GWJ Conference Call Episode 604

Pillars of Eternity II, BATTLETECH, God of War, Bury Me, My Love, What Makes Game Characters Relatable? Your Emails and More!

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This week Shawn, Amanda, Sean and Cory talk about what makes a character in a game relatable. 

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Comments

00:02:02 God of War
00:06:10 Bury Me, My Love
00:11:11 Monster Prom
00:15:00 Battletech
00:17:27 Pillars of Eternity II
00:26:51 What Makes Game Characters Relatable?
00:49:25 Your Emails

Gamers With Jobs - "There goes your life."

When the the question came up about identifying a character that you related to in a video game, I immediately thought of Gone Home as well. I think the whole idea of being a kind in the 90s who is in the process of trying to figure the world out resonates with a lot of us.

Great discussion!

I do think you all employ art in what you do, as what you do is performative in nature, and the skills involved in that are artistic. You are all also acting as cultural critics, and analyzing artistic content involves thinking about the creative work of others. To do this, you must engage with design choices, performance choices, and creative analysis. Then you've got to synthesize those thoughts and convey them to your audience. All of that is utilizing artistic skills. Whether or not you think the podcast itself qualifies as art is besides the point, it is at the very least using artistic and artistic adjacent skills.

I had a teacher who once said the primary action of an artist is to SEE and EXPLORE, and then turn around and show people what you've seen and what you've explored. That's always felt right to me, and I like the broader definition than the idea of "high art" and "content" being two different things. Culturally, I think the Western world has a tendency to separate out "art" from "entertainment." Heck, we also have an urge to diminish art in general. Schools are quicker to cut budgets for the arts than they are for anything else. We don't pay artists or respect them the way we do other types of workers. The NEA is always on the chopping block in the US.

Meanwhile, I almost never use algebra in my daily life, and I don't know a single person who doesn't engage with art in theirs - yet you'll be hard pressed to find a school that has a healthy arts program and no algebra - with the reverse being quite common.

I've been doing presentation coaching for corporations as a new career, and what I've learned is that people are indeed hungry to have their artistic skills developed, even if they don't think of themselves as artistic. Even people with the least artistic jobs in the world encounter art in their lives and employ artistic skills from time to time.

I could go on and on about this, because I'm a huge proponent of the arts. I think they are essential and a fundamental part of being a human being. I think Western Colonialism / Capitalism puts value on preserving status quo power structures and values monetary efficiency over everything else, hence the arts get hit with a host of troubles. Since art has always functioned as something that is meant to challenge the status quo and find different, better ways forward, it doesn't play with capitalism. People without resources are cut off from even being able to have careers in the arts, since they rely on networks and unpaid internships. The patrons who fund the arts tend to be corporate, and over 95% of the artistic organizations that get arts grants and funding have operating budgets north of $1 million dollars. Imagine if even some of that money went to smaller artists and organizations? Artists are portrayed as naïve, selfish, aimless, etc. And most people have a knee-jerk reaction to downplay the arts in their lives - especially their own creative work. This is because saying "I am an artist" sounds pretentious / highfalutin. Yet saying "I am a plumber" doesn't. There's a reason for this, and its the way our culture values those occupations and the people who have them.

It is a core belief of mine that everyone has artistic impulses, and I hope that you guys can recognize yourselves as cultural critics who employ artistic skills on a regular basis. As silly as it might feel, as much as someone joked "if this is art then we're all in trouble" (paraphrasing) I think what you guys do has value beyond simply content.

Anyway, I said I could go on about this and clearly I can!

Still waiting on the theme to Ranger Priest.

TheHarpoMarxist wrote:

Great discussion!

I do think you all employ art in what you do, as what you do is performative in nature, and the skills involved in that are artistic. You are all also acting as cultural critics, and analyzing artistic content involves thinking about the creative work of others. To do this, you must engage with design choices, performance choices, and creative analysis. Then you've got to synthesize those thoughts and convey them to your audience. All of that is utilizing artistic skills. Whether or not you think the podcast itself qualifies as art is besides the point, it is at the very least using artistic and artistic adjacent skills.

I had a teacher who once said the primary action of an artist is to SEE and EXPLORE, and then turn around and show people what you've seen and what you've explored. That's always felt right to me, and I like the broader definition than the idea of "high art" and "content" being two different things. Culturally, I think the Western world has a tendency to separate out "art" from "entertainment." Heck, we also have an urge to diminish art in general. Schools are quicker to cut budgets for the arts than they are for anything else. We don't pay artists or respect them the way we do other types of workers. The NEA is always on the chopping block in the US.

Meanwhile, I almost never use algebra in my daily life, and I don't know a single person who doesn't engage with art in theirs - yet you'll be hard pressed to find a school that has a healthy arts program and no algebra - with the reverse being quite common.

I've been doing presentation coaching for corporations as a new career, and what I've learned is that people are indeed hungry to have their artistic skills developed, even if they don't think of themselves as artistic. Even people with the least artistic jobs in the world encounter art in their lives and employ artistic skills from time to time.

I could go on and on about this, because I'm a huge proponent of the arts. I think they are essential and a fundamental part of being a human being. I think Western Colonialism / Capitalism puts value on preserving status quo power structures and values monetary efficiency over everything else, hence the arts get hit with a host of troubles. Since art has always functioned as something that is meant to challenge the status quo and find different, better ways forward, it doesn't play with capitalism. People without resources are cut off from even being able to have careers in the arts, since they rely on networks and unpaid internships. The patrons who fund the arts tend to be corporate, and over 95% of the artistic organizations that get arts grants and funding have operating budgets north of $1 million dollars. Imagine if even some of that money went to smaller artists and organizations? Artists are portrayed as naïve, selfish, aimless, etc. And most people have a knee-jerk reaction to downplay the arts in their lives - especially their own creative work. This is because saying "I am an artist" sounds pretentious / highfalutin. Yet saying "I am a plumber" doesn't. There's a reason for this, and its the way our culture values those occupations and the people who have them.

It is a core belief of mine that everyone has artistic impulses, and I hope that you guys can recognize yourselves as cultural critics who employ artistic skills on a regular basis. As silly as it might feel, as much as someone joked "if this is art then we're all in trouble" (paraphrasing) I think what you guys do has value beyond simply content.

Anyway, I said I could go on about this and clearly I can!

Fantastic -

Being schooled in both the sciences and visual arts I appreciate your points. Very well articulated. Too be even more specific, I would say that traditional artistic skills, especially in contemporary culture, are not as important as problem solving skills . To be successful in many careers, one needs to have a mastery of visual thinking skills and visual literacy. All disciplines of learning overlap, and the trend is to teach problem solving as opposed to memorizing curriculum content. For example, if I can recall every single historical fact of a particular historical period, that does not make me smart. Nor does being able to memorize any number of mathematical equations. What is important is being able to apply learning, or allow existing concepts to lead to new ideas and thinking, or to understand relationships between disparate ideas or concepts which can lead to new ways of thinking.

Visual art is the common thread that runs through just about every aspect of learning and thinking. In today's culture, visual art is ubiquitous - apps, video games, writing, math, book covers, road signs, industrial design, engineering, etc. Interesting times.