It;s funny, because now that the crew are in Giant Bomb, the reviews are much more personal to their own experience with the game. The reviews feel that much more interesting and are better for it, if you ask me.
@GoldenWoozie since you've downloaded them all could you upload them for other duders who want to hear them? I'm currently listening to the oldest bombcasts, but even earlier than that would be awesome, also if you haven't it guessed yet, I'm lazy :D
Don't want to do that? no problem, I'm just asking.
@dreffen Gamespot's The Hotspot. But considering Jeff Gerstmann was fired near the end of 2007 for his Kane and Lynch review being... well... honest, I'm guessing this is well before that. Also considering both Carrie Gouskos and Alex Navarro are both on this recording, so yeah.. this was early 2007 at the latest.
@dreffen Yes there is an archive. If you go to GameSpot and search "Hotspot" in the search bar you'll find the Hotspot's main page. On the right hand side there's a mini scroll box with every single episode. You have to scroll down pretty far to get to 2006, and you have to download each episode individual (no zips or anything) but they're there if you want em. I also personally downloaded all the episode in case of nuclear catastrophe and what not.
Video Game is GAME not ART! Is there ART in Go/Baduk/Weiqi GAME? Is there ART in Chess GAME? Is there ART in RISK Board GAME? Is there ART in Monopoly Board GAME? Is there ART in Deck of Cards GAME? Is there ART in Basketball GAME? Is there ART in Football GAME? Video Games are the Youngest RELATIVES of those Traditional GAMES that I just listed! BTW, Roger Ebert is correct on that Video Game is not ART! Video Games should never forget its true ROOT and EVOLUTION! >=)
"please take a look at Bioshock and tell me if that doesn't looks to you a BIT like art... "
Nah, it looks like MONEY to the Filthy JEWS to me! BioShock is just System Shock 2 Wannabe!! {roll my eyes}
Anyhow, have I tell YOU a story about one of the Taiwanese Guys that I know? He is a Doctor today because his father break his hand that DRAWS.... haha!! >=P
REAL Artists in our Human History die POOR while making some GAY FILTHY Bankers very RICH!! >=/
Whitey can't draw too well today! Just look at American Animations VS Japanese Animations!
BTW, can YOU draw? Have YOU won First Place in School ART Contests? I kicked Whitey ARSES before!
Of course, I know at least 4 or more Taiwanese Guys that can out-draw me from Taiwan! It made me realized that I kicked only those LOOSERS that think Video Game is ART!
Filthy JEW, go make your Circles and Squares out of TOILET PAPERS for your South Park! Those are ART for sure! >=P
Filthy Bernard Madoff JEWS Bankers love ART!! Why wouldn't they? ART is like MONEY to them! ART let them invade TAX and something for them to SPECULATE with aside OIL! ART also showed how FILTHY RICH that they are to afford those ART!!
People working in the VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY are 2D/3D Animators! I can see why YOU loved Artists because they are PAID so much less as well! {roll my eyes}
It seems like CENSORSHIP is ON! All my messages about our Cavemen Ancestors is deleted, which I explained perfectly well why Video Games or GAMES are not ART!
People like YOUR KIND just don't want TRUTH!
ART is just a RELIGION to push it on people that don't agree with it, and I'm one of them!! >=P
Before dawn of mankind, earth is covered in ICE (Ice Age)! The only way for our Ancestors to survived is to hunt down those Woolly Mammoths (Giant Elephant) for food!
They are those that went up against without a GAME PLAN! They are killed because they are DUMB!
That's until a Wise Leader decided to use various Stones to represent those Monster Elephants and Men!!
it interesting to see how Jeff's take on reviews changed...look at GiantBomb, and how they review games there...they talk about them from a personal experience point of view...Jeff's perspective changed, because they say that there are so many gamers now, tat it is impossible to make a review that is right for everyone
I like how Jeff would speak his mind and sometimes I agreed with him, but I think that PURELY technical reviews are idiotic and bad.
