doesn’t even have a CD drive. Things kind of come full circle since I became the cool older cousin who plays video games for my baby cousin, but I doubt she’s ever seen a CD ROM. I don’t even think that she knows it, but she could download her favorite game that we play every time she comes and play it at home in a way that I never could when it was my older cousin and CD-ROMs.

[@hubblebublumbubwub5215]

Assassins Creed INFINITY.... As if there isn't too much of it already

[@MorganWick]

Assassin's Creed Mirage... now that's a name that'll lend itself to some snarky comments, especially if they don't deliver on any of their promises.

[@theAverageUpload3r]

I do agree with the distinction you draw. The way I see is is that games-as-a-service are usually more sports-centric - battle royales, soccer games etc. I do think some of the episodic live service games that respect a narrative, like, Destiny, can still be considered and critiqued, despite their 'moving' - a bit like how you can consider each entry in a book saga as they come along. Fatigue pushes trends out of the zeitgeist so there'll be some new flavour of games industry obsession in 5-10 years anyway.

[@cereal_chick2515]

Yahtzee's back on the games-as-art wagon! Yay!

[@Leo-pw3kf]

Was he ever off of it?

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

I feel like he's always been there, it's just hard to vocally stick to that in an industry that refuses any structural criticism and an audience that doesn't care as long as they see familiar names and get easy dopamine. One only needs to look at Jim Sterling for someone who stuck to their guns and was punished for it again and again. You either play nice and quiet the vast majority of the time or you fight tooth and nail to be heard knowing you'll be dismissed and attacked the whole time.

[@naranciagaming]

@@user-xsn5ozskwg attacked by who? "The industry" isn't sending assassin's to your door if you say you hate the new CoD or AC (which everyone does) and moronic shills can't do anything as it would require getting of their knees for more than 2 seconds to write a DM or something just to be immediately blocked

[@user-xsn5ozskwg]

@@naranciagaming I forgot the word "attacked" only encompasses physical violence. My b.

[@blipboigilgamesh7865]

@@naranciagaming i think they meant "attacked" as in morons who only consume games as little more than digital playthings purposefully misrepresenting their points to ridicule their stance in regards to how indifferent most gamers are in relation to games' artistic potential. It's almost like your instantaneous hostility towards them kinda proves their point.

[@sigzil1985]

Do you remember when getting a boxed game meant you could spend the first 4 hours of your game time reading the manual because dad was still using the bloody computer for work? That was good stuff. Wing Commander III had the best manual I've ever read, with all the tech specs of the ships, background story in various forms and general information. I was already in the game world when i started playing which cut out on unnecessary fluff at the beginning of the game to get the player into things. It was better, and that isn't nostalgia.

[@Exkhaniber]

I fondly recall playing Wing Commander 3. I vaguely recall seeing in video game magazines around that time that they also made (or were making) a fourth installment, but I never got around to looking for it. Completely slipped my mind. For me, Wing Commander 3 represents a fascinating point of divergence between myself and my father. Because when I see a tweet or news story about Mark Hammill, I know him as the guy who played Christopher Blair in Wing commander III. My father knows him as the guy who played Luke Skywalker in those Star Wars movies.

[@jmurray1110]

What did neither of you watch Batman the animated series or rapacity street kids safe Christmas Though on mark he’s a remarkably kind man from my understanding and his love of his roles like like made last Jedi all the worse especially when you hear the heartbreak in his voice

[@murphy7801]

Slight issue with Mona Lisa point. Since Leonardo worked on it for like 20 years always tweaking it. He was never happy from what we can tell with it.

[@tatwood1123]

you're absolutely right, but once it was done, it was done. he didn't present an early access canvas, nor did he break into the louvre to alter it

[@Mene0]

Did he make NFTs of it though?

[@toninhosoldierhelmet4033]

the biggest problem of independent development is you don't know were to stop and you just end up feeling strained, happened to me the first time i put effort into making a quake map, i personally think it's good but not perfect, but after all i stopped working on it because it ate 4 months of my life of tweaking/bug hunting etc... it indeed teatched me that trying to make perfect is just a mistake, i could have put atleast 2 months less into it and over all it would be like 2% worse of a map.

[@jdbruiser]

There's a similar issue with the endless rut of sequels we get. That's like tweaking and expanding art where it's really not necessary. Sure new stories with the same characters can be told but it isn't necessary.

[@The_Viktor_Reznov]

@@tatwood1123 Lmao imagine him selling the painting and then coming in unannounced every now and then to tweak the painting

[@magnustherad3597]

biggest ''no shit but glad somebody important said it'' moment of the day reading that title, THANK YOU

[@martindix1330]

Go to Melbourne. Walk around the cbd - take a guided tour even! But look at the street art. Its amazing. Then wait a few days a week maybe and do it again. Chances are it will be all new. A lot of it being highly topical and actually bloody good! A good game as service could be this. Maybe one day some one will make one.

[@postblitz]

Few bits of irony here: - Da Vinci DID in fact keep drawing the Mona Lisa nonstop for more than a decade. It's the sole painting he even carried with him into France when he was invited there by the king and spent his last years in - which is also why the painting is not in Italy. - Assassin's Creed is in fact a look into the past and even if it's a stale gameplay soup, it features historical world-building on an aesthetic level that is rarely encountered. Caesar 3 & Pharaoh and all the other Impressions City builders remain the highest standard for historical city building precisely because of the same reason, despite their gameplay being very simple. - "for something to qualify as art it has to stand still" directly contradicts The Performing Arts in shape, although not in spirit. The spirit of the sentence is contradicted by all the interpretations art such as theater plays have undergone in the centuries since their creation. Even a book can be reinterpreted centuries after it has been made in light of new paradigms brought about by technology.

