Why has literature become so unpopular with this generation?

MEGAN SALINAS

>you are born
>literature declines and degeneracy rises

really makes u think

>>9631389
Yes.

If people are raised on slop can you really blame them when they don't know how to chew?

>>9631408
I don't blame them. If anything it makes me sad because I am like that too

>>9631389
Schools and parents. Television/internet/video games are the easiest thing to shove into your kid's head to make him docile for a while so that's what they get. It doesn't get the brain moving in any good directions but it makes parenting much easier. I probably only read because my parents got me doing it a bit every night from as early as I was able. A significant part of it was also getting an e-reader on a whim when I was about 15 that came with half of the western canon preloaded onto it.

I'm only here because of exceptional circumstances. Maybe at most 1/20 people growing up right now will have (1) parents who care to force the habit of reading into their kids [and it is something that has to be forced these days] and (2) will be exposed to the right stuff to convince them that reading is something worth carrying on with once their parents/school stop making them. It was old science-fiction that really got me into reading, if I'd never discovered Gene Wolfe I don't know if I'd still bother. Compare that to what's normal right now, only really being made to read at school and only garbage up until towards the end when a handful of arbitrarily selected classics are forced down your throat in a manner that's usually extremely boring and doesn't stimulate serious study or reflection.

People need somebody to not only care enough to get them reading in the first place, but to stimulate a genuine interest to keep them going. Not everyone is a reader but 9/10 people probably could be if somebody took the effort to expose them to the right things to get them genuinely interested to the point where they'll want to keep going if left alone. Most teachers aren't doing that because it's too personal and they're shackled to shitty curriculum while to pass for a good parent in 2017 all you have to do is not decide to murder your child before they're born.

because reading is for stupid loser nerds
cant be reading when youre busy hanging out at the mall on weekdays and partying all weekend
at least thats why i stopped reading for a decade

literature has never been popular dumbass

>>9631389
Computer games

>>9631441
only because poor "people" were too retarded to read

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>>9631389

>another thinly-veiled attempt to self-congratulate for reading books

fuck off with your pseud circlejerk you fucking newfags

>>9631389
I think it's mostly schools. Until I had no other form of entertainment available but books I never would read because everything else I had read was forced by schools and turned it into a memorizing and question answering task that stripped any fun from it. When that's the only thing a kid feels when reading they'll never willingly pick up a book while there's a perfectly good spoon to shove up their ass for entertainment instead.

It cant compete with video/internet as far as entertainment, and nobody thinks seeking out meaning or humanity through literature is worthwhile, necessary or even possible.

It hasn't, pseud.

>>9631389
Well it isn't unpopular amongst intellectuals. Back in the day it was one of the only mediums for entertainment, but now we have plenty of mediums for that. So of course lots of people who have no business reading anyway, do not read.

>>9631389
It depends on what metrics you're using for popular, OP. When I was in high school (about 4 years ago or so), the "cool indie" kids were reading /lit/. Granted, it was basic shit like Hemingway and Vonnegut (whatever wasn't already on the class reading list), but that was what the "cool kids" did. Looking back at it now, obviously we weren't really all that cool, but plenty of the other kids thought we were and wanted in on the /lit/ club. I mean it was mainly for cultural capital and we all took being called pretentious as an accolade, but it was fun at the time and we sure felt cool.

I guess that's kind of half of what /lit/ is to this day though honestly.

>>9631449

Anyone who stops at "education" in explaining the ills of the world hasnt thought enough about anything. Also theres no obligation from adulthood in general to educate you. You must do that. And its not going to be fun, its going to be hard work.

>>9631448

Im immensely proud of the reading habits ive struggled mightily to form over the years, the books ive read have changed the entire course of my life. i was a complete jackass who couldnt think before i started. Its hard work thats slow to pay dividends. All readers are proud of their reading. Saying you arent is fraudulent humility.

>>9631456
>'cool kids' reading in high school
>21st century
lmao

>>9631460

>Saying you arent is fraudulent humility.

hahahahahahahaha

not following suit in this gaudy display of humblebrag self-congratulations is "fraudulent humility" now?

fuck.
off.
pseud.

My mom forced me to read a book when i was like 14 and i started cry infront of her because the story was so sad to me
I dont remember the title and i dont want to read it again

>>9631475
Private schooling in a major US city, anon. Things were a bit different than Mid West public school systems.

>>9631478

I dont understand. Are you saying reading isnt work one should be proud of or that one ought never be proud of their work generally?

>>9631431
Jesus Christ this is so true and depressing, I just wish I could cultivate that habit even more but it does seem like an uphill battle at times, but reflecting on how i barely read at all before I started forcing myself versus now does motivate me to try harder. It really is one of the most satisfying things when you genuinely take interest in a book and just get something out of it.

>>9631441
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/alfred-tennyson

> The queen treated Tennyson with what was great informality by her reserved standards, so that the relationship between monarch and laureate was probably more intimate than it has ever been before or since

>His extraordinary popularity was obvious in other ways as well. He was given honorary doctorates by Oxford and Edinburgh universities; Cambridge three times invited him to accept an honorary degree, but he modestly declined. The greatest men in the country competed for the honor of meeting and entertaining him.

More competition dummy. Movies still follow a written script though.

>>9631508

Its deeper than that. It has to do with the prevalence of atheism, the expansion of sentimentality and self help culture, the abandonment of humanist ideas of learning and the acceptance of historical identity as primary (hence why young people instinctively read novels for social crit instead of psychology).

Theres an idealist dimension to the material expansion of electricity, is what im saying.

>>9631389

I imagine that the rise of social media and smartphones have a large influence. It's easier to browse your Facebook feed for 10 seconds and get instant gratifications instead of putting in the work it requires to sit down and read literature.

Also, a repetitive use of smartphones and iPads from an early age makes your attention span extremely short and gives you a constant urge for dopamine

>>9631456
>it depends on the metrics
Stopped reading there. People do not read any more, and if they do it is YA. This is a frightening fact that cannot be disputed. The contemporary forms of entertainment are poison for the mind, they obliterate the ability to concentrate and cultivate mental discipline - the reprecussions will be horrifying, I cannot imagine what our future will look like once the 20 year old manchildren of today turn 40 and become the backbone of the society. We are in for a wild ride, that's for sure.

There is one more point I would like to make. The ancient theatre had the same role as e.g. football has today - mass entertainment. Who do you think Balzac and Stendhal wrote for? The marginalization of literature and consequently the attitude that it belongs to the "high culture" which is reserved for a tiny fraction of the society is a new phenomenon. I cannot even imagine the consequences of the massive cultural downfall, we shall find out in about 20 years. In case you are a university student, all you have to do is talk to your peers in order to confirm what I have written - idiocracy awaits.

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>>9631495

>Are you saying reading isnt work one should be proud of or that one ought never be proud of their work generally?

don't try to pass this off as merely "feeling proud" -- it isn't. if it was you'd simply feel proud and leave it at that.

but you feel compelled to take it that one step further and gloat about it with other le literary life try hards in circlejerk sessions because you're a fucking idiot newfag.

>>9631524

It kills me to think of how hard death and aging is going to be for millenials, they have no spiritual preparation for it whatsoever.

>>9631530
You're an idiot.

because all the literture worth a shit gets made into movies or tv shows.

also youtube video essays adn TEDTalks vs actually reading essays

>>9631533

Y do u say that

>>9631517
I would argue atheism, holy books aside, is only more reason to read, not less. The search for meaning is a basic human instinct and Atheists are rudderless for better or for worse, seems to me they would naturally be drawn to books.

>the abandonment of humanist ideas

This I would agree with you much more on, I will always remember this one dinner I had with people. This one kid was asked what he was going to do in school, and this was during the whole STEM fever, and he said he wanted to learn philosophy, and he found it really interested. As soon as he was out of sight, people laughed, laughed, and just mocked him, literally just imitating him and pretending to be pretentious philosophers and cracking barista jokes.

I totally believe society has lost all respect for humanism but I believe there is going to be a rebound. I believe society has left itself without any outlet in regards to learning from the past, or exploring meaning, or even more practical things like how to write effectively.

I don't believe this is sustainable, people crave that shit, when they got rid of religion in the USSR it came right back after it started being allowed and came back strong. There is a certain part of people being suppressed by modern society that is being poorly satiated with dramas on Netflix. I think there is plenty further for humanism to fall though, it's been taken over by the radical left, anthropology for example is literally one of the top most left leaning fields out there and is very related to humanism and is entirely up its own leftist buttcrack.

I'm bias here by my own personal experience, but I've seen how my friends just clinging to any sort of authority that gives them any semblance of guidance, and I know there is something lacking.