I think games are art, not in SOME ways, as Jeff believes, but for what they are as a whole. I think not all games are ARTISTIC -- I think most lack artistry. But I think they are an artFORM.
To me, art is meant to evoke emotions and thoughts. Games DO that and they do so by bringing sensory forms of entertainment to you in an interactive medium.
You don't get any kinds of emotions when playing games, NOR do you think at all when you play them?
No offense, but in that case, why and HOW do you play them?
Interacting with a game requires thought processes or else nothing happens.
With no emotional or mental reward, what's the point in playing a game at all? Even if that emotion is simply the feeling of having fun, that's still an emotion, and one that games alone do not cater to.
Some games evoke emotion but not ALL of them so I feel they cannot be really classified as art. As a graphic designer/photographer myself, I do have an appreciation for Video Games ever since I was around 4 or 5.
I wouldn't really say that the thought process used is similar to the one I get when viewing an expressive piece of art because its more methodical to me..(not so much the motives for how/why they chose to make some decisions) I play video games because its a form of relaxation for me.
No offense, but by the argument "not ALL of them do so" that means that NOTHING is really an art form.
Not all books evoke meaningful emotions out of me, nor do all movies, TV shows, or paintings.
So to me, that argument doesn't work.
If they have the potential to do so and, as a general rule, elicit thoughts and emotions, then to me, it's an art form. That doesn't mean I think all games are ARTISTIC, specifically, but I would say the same for ANY medium.
Heres what i am thinking after all these long ass posts. Sadly i can't take my thoughts and string them out among a couple dozen comment entries.
When i buy any video game - in general - i expect a level of interactivity not found in movies and the arts of literature. Lets face it, Choose Your Path story books just don't cut it. We want to carry our selves and our protagonist through the world with our agenda or at least an agenda that makes some damn sense to us.
Movies are designed to take us along for the ride we invest in.. The melancholy tones in Silent Hill's movie, or the "Don't tread on me" in Shoot 'em Up.. They are all assisted with the fact that the viewer usually is entirely subject to lots of different styles in writing, visual stimulation and things that video games just have a near impossible time replicating.
Books are given the power of our own personal perspective. No one can really tell you what the gals look like in Wheel of Time. The writer gives you a description but chances our what you and the other ten readers imagine are different.
We get to imagine what the world is like in a written book.
In video games the writers are limited by deadlines much worse off then script writers for a screen play oh and then they have technological troubles with the way they get to portray their world.
This is why video games are so hard to place as an art. I can't say games don't earn it but i can say not all games deserve to be called art.
We are usually limited in some form or another that sets our imagination apart from the rest of the forms of expression, so we lose a lot of the ability to - whats the word here? - Perceive the world as we want to because theres a damn game to code, act and capture voice for. So much is lost in the translation we have a hard time calling it art.
He's mostly right about this. Most video games are approached as products with an end goal of profit. This means that (by and large) there might be a good deal of craftsmanship that goes into a video game, but rarely does it transcend its nature as a time filler and profit maker to actually become art.
Besides, examining popular "story-based" games like MGS, Final Fantasy etc. from a literary perspective, they fall far short of mediocrity.
I think most people just assume that games don't have a good story, but don't actually have a literary background knowledge. I don't want to accuse you of anything, but that tends to be the case.
Plus most stories in books isn't so much the story itself, it's the devices used throughout. Metaphors, foreshadowing, juxtpositions, etc. The Scarlett Letter for instance is a pretty simple story, just packed with those types of literary things. [Continued]
If everyone keeps thinking convincing themselves games have bad stories, they'll never appreciate a good one when it comes a long. Shadow of the Colossus I think is more literary than Metal Gear Solid 4 or Final Fantasy could ever be. It also uses the unique part of gameplay, interactivity, to tell part of that story, and to set a mood, other games haven't done that before without the aid of cutscenes. I think Jeff is close minded, he hasn't even played SOTC, and only enjoys MGS cuz its "crazy"
What makes you qualified to judge the literary merits of a video game story?