[@swiggsoclock]

The Mona Lisa was repeatedly repainted and renaissance painters frequently bashed out paintings on a purely commercial basis - carvaggio spent an entire career knocking them out

[@sunlitsonata6853]

Final Fantasy XIV seems like a massive, massive exception to this rule for how well its expansions have been received and its strong focus on story by design. But even then it had an initially disastrous launch it needed to rebuild the entire game to carry itself out from

[@powerfulech0356]

Very true, and their effort to future proof the game recently to insure the story can still be played even in the future when the servers go down as well

[@Odesawaan]

Definitely agree but more because it's not designed to be continuously played until numb with existence like other MMOs. Their 'service' centrally focuses on a story being told, and everything else they put in as toys to play with if you want is never required.

[@jeremyoverton7047]

Agree 100%. Plus each of its expansions do capture a moment in time. There are metaphors in each of the stories that are relevant to the time that they released and these remain unchanged.

[@FSmith-kv4fj]

FFXIV also just wrapped up a complete story arc. If you were to play the game from vanilla to Endwalker and quit playing after the credits of Endwalker, you will have experienced a complete story with a definite ending that doesn't leave massive teasers and cliffhangers. Compare to say... Guild Wars 2 where every expansion leaves tons of questions and story arcs completely unresolved with a wink to camera that it will be resolved later.

[@iridium_nl]

FFXIV bungles Yahtzee's whole theory. Games as a service can indeed be art. They're not incompatible, that's ridiculous talk. Are they uncommon occurances? Absolutely.

[@shadogiant]

He did keep repainting the Mona Lisa, at least a dozen times. The reason its in the form it is now is the artist died.

[@Montesama314]

"I wonder if I should give her a brighter smile... Eh, I'll get to it tomorrow."

[@aiza9052]

The bit about grandma at 3:39 actually killed me. God the times are really interesting aren't they. xD

[@regesteel548]

It wasn't brought up in the video but in the thumbnail is destiny and I feel that is the best example of what a live service game can be. But it has had something that a lot of other live service games don't, a defined end point at least in the light and dark saga that's been going on since D1s release. The end point being after the final shape in 2024. Which can provide the best time to analyze it. Though this does have its flaws as you'll not be able to go back and play some things to experience it as the players did, a flaw im well aware of but oddly one I feel can become a strength solely through the lens of the game being an actual world you live in with other players. Using the painting example I think of destiny as the mountain itself and the painting is the story being told by the DLCs and the seasonal quests. And with them being stories told in a world that is ever changing it helps it feel real, like in the world around us there are billions of stories going on and we can only capture a few before they're gone forever. In part I think that's why yahtzee will never experience a game like destiny in its best form, its a game built around community and playing with friends. Not saying he doesn't have friends but we all know he doesn't do much multi-player and that's one of the core mechanics of destiny. For example starting all the way back at the first DLC for D1 you got the Crota's end raid where you killed Crota which is why his father Oryx attacked the Sol system in the taken king DLC. But if you're a solo player and never did the Crota's end it kinda falls flat on you as you never did the raid and never killed his son. What live service should and what i feel destiny is, is a huge operatic story. So to compare to the star wars trilogy (pick whichever you like) instead of 3 major films it'd be like getting a 1 hour episode ever week for years on end to tell the massive story and show off the world its taking place in. I understand the criticism of them, especially when it comes to pricing and even just bugs/issues that arise from games as a media but live service games could be like what MMO's should be/are. The biggest stories told across years and years with you playing a central role with your friends. With the community at large all adding their own spins to the world and the stories unfurling in it.

[@JusticeSoulTuna]

I'm so happy someone brought up good points about Destiny, finally. It is imo the best live service game, with a story that continues to improve and impress.

[@stevenneiman1554]

One of the reasons why i think that heavily pruning back copyright terms is a good thing is because I think that commercial art would be improved if the people in charge if its creation weren't incentivized to keep puppeteering the rotting corpse of a 30 year old franchise. And nothing would do that quite like anyone who wanted to being able to play with the same corpse, and also legally torrent the original works when the franchise was starting and needed a statement to get people's attention. It wouldn't be a magical panacea for all the problems of art as a business, but I think dramatically lowering the term of copyright would equally lower the life expectency of franchises, and that humanity would benefit.

[@fal_pal_]

The impact of something can be felt regardless if it could be criticized or not, or even properly remembered. There's so much art and music that we'll never know it's precise form but know that it existed at some point and influenced future generations

[@blueblaze5160]

I've always had the philosophy of "I want to play a game, I don't want to interact with a service."

[@lopzag]

I've started seeing multiplayer-focused games as a wholly different entity from story driven singleplayer games - more akin to playing a sport than experiencing a piece of art. Playing a multiplayer FPS has more in common with playing a game of football than it does with a game like Undertale or Elden Ring.

[@Florkl]

Fun fact: Leonardo Da Vinci is believed to have continued to refine the Mona Lisa for over a decade after he painted the bulk of it.

[@Chernobog34]

Shout out to TheOtherFrost in the beginning ad. One of my favorite SMITE streamers. Glad his voice is being used for good.