>expansion of sentimentality and self help culture

I don't have any frame of reference to how big sentimentality was before, but I would argue the self-help market is already past its prime, it probably peaked in the 80s/90s. People realise the shallowness of "The Secret" by and large. Society is becoming too increasingly unequal and hard to thrive in for the sugar-coated easy to digest step-by-step messages of self-help books to be taken seriously.

>>9631524
> idiocracy awaits.

IQ is trending up, and historically speaking, it's trending up rather sharply these days. When automation kills all the jobs for people under 90IQ you'll see how much of an asset being dumb is. Not much of one. Everything a dumb person can do a smart person can do better.

>>9631524
>I cannot imagine what our future will look like once the 20 year old manchildren of today turn 40
not much more different than today. a lot of 40 year olds are fucking retarded and were raised on television

>>9631537

Atheism leads to despair which leads to the need for distraction and sentimental explantions of life.

>>9631440
>hanging out at the mall
What's the deal with this american meme?

>>9631572

Malls are actually in decline nowadays, having been squeezed by Facebook, Amazon and fast casual trendy eateries.

>>9631537
>IQ is trending up
I doubt, but even if it is IQ is not the only relevant criterion. The issue I am addressing is related to culture and what you and the other anon are refering to as the humanist ideals. I studied electrical engineering and it is certain that quite a few in my class were more intelligent than me in terms of the ability to quickly grasp a concept and solve tasks. Once again, this is not what I am aiming at - from my point of view, the "STEM skills" have close to zero relevance when it comes to the humanist ideals, when it comes to culture. I am talking about a different kind of virtue that was first rationally explicated by Aristotle and his notion of phronesis: the cultivation of virtue and the consequent ability to intuitively tell right from wrong, to acquire knowledge without a method of (or inspired by) the natural sciences. The humanist tradition had been unbroken for a long time (the stoics, Gratian, Vico, Shaftesbury, Oetinger, Hume...) until Kant who is largely responsible for the death of the humanist tradition - he emptied the notion of sensus communis (which does not differ significantly from phronesis) by reducing it to an a priori of formalist aesthetics. That is how the humanist notions lost their powerful moral and political connotation, they were stripped away from their primary function as means of acquiring knowledge regardless of a method. And how does one acquire phronesis/sensus communis/good taste? By education, education as first understood and explicted by Hegel (Bildung) - a process of spiritual uplifting by living and learning. I have basically repeated Gadamer's argument from his magnum opus - Truth and Method. Knowledge cannot be reduced exclusively to the method of the positive sciences - doing so inevitably leads to social decay (which we are experiencing today). The humanist ideals are needed more than ever in the contemporary society, we desperately need a new enlightenment - the education of the masses based upon the forgotten humanist tradition.

>>9631535
You watch video essays and TEDTalks because they're in the same place you go to have fun. You are only a few clicks away from a mildly insightful youtube channel, whereas you have to go to the bookstore, search for the right book and spend money on it. Literature and philosophy need to get up to date and somehow create or incorporate themselves into a network that allows easy access to them.

>>9631575
I'm actually reading through the Greeks right now ending with the philosophers so I don't know quite what the fuck you're talking about to a great degree but I will be sure to react in a month or so after this thread dies and will subsequently call you a pseud faggot or self-flagellate myself for saying something dumb.

I will agree however with

>The humanist ideals are needed more than ever in the contemporary society, we desperately need a new enlightenment - the education of the masses based upon the forgotten humanist tradition.

I swallowed the STEM meme hard and have faith in the ideas you talk about, I'm working to learn more so I can carry out those ideals. I've just seen how my peers, my family, everybody I know connects to these things that provide the same things as humanism, and it just has grasped my curiosity because the same people also tend to disdain humanism and mock it openly.

>>9631401
Name one age, year or whatever where literature was more readily available and more people were literate.

Protip: you can't

>>9631389
People's brains are wired differently because of constant interactions with technology

>>9631607
Is it possible to revert that change

>>9631648
Do you mean to people it's already happened to or to society in the future? Either way read 'The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains' by Nicholas Carr. I find that if I don't read for a while my brain goes into 'internet-mode' and I find it hard to sit and focus, but then reading for a while can flip it back again.

clearly is hasn't become too unpopular. i think it's safe to assume everyone on this board is under 30, which puts them in the Millennial pile

>>9631603
2018

A think that a lot of the factors presented above are responsible.

But it all comes down to attention spans and imagination. We are getting dumber and dumber and that's a fact. Kids nowadays don't use their brains as much as we used to.

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Its the end of the guttenberg mind.

millenials have destroyed their cognitive faculties with smart phones and pictures of "funny" frogs.

you did it to yourselves.

literature is dead/dying. the codex will die in your lifetime

>>9631669
im 34

>>9631669
This is one of the slowest boards here.

>>9631431
I have a similar story, but I hated reading because everything my father recommended wasn't something I could enjoy as a kid.

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>>9631410

>>9631389
False premise, literature has never been popular.

The masses have only been able to read for a century or so.

>>9631762
not all books are literature

lack of proper lit curricula in elementary schools.
as the current powers that be are cynically ignorant, blatantly anti-intellectual and very open about their hate for the arts and love for private capital, you can expect it to grow a lot worse, so enjoy!!

>>9631785
But all literature is written, so if you can't read anything you can't read literature either.

So even when only a small percentage of people could read, just an even smaller percentage of those people would actively read literature.

You could probably say that literature is more popular than ever.

>>9631389
It has never been popular. And I think more people read now than 20 or 30 years ago.

What did plebs do with their free time before mass media existed?

>>9631806
get an infection and die

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>>9631808
>tfw my cold is still present after six days
Truly the worst timeline

>>9631389
Lack of attention span. Kids these days can't go for 30 seconds without checking their phone.

>>9631431
>>9631440
This. My parents put in an enormous effort to get me to read. I learned at age 4 (not my genius, but their hard work) and read every day. My love for reading only came to an end when A. it became mandatory in school B. teenage hormones kicked in. I was into sports and had a large circle of friends so reading just lost its place in my life for a decade. I'm so glad I started reading again regularly around 3 years ago.
>>9631572
I'm not American and I hung out in a mall, outside a mall, at the park after buying drink from the mall etc. etc. It's a public place where you run into people you know.

>>9631389
The fact that you felt compelled to post a picture of an attractive woman in the OP, says a lot.

>>9631856
I can't help it, I'm addicted to porn

>>9631431
End of the day, it's for the best that the majority of society is being steered away from reading. Universal literacy was a mistake. And I'm not talking about reading and writing, those are just job skills, but rather the will to read for pleasure.

These people will be enraptured by television, video games, whatever, or possibly just very bad books. It will ultimately spare us their opinions and ensure they have no influence over literary tradition. Go read the reviews for any of the 'required' works in high school, it's full of cretinous illiterates dropping one stars on fundamental works of English literature like Chaucer and Shakespeare's plays. These are the people who do not read as adults and our world is better off for it.

>>9631584
Well, for once an e-reader/Calibre setup does wonders for accessibility. I've read 41 books so far this year and bought none. Of course, it's not legal, but i'm grateful it exists. I would hve bought physical books exclusively, but the nearest decent bookstore is 3 hours away from where i live.
I think literature can only get to a point of accessibility before simplifying it too much (like say, making it into videos) or basically giving them away for free (like my example)

>>9631449
schools are the way they are because of shitty parents. You have no idea what you're talking about

I hope an EMP goes off

>>9631906
>library 2 blocks away
>2 used book stores literally within 1 block
>regular book store 3 blocks away
Living in a city has its advantages. Of course I still get most of my stuff from Amazon. Though these days libraries are pretty sweet, I can go online and browse the books of like 50 libraries in one database and order whatever I want to be delivered for free to my nearest library. It's like having a library the size of a football stadium right next door.

>>9631808
Work so they don't fucking die.

>>9631389

It's because of these Jezebels OP

>>9631806
This is a simplification of course but mass media was only created after industrialization gave more and more people free time. There was no time where plebs had free time but no mass media.

>>9631962
You've got it backwards.

Hunter-gatherers 'worked' about four hours a day and medieval peasants had more than 150 free days per year.

Working hard all day didn't exist until industrialisation came about.

A reason is that literature is less immediately appealing due to its primitive technology. Why does lit love books but never talk about the oral tradition? Technology. Of course lit is too pseudo Intellectual to ever admit this. According to lit, novels, and the commercial model that allowed them to be distributed in the way they popularly are now, have been around for millions of years.

"Why do you guys automatic shit on serialised novels now when Dostoevsky and Dickens wrote them?" "Well, um... Shut up pleb!" Don't expect lit to be self reflective.

