moribvndvs
a year ago
Tangentially, I feel that the technical pursuit of hyper realism and novelty in various media over methods that require active participation of your imagination and intellect are a part of why many of us feel so disappointed and underwhelmed today.
I look at today’s sci-fi blockbuster or television show where unbelievable sums of money and effort were spent on highly detailed, elaborate CGI sequences and, more often than not, I’m not very moved and forget about it almost instantly. However, I watch an old Star Trek episode that has hilariously bad effects thrown together as cheaply as possible and I can _feel_ parts of my curiosity, imagination, and so on shift into motion. In order to make that embarrassing sound stage with a guy in a rubber suit work, I actually have to participate in it, provided the crew was skilled enough to provide a fertile playing field and a compelling scenario. It’s no different for games.
Being shoved through bigger, louder, and more audacious carnival rides where you just kinda walk from point A to point B becomes disappointing after a while. The disparity between the scope and ambition of the presentation and your actual engagement greatly amplifies any sensations of being underwhelmed and disappointed.
johnnyanmac
a year ago
That's because the things adults in western culture are most hooked on isn't their own imagination, but other, wealthy, attractive people and what they say. That's why there is always this push to make things look closer to reality, and why any kinds of animated works that were popular by themselves have this inevitable shift to the "real medium" of live action. They want to sell you on real people as brands, not silly cartoons or artists.
Whether that speaks to the power of the advertising machine or the lack of imagination in the people is a question left to the reader.
moribvndvs
a year ago
Keeping up with the Benjamins is certainly a bottom trawling psychological mechanism in the chest of tools employed by media, but I don’t think it accounts for the sum state. Genuinely astounding and wide reaching works are actually pretty rare when you compare them to the vast sea of lesser works. Entertainment lives on a string of less frequent and more singular booms, but the industry that pops up around it survives off the hype or lack thereof between. So, they push quantity over quality and authenticity, and reprogram consumers around that hype train. Worse than that, they might reach for dark patterns to artificially and negatively prop up engagement, which rots the whole thing from the inside out.
pistoleer
a year ago
You specifically mention this as an ailment of western culture, how are other cultures, what are they most hooked on?
tomjen3
a year ago
I have recently started to watch Star Trek Strange New Worlds and I absolutely love how good it looks. Whereas with the rubber suits of ST:TOS I had to fight disbelief all the time (no offence to a 60 year old show on a budget that had to look believable on a 20 inch b&w analog television).
This won't solve bad writing (hence why I stopped watching Discovery), bad characters, bad acting or a bad setting but I can't follow you at all about it being a problem.
moribvndvs
a year ago
I didn’t actually say it was a problem, although I did have a part clarifying that looking good can only help but I don’t think can be relied on to drive a work very far on its own… I deleted it because I felt I was already well beyond rambling and it was implied in my first sentence.