[@BIadelores]

There's a bit of a problem with the Mona Lisa. Problem is, a lot of art was in fact "updated" after release. Books and Theatre are perhaps the most infamous example of this. Some of the world's most famous books and books series like "In Search of Lost Time" famously got revised repeatedly. Meanwhile, it was common for theatre plays to be revised, so common that it was seen as unusual when they weren't.

[@justsomeguy9230]

Thanks for the caveat, always fun to hear how things are older than we think. That being said, I think the main difference here is that many works are updated but a lot of these services are designed to never be finished.

[@zeltzamer4010]

Except in those examples, the artists are still working toward something. It’s basically just a public first/second/whatever draft. But games as a service aren’t working toward any end goal. The only driving force is to postpone how long it takes for them to be discarded. There’s no artistic benefit to them being online exclusive either. They are literally, expressly designed to make money. Also, I wouldn’t say art being revised after release is THAT common outside of theatre. Most movies/books/paintings are finished when they’re done enough to be put out into the world (although I’ll cop to remasters or deleted scenes being added to films.)

[@lordasami]

@@justsomeguy9230 That in itself can be interesting. You can catalogue the history of the development and have an opinion on the entirety of the piece.

[@noxteryn]

@@zeltzamer4010 Exactly this. Games like Terraria, where the devs add more and more content, are fucking amazing. We want more of that. Games like GTA: Online, where any new update is created solely to pressure players into spending real life money or grind for hundreds of hours, is shit. We don't want that.

[@anna-flora999]

Did da Vinci break into the house of the guy who commissioned the mona lisa after delivering it?

[@diatere2316]

this is why I like the Splatoon model of live-sevice. a year or two of updates and changes and maybe an expansion, then a big explosive finale to both end it and to say "we're done with this game".

[@Glamador]

My hope is that, one day, games like Warframe and Genshin/Honkai Impact do, in fact, end. They *have* stories, with characters, and plot! But who knows if we'll ever see the end? I think it akin to monthly serialised publications, like Shonen Jump. There are upsides and downsides, ya know? You get immediate feedback that can be incorporated into the storytelling, and you get to see the artist(s) change and grow over time. But the chapters already written still exist, unlike with live service games. I guess that makes it different...

[@tahcko3140]

6:30 "All art says something about the human condition in the time that it was made"

[@cybertramon0012]

My issue with Live Service Games has a lot in common with Yahtzee’s point about how they’re always changing. That a lot of the events are timed or limited. If you don’t play during that time, then anything interesting or unique offered during that time is lost forever. And with so many games wanting our attention it feels like a chore when you have to log in every day to unlock the content. Or you got the game at a later date, only to find out there’s whole groups of content you can never access. Destiny comes to mind the most. I played through the first one’s entire lifespan. There are armour designs that are incredibly difficult to get because they were replaced with new expansion packs. And the hunt for the House of Wolves or Sparrow Racing questlines that are unavailable forever. Destiny 2 has had whole storylines and maps removed to make way for more content. So if you weren’t on the scene when these things happened, then you’ll never get to play them. I don’t like it when a game dictates my schedule for me.

[@hanniballahr94]

Appreciate the turn into the Hegelian definition of art near the end.

[@Roronoa2zoro]

More and more games transitioning into online multiplayer, live-service blobs is how I'm getting to realize I'm probably going to outgrow my hobby at some point in the near future. Just like my dad hasn't engaged with much music past the 90's I could well stop paying attention to new video games by the end of this decade, because the medium is shifting in a direction that I don't like and am powerless to stop. On a positive note, it could mean I'll seriously start working through my backlog at last.

[@cancerino666]

I stopped a while ago. It's rare now for a new game to come out I genuinely want to play

[@Roronoa2zoro]

@@cancerino666 Oh it's rare for me as well, I am just an eternally naive optimist and haven't quite decided to give up on new games just yet. I can feel it coming on, though. I reckon I could count on my fingers the number of games I'm currently looking forward to and I wouldn't even need the whole second hand. It's a shame, but it is what it is.

[@CheesecakeMilitia]

Has Yahtzee tried "Umurangi Generation"? It won the top prize at IGF last year, and I think about it a lot in the context of "games that *say* something". It has an even more overtly social message than a Papers Please or Bioshock, and it's something that takes balls in this industry that I wish I could find more strong examples of.

[@sachabourdeau358]

More hard hitting philosophy in this video than a bachelor's degree!

[@masterofdoom5000]

It sure is nice when a story is allowed to end, some level of comfortable closure presented. Spiritual successors are rad for this very reason.

[@FunkyDouch3000]

The point about game franchises needing to die really hits home. Halo is one of the best examples in my opinion. what has all the Halo titles 343i have made actually added to humanity and to gaming as an artform? Nothing, really, I'd argue. They've tweaked some things, changed some elements, updated graphics and mechanics and such, but as pieces of art they're vacuous. Bungie's run with the Halo franchise produced some great games and stories, and then they were done. everything 343 added after that has only diminished the experience. Imagine if all that money and resources that went into 343i producing more and more unneeded Halo titles went into producing an original IP or two instead. we might have gotten something worthwhile and lasting out of that.

[@danielgrezda3339]

One small thing I would add is I do believe in Yahtzees stance about art needing to not be changed, but I do have an exception with art releasing in chunks like shows or comics. If the episodes or chapters are not updated multiple times, I do think it still qualifies as art even though it is not complete. I draw the line if the art is changed, not if the art is complete. But don't take this the wrong way Ubisoft, I expect a completed game when I pay 60 dollars for it!!!