That's only a hump, not the main reason. The main reason is that literature is presented as some thing "enriching" and educational rather than entertaining, as the medium was first intended to be. You get teachers telling you to enjoy certain books or else you're stupid. You get post hoc theorising about Shakespeare's use of literary techniques which are obviously bullshit as they never give any greater predictive power or practical power (ability to write great books). A 13 year old doesn't think in these words but they intuitively know it and they know it's bullshit. You learn how to read "apple" and what it corresponds to and you then can use that anywhere. You learn what 1+1 is and you can apply that anywhere. Now look at what the fuck they're teaching you to do in English classes, from school to university level. It's utterly pretentious and vacuous post hoc theorising or plain bullshitting. lit is fully entrenched with the idea that reading books makes them smart, so you'll never see that again on here.

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>>9631389
Because these days it's easy to coast by a pretend you're cultured/experienced. Everything in a quick easy summary is a click away. Attention spans have lessened and unless one is bombarded by constant things to do, rather than sit and ruminate, they'll lose interest.

>>9631389
You know, I think I know why. It is because of ghetto culture. And not to mention americuck rednecks,

>>9631969
I hope this is ironic.

>>9631401
Spoiler alert: Humanity has always been declining since society was invented. t. Rousseau

>>9631389
The picture you posted is one of the reasons.

>>9631389
Literature more popular than ever, and most idiots who took this thread seriously are dumbasses.

>>9632138
Almost no one I know my age reads for pleasure. And most of the people who do are women.

It's because women entered the workforce and stopped actually raising their kids themselves. Before that they'd spend all day at home and there was plenty of time to read with their children. Now they come home after an 8 hour day, "too exhausted" to actually spend time with their kid, so they hand him a big mac and let him space out in front of the tv for 4 hours.
Basically, women ruin everything

>>9632126
Porn in general?

>>9631431
Your post made me realize how lucky I was to have a parents that encouraged me to read as a child, what an impact it has made! Thanks for brightening my day a little

Reading sucks. I jerk off to face sitting videos instead.

>>9631838
Grandma, isn't this your nap time?

>>9632126
Thank god I no longer have to read Dostoyevsky to get my rocks off.

>>9631389

cell phones and social media have hurt literature much more than videogames.
people have never read so much, they just arent reading books.

Because it is relatively high effort entertainment in a world of low effort entertainment.

>>9632197
People still read more than in the past, in this era having access to books is easier than ever before.

>>9631740
wew

>>9631862
At least you're honest with yourself. Seek Christ.

There's nothing inherently wrong with video games.

>>9632541

damn son, check your denial, you're awfully defensive for some reason.

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>>9632562
>there's nothing wrong with video games
>why are you so defensive
lit at its best.

>>9631986
and you happen to be the enlightened exception, interesting how that happens

>>9631389
>citation needed

>>9632072
It's a fact.

>>9632482
This. You can have an active and healthy interest in both video games and literature, but it really is phones and social media that messes with people's attention spans - people feel the need to check every second for a new notification and then every other second once they receive a text. It's immensely rude especially if they're already in a conversation with someone and they just whip out their phone.

>>9632573

Leave that chinless man alone, you Cheeto-gobbling, near-sighted freak.

You need to shrink the gray matter growing in the crevices of your brainlet. Get out some flashcards right now. And go for a jog while you're at it, fatso.

>>9631389

In my experience, pretty much everyone loves gothic novels such as Dorian Gray and dystopias such as 1984. Not even most of /lit/ can be bothered to read a Jane Austen novel.

>be me
>begining of genz
>me and everyone around me all had nice smartphones starting in highschool
>meme culture is dominant, everyone on face book, twitter, snapchat, instagram all day
>everyone watches shitty netflix, capeshit, youtube other normie stuff ( some of which is good)
>no one reads at all were to add and hyped of sugars

>>9631750
Same, my parents wanted me to read shitty christian self-help books.

>>9631603
>more people were literate.
only to a shitty 90IQ leddit-tier degree
the average writer nowadays seems to have never heard of proofreading let alone copyediting

>>9631389
>never been greater access to literature
>for free, no less
>never been this many humans on this planet at once, that we know of
>never been this many literate humans at once, that we know of

Honestly, it's pretty easy to see video games /could/ be the next form/medium of literature. There's music, visual interaction, motor skills (granted, they're minor), thought processing, and potentially immersion -- it's basically wide open to classical music + interactive literature + visual aesthetics.
>And for those of you real butthurt I can post this seriously, we have plays and movies released annually of literature from several hundred years ago.
>Video Games are basically interactive movies, at this point (if they were ever more than that).

My question is "Why don't we have a movement to make literature-based video games when we have all the tools necessary to make them?"

>>9633458
That's only because it's more accessible.
If it were still hyperdrive on perfection alone, that barrier to entry dropkicks "the average _____" out of the game.

For _____, you can insert practically anything with a /now/ low barrier to entry. Graphic Design, Marketing, Writing, Music Production, Video Editing, Video Game Design... even beer and winemaking has probably never seen such shit quality in its industries, but because that's "food" and most people don't consider the other kinds of low-quality content they "consume" to affect their health and mental/emotional/spiritual wellbeing, they don't give a fuck.

>>9631389
Actually, literature is more popular than it was with previous generations. Statistically speaking, that is, more people read than in 1950.

Because reading is hard. Lizard brain > human brain. Shit takes effort.

It's even harder to read for practical purposes, be they abstract or concrete. Because that means you gotta be able to learn whatever it is your reading.

Then it leads to learning how to learn itself.

Now account for the fact that all of the above is frustrating af. Reading, learning, w/e - gotta manage the frustration and not cave in half-way reading Nietzsche's BGE wondering "wtf is this cooked cunt on about!?"

Who the fuck knows. Enjoy the decline. Praise Kek.

>>9634428
...but isn't the lizard brain the one that has all the automation and beliefs and shit? Like all the built up minor skills, muscle memory, whatever?

>>9634456
DESU, I'm not too sure.

I meant it from a more impulsive, emotional perspective.

Not that the lizard brain is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that those mechanisms and processes in place aren't suited for the abundance of resources we have today.

>>9631584
>Literature and philosophy need to get up to date and somehow create or incorporate themselves into a network that allows easy access to them.
Stefan Molyneux
Jordan Peterson

Come the fuck on.

>>9634307
Is anybody who grew up on video games going to be able to make anything of value? All of the best video games are built on pure motor-skill input or fantasy and immersion. The skill-based games are purely mechanical and entirely their own thing. And the best of the fantasy/immersion focused games are built on the humanities.

>literature based video games
Do you mean video games based on literature or video games that aspire to have literature like qualities (inspiring thought/reflection, dealing with relevant ideas in a meaningful way)? Either way I don't see it happening. To make anybody interested in The Illiad as vidya you'd either need mechanical input (at which point you'll end up with Ancient World Call of Duty with better between-battle exposition that nobody listens to) or you create a system which lets people immerse themselves in it RPG style, at which point it's 'The Illiad, assembled by 100 different Japanese/Polish guys working over time moving at the pace and whims of a bored 14 year old who probably will just end up going back to League of Legends before he reaches the end.'

And if you mean making video games with literary merit, that'll be even harder. The only ones that come close are the ones built on what the humanities already had to offer, which begs the question of why you don't just start with the greeks, because they did it first and better. People jerk off over From Software's worldbuilding and ambient storytelling, their aesthetic and style can be traced directly backwards to literature. From Software <- Vampire Hunter D <- Book of the New Sun <- Tales of the Dying Earth. Vance used poetic prose and his vast imagination to create exceptionally pretty adventure stories, Wolfe used Vance's unique tone and style as a vehicle for Catholic thought and a means of exploring the influence of memories and storytelling on our lives and personal characters, VHD took the aesthetic established by Vance and Wolfe and used it for regular enough pulpy action and by the time it reached From Software all you have left is weird, old looking scenery, references to things too old to understand and lots of BING BING WAHOO monster-fighting action to fill the rest of the space. The video game literary tradition is not a strong one at all.

And don't even get me started on those ridiculous American shitfests that they try to pass off as meaningful works of anything.

>>9634563
>The video game literary tradition is not a strong one at all.
You have not played many Shadow of the Colossus, ICO, Braid, Vampire: The Masquerade, System Shock 2, most PC RPGs, etc.

Deus Ex fucking blew my mind when I first heard about it on /v/.

>>9634563
>And if you mean making video games with literary merit, that'll be even harder. The only ones that come close are the ones built on what the humanities already had to offer,
Simply epic. What's the point of movies? Anime? Manga? TV? It's all "done before by literature".

>>9634590
>Shadow of the Colossus
BING BING WAHOO but my waifu is dead so this is actually deep
>Braid
BING BING WAHOO but nukes so this is deep
>Vampire
BING BING WAHOO oh shit we ran out of time and money fuck just fill a sewer with enemies for a last act
>System Shock
I like the spooky robot voice but it's not remarkable science-fiction. They designed a cool space station but that's about it.
>most PC RPGs
are hot garbage. Fallout is abysmal and you know it. The only redeeming value that game has is giving yourself 10 Luck 10 AG and the perk that lets you punch 10 times a turn and vaporizing entire gangs of raiders before they even move. I do really like Gothic but it's just a sword & sorcery piece of junk that lets me swing the sword by awkwardly hammering ctrl and the up arrow.