You're right that a large part of literature is prosaic style, device, etc. However, good literature generally has a coherent story. I can't say the same for video games in general.
You mention Shadow of the Colossus as an example of good story telling in games. I agree, but it's also the rare exception. It's also plot driven, and the plot actually sustains itself (doesn't wear out its welcome).
However, there isn't anything in the story that could not also be duplicated in a film. The story is relayed through cut scenes, the techniques of which are borrowed from the visual language belonging to film. They can be analyzed from the perspective of editing, framing, and mise-en-scene.
What makes it fun to play is that it is a game. And in order to be a fun game, it goes back to those same basic issues of control, graphics and other programming and technical issues.
Accepting that cut scenes, world building, and dialogue bubbles are mimetic functions fully explored in other media, I don't see games as art. Something like it, though, in the better cases.
Video game reviews really don't have any business talking about that though. I have a strong emotional attachment to Soul Calibur. According to you "fighting games suck." You wouldn't consider it art, but for my money, I have far more emotional attachment to playing that than Shadow of the Colossus.
It;s funny, because now that the crew are in Giant Bomb, the reviews are much more personal to their own experience with the game. The reviews feel that much more interesting and are better for it, if you ask me.
CornishRocker 5 months ago
@GoldenWoozie since you've downloaded them all could you upload them for other duders who want to hear them? I'm currently listening to the oldest bombcasts, but even earlier than that would be awesome, also if you haven't it guessed yet, I'm lazy :D
Don't want to do that? no problem, I'm just asking.
B3taBug 8 months ago
@B3taBug Like I said already. Every Hotspot episode is on Gamespot, you don't need me to upload them because you can get them else where.
GoldenWoozie 8 months ago
What show is this segment from?
dreffen 9 months ago
@dreffen Gamespot's The Hotspot. But considering Jeff Gerstmann was fired near the end of 2007 for his Kane and Lynch review being... well... honest, I'm guessing this is well before that. Also considering both Carrie Gouskos and Alex Navarro are both on this recording, so yeah.. this was early 2007 at the latest.
Jeff is still on the Giant Bombcast though
Shaanyboi 9 months ago
@dreffen As Shaanyboi said, it's from The HotSpot. The recorded date was around early 2006 though, long before Jeff got fired.
Jeff went on to start GiantBomb with his co-workers and friends starting with Ryan Davis and later Vinny Caravella and Brad Shoemaker.
GoldenWoozie 9 months ago
@GoldenWoozie Thanks mang. Guess I never listened to as much HotSpot as I thought I did
Are those archived at all somewhere? Remember there was a dude who was postint 'Best Of' HotSpot years on the GB forums
dreffen 9 months ago
@dreffen Yes there is an archive. If you go to GameSpot and search "Hotspot" in the search bar you'll find the Hotspot's main page. On the right hand side there's a mini scroll box with every single episode. You have to scroll down pretty far to get to 2006, and you have to download each episode individual (no zips or anything) but they're there if you want em. I also personally downloaded all the episode in case of nuclear catastrophe and what not.
GoldenWoozie 9 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@GoldenWoozie Thanks mang. Guess I never listened to as much HotSpot as I thought I did
Are those archived at all somewhere? Remember there was a dude who was postint 'Best Of' HotSpot years on the GB forums
dreffen 9 months ago
Totally agreed. Jeff's the man.
DirtMcGurt024 1 year ago
Lol, is that Leigh Alexander at the end?
Naxwell 1 year ago
@Naxwell Carrie Gouskos, former editor at GameSpot, currently works BioWare Mythic working on Warhammer Online.