[@grimreefer9324]

"Games as a Service" is also pretty incompatible with "Games as Games", really. How programming often works is that for every month you work on implementing a new addition you'll be working three months on the sheer number of bugs that arise from it. And the bugs that arise from your bugfixing.

[@raistlarn]

99 bugs on the wall 99 bugs Take 1 down fix it and the computer breaks down now there are 250 bugs on the wall

[@BlurkFromUtterSpace]

The ever-growing spaghetti code of older service games. Why bother fixing the code when you got more MTX to implement.

[@thevgmlover]

Paladins?

[@maudley]

@@BlurkFromUtterSpace Even worse with how bad turnover rate is for devs. Really not a great thing to combine with a job that requires understanding a complex system that could have been done in multiple different ways, is likened to black magic by it's experts for sometimes unpredictable idiosyncrasies, and put together by who knows how many people who may have as little understanding of the source code overall as you do starting out.

[@deathcreatedthedead]

This is so true with Destiny that they took out content because newer content was breaking the old content. Instead of fixing it for newer players they discarded it.

[@Canadamus_Prime]

My biggest objection to the live service thing is the rampant exploitation, but you bring up a very good point about art. I have often thought that, as much as I love a given franchise, there has to be a point where it ends. I can name half a dozen franchises that I've enjoyed but their continuation has been to their detriment. Star Trek (although I am enjoying Strange New Worlds), Star Wars, Dragon Ball, the MCU... although maybe that last one is just over saturation.

[@LarkyLuna]

Funny you cite Mona Lisa DaVinci got Lisa to model for him in 1503. The portrait was updated multiple times until he gave up and left it unfinished in 1517 We only have the last snapshot of his live service, and *that* we consider art I guess Maybe live services are betas you continually pay for and the job is only finished when the service shuts down

[@LarkyLuna]

Apart from the fact they are never archived for posteriority

[@ThaSaruo]

Did not expect to hear Frosty when tuning into the Escapist

[@Scicianman]

Excellent as always and very well thought out. But one thing I hesitantly disagree with is the notion of not being able to properly judge, critic or analyze live service games in a historical perspective. We can so long as we adapt the way in which we do so. In stead of viewing them as part of a entire generation or era spanning multiple years, we will have to use the smaller units of measurement they occupy. Single years, parts of year, even potentially down to months or even weeks, to properly get a reference point of what was happening in game culture and wider society as a whole. And in some ways is already happening. As unofficial as they are, some people or even groups, are trying to create records of the various trends that pop up and just as quickly die off, that the modern social media age are producing and the context and reasons behind them. So while I do believe the transition will be long and arduous, it is possible.

[@kamikaze00007]

Here's a shorter take. Games as a Service is incompatible with art because they're just slot machines where you have to keep adding money while the casino keeps adding more slots to spin.

[@bendonatier]

I am going to raise a counter example of a game I enjoy that is on running, and a piece of art but I just want to say that it is an example of how to avoid this problem, and that I agree with most of this video. Final fantasy fourteen is at this point on its fourth expansion since the relaunch and is a very long running live service. It's an MMO that's the point. The difference is though that it's narrative understands that it's going to be around for a long time, and as a result takes a very long view, having the slow moments, breathing, letting the stakes fall back to normal so the escalation can mean something. It has side stories that matter and some that don't because they don't need to. There is so much there in terms of scale that it could only be done as a live service. It is still an MMO and a final fantasy story so if nothing else Yatz can ignore it, it's not for him

[@jaredsmith575]

I appreciate "games as art" but I also appreciate that games can just be that... games. Like... just a fun diversion. No one says baseball or soccer has to be art. They are fun to play, and fun to watch. Counterstrike/Fortnite/[your preferred RTS of choice here] can be just be "games as games". You can't, and shouldn't, judge CS:GO or Fortnite on the same metrics that you judge Bioshock or Life Is Strange.

[@EdenLippmann]

...except that performance art, aleatoric art (where elements are left to chance) and art involving audience participation have been things for centuries. The idea that a work of art can be continually created and developed, potentially to the point of never being truly finished, isn't even slghtly new. And no, art doesn't have to have a 'meaning' or some philosophical theme; a work of art is a curated experience, and there's nothing about the live service model that precludes that. Yes they're basically corperate cash grabs, but that's a different problem, one afflicting the entire industry. Also, art is not defined by criticism, it's defined by the experience of the audience.

[@CapnNapalm]

Yeah. This whole video could be better summed up to "I don't like live service games". That's a fine opinion to have. I'm not a fan myself, but its because of my personal negative experiences with them rather than some lofty musings of whether or not they're allowed to be art. The reality is that live service games can still have a story, they can still have a full game at launch, and they can be made to run well without tons of initial patches

[@SorakuFett]

I personally argue art is not defined by humans at all. Art is defined solely by its creation. *Quality* is defined by audience and critique. But anything that is created is art. Birdemic is just as much art as the Sistine Chapel.

[@EdenLippmann]

@@SorakuFett The problem I would have with that definition is that it seems too vague and all-encompassing to have much utility. I do believe there is a reason to differentiate, say, Michaelagelo's David and the Golden Gate Bridge, in terms of their purpose. I wouldn't draw any hard line between art and non-art - you could definitely discuss the artistic qualities of the Golden Gate Bridge, for instance - but characterising _all_ created things as art, to my mind, doesn't really reflect how people interact with things.