>Deus Ex
Is a shopping list of conspiracy theories disguised as a plot tying together gameplay that's a combination of Thief but bad, Unreal but bad and Gothic but bad.

>>9634614
>what's the point of movies
To tell stories in a way that can't be done with literature. But even then movies are at heart a literary medium. Writing is more important than anything but visuals and sound add more dimensions to it. The best movies are built on intelligent writing.
>the point of anime
To entertain children and nerds.
>manga
to entertain children and nerds
>tv
to entertain children and nerds

It has mostly all been done by literature. 99% of entertainment media is delivering a retarded version of what came before for people too uneducated to appreciate the whole original thing. This applies to shitty YA books, pop music, movies, tv shows and video games too. Very few things produced in any medium really matter that much.

>>9631389
This generation? Literature was never popular. New age and genre fiction is barely literature, and neither of them are as popular anymore because

1. Economic changes, people don't have the free time they used to have to read new age crap

2. Movies and videogames have replaced genre fiction as the primary gateway into fantasy worlds, since the 80s.

>>9634563
>Is anybody who grew up on video games going to be able to make anything of value?
This is a retarded statement. A huge portion of people in their 30s-50s today grew up on video games. Most games since the 90s are made by people who grew up on them.

>>9634688
Name one worthwhile piece of art produced by somebody who drew on video games. Hell even video games are in decline, the old RPG designers at least drew on D&D, which required imagination and was inspired by a lot of great writing. The new RPG designers are all either autistic basement-dwelling eastern europeans who consider Fallout 2 to be the Moby Dick of the medium or dweeby numales who measure quality by how many transexual muslims they can jam in and treat everything else as an afterthought.

Where are our great artists and what did they grow up on before they were ready to start on their own creations?

>>9634703
>Name one worthwhile piece of art produced by somebody who drew on video games
Devil May Cry, the first one. Kamiya is a classic example of a guy that grew up on games and was inspired by them to create. That was easy.

>Hell even video games are in decline
No they aren't. You just don't care about them anymore, because you're more interested in just reading.

>>9634709
Devil May Cry is cool but in a way that's a completely new stream of media separate to literature. Its quality comes almost entirely from mechanical input, with writing/sound/visuals just being there for a bit of style.

>video games aren't in decline
name one genre that hasn't moved backwards. 2008 was the end.

>>9631449
>>9631431
>Schools and teachers schools and teachers

Public school English teacher here. Ask me anything.

>>9634725
When was the last time you saw a student who cared about English?

>>9634719
>Devil May Cry is cool but in a way that's a completely new stream of media separate to literature.
You are correct. It is a video game. Smartass comments aside though, I'm not sure what you're even getting at here, a text-based video game is a video game and not literature. All video games are a separate media from literature.

> Its quality comes almost entirely from mechanical input, with writing/sound/visuals just being there for a bit of style.
You say "just being there" but that is dismissive when there's no need to be. The art design takes as much time and effort as the programming. There's as much passion poured into those things as developing the mechanics. The whole package has to be judged.

>name one genre that hasn't moved backwards
Some have died, others transformed. None of them have gone backwards.

>>9634729
Last year, in fact. I get a few every year.

>>9634627
Ok, so you're a troll. If not, stop being a casual and actually explore in these games.

Tl;dr: git gud

>>9634732
This whole video game thing got started with >>9634307 raising the idea that video games could potentially succeed literature. The point I've been trying to make is that that won't happen because most video games are a completely form of media, while movies and television are at least a kind of off-shoot.
>All video games are a separate media from literature
Exactly.

>Devil May Cry quality
The non-game parts are actually very well done in that series I'll admit, but never to the degree where the sound/visuals will carry the same richness as the best movies and of course never to the degree where the writing will match great literature. They're too focused on the game part, as they should be.

>no genre has gone backwards
RTS peaked with Starcraft/Cossacks, shooters peaked with Unreal Tournament/early quake series, platformers are dead, RPGs are all either Fallout clones or single-player MMOs featuring homosex romance, there's no reason to play new games unless you're a graphics whore.

>>9634739
Do they really care or do they just absorb what they need to get grades and then never pick up a book again?

>>9634754
>Do they really care or do they just absorb what they need to get grades and then never pick up a book again?

Does it make a difference? My job isn't to make them "really care," it's to ensure they have the ability to read sufficiently complex texts and be able to form a halfway-decent sentence. I'm with Bloom on this one, reading is a selfish pleasure and nothing more. If they want to read as adults, great. If not, woop-de-doo.

>>9634754
>platformers are dead
Crash Remakes
Metroid Prime 4
Super Mario motherfucking Odyssey

>>9634754
>RPGs are all either Fallout clones or single-player MMOs featuring homosex romance,
Fire Emblem
New Switch Pokemon game
Xenoblade Chronicles 2

>>9634760
I think that it makes a pretty strong difference. All of the best English students when I went to school had no idea what they were doing but studied assigned texts like a science until they could process essay topics and spit out high-scoring essays like calculators. A proper education in the humanities doesn't have immediately practical benefits like learning a language or how to code or whatever but I think it's definitely something we should try not to lose. Especially if you live in a society where everyone votes and government is steered by what normal people think, like I do. A country that's on the whole barely thoughtful enough to process Harry Potter can't be going anywhere good.

>>9634776
Maybe I didn't express myself well enough. My job is to do exactly what you described. Whether or not the students "really care," as you put it, has very little to do with the ability to shit out five paragraph essays.

Did I answer your question? Am I misinterpreting what you're asking?

>>9634791
I get your point, seems like this is the same all over. Next question, do you consider the essays to be a valuable means of gauging a students understanding/engagement with a text?

And after that, have you ever read any Ivan Illich? I like asking teachers that.

>>9634799
No, I do not. The modern academic essay is a useless thing, at least in primary and secondary education. It is a bastardized form of the classic essay and is generally graded based on length rather than any reasonable standard of quality.

The rubrics used to grade students are laughable - Can you use a quote correctly? Does your essay have a thesis? Is there a consistent thought being built towards throughout your essay? They don't even look at the grammar or spelling. As long as some meaning is discernible students will score high on the so-called "Usage and Craft" portion of the rubric.

I have not read Ivan Illich. Should I have?

>>9634836
Illich's 'Deschooling Society' is a very interesting look at the practical value of formal education. It was written decades ago but for the most part it's still relevant.

>>9634845
I will read it, thank you. I am currently working through two of Constance Weaver's books on grammar education.

>>9631389
I keep seeing a pattern in threads like these
>no one reads anymore
>that's not true. literacy is at its highest, and we have never had as much access to books as before
It's getting kind of annoying. It should be obvious that access does not mean people read more, although it could be one of the reasons people read less. And there's a major quantity-quality difference between modern and past literature. People these days who say they like reading just mean that they occasionally re-read the same Harry Potter or Young Adult fiction. But in the 1920's a 'reader' would have a thorough understanding of philosophy, history, art, writers from across the globe, religion, and even science to an extent. You simply cannot compare modern pure-entertainment books to the intellectual works of the past. Despite literacy being at its peak, we have a severe shortage of an intellectual class.

Also the girl OP posted is hot as fuck.

>>9634946
>Also the girl OP posted is hot as fuck.
Good news, pretty sure she takes penises on camera for a living.

>>9634946
Youre fucking retarded how would people in the 1920s have access to all those books? Especially heading into the depression. You fucking idiot wow go read a book or soemthinf dweeb

>>9634967
Not him but working class intellectuals were a thing in postwar Britain at least, leading to the unions and such like.

>>9634967

lending libraries

In those days you could rent books the way people used to rent videos.

>>9634946
You have a lot to learn.

>>9634967
Libraries and printing presses were things. Literature wasn't unattainable; around the 19th century is when pretty much anyone who wanted to read books could read books. Also keep in mind that reading was a form of entertainment back then; with the increased unemployment rate reading would increase just like drinking would. You might not be able to buy a library, but you were very much able to access a decent selection of books.

>>9634957
:D

>>9635022
What an insightful post.

>>9634946
No, an average reader from the 1920's would be reading magazines, diaries or pulp fiction. And the amount of people who back then were interested in serious literature are the same as now.

Nothing has changed.

It never was popular.
You ever see the shit your grandparents read? It's just WW2 porn or some History Channel bullshit like that.

Literature was never popular. Reading was for the period where literacy was up and radio/TV wasn't here yet. But penny dreadfuls may as well be the same as your average soap on the tube.

If you can't find people IRL who like good books though you probably just suck.