GoldenWoozie 1 year ago
what video was that from
BoyceyGanglionz 1 year ago
@BoyceyGanglionz I'd like to know this as well? It's certainly not the Bombcast...
chewinggumbellz 1 year ago
Comment removed
quackajack13z 1 year ago
IronJackalTw 2 years ago
@IronJackalTW
please take a look at Bioshock and tell me if that doesn't looks to you a BIT like art...
yurishosan 2 years ago
yurishosan,
"please take a look at Bioshock and tell me if that doesn't looks to you a BIT like art... "
Nah, it looks like MONEY to the Filthy JEWS to me! BioShock is just System Shock 2 Wannabe!! {roll my eyes}
Anyhow, have I tell YOU a story about one of the Taiwanese Guys that I know? He is a Doctor today because his father break his hand that DRAWS.... haha!! >=P
REAL Artists in our Human History die POOR while making some GAY FILTHY Bankers very RICH!! >=/
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
yurishosan,
Whitey can't draw too well today! Just look at American Animations VS Japanese Animations!
BTW, can YOU draw? Have YOU won First Place in School ART Contests? I kicked Whitey ARSES before!
Of course, I know at least 4 or more Taiwanese Guys that can out-draw me from Taiwan! It made me realized that I kicked only those LOOSERS that think Video Game is ART!
Filthy JEW, go make your Circles and Squares out of TOILET PAPERS for your South Park! Those are ART for sure! >=P
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
@IronJackalTw
wow, some one is a bit racist..
but at least you check the profile of those you replay to...
in all this text I could find many antisemitic comments, some porsenal comments, and one comment about the definition of art.
you say that art shouldn't give you money...
are you saying that pop and rock are not art???
yurishosan 1 year ago
yurishosan,
Filthy Bernard Madoff JEWS Bankers love ART!! Why wouldn't they? ART is like MONEY to them! ART let them invade TAX and something for them to SPECULATE with aside OIL! ART also showed how FILTHY RICH that they are to afford those ART!!
People working in the VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY are 2D/3D Animators! I can see why YOU loved Artists because they are PAID so much less as well! {roll my eyes}
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
yurishosan,
'are you saying that pop and rock are not art???'
ART is a DILUTED Vocabulary! It is Meaningless today because everyone claim it (to be ART)!
Video Games are not PURE ART! If it is, let's test this HYPOTHESIS!
Let's hired ONLY Artists and Animators and get rid off all the Programmers and QA Testers (Engineer-side People)!
Would there even be a Video Game?
BTW, Video Game is High-Tech STUFF! The Artists and Animators go beyond your so called.... Traditional ART, too! >=)
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
yurishosan,
'one comment about the definition of art.'
Is this ART?
RobotCNC....
v=UjMJOfCyDaA
The Comment Section is DISABLE because someone was CURSING out at those TECHNOLOGY!!
Yet, that's exactly what the CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) really is in VIDEO GAME INDUSTRY!
I know that YOUR KIND love the MAGIC of those WORKS but hated the PEOPLE behind them!!
Those PEOPLE are HERETICS and would be stoned to death in old days! After all, ART used to be commissioned by the CHURCH!! >=(
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
yurishosan,
It seems like CENSORSHIP is ON! All my messages about our Cavemen Ancestors is deleted, which I explained perfectly well why Video Games or GAMES are not ART!
People like YOUR KIND just don't want TRUTH!
ART is just a RELIGION to push it on people that don't agree with it, and I'm one of them!! >=P
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
I'm blocking Iron Jackal from commenting because he posts a thousand comments when its no needed. We get your point dude, be quiet.
GoldenWoozie 1 year ago 5
Comment removed
IronJackalTw 1 year ago
Game > Music > Art > Language
Our Ancestors (Cave Men) got GAME and lots of it!
Before dawn of mankind, earth is covered in ICE (Ice Age)! The only way for our Ancestors to survived is to hunt down those Woolly Mammoths (Giant Elephant) for food!
They are those that went up against without a GAME PLAN! They are killed because they are DUMB!
That's until a Wise Leader decided to use various Stones to represent those Monster Elephants and Men!!
IronJackalTw 2 years ago
Video Games are TOYS!!! >=P
If I make the CONCEPT ARTS for the TOYS like a Soccer Ball, is it ART? Yes, the Design for shapes, colors, decals, and so on is certainly ART!
