The Artist is Absent
Added 2016-07-26 13:00:16 +0000 UTCThe finalized version of The Artist is Absent is now online. Go tell everyone you know.
Comments
As if this game couldn't be more meta... I posted about this game on the book face and how it made me feel (I too had a friendship rapidly go south so my reaction was similar to Ian's), and a friend who took the recommendation had an almost exactly opposite reaction.
AaronRobertoMusic
2019-11-02 00:04:50 +0000 UTCOkay. I actually really appreciate this. Maybe a straightforward thesis in the "down-there" would go a long way. It's in the title: "The Artist is Absent," but it's a bit cryptic. I think I could not see it, because that strikes me as such a flatly obvious statement: "The narrator is not the author." Or, at least, not necessarily; especially for video-games! I don't like to guess what the subject is. That's I think probably part of the frustration people may've felt about TBG. But I am pro "spoiler." I want to know as much about a piece as possible going in, I get the most out that way. It's fascinating how different people's minds can be. Or frightening when you consider our apparent capacity for extremes out of left field. (I'd be surprised if anyone can think of one thing that no person would ever do. That thought always boggles my mind. Maybe this is why people fear diversity so: we're so diverse there's no telling what we'll do!)
Michael
2016-07-28 13:37:31 +0000 UTCYou explained a bunch of ideas I was only passingly familiar with really well. I really loved this video thanks!
Caoimhe
2016-07-28 09:20:46 +0000 UTCI'm generally loathe to explain my videos beyond what's in the videos themselves, but, if it helps: I felt like most of the discussion of TBG got very fixated on teasing out the layers of meta and fixated a lot on Coda's realness/not realness, or fixated on the different things Coda might represent. I felt a lot of people danced around what the game itself was about and mostly talked about HOW the game was about what it was about. But I'm also aware that my way of looking at storytelling through the lens of critical theory may have made my reading easier for me than it was for other folks, who don't always have the language to discuss Authors and Narrators as separate concepts, so doing a take on TBG was also a fine opportunity to discuss a lot of narratology. As for thesis, my thesis is, simply, as I say in the video, "Don't Mistake The Narrator For The Author," and the bulk of the video is laying the groundwork for that sentence to make sense. I am as surprised as anyone that it's being received so well, but my best guess is that that framework is new to a lot of people. I know I was really excited to learn all that stuff about narrative in the first place, and part of sharing it was in the hopes other people would be excited as well.
Ian Danskin
2016-07-28 01:31:34 +0000 UTC(I'm in my 30s.)
Ian Danskin
2016-07-28 01:21:54 +0000 UTCI feel bad. I don't understand the fanfare in the Youtube comments. I still can't tell what the thesis is. Maybe you have to experience TBG and/or followed the aftermath (something seems to have occurred) to understand this video. That shouldn't be necessary, but I feel like either everyone is gladhanding this video, or I'm an alien from outer space. It's a good video, but I feel like I'm not seeing it for what everyone else is.
Michael
2016-07-27 23:03:07 +0000 UTCPeople vastly underestimate how much time/work is involve in pretty much everything :) I honestly still can't wrap my head around how casually people prepare videos for the Internet. Much less very-polished material. It's definitely generational. People in their 30s, I don't think for the most part can even conceive of setting up video and lighting and everything, and usually just to do something stupid on the Internet. So much is involved.