[@mattwo7]

6:33 This is some Ship of Theseus paradox style stuff right here: When a game fundamentally changes over the years, it's not the same game as it was before. This is evidenced by WoW Classic, which was meant to circumvent the popularity of all the illegal vanilla WoW servers, the illegal MapleStory "before big bang" servers, as well as archival "before big bang" versions of MS fansites like Hidden Street and Star Wars Galaxies fan servers that either use a version of the game before the combat update or before the "New Game Experience" update. You don't quite see this sort of thing with many other games though. Preservation certainly seems to be more important when it comes to old MMOs than it does modern GaaS games.

[@arellajardin8188]

Honestly, AC Infinity gives me some small hope for the franchise. From what I heard, it’s just a framework for delivering smaller, contained AC stories, where each “game” (or content pack) can focus in a specific experience. As opposed to Valhalla, which is so monolithic and neverending content, but most of the content doesn’t mean anything. I could be completely wrong, and Ubisoft could fall back to their old tricks. But I see the potential. Mirage could be classic style experience like the first few games. Red could be more stealth focused. Hexe could have a horror element. If it’s done right, this could allow for more diverse artistic expression, each game feeling different, instead of one massive, same-y blob.

[@ce6535]

"You can't analyze something until it has stopped moving." - So, we're giving up on relativity then?

[@BradyRamaker]

I think games have become big enough where they're transcending a single medium. Some are an amusement park or playground where nothing means anything, you just go to relax or have a time messing around, possibly with friends. Some of its an exploration of themes and motifs and storytelling that's been curated by a singular vision. Others are meditative aids where you vibe out and go into a zen state, like cozy games/farming simulators. Others are intellectual or skill based experiences meant to challenge you. Others are tools that you pen your own non-linear storyling with. It's interactive media now, and what we call "games" are simply a type.

[@rileyarmytage6142]

You absolutely hit the nail on the head, I think different types of games have different goals and objectives in what they are trying to achieve and should be judged on that and not for not being a different kind of game.

[@LemonGrinder]

This is a really good point; games are now as broad a category as movies or television, and goodness knows there are many equivalents to live-service games in TV. I suppose what's new now is that games as a service are getting much larger, better-looking, and better-funded, out of the cheap mobile "buy crystals to shorten cooldown" games stage.

[@LavenderAudio]

3:49 Getting your Jimquisition on a bit there, ahah, big ups.

[@levelsandgear5644]

Similarly, one of the things I find frustrating with "Games as a Service" is that - Two people can have a completely different experience with the same game - Making it very difficult to talk about. If two people played "Pac-Man", you both knew they had a similar experience. If two people played "Warcraft", they had a similar experience. With games as a service model, this is no longer the case, making it harder to have a shared reference/culture point. Can you imagine if movies were released, stayed in the theater, and every 2-3 months they changed the ending of the movie?

[@mercenarygundam1487]

Bang On Balls: Chronicles is what happens when Spyro, Mario Galaxy and Polandball/Countryballs get thrown into a mixer and seasoned with Banjo Kazooie.

[@BLZ231]

Great video. Personally I don’t think there’s necessarily anything wrong with continuing to update a game, but if it’s a single player game there should come a point where the developers draw a firm line under it and declare it finished, and resist the temptation to tweak it anymore. Of course multiplayer games are dependent on retaining a player base, and so in many cases will have to keep adding at least a few changes indefinitely.

[@Skeletons_Riding_Ostriches]

For multiplayer games you can just let the community run their own dedicated servers.

[@jneff6456]

'Games as a Service is Incompatible with Art' - Truer words were never spoken.

[@whoknows8264]

I'd like to see Yahtzee and Ross Scott have a conversation about the subject

[@Skeletons_Riding_Ostriches]

Oh, hell yes.

[@Kevin-cf9nl]

It's worth remembering games as a service aren't new. I was deep into several games-as-a-service games back in the early 90s (although they weren't called that then), for example. One of my favorite games-as-a-service games of that era, Terris, came out in 1993! I would say that its true, I wouldn't consider these games themselves to be art. But they certainly had a lot of art happening inside of them. Some games are works of art, but a lot of games as a service games are more akin to being some kind of gallery, I think.

[@subtlegong2817]

Most modern popular media strains the meaning of art. Most games or movies or music is made to be a product and therefore closer to a banana or chair. This is especially true for the way games are released these days

[@vulkendov5210]

Most classical art was also made to be a product, the only difference is that they were made for nobles, royals, and wealthy patrons. the idea that art should be made to say something is a relatively new one, starting around the 19th century.

[@jnaidoo12]

Interesting comment. Not all games have to have "serious" artistic aspirations like Bioshock, just like not all films or books have to be "Citizen Kane" or "Ulysses". But in the case of e.g. music or some types of theatre, there are precedents for performances that have an element of "performance as a service" - continuous improvisation and audience participation. The examples I have in mind would be things like square dancing, live DJ sets, or stand-up comedy performances.

[@eeuchler]

Idk sounds like live games are incompatible with reviews is not the same as being incompatible with art. Some of the narrower defentions sure, but the complaints brought up here would be true for soap operas, wrestling, and comic books interms of media that have no true ending and therefore can't be judge in a hollistic sense.

[@Robert399]

3:14 That's why people like TotalBiscuit and Jim Sterling deserve(d) a lot more appreciation, instead of just "eh, old news, stop going on about it, say something good for a change".