However, when the Finished Product is created, is it ART any more? No, the Soccer Ball is a TOY when it is a Finished Product!!
Video Games will always be TOYS!!! >=P
ART is not FUN at all!
BTW, TOYS are FUN to play with!!! >=)
IronJackalTw 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
tl;dw
Jeff Gerstmann: "Are video games art? ... No."
I hate this man, so much.
LeoPirate 2 years ago
it interesting to see how Jeff's take on reviews changed...look at GiantBomb, and how they review games there...they talk about them from a personal experience point of view...Jeff's perspective changed, because they say that there are so many gamers now, tat it is impossible to make a review that is right for everyone
dantey01 2 years ago
@dantey01 Its also true that the technology has advanced and allows designers much more leeway to develop... maybe Jeff has found his art?
TheFreeman13 2 years ago
I used to think of some games as art, but when you think about it, Jeff's right. They have art in them, but are not art in entire.
GoggleEyedHermit 2 years ago 3
@GoggleEyedHermit the same could be said for movies or plays
barqueWorks 1 year ago
@barqueWorks I agree with this sentiment, thanks for broadening my horizons mate :P
GoggleEyedHermit 1 year ago
I like how Jeff would speak his mind and sometimes I agreed with him, but I think that PURELY technical reviews are idiotic and bad.
I think games are art, not in SOME ways, as Jeff believes, but for what they are as a whole. I think not all games are ARTISTIC -- I think most lack artistry. But I think they are an artFORM.
To me, art is meant to evoke emotions and thoughts. Games DO that and they do so by bringing sensory forms of entertainment to you in an interactive medium.
D3stinySm4sher 2 years ago
I dont think all games evoke emotions & thought really (e.g Madden or whatever).
Some games do..But overall no its not an artform. its just some games have aspects that are artistic.
R0b0R0bb 2 years ago
You don't get any kinds of emotions when playing games, NOR do you think at all when you play them?
No offense, but in that case, why and HOW do you play them?
Interacting with a game requires thought processes or else nothing happens.
With no emotional or mental reward, what's the point in playing a game at all? Even if that emotion is simply the feeling of having fun, that's still an emotion, and one that games alone do not cater to.
D3stinySm4sher 2 years ago
Some games evoke emotion but not ALL of them so I feel they cannot be really classified as art. As a graphic designer/photographer myself, I do have an appreciation for Video Games ever since I was around 4 or 5.
I wouldn't really say that the thought process used is similar to the one I get when viewing an expressive piece of art because its more methodical to me..(not so much the motives for how/why they chose to make some decisions) I play video games because its a form of relaxation for me.
R0b0R0bb 2 years ago
No offense, but by the argument "not ALL of them do so" that means that NOTHING is really an art form.
Not all books evoke meaningful emotions out of me, nor do all movies, TV shows, or paintings.
So to me, that argument doesn't work.
If they have the potential to do so and, as a general rule, elicit thoughts and emotions, then to me, it's an art form. That doesn't mean I think all games are ARTISTIC, specifically, but I would say the same for ANY medium.
D3stinySm4sher 2 years ago
ah fuck it. i missed. way to fail, Exile.
SDKExile 3 years ago
Heres what i am thinking after all these long ass posts. Sadly i can't take my thoughts and string them out among a couple dozen comment entries.
When i buy any video game - in general - i expect a level of interactivity not found in movies and the arts of literature. Lets face it, Choose Your Path story books just don't cut it. We want to carry our selves and our protagonist through the world with our agenda or at least an agenda that makes some damn sense to us.
SDKExile 3 years ago
Movies are designed to take us along for the ride we invest in.. The melancholy tones in Silent Hill's movie, or the "Don't tread on me" in Shoot 'em Up.. They are all assisted with the fact that the viewer usually is entirely subject to lots of different styles in writing, visual stimulation and things that video games just have a near impossible time replicating.