Michael
2016-07-27 18:19:51 +0000 UTCFor what it's worth, I didn't understand what I was supposed to take away WRT the part about "TBG," I understood what the game was doing/about, and that it was being used kind of as an example, but I am not sure how explaining how these things--that most people probably take for granted--work relates to TBG. Still I am glad to have learned something about TBG (without having to sit down with it.) I just feel like the piece was too muddy in this regard. If it's a three-legged stool, for me, one leg was sunk into some mud somewhat. My take on TBG is it's a follow-up to Stanley Parable, which is a line of arguably gimmicky titles, so the artist felt a need to do something similar to follow-up their prior success. So they chose to show the general public what it's like to mess around in level-designing software, doing things you're not supposed to. I don't mean this in a dismissive way, but one can argue that it's avoiding doing a work (of art) proper, if there is such a thing. To sell this experience, it is wrapped in layers of interpersonal mental gymnastics. Because things need gimmicks nowadays. I get it's a thriller/faux-documentary, but I don't understand what this piece is saying about the audience's relationship/duties, if any. Is there a "This is Phil Fish" parable in here? Was "Davey" similarly dissected in full view of the Internet? Or are we to applaud him, and revel in his subterfuge? I don't think it was ever properly framed. Peace out.
Michael
2016-07-27 18:13:26 +0000 UTCThat's ironically assuring. I can work with that. I love me some Chris Franklin, and I'm gonna have to rewatch his essay now, but no bells in my dome rung throughout the whole video about it being similar to his video. Whatever you did, it worked, and I learned more through it. PS: You came out of left field with that pretension joke and landed it so well that I was laughing for a good 2 minutes after the video was over. Keep on keeping on.
boy_carmelina
2016-07-26 22:02:46 +0000 UTCPudding = life, that's what.
Ian Danskin
2016-07-26 21:48:50 +0000 UTCBad news: the feeling that you have nothing to add never goes away. I spent a lot of the edit of this video feeling like I was just saying all the same stuff Errant Signal already said, just with different emphasis. All you can do is get better at tamping that shit down and doing your thing in spite of it.
Ian Danskin
2016-07-26 21:48:18 +0000 UTCI can't believe you've made another video where, by the end, I am left thinking "how is this guy so good and how do I become him." I can see why it took you so long to write, though. Brief as the 'fundamentals' parts were, I can imagine each took quite a bit of time to research then simplify and truncate. I remember borrowing a semiotics book from the university library in college and it starting way too far of where I was. Then again, I was a science major, so what did I know. I actually had to sit here and think for a few minutes to remember what I took when I first played Beginner's Guide. I know I loved it, thought it was much more honest than Stanley, and made me feel that much closer and inspired by Wreden. At the same time, it sort of sealed for me the idea that people who make things on the internet may seem approachable, but they really should be given the same space I'd naturally have between myself and, say, Al Pacino. In the end, I thought it was about the frustrations of creation, of making something and feeling it is bad, or forgetting why you started and having to reconstruct its meaning to finish or continue with it, or it being perceived as a completely different story than what I intended it to be, and so on. The idea that this is just a sample from a relatively young medium of how far compiling and decompiling a work can go freaks me out. I'm a physics major, and I've always wanted to write (and enough strangers have complemented my writing unknowingly to know that I've got _something_ going), but learning about all of this makes me feel like I could never add to what has already been done.
boy_carmelina
2016-07-26 21:44:14 +0000 UTCGod enter-to-submit is delightful. Anyway, I enjoyed your video and am proud that my patreon sheckels could finance it. It's definitely a game that requires pulling apart tons of "but what even IS a _____?" questions to talk about fairly. What even IS a game? What even IS friendship? What even IS pudding?
Aaron
2016-07-26 21:29:26 +0000 UTCHey! When I first played Beginners Guide I was completely flummoxed at the online analysis of it. I found it all lacking, as if Game Reviewers™ realized they were facing something complex and layered and felt like pointing out that fact was doing it a service. Looking at it from the perspective of "is Coda real?" or "I dunno I think this game may be trying to SAY something" feels like monkeys looking at a black monolith and wondering if it's full of pudding.
Aaron
2016-07-26 21:26:27 +0000 UTC:D
Ian Danskin
2016-07-26 14:17:43 +0000 UTCI didn't know what to expect when the script kept growing but this was so good that I actually became very excited when you mentioned linking some further reading in your video description. Excellent work.
gomollusk
2016-07-26 13:20:56 +0000 UTC