>>9635057
>You ever see the shit your grandparents read? It's just WW2 porn or some History Channel bullshit like that.
Your grandparents maybe.

>>9635068
Okay I get that you have a cool grampapi, but we both know what I mean.

One of mine was a stereotype gramp. Golfin, Dan Brown books, Arnold Palmers, the works.
Other one read the Harvard classics.

Most people have the former is what I'm saying.

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>>9635054
>>9635057

Apparently the number of people who read for pleasure has stayed the same since the 1980s, which of course means that the percentage of people who read for pleasure has decreased. So in fact, to be honest, you're both wrong.

Personally I blame our shitty education system and the general "proletariatization" of society.

>>9635080
Reading for pleasure =/= reading literature.

>>9635083

A falling tide lowers all boats

>>9635089
not anti-gravity boats

>>9635089
Call it a hunch but I feel like well the constructed boats are doing about the same as before. Could be wrong though. Lotta shit in the water these days.

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>>9635089
>being at the mercy of the tides
Uncultured swine.

>>9635100

That's a lot of locks.

>>9635080
Nope, the ratio of serious readers and casual readers have always remained the same since forever.

>>9631495
You read. Big deal.
Everyone reads.

Is your life is so devoid of accomplishment?

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>>9631389
Why would you read if you could satisfy your most primal and masculine urges by socializing and having sex? It's no coincidence that reading attracts a certain introverted loser audience. I doubt the majority of anons on this board would ever be here, have identity crises or ruminating thoughts about life if they simply had satisfying access to sex and women in general. Do you see the confident and cool guys reading? Do you think they could even fathom how some incels and normalfag-wannabes could spend their evening on an imageboard arguing about elliot rodger's manifesto and philosophizing about the state of the western male and his relationship to the opposite sex? Cerebrotonic type in pic related.

>>9635840
PRO JECTING

You might as well ask why anyone does anything but fuck. Sex is good but there's more to life

>>9635840
>Do you see the confident and cool guys reading? Do you think they could even fathom how some incels and normalfag-wannabes could spend their evening on an imageboard arguing about elliot rodger's manifesto and philosophizing about the state of the western male and his relationship to the opposite sex?
Those brutes are necessary in our capitalist society, or else the system would tear apart. They don't need to read, just obey the elites and do the hard work that intellectuals don't want to do by themselves.

It's not necessarily a bad thing. When literature is a marginal art form - yet relatively influential - it reaches a more intelligent audience and therefore maintains better quality.

As for the reasons why plebs are in different entertainment forms:
- literature is more difficult than easy-to-access technology, less instant gratification
- plebs are always attracted to the easiest available format unless extraordinary effort and circumstances keep them a bit more civilised - even then, it is a minority who reads
- American spirit, the turbo-materialistic shitshow and the plebbiest of plebeian cultures, has prevailed along with capitalism; therefore the lowest common denominator rules in culture until we get bored of this shit and move on to something different

Etc.

>>9635840
Camus was a well-known womanizer and spent a lot of his time reading and writing. So, yeah, you're kinda retarded.

>>9631400
> you will never berry your dick inside her ass
why even live

>>9631572
it was an american meme before the internet, peaked in 80s and 90s. now there are youtube channels dedicated to dead malls like this one
https://www.youtube.com/user/moviedan/videos
internet killed malls, the remaining malls are barely alive visited by old people and niggers doing their magic

>>9631431
Fucking THIS.

For perspective, we live in the age of "child leashes".

Look for them in the grocery store - children with a little teddy bear thing strapped to their back, attached to a tether that their mother holds. It is literally a leash designed for children, so that you don't actually have to watch them while you're gazing into the abyss of your smartphone (I love that name now, by the way. The phone really is the smart one in that relationship) or teach them how to behave themselves or avoid traffic and not get in people's way.

Children are raising children, taking every shortcut possible to "make it easier" instead of taking responsibility for the development of their own fucking children. They'd rather just put some kid's show on autoplay on Netflix (or just throw their kid a phone with youtube open) while they post selfies and share video clips and other high-school-tier facebook-generation shit instead of sitting down with their kid free of distractions and reading to them, gradually encouraging the kid to start doing the reading-out-loud during these sessions.

These people can barely manage to raise a dog by themselves, yet somehow they're allowed to raise the next generation of human beings. One day you're going to bump into some 30-year-old asshole with your car when he was trying to weave between moving traffic to cross the street, because he was raised with a child leash and late-developed, malnourished reading skills.

>>9631431
No one in my family read, I come from a working-class background and I have been naturally inclined to literature and knowledge since I was a kid.

because modern literature is bad. it's pretentious shit written by and for literati. just look at how many books nowadays are basically "petty-bourgeois Jewish-American writing about Jewishness" or "petty-bourgeois woman writing about women" or "struggling male author with inflated sense of self-importance writing about living the literary lifestyle in Brooklyn" or "immigrant novel #234234" or "black author writing about Blackness".

Nobody has to write letters anymore. Telephone and email have killed the formal letter.
Writing letters required thought about language and prose, and increased your baseline of literary knowledge and skills.

Read letters from average grunts writing to their loved one in WWI, usually the prose is more elegant than most contemporary writers

>>9635840
Speaking as someone who thinks of themselves as handsome and who has had a lot of sex: It's largely empty and just a rudimentary method of distinguishing yourself. It has no greater value than the worth you place on sex - and you'll find sex slowly loses its value with each experience. Am I any happier for boning numerous women? No. Did it make me a better person? No. In fact I once cheated on a very worthwhile, dependable girlfriend in order to bone this thiccc chick and it was really disappointing and lackluster; it also lead to the end of that relationship. I regret it everyday.

Some simple minded men are content to spend life chasing women, but you should recognize these are the ones typically chasing down a lot of things. Materialistic things.

>>9634754
>platformers are dead
Most of them are just relegated to being metroidvanias now. I don't mind, I like them. Valdis Story was fun. Your spiel on RPGs is entirely one-sided and based solely on the western market of them, I will however absolutely agree with you on it.

Just this year however we had a very strong showing of japanese RPGs that essentially completely blew out every political piece of shit the west spewed out. NieR and possibly Nioh immediately come to mind. I hesitate to mention FFXV since it went full pandering mode and the core gameplay and overall design essentially just mimicked the Witcher 3 because of how it sold.

I learned a lot of English from Baldur's Gate, and history from Age of Empires, pretty superficial but still.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1WJyLQjypo

>tfw I enjoy reading and video games equally, and see merits in video games
I laugh at you faggots limiting yourself, I'll be over here enjoying both Ulysses and Deus Ex, two masterpieces, each in its own right.
The problem aren't video games, but teens which play shitty dumbed down games, and only do that, instead of also reading and having other hobbies.

>>9638053
Pretty much this, its almost embarrassing that we still have these kind of discussions. Step your fucking game up.

>>9634754
You don't understand genres in video games very well. You say they peaked with those games, but the thing is, after they peaked they started to fuse with other genres. No game coming out today is a single genre, it's all combinations of genres, which makes them new things and more complex than their predecessors. If you care about video games then there is no reason not to play new games.

Of course, the statement that video games "can be the next form of literature" is retarded, unless it means the next form of immersive fine art (which literature hasn't been for some time, but anyway), which I then agree with. It's already there.

>>9631452
o-okay.

>>9636956
>berry

>>9638919
Videogames are doing very well financially while garnering a massive mainstream attention with e-sports and events. I'd risk to say: much better than the PS2 era. 152 million units are nothing compared to the power that certain companies are attaining (Valve, Riot games, EA, Ubisoft, Bethesda, etc.)
Theoritically, games are the most complex artform to exist, due to the interaction factor. However, most games falls flat on its face due to limitations, audience (i'll get to that soon) and investors demanding returns.
If one's seeking art, they might want to overlook AAA games and jump into indie titles. (Crypt of the necrodancer, Binding of isaac, spelunker, Ori and the blind forest (i know, it's not indie, but it's very artsy), etc.

---BUT---
I am ashamed to say that i play videogames, because my anecdotal evidence sugests that this group has communication problems, almost autistic attachment to one artform, while ignoring the others and extreme patriotism to their "cult" to titles, characters, companies (almost like an otaku would behave).

That's why folks, on public, i enjoy talking about music, films, books and work. But when the subject is games: I simply remain silent, Even through i thoroughly enjoy playing videogames, as a secret habit, of course.

I like literature because not a lot of people read and you gain knowledge and information from it; however the new generation have better medians in which lit and stories are told. Therefore it is a lot easier for them to not want to read when it is just told to them. I like this board just the way it is and everyone who talks on it.

>>9631389
It's because books are for NEEERRRDDDSSS

They're also often kind of a false reality I dunno...

