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Comment by triptych | Hacker News Reader

This seems way off base for me. Games are meant to empower you and help offset the desperation of everyday life. Not grind you down further.

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Counterpoint: Some games are art, and are meant to make you feel something. These games are also important and/or have a place in the world.

I don't think that I would want to dump 200 hours into "that dragon cancer" but knowing that it exists and is as powerful as it is means something. Playing that game makes you feel something important that blasting aliens with laser pistols doesn't.

Being heroic isn't always saving the planet. Sometimes it's just waking up the next day and going to work.

There are art films that make us feel completely devastated for a long time after watching them. Sometimes they make us understand another facet of the human condition. Sometimes they make us feel hopeless.

Until there are games like that, I'm going to hold off calling them art.

Go play "That Dragon Cancer".

I've mentioned it elsewhere in this thread, and it's hard to argue against it not being a brilliant art piece.

http://www.thatdragoncancer.com/

I take back what I said. I wasn't aware of such a game.

> Being heroic isn't always saving the planet. Sometimes it's just waking up the next day and going to work.

Going to the cubicle and banging out TPS Reports day in and day out isn't being heroic, it's being passive, living life on auto pilot. I hate it. And so do most people who are aware of what it's doing to them.

Without getting to deep into the philosophical point I was trying to make as an afterthought in my comment:

"Given the choice between the sweet simple release provided by the revolver, and continuing the Sisyphean task of just living, I consider the human race heroic for simply being"

It's those deeper philosophical questions that we struggle with, and once we have the right 'question' the search for the answer is what drives most people. But those answers are mostly elusive or non-existent. And that makes people very unhappy.

Maybe these games do exist, just not from commercial companies. If art is not sell-able then it may not be funded, but that does not mean a passionate person cannot make the game they want anyway. Just don't expect it to be a AAA game.

"[...] waking up the next day and going to work" is about survival, not heroism. It's about ensuring that you have a house over your head and food in your stomach so you can go back to work the day after next.

Not much heroic about that.

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