A way Destiny excites me

by Leisandir , Virginia, USA, Thursday, March 14, 2013, 17:42 (4281 days ago) @ Kermit

You have excellent arguments, and I'm far from capable of refuting them. I have one last thought to add to this discussion, and that pertains to the comparison to other forms of art. More than any other medium, the videogame is a gestalt of all the other art forms. It is composed of traditional 2d art, 3d art, visual effects, music, sound design, voice recording, the motion of the human body . . . anything that falls under the umbrella of art can be found there. The experience is incomparable to purchasing or viewing a painting; a painting is only a piece of a videogame.

Beyond that, more than any other art form, the videogame is a piece of technology. That's what makes it so marvelous. It is, as folks say, more than the sum of its parts. A lot of excellent games are good because the package is more than what the developers buit. The Source engine and the Unreal engine are just two examples of games which were just as strong as platforms for others to use to create as they were as standalone products. Both of those were used originally to build games which gave the user an enormous amount of control over the content of the game; you can play Half Life 2 with every setting on default, or you can literally access the dev console and change every variable the creators had access to. When you have a game like Halo, you've been given an excellent package which is useful only for the experience the developers intended. When the user is given control, you can enjoy the developer's project, and then you can use the platform for myriad other worthwhile experiences.