>>9638919
Name one fusion that's good and one game more complex than one that could be found in the 90s. X-com got turned into a board game, RTS turned into ASSFAGGOTS, RPGs have stagnated in Eastern Europe, turned flaming homo in the US and Japan is doing the same thing they've always done with better waifu rendering technology, shooters are absolute garbage right now unless you're into role-playing simulator-faggotry and action games have just been stuck doing slightly better or worse variations on Devil May Cry for however long it's been since that came out.

>>9639287
name one storytelling medium that's objectively superior to literature.

>be me
>5 yo
>mom reads me book everytime for 20min before going to sleep
>get excited for the plot
>after she stopped i started reading this book all by myself
>finished it in few hours
>read regullary after that
Thanks Mom

>>9631431
My mother forced me to read every day atleast a few pages a day really thankful for that

>>9639412
Not that guy, but literature isn't always the best for telling stories. For example, if I am reading a literary work with characters whose looks aren't described, what the hell should I imagine? How does the scene look like? It sucks that I have to self-insert my imaginations. But even if the looks of the characters are described, every reader will perceive him in a different way, still. There's no way to describe faces so that others see it the same as you do.
That's the only thing that bothers me about the medium.

>>9639546
On the other hand why would it be necessary? It's only because of movies that we now think that it's indispensable to have a face in mind. It's really not - and that's one of the characteristic of the novel, the fact that vision is not its primary medium.

>>9639593
Maybe it's just me, but I can't "see" things very well when I imagine them (also when I close my eyes and try to imagine a picture, everything is black and I can hardly "see", if you understand what I'm trying to say), so I don't mind reading a text without a clear picture of events in my head, but I think to a lot of people it's bothersome that they can't picture exactly what is happening.
Imagine a scene where two people are talking in a room. The room itself isn't described, it bothers some people that a lot of the things are left out so what you imagine is probably different from the author or somebody else who read the book, as it depends on your personality etc.
This flaw (in my opinion) aside, I still consider literature to be the best medium, maybe exactly because of that flaw, because it has the most capacity for telling stories (which can also contain certain philosophies), requires the most concentration (you're reading words, that's the least stimulating out of all the other mediums) and patience.

>>9639482
Hey, it happened to me exactly like you say

It's a cultural thing too, the Anglosphere is particularly bad when it comes to reading. I had an Eastern European ex who loved reading because her parents forced her to read classics as a child and in state education back home she was made to memorise poems and stories. That would never pass in the UK.

I didn't really have anyone to inspire me to read, though my problem was being easily distracted. In the early days of school I would finish everything in class way early. My teacher would give me some extra material and after that was done, she/he would send me to the school library. I was fascinated with native horror stories, urban legends and history. I'd read about middle age technology and inventions. Apart from fantasy (fuck that gay shit desu); I'd binge everything. Then along came computers with games. I learnt a lot using computers (coding, English, etc) but I stopped reading after that. Fast forward, university. I bought a Kindle because fuck buying overpriced textbooks and WHOOPS I'M HERE.

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Posting in a pseud thread

Smartphones and memes have fucked the brains of the younger generations. Memes were fine when they were divorced from real-life, but now we have fully grown adults acting like primary school children without end.

>>9639216
>If one's seeking art, they might want to overlook AAA games and jump into indie titles.
I'm not sure why you would think this. The games you listed are cheap, poor quality minigames compared to many AAA titles. Have you not been playing games for very long?

>>9639412
Most genres have crossed over with the adventure and RPG genres by now. I know you dismiss these for no reason whatsoever but they are excellent and they cut to exactly what is lovable about video games and I disagree with your position wholeheartedly.

any fool can read a book. it takes a true intellectual to 1cc mushihimesama futari

>>9639795
Bastion and FTL are honestly leagues ahead of 90% of AAA titles desu

>>9639935
sage since the discussion is very off topic at this point. But I'm bewildered on how you could think that. FTL is decent at least, and yet I wouldn't say it's "leagues ahead of 90% of AAAs" or even better than 90% of them. Note that there are many more AAA franchises than Assassin's Creed.

>>9639991
What recent AAA titles are there? Horizon Zero Dawn, an "epic" 15 hour journey that plays exactly like any other ubisoft title? Witcher 3, whos sole strong point is the writing since the raw gameplay and expansive world is essentially the same as the last 2? Call of fucking Duty? For Honor which is a god damn mess of balance and bugs, wherein it took them nearly 3 months to belt out the first patch that didn't even address a single major issue?

Notice how I neglected any mention of japanese tripe AAA, mainly due to how the previous chain of posts seem to entirely deny their existence aside from a single other poster. Yes, I would argue that FTL is far more than most of those games, both in requiring mechanical skill and effort, and sheer immersiveness.

>>9640179
Haven't played HZD or For Honor, and I thought Witcher 3 was just okay, although saying its "raw gameplay" is like Witcher 1 and 2 is absurd. They play nothing alike.

Since 2013:
>The Last of Us
>Assassin's Creed: Black Flag
>Crysis 3
>Metro: Last Light
>Splinter Cell Blacklist
>Dead Space 3
>Call of Juarez Gunslinger
>Alien Isolation
>Mario Kart 8
>Metal Gear Rising
>Wolfenstein: The New Order
>Bloodborne
>Halo 5
>Until Dawn
>Rainbow Six Siege
>Dying Light
>Just Cause 3
>Titanfall 2
>DOOM
>Battlefield 1
>Hitman
>Dark Souls 3
>The Division
>Prey
>Breath of the Wild
>Resident Evil 7
>Ghost Recon Wildlands

I can't say I had a phenomenal experience with all of them but pretty much all of those games are a 7/10 - 10/10 to me. inb4 you dismiss each and every one with far-fetched, desperate, non-applicable comebacks like "just a sequel" or "just a rehash" - as someone who is playing all of these games, switching up my genre of focus every other 1-2 weeks, the feeling of these games all being redundant of each other and of past games doesn't happen to me. Using these things as complaints outs you as someone who clearly does not play enough games. In other words, these are the complaints of an outsider and outsiders should not even bother expressing their opinions on subjects which they are outside the experience of since it holds no value.

>>9640228
Chaos Theory was the last good splinter cell game

>>9640228
I've actually been playing games of every console and genre for the last 24 years. There is a good amount of strong games in your lineup, many that I've personally enjoyed, but if you have yet to run into "indie" titles that match at least some of those, then you simply have not begun to branch out and continue to consume any big name game.
I'm not going to just "attack" every game on that list because that'd be stupid and pointless, but I will make note that some of those titles rely completely on multiplayer to be a "good game" (going off your 7 to 10 rating) which is something that absolutely can not be judged in any remote way of objectivity.

Something like Titanfall 2 is an absolutely amazing multiplayer game, full of all kinds of mechanical tricks involving the movement system that truly rewards skilled and dedicated players. The singleplayer has some incredibly cool set pieces, but if you were to just compare the single player to another title, like say Live A Live on the SNES it could fall flat. Of course comparing 2 games so different is completely retarded but so is buying a game like Titanfall just for the singleplayer, where the first game didn't even have a campaign and the game itself by design makes it well known that "hey, this is a multiplayer game".
All I can really say here is that you should try some of the stronger indie titles and take note of their impact, overall length and replayability, price point, mechanical skill to do good/complete it, then compare those factors to most of those games on your list. You might end up surprised.

I will admit that in recent years a huge amount of indie titles are just pandering political bullshit but so are some triple A titles. And to end this massive shitpost of mine I will just end with this
>Just Cause 3
Really nigga

>>9640228
FTL is unironically more immersive, requires more forward planning and mechanical skill, and has a better soundtrack than like half of those games. I mean it's not 90% like that guy said but you should definitely branch out more if you think everyone one of those is high-tier. I will give you Bloodborne since I'm a lovecraftfag. I can tell from most of those games that you like a more gritty, realistic style which most indie games, or hell even just non-AAA titles like armored core simply don't or can't afford to have however.

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>tfw 22
>tfw your parents broke at the age of 8
>tfw you and your sister go to live at mom, because dad beat her up
>tfw mom works all day, home at weekends
>tfw you spent most of your childhood either outside or on computer all day
>tfw somehow did good at school, even though nobody sparked interest for it at home and is braindead
>tfw grow up hating father, even though he paid child support and I went to visit him
>tfw after highschool I realize dad has huge anger issues, but has a good hearth afterall
>tfw you realize you never had father growing up and your mom didn't take care of you, other than providing your food
>tfw always eat in my room, mom and I never understood eachother
>tfw live with mom since the age of 8, but feel like a stranger
>always in room on computer, playing games or w/e
>tfw 22 now and realized why I did so poor in life until now, because I never had parents that raised/guide me nor sparked any interest in me
>luckily was naturally good boy at school and took a lot of martial arts and look like a fucking greek god with a face that is about to kill someone + charisma and street smart with people/women. Everybody respect me and doesn't want to fuck with me, magnet for groups of people, can make topics interesting and funny out of the box
>tfw you realize at 22 how dumb you are, but at least you got all the other properties in life to succed
>tfw just got to put work into school from now on and I'm set for life

It's fucking amazing I didn't fail, run away from home or kill myself during my depression episodes growing up.