SDKExile 3 years ago
Books are given the power of our own personal perspective. No one can really tell you what the gals look like in Wheel of Time. The writer gives you a description but chances our what you and the other ten readers imagine are different.
We get to imagine what the world is like in a written book.
In video games the writers are limited by deadlines much worse off then script writers for a screen play oh and then they have technological troubles with the way they get to portray their world.
SDKExile 3 years ago
This is why video games are so hard to place as an art. I can't say games don't earn it but i can say not all games deserve to be called art.
We are usually limited in some form or another that sets our imagination apart from the rest of the forms of expression, so we lose a lot of the ability to - whats the word here? - Perceive the world as we want to because theres a damn game to code, act and capture voice for. So much is lost in the translation we have a hard time calling it art.
SDKExile 3 years ago
are you part of a clan?
I keep meeting people over xbox live with the same "SDK" to their name.
futbolequis 3 years ago
He's mostly right about this. Most video games are approached as products with an end goal of profit. This means that (by and large) there might be a good deal of craftsmanship that goes into a video game, but rarely does it transcend its nature as a time filler and profit maker to actually become art.
Besides, examining popular "story-based" games like MGS, Final Fantasy etc. from a literary perspective, they fall far short of mediocrity.
samuraiguy2005 3 years ago
I think most people just assume that games don't have a good story, but don't actually have a literary background knowledge. I don't want to accuse you of anything, but that tends to be the case.
Plus most stories in books isn't so much the story itself, it's the devices used throughout. Metaphors, foreshadowing, juxtpositions, etc. The Scarlett Letter for instance is a pretty simple story, just packed with those types of literary things. [Continued]
GoldenWoozie 3 years ago
If everyone keeps thinking convincing themselves games have bad stories, they'll never appreciate a good one when it comes a long. Shadow of the Colossus I think is more literary than Metal Gear Solid 4 or Final Fantasy could ever be. It also uses the unique part of gameplay, interactivity, to tell part of that story, and to set a mood, other games haven't done that before without the aid of cutscenes. I think Jeff is close minded, he hasn't even played SOTC, and only enjoys MGS cuz its "crazy"
GoldenWoozie 3 years ago
What makes you qualified to judge the literary merits of a video game story?
You're right that a large part of literature is prosaic style, device, etc. However, good literature generally has a coherent story. I can't say the same for video games in general.
You mention Shadow of the Colossus as an example of good story telling in games. I agree, but it's also the rare exception. It's also plot driven, and the plot actually sustains itself (doesn't wear out its welcome).
[continued]
samuraiguy2005 3 years ago 2
However, there isn't anything in the story that could not also be duplicated in a film. The story is relayed through cut scenes, the techniques of which are borrowed from the visual language belonging to film. They can be analyzed from the perspective of editing, framing, and mise-en-scene.
What makes it fun to play is that it is a game. And in order to be a fun game, it goes back to those same basic issues of control, graphics and other programming and technical issues.
[sorry, continue]
samuraiguy2005 3 years ago
Accepting that cut scenes, world building, and dialogue bubbles are mimetic functions fully explored in other media, I don't see games as art. Something like it, though, in the better cases.
Video game reviews really don't have any business talking about that though. I have a strong emotional attachment to Soul Calibur. According to you "fighting games suck." You wouldn't consider it art, but for my money, I have far more emotional attachment to playing that than Shadow of the Colossus.
samuraiguy2005 3 years ago
GoldenWoozie,
Jeff Gerstmann is rather honest, which is why GAMERS can count on his reviews! I don't read GameSpot much any more these days!!
Even Hideo Kojima of MGS knows that he is making Video Game and not ART, which he said it himself!
ART would be so devalued if it is on the same line as Video Games of today! =/
IronJackalTw 2 years ago
wow...all he said here is complete bullshit
a7xlog 3 years ago
idk why hes a ass he just is
falloutkid81894 3 years ago
Why do disagree with his comments on video game reviews?
futbolequis 3 years ago
That was alright
Brando1788 3 years ago