[@Kyller3030]

I'm still looking for a game journo like TB

[@AzathotFilm]

"You can't analyze something until it has stopped moving." I can understand the sentiment behind this especially from a critics perspective. I still feel that analyzing art after it has stopped moving is more archeology than art analysis. Many forms of art don't transcend time and space and many works get their power from being tied to a specific moment in time. In Finland famously Jimi Hendrix's gig in 1967 completely melted peoples minds. It created a boom for rock'n'roll music in a backwater country and inspired countless musicians. It was recorded by the finnish version of PBS but taped over a few years later (for a mediocre ballet performance). That performance was art with meaning and weight. It was a singular event that had meaning as art. The records we're lost, Hendrix died and now we can only get a vague idea of what it felt like to be in that audience through other recordings and what people have told us about the gig. But it would be hard to suppose that just because we can't analyse every nuance of the performance that it wasn't art.

[@pablorepetto7804]

Also, what about the Iliad and the Odyssey? Homer wrote them down, but they used to be encoded in an _oral_ tradition that regularly changed and expanded them. Calling those earlier forms "not art" would be unreasonable.

[@profcory1]

I've been struggling to describe my changing taste in games over the years, and you finally put an expression to it. Nowadays I'm much more likely to be into a game that's "about something." Faceless shooters and other multiplayer games don't do it for me anymore, nor the big AAA open world titles like the AC games you discussed. Never woulda thought I'd be an "artsy" game person, but here I am.

[@ItalianCanadianGuy94]

I honestly love these videos just as much as ZP, they're fantastic! Let's hope they don't go the way of Judging by the Cover

[@theescapist]

No plans to stop. Yahtzee enjoys writing them, we have fun editing them and sponsors have been showing up. Good way to keep the parent company away from trying to sponsor ZP too cause we know no one (including Yahtzee) wants that.

[@Mirro18]

I think there is a bit of a difference there that I would be looking at. There is "Games as a sport". Which is stuff like Fortnite, League of Legends (to a lesser degree but still), CS;GO and others like it. Their main focus is not to be art, they are supposed to be viewed as a sport. With all the repetitiveness that it can bring. And that can be a good thing actually in some senses of the word. Because some people want that kind of thing, and strive on that thing. And then there are "Games as art" which includes most games but also stuff like World of Warcraft and other MMOs, No man's sky, Warframe, Destiny and stuff like that. That might be were things apply that you said. We will be judged by the stuff that was popular in that regard. But I think it kinda is part of what video games can be. It can be sport and it can be art. It creates a human experience unlike other mediums like it. And while the money grabbing of companies like Ubisoft do threaten this, It is still a point worth discussing.

[@justsomeguywithsunglasses8418]

You should talk to Scott Ross about this. His "games as a service is fraud" is a fascinating video. Also...Freeman's Mind

[@zeltzamer4010]

The industry isn’t pushing empty assembly line products, you’re just being paranoid!

[@TheCreepypro]

love when yahtzee talks about games as art

[@nirast2561]

Ma! Get the camera! I'm -on TV- in a Yahtzee video!

[@SunOfCinder]

Frost doing the sponsor read was a surprisingly pleasant suprise

[@XFanmarX]

One tiny counter-argument: Not all games can be, or have to be art. Let the Fortnite's exist. There are enough timepieces even in our time that showcase culture and ideas of our generation(s), and we can't even appreciate all of those with the time we have.

[@phen0menos]

Precisely this. The problem with this argument is that there are multiple different conceptions of what a game is/can be/should be. Think about what the word "game" meant prior to the invention of the computer. It usually referred to things like Chess, card games, bowling, or tennis. Would anybody have asked if those things were art? Not to my knowledge (if someone knows of any instances of people discussing "games as art" prior to the invention of computer games please correct me). Now with the advent of video games we have a totally different conception of what games are/can be. For one thing, single-player games are far more prevalent now than they were back then. Pre-computer games were almost always a shared activity, either for social fun, friendly competition, or serious competition. Now games have evolved into something entirely different, something which is undeniably an artistic medium for self-expression, but it's not like the older paradigm of "games as a shared activity" went away. The two co-exist, and sometimes overlap. However, just because games _can_ now be art doesn't mean they _have_ to be

[@dannerhoinowski9520]

@@phen0menos well put

[@MorganWick]

3:12: Matt, you should have drawn a circle around "The Last Chapter" under "Valhalla" and stuck "LOL" next to it.

[@ezraclark7904]

Do you think that games with endless expansions qualify? Like card games that get a new set every 6 months, but you can still play the game as it was on release.

[@admixx5444]

Its weird you made a video about because i was thinking about how multiplayer games mostly have a shelf life which is an odd thing for a piece of art.

[@Nerdnumberone]

I know that videogames can be art, but should all videogames aspire to be "art" or should some focus on being enjoyable in the present, without worrying about having deeper meaning or historical value? In retrospect, Yahtzee didn't claim that games had to be art, but his complaint could be interpreted like that. Does art need to recorded to be art? Is an improvised song or skit any less artistic if only one audience will experience that specific event? A modern production of a Shakespeare play is going to be a different experience that its first performance. Similarly, the experience of a game will change as it is updated or emulated. Does a game need a story to be art, or can the basic mechanics deliver a message or theme? I'm not saying that all games as a service (or indeed any game currently on the market) are necessarily art. I'm just questioning whether an ongoing game is incompatible with art. Perhaps a story can write itself based on player actions and interactions.