>>9640485
>and was able to pull the best women/bitches, because I looked good and had the character.

The only thing keeping me alive during highschool was chasing pussy really and bunch of pussies chasing my dick.

I just realized I was a Chad.

>>9639795
Since childhood, unfortunately.
Sometimes simplicity is better than an intricate high budget game.
>>9640228
On this list, i can only agree with RE7, DOOM 2016, DKS 3, bloodborne and SC blacklist
The rest is just uninspiring and/or uninteresting games

I'd also add MGSV TPP

>Using these things as complaints outs you as someone who clearly does not play enough games.
Has it crossed your mind that time is scarce and video games usually demand more hours than any form of art available? Are you aware of the existence of literature, music, movies and series? Is this your only occupation and hobby?
That being said, some of these titles requires a significant investment, specially multiplayer games with absolutely no artistic value. You just shoot dudes, level up, personalize your gun and rinse and repeat. Mindless and repetitive.

I wouldnt bother as much if they were rogue-like, which luck plays a big factor on strategy, even through gameplay may look boring and simplistic, decisions matter.
Some of these titles are extremely mediocre games, such as Dead space 3, Crysis 3, Assassin creed, the division.

You clearly are a multiplayer game, in that case, the gaming industry suits you well. But as someone looking for artistic value with some challenging mindless experience, it's really not there in the AAA titles.

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>>9639032

I remember learning vocabulary from playing Warcraft 1,2,3 and the Starcraft 1. Those introductions with text before the mission was always highly enjoyable. But I also read a lot as a kid too.

Anything blizzard after the activision merge is heavily dumbed down in comparison though.

>>9631400
I have expended quite a lot of semen over the last few days thanks to this information, let me tell you

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>want to read while staying at a friend's house
>evenings consist of watching him and others play fighting game matches over and over

>>9631530
My drug addiction will take me down in like 10 years so I am okay with this.

>>9631389
>provides no empirical evidence

I think it's because of the internet. You can get your dose of information much faster there. Stories, news, socialization. It scratches all the itches. In minutes, you can catch up with what your friends are doing, what the breaking news are and you can even see funny cat videos.

It's a drug, and it makes life go faster. We don't have time to read anymore, because there are much more stimulating ways of entertainment available. Reading will never be cool again, it's going to slowly recede even more and those of us who read books will be a tiny tiny minority and people will look at us like aliens (which kinda is the case already).

>>9641122
Reading never was cool.

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>>9631530

The movement to legalize euthanasia is gaining ground. If the welfare state collapses they won't have much choice, since so few of them have any children.

>>9631389
they don't have the capacity to delay gratification
millenials are the new baby boomers
they'll burn us all down and blame us for not stopping them

>>9640502
We're all looking for artistic value here. We just don't all value the same things as being artistic.

Also, for the record, most of those games listed were singleplayer. But multiplayer video games are still video games.

>>9631389
In a world where everything happens so quickly no child would ever want to slow down to read

>>9631389
why read only books when you can just listen to smart people having conversations (podcasts, lectures) or even tip them for a response to a question (youtube, patreon)?

>>9641084
Lucky guy, I wish I had friends who played fighting games.
Unless it's shit like Smash, Mortel Kombat, Injustice etc

>this smashed turd of a thread gets 216 replies
I guess I should kill myself

>>9641840
Mortel Kombat and Tekken. Occasionally Smash. Vidya is boring to watch. I find Smash boring to play.

>>9641845
>Mortel Kombat and Tekken. Occasionally Smash.
Yeah, that's pretty gay. Not a fan of Tekken to be honest. I'm more into Street Fighter and weebshit.
>Vidya is boring to watch.
Depends on the game imo but if they're just mashing then definitely.

>>9639412
Animation? Movies? Videogames?
These are superior to literature less work required.

>>9631389
YouTube video's are just easier..

>>9631460

films, art, etc can all do the same thing as a book, trying to act like literature is some superior medium is pretentious and hilarious

>>9634627

you failed to do the best troll answer; "planescape torment is more like a book than it is a video game, and it's arguably one of the best 'video games' ever made!"

>>9634327
Shut the fuck up, nerd

>>9631447

I grew up poor, and reading was one of the few forms of entertainment I had since I could check out books for free.

>>9641897
Reading requires more expenditure than visual mediums. People have a tendency to veg out when watching movies and TV, even video games end up being an exercise in repetition. People read comics and appreciate the art, but shy away from books, especially big ones, because it's "too much work." Surely you can recognize this.

>>9635840
>the wagecuck

Fuck, this is accurate.

>>9632562
>>9632573
he's right, guns kill nothing, people kill each-other and themselves, games are fine, books are fin, but too many games=retardation ,to many books =/lit/ autism

>>9631389
reading entails thinking
people dont like to think

>>9635111
for you

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>>9632205

>Basically, women ruin everything

I'm still pissed off at the women teachers who ran my elementary school like it was fucking Treblinka. I ran away from school twice in the middle of winter because those harridans gave me a detention and made fun of my story about dinosaurs. I just know that they were all feminists, too. That's why girls were never punished for anything.

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>>9642100
I'm sorry to hear that, anon.

>>9641821
Most books nowadays are just magazine articles with a fancy cover and binding.

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>>9642128

Thanks. I was probably a difficult kid but sometimes they were just gratuitously mean. We had a school play where I had a bit part as a frog. . .and when we were watching a videotape of the performance one of the teacher's assistants said "There's Anon, hopping around like an idiot."

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>>9631389
you cant totally see what this generation is reading:
>>>/pol/130066705
no wonder everything is gone to shit

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>>9642100
Me too, and all these bitches taught us in reading classes were books about slavery, the extermination of the Indians and the Holocaust. Meanwhile the entire Western canon including Shakespeare et al was completely neglected

>>9631887
Still, wouldn't it be better to have many readers arguing over what's canon and what's crap? I say let them come and be converted.

>>9641050
I'm glad to hear it my man

>>9632205
You're retarded and isolating processes in human history for no reason.

>>9641906
Planet Escape: Torrent is a shitty video game and not even compellingly written.

>>9642256
This, I keep picking it up and it's just agony. Even Baldur's Gate II is more compellingly written

>>9642256
>>9642266
Plebs detected. Planescape had an extremely immersive premise at its time of release, it's a classic for a reason.

>>9631495
>Are you saying reading isnt work one should be proud of
I'm not him, but I've never considered reading to be work. It's something I enjoy. Why would I be "proud" of a hobby? I can be proud of the results, I suppose....but that gets irritating really quick, like a gym rat who won't shut up about how awesome he is for working out. Just shut the fuck up and enjoy it or don't.

>>9642270
>extremely immersive
The first 6 hours of the game is clicking around an ugly mud-city doing odd jobs for nobodies consisting of fetching, some of the worst combat in the history of video games, and finding the named NPCs within crowds of nobodies and searching through a billion empty hovels for the right piece of junk you need to advance. Hell, as far as I could see that's the entire game.

Gothic at least had the benefit of making you feel as though you were actually exploring thanks to its 3D world and third person perspective. In Planescape you just click around the same ugly mudscapes waiting for the nameless one to catch up to your mouse cursor.

what statistics are you looking at that suggest books have become unpopular with this generation? everything I've seen suggests otherwise.

>>9642311
Harold Bloom says that he's had to drastically lower the standards he holds students to because even the most promising English students in America are plebs compared to those who came just a few decades before.

>>9642316
what does this have to do with the popularity of books?

>>9642323
The young Americans who you would expect to be the most well-read don't read as much as those who did a few decades ago.

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>>9642270
Yeah, it did have an extremely impressive premise, but that doesn't make a great game and acres of cringeworthy and poorly-edited dialogue don't make a great game.
this >>9642306

On a related note I'm running a Planescape campaign IRL atm, ama

>>9642306
You describing it in the worst and most lazy way possible doesn't mean that's how it actually is. That's not at all what my first 6 hours were like and there's many hours ahead of that.

>>9642336
>that doesn't make a great game
Sure it does. Why wouldn't it? Immersion is what we're here for.

>>9642349
I'm sorry, but I really don't want to describe for you why an extremely impressive premise doesn't make a great game
Does an extremely impressive premise create immersion for you? I didn't feel super immersed by it, partly because of the poor game design/interface and partly because of the corniness of the dialogue though ymmv on the latter

>>9642373
I said immersive, not impressive. Just caught that now.

