grand theft auto games illustrate a weird art principle. in the early games (gta2), heavily pixelated, you are no one. its a generic city. so, you could be anyone — anywhere. you read into it. everything meets you, the viewer, halfway.

then theres a graphics advancement: gta3. now youre a particular guy in a particular city, but he doesnt talk. you still read yourself into it.

another step forward: vice city. now the main character (you) talks. has an explicit nature, character, and backstory. doesnt meet you halfway at all. its not you. okay — but a lot of the stores are still generic, random NPCs are still big polygons — you can read into them.

cut to now: hyper particular setting. fully fleshed out characters. now the NPCs are fleshed out fully as well. you can see their jewelry, hear how they speak, each one is clearly "a character".

no space left to read into anything. its all point blank, right there. no part of the world meets you halfway.

theres an artistic spectrum for how much a world comes to meet you, and leaves space for you.

it isnt inherently good or bad, but all art has this aspect. its part of what people respond to, usually without realizing it.

— owen cyclops (@owenbroadcast)

Games should have either zero story at all or have the story entirely conveyed through esoteric lorebooks strewn through the world that you have to actively seek out.

Every man hour wasted rigging a 3d model to lip sync or recording dialogue instead of working on particle fx and giblet physics is an affront to the art form.

Linearity and fidelity belongs to the platonic movie. The platonic videogame, in contrast, is made of geometric shapes colliding and exploding with kinetic ecstasy — a far more noble and noetic pursuit for a soul drawing nearer to the Forms

Gamers have such impoverished tastes and are so embarrassed by the years they've wasted on rooty tooty point and shooties that all you have to do is spoonfeed them a mid Gilmore Girls episode and they think they're experiencing Dostoevsky, so long as they're pressing buttons.

— Dudley Newright (@NewRightPoast)

— Heliotrophy (@Heliotrophy)