Freezamite you're either willfully disregarding the definition of the word medium when it suits you, or you're being extremely obtuse just for the sake of it. Video games count as a medium
No, videogames weren't created as a medium of anything, and they've become a medium by transforming themselves and copying what the real mediums (like cinema or paintings) had.
Were Pacman or Space invaders or Shinobi a medium? A medium of what exactly? That's what defined what a videogame is.
Videogames are games displayed through a video signal, and they're good as Video-
games for what has always defined a video-game: its design and its rules.
That being said, can you use a video game as a medium? Only in the same way I was "playing movies" when I was a kid with my friends and a video-camera.
The "playing movies" thing was funny because we invented our own recording rules, and the movies themselves were a total mess but it was a good game for us, funny and all.
Does that mean that "playing movies" is the same as making movies? No. If someone had obligated us to treat the game like a medium and instead of recording following our own rules we had been forced to record properly to achieve a good product as a medium, then we would've hated that without any doubt and it would've become a bad game by any means. In fact, it would've stopped to be a game.
Now you can say: "but I enjoy more watching a game with good graphics than playing an excellently designed game with bad aesthetics".
And this is something totally legit, you can feel like that. But then you don't like videogames, you like the immersion or the good images that a videogame can bring as a result of the media it's displayed through, in the same way that if we had been little geniuses our fan-made kid-movies could've been great as proper movies as well.
But playing movies was good as a game independently of the quality of them as movies and only because of the "recording" rules we set and how we recorded them.
ViewtifulJC said:
Mechanics don't exist in a vacuum. They all start from a central idea, even the vaguest idea, and all the little elements that make up a game. The font color, the font itself, the character design, the music, the animations, the sound effects...these are all aesthetics. If you can't convey your mechanics to the senses, you don't have a game. You don't have anything.
Like...I can't even imagine Tropical Freeze being as good or bad as it is without the aesthetics. Take away David Wise music, the sound, the character designs(or the characters period), the font, the text, the platforms, the colors, the animations...take away all the aesthetics you just take away the entire game.
It's a bit funny how you dodged my analogy to your flawed logic and didn't answer to it, so I'll try it again:
"Like...I can't even imagine Football being as good or bad as it is without the popularity. Take away Lionel Messi, the huge stadiums, the player's sex appeal (or the players period), the ball, the lines on the ground, the ground where you play, the equipment colours, the player physical capacities...take away all the popularity you just take away the entire game."
See where the fallacy is? Football can't be played without players, nor balls, nor a plain field. But that doesn't mean that those things are something that influence the quality of football as a good or bad game. You may like football more if Messi is the one playing than if it's a 5 year old kid, but the game is as good if it's played by Messi as if it's played by a 5 year old kid.
That's what has always defined a game, and video-games are games displayed through a video signal. PERIOD.
ViewtifulJC said:
Like, I get it Freezamite, you really want to be Mr. Hardcore Gamer, but your weird war on aesthetics is very puzzling. Its why you keep getting banned. Its why they took your thread privileges away.
No, that's not about being a hardcore gamer, that's about being a gamer period. I don't have anything against aesthetics, in fact I've participated on graphical discussions and such.
What I'm against is at putting aesthetics over what defines a game when judging video-games, in the same way I would be against someone judging how good a sport is based on "how popular the players are" even when I have nothing against discussing about if Leonel Messi is a good player or if it's better as a player than Cristiano Ronaldo.