[@Harrier_DuBois]

Games as a service could work with a good multiplayer game, I know Yahtzee doesn't play many. For instance Age of Empires 2 or 3, they are games that people want to play over and over because it's like a sport, like a game of chess, it doesn't need to be improved necessarily, but adding new maps and patching bugs and hacks is a really useful service, worth some money.

[@TS6815]

In an ocean of hot garbage, Terraria feels like a lone high point in the GaaS / fix it in post world. A rock solid wonderful game at release that grew into one of the finest finished products in all of media (not just games, and I'm not kidding even a little bit). That dev team showed what's truly possible when all the time, money, talent and passion come together in this system and in a lot of ways it's soured every subsequent promise by devs to grow and support their work after its released. So many games in my library (even good ones) feel half finished in comparison, just buried under the potential that this industry *should* be making possible, but just isn't when the big money alternative is so much more prevalent

[@MF-fd2ug]

stardew valley is the other big one in that regard. already good game made so much better with post launch support. also factorio possibly but im not how it actually was when it first came out.

[@aeiouiji]

you know the terraria devs love their game because they keep saying "this is the last update" and then go on to do another huge update.

[@somestupiddudewithayoutube4676]

@@aeiouiji and they’re making their final one literally called ‘labour of love’

[@1Raptor85]

Red is straight up addicted to giving his players free game expensions, he's said like 8 times now that "this is the final content patch!" only to keep going a few more years with more new content, lol. He actively chats with terraria fans and often implements their ideas into the game as well.

[@raistlarn]

Terraria, NMS, Stardew Valley, Factorio, I'd even throw Subnautica (even if I felt below zero was a downgrade) in as they are still releasing free expansions to it. Honestly these devs have made a fan out of me.

[@XThunderBoltFilms]

It's interesting that I made this exact point to a friend a few days ago. Its not even so much just in the literal "game art" portion, but I consider how the mechanics of a game are such as customization, how unlocks and progression work etc. that are included when I define the 'art' of a game. It used to be the case for example that customizing your character to the most full and awesome extent, giving as much freedom as possible was the goal of every FPS developer. And steadily player freedom and expression grew until suddenly - it was no longer in a developers best financial interests. Instead, selling 'skins' or armour kits as part of microtransactions was the best way to make money. And swiftly, customization like Halo Reach's or call of duty black ops II disappeared. Even something simple as player emblem creation is deliberately limited in favor of stuffing pre-made emblems inside unlocks to pad them out. The result is that they become absolutely meaningless, since you can't even choose what you want, and you cant customize it at all. In these areas games have objectively become worse because its not financially advantageous to make it better. And that sucks ass.

[@thnkng]

I think we've gone way too far with the whole 'games can be art' idea and have now strayed into 'games *must* be art'. Games don't have to be art. Really, they don't. Is Cards Against Humanity art? What about Bingo? Is Chess art? Most people would say no. But they're still worth doing. Because they're fun. Things are allowed to be just *fun* as a past time and not have to give some deep message with an underlying theme. Most games outside of video games are like that. There's no real 'theme' in Risk of Rain, for example. There's barely much of a story there if you're not one of those weirdos that delves way too much into games with a barebones story. But the game is still worth putting hours into because it is *fun to play.* Art is in no way the only criteria for a game to be good and suggesting it is is elitist bullshit - sometimes a game just needs to be fun and give people something fun to do. That's what games have been for most of human history. And that's okay.

[@martingraham801]

Interesting point. I just wanted to say I agree, but that there is a sense of something we get from GAAS, it is a mirror. It does show that a lot of people do seem to enjoy gaming as an escape, enjoy games they can enjoy as long (as the servers are on) as they want, and shows us that there is a lot of appreciation for instant gratification. I can get that enjoyment out of a Fortnite win within 30 minutes where as my re-playthrough of Bioshock just the other day took me many hours because I wanted to really appreciate the game for about all it had to offer. I think that live service games do show us a snapshot of society, it just paints a very negative picture overall I say. That being said I think there is a place for these kind of games and that there should be a line in every gamers head where they can say this is art or this is a service because the artless deserves a place as well. There is nothing artistic about needing to do the laundry, but there is still satisfaction in clean clothes.

[@El-Burrito]

This video and Ross Scott's videos on Games as a Service are the discussion we need.

[@gingerinajacket8519]

Metal Gear solid V had an online service, you were just playing in offline mode I will grant this, they divided the line between games as an artful story, with the game as a base management sim in a world of other people playing base management sims.

[@MrTheDlanor]

You know I've been getting back into Yu-Gi-Oh a lot lately and perhaps it's better to think of these live services as somewhat similar to card games. A constantly evolving format with no real artistry beyond mechanics and card art/graphics. After all Yu-Gi-Oh had to make an anime to explain WHY we should care about the card game. I e it had to create actual "art" to sell the card game mechanics. What's interesting to me is that even that step is now removed. I wonder what changed?

[@V-Jes]

Yugioh was both a manga and an anime years before the card game came out so that part falls quite flat, not to mention the anime also hasn't gone anywhere but it just now uses a different duel format called rush duels...

[@jonathandear4914]

I remember they did this a lot with toys too back in the day, main one that comes to mind though from my own experience would be bionic, you got the toys and the admittedly enthralling world and stories of the franchise that further get people invested into the toys.

[@BerenElendilAPGaming]

@@jonathandear4914 And can I just say, the story on its own is so good!! I'm actually running a campaign in the setting (at least my own version of events, with more FromSoft-y vibes mixed in), the sense of mystery and having everything slowly revealed was the best part of the series. "Why are these robos living on a tropical island? Why do they have a deeply-entrenched religion in their culture?" It was just unusual enough, intriguing enough, that it inspired so much curiosity.

[@jonathandear4914]

@@BerenElendilAPGaming another example I suppose is also mobile suit gundam. but yeh I agree with you.

[@durgenthefirst]

My take regarding about art being a snapshot of history is that it's important to realize that the nature of Games as a Service is a fairly recent phenomenon to video games when you consider the totality of video game history. While it was present in MMOs in the 2000s (and supposedly existed in the late 90s but don't quote me on that), GaaS only recently took of in the mainstream in the 2010s and its role in the 2020s is fairly unknown. This is because, being only 2 years into the 2020s, what trends may end/start are still mostly unknown and up to speculation. It's not truly possible therefore to have a snapshot of the era of GaaS we're in currently as the photo of it hasn't finished being developed for us to see it. Ironically, for us to understand why and how GaaS came about (and whenever it's incompatible with art), it has to end first (at least in the mainstream), in order to have a comprehensive and clear view on why GaaS got so big initially (and how it will eventually end). When that may occur is up to speculation, though I'm of the opinion it will be due to the homogenization of media with business hitting a "breaking point" (even then, who knows WHEN that breaking point will happen and why).

[@jonathanbaldwin5816]

Like all sweeping statements, "All Live Service Games Cannot Be Art" has its exceptions. Destiny 2 has been doing a great job of putting out serialized stories with small character focused stories every season and larger over arching stories each expansion. Much like a book series, we can't evaluate it as a whole until it's finished, but we should still be able to rate each season after it's done.

[@danielboyd7810]

Destiny 2 is an interesting example because in my view it supports the point that live service is not compatible with art. I look no further than the removal of the Forsaken story from the game to support that claim. They removed one of the most emotional and compelling stories they have ever told in their universe for the purpose of becoming live service. It's hard to appreciate the art of it when someone experiencing it for the first time now will be missing big parts of it.

[@NotThatGuy_YepThatGuy]

@@danielboyd7810 I left Destiny 2 for this very reason.

[@kyro8581]

I feel like Destiny 2 is one of the best examples of live service games not being art. The game is so big they are getting rid of content. The main story from the original game and its better expansions are long-gone. Perhaps Final Fantasy XIV could be an exception, but Destiny 2 is not.

[@lunarazure9969]

Its also very hard to evaluate a book series when the author decides they don't need the first 3 books anymore, and anyone coming in new to the series has to start from book 4. Except at least they don't go to your house and confiscate the books you already bought, unlike Destiny 2 which decided it didn't need half its content and if you already paid for it then too bad. Destiny 2 is the perfect example of Live Service Games gone wrong where they straight up removed content people paid for, then make you pay again to play the new DLC they replaced it with.

[@danielboyd7810]

@@lunarazure9969 This is a great analogy!

[@ProgEnjoyer397]

Not only does the whole practice of GaaS have issues artistically, but there's a whole bunch of legal ramifications tied to it as well. Accursed Farms does a great video, "Games as a Service is fraud" highly recommend it

[@Thamian]

I think you're missing the most fundamental point of art here (and one that you've expounded upon yourself) - art is there to make you feel something - it's an emotion sythesis object. This ultimately where we do unfortunately have to put Fortnite or WoW (or for that matter, Elite Dangeorus) into the art category - becasue people who play and enjoy those games (even as they mutate and change over time) are doing so because of how those games make them feel - that might be the comraderie they have with the people they play with, the satisfaction of victory over another person, or in the case of Elite, the wonder of wandering the infinite while listening to podcasts. However, where I think a lot of live service games seem to go sideways and fall out of that category is that a lot of them are designed to be disposable - just another skinner box to entertain for a short time until the next one is kicked out the door - and that I think is where you find the difference between live services that are incompatible with being art, and the ones that are: the act of mutation, of change and improvement and alteration over time because it's not just a throwaway thing, is where they can be art. Which would also rule it out from the time capsule thing I suppose - but then most of these games that do last have stages, are well documented and so on - and will eventually end. Maybe it's the whole "it's history once it stops being current events" sort of debate just in a slightly different field.

[@thomaswoodward818]

Jesus christ this was a really good episode. I could sit and watch Yahtz argue the theoretical philosophy of art all day

[@WillJackDo]

"Entertainment gives you a predictable pleasure… Art leads to transformation" -Makoto Fujimura

[@jackukridge5381]

The Mona Lisa was an odd comparison to make as Leonardo continually screwed with the painting in a manner similar to George Lucas with Star Wars. Even at his death he considered it unfinished. It is also worth noting that Leonardo accidentally destroyed some of his own works, The Last Supper basically disintegrated and he inadvertantly melted a mural he made.

[@BSideWasTaken]

Turns out games aren't always art, sometimes, they're *games*. i.e. played for fun and/or with a skill element like I get what Yahtz is saying but by his logic we should be questioning the artistic value of whatever sportsball game is happening tonight

[@ThePhiphler]

This is excatly why dead people, and more specifically dead artists, are more interesting than living ones to analyze; because it's possible to draw final definitive conclusions and you won't have the person set out to subvert your analysis the next day.