>>9642349
Anon said that the premise is impressive, not immersive. Gameplay is more important than anything else. I find Tetris immersing. Not being painful to play would make Planescape a good game. It's D&D-tier setting and comic-book writing could at best serve as above-average window-dressing to a decently constructed rpg, but as it is it just seems horribly pretentious.

>>9642378
You clearly did not play Planescape close to its release. It was cutting edge. It was visually detailed, more than other traditional CRPGs at the time, and the story was complex. It also had a setting that was unique to the video game RPG landscape and still is for the most part. That made it very immersive which made it a great game. Tetris doesn't compare, unless you're an old man that just prefers a simple but satisfying puzzle to a full fledged engaging adventure.

>>9642428
dude, planescape is just baldur's gate in space or whatever, not saying it's not good, but baldur's gate was the impactful game at the time, planescape was a spin off using the engine, also tetris was a big deal, like angry birds and candy crush multiplied big

>>9642434
>planescape is just baldur's gate in space or whatever,
Nice. You don't pay attention to the fine details it seems like. Planescape is a very different animal to Baldur's Gate.

>tetris was a big deal, like angry birds and candy crush multiplied big
I don't disagree. At the same time, I hope you realize that I don't value those games at all. They are bite sized puzzle games, making them on the deep low end of the immersion spectrum, while something like Planescape is at the high end, like potato chips to a three course meal respectively.

>>9642449
>food analogies
NOW this thread is going places.

>>9642449
>I don't disagree. At the same time, I hope you realize that I don't value those games at all. They are bite sized puzzle games, making them on the deep low end of the immersion spectrum, while something like Planescape is at the high end, like potato chips to a three course meal respectively.

u sound like a pseud, when i was a tween my buddy whose father was a professor at an elite uni and his older brother would battle each other for tetris high score very seriously, we also played some ad&d rpgs like the original pool of radiance, but to them narrative rpg type games were clearly just escapist time wasters, while tetris was a real test of your mettle, just like street fighter and mortal kombat would be later. i always feel like the kids that are obsessed with single player rpgs are just trying to hide from competition, it's so beta. "muh immersion".

>>9642454
What contrarian meme are you spouting now?

>>9642449
>ike potato chips to a three course meal respectively

you can just smell the cheetos in this guys neckbeard

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>>9642460
>this post
Jesus christ.

>>9631741
well i mean people who are into literature and would go on 4chan don't really correlate don't you think? i think it's safe to say most people came here for other reasons then found this board.

>>9642485
i used to go on /mu/ but then i decided if i want to read about pitchfork's greatest hits i'll just read pitchfork and skip the middle man, /mu/ is wack, but it's engaging for a little while

>>9642467
>only fat and filthy people enjoy food
What a copout excuse to drop out of the discussion.

>>9642509
if the first analogy that pops into your mind involves potato chips and three course meals chances are you're gluttonous garbage

Some of the people I know who are younger than 30 read at least occasionally, the vast majority of the people I know who are 30+ haven't read anything but some pages of the bible in years. And most of my friends have the same experience. If anything, people are more literate now than ever.

>>9631410
Sincere post. 8/10

>>9642522
I just had dinner, but alright.

>>9634563
Yes, we can certainly make things of value. A good slice of medical technology that helps train surgeons came from people playing video games, and a few brighter souls who figured out how to transpose from one sector to another. Fantasy and immersion are two of the top reasons people still read, followed by learning/education, and growing as a person/contemplation. Isn't most literature built on the back of the humanities, with specialization of theme particular to knowledge of a specific field/subject the author found interesting? Moby Dick springs to mind; there are already light video games that teach and help people improve their basic skills (excluding the generic improvements just by playing video games, period).

Both video games based on literature (D Souls series and especially Bloodborne are surprising in their depiction of certain subjects, like the Catholic [denomination?] branch of Christian faith) and video games that aspire to have lit-like qualities, e.g. - better prose, better storytelling, different/experimental methods of teaching players the think for themselves. I'm not going to say Mirror's Edge games are amazing, nor is Portal (it was pretty great) but think of how fast some children (there's literally a baby playing both in vids online) will grow mentally by being challenged with concept-based problem-solving so early. I think you're thinking too linearly (straightforward, literally?)... if someone were to take the Iliad or Odyssey or Beowulf and make an epic fantasy game that was like Elder Scrolls or Legend of Zelda series, people would get into it. God of War is a bad example for gameplay, and so is Assassin's Creed, but there are thousands of people from each of those series who would never have gotten into reading fiction (let alone literature) about the things that influenced those games. Imagine if there were a Shadow of the Colossus for the Greek, Roman, or Norse gods, with a half-decent team of 2-3 writers (one for concept, one for details/academic side, one to edit and bring it together in game format). I agree it'd be a fuckton of work, but damn, anon, there are options.

It's really not that difficult to add literary merit. The past decade has seen video gaming as an industry blow the fuck out of proportion to a billion (soon trillion) dollar sector. And you know what direction the corporate overlords are all worried about? Fans are aiming for storytelling; GOOD storytelling. There are games out there now that make nil sense mechanically, or economically, but are aesthetically pleasing and tell a decent story. >[Should note here I'm not being a fickle jerkass, I meant making the game will be difficult, not making it more literary.]

Your point about From Software is EXACTLY where I'm coming from. That is literally the direction fans are pushing in almost every single platform and genre of video game. Even fucking porn, largely unrelated to the discussion, has seen sales booms over better storytelling.

>>9634563
>>9642572
Man, I'm not saying it's going to be pretty. It'll probably be like comparing smutty, popularity-YA with canon literature for a decade or two, but it's already on the move in a better direction.

I don't think video games will, would, or ever could replace literature; that's not what I meant. I meant literature can improve them, is improving them, and will find new interest because of them. /lit/ ain't dying, and video games, I believe, will help drive literacy rates up, globally, on average.

>video game literary tradition
Hahaha, there isn't much of a tradition because the people making the games are only now realizing, "Hey! We can make better quality games, and they still sell." Seriously though, think of how many years humanity has had to hone literature, and how far video games have come in 50 years. It's gon' get gud.

>meaningful works of anything
Yeah, the only people who think literature is that great are the people who don't know what value really is. It's entirely subjective. Immaculate value to a 4yo and a 128yo are completely different, as is the entertainment or growth value of what you and I like. Literature was and probably always will be the biggest snootfest besides material wealth, but it's also the biggest waste of time.

>>9634627
The market is doesn't lie. If it sells, it's good enough to sell, as much as I hate to admit it in some cases (mostly apps/app games).

The exact same way I dislike app games, other people dislike video games, so I don't dislike you for your opinions, but I do dislike that you're not willing to look objectively at how they have merit, value, and are getting better and closer to a newer form of literature.

I don't believe movies tell a story that can't be done with literature, otherwise someone would make a version of Shakespeare that would be counted globally/internationally as critically better than the original. That hasn't happened. It's just a different medium, the same way you can convey the exact same thing in oil and acrylic painting, or charcoal and colored pencil. Pros and cons to each of them, but none are "lesser" than others.

Everyone at some point is going to look down on what other people do with their time. There are people who will look at you reading lit and basically sneer at you for wasting time you could otherwise spend making hundreds of millions in material wealth. Literature itself is delivering a retarded version of what came before it; philosophy, alchemy, spiritual/religious/occult doctrine. One could easily say "if it's not music/lyric, it's riding on the back of music and lyric" because that was the original storytelling and knowledge/wisdom-passing medium. Nothing matters until you think it does, then it does. Life's funny like that.

>>9634754
You're correct, video games are a completely different form of media.
>I apologize for not making it clear I meant video games will be a continuation, not a replacement of literature.

>>9642658
*waste of time to compare what you think is better, rather than trying to grow up enough to accept someone else's appreciation for a thing you don't like doesn't mean their opinion is invalid (like a person who just wants to own a small boat and cabin by a lake to go fishing v. a person throwing million-dollar parties on a yacht in the caribbean; if you like it, great, but if you don't like it, that doesn't mean it's shit).
>I did not mean literature or accumulating vast material wealth is a waste of time, period. They're both pretty great endeavors.

people who truly enjoy reading will get into it on their own

lotta lewronggeneration neckbearding in this thread...

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>>9642572
>>9642658
>>9642677
...guess I know what my future is now.

>Oh, lordy, the autism took me again.

>>9631389
I'm under the impression that more people are reading then ever in world history, maybe just not what you would want them to. I think you might also have over estimated how many people especially in their youth normally read outside of this generation. I have faith that some people will still have a will to read literature as generations come, and that the worthy writings will rise above the others.

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>>9642572
You say that given time things will improve, but the improvement comes with maturity. I see no sign that video games are set to do that. Bloodbourne is just King's Field with sleeker action and better visuals. The industry isn't moving forwards and I see no reason to believe that it will with time. The two ways I imagine it could would be that new video game writers build on the works of others to slowly build a /v/ canon (unlikely, the best video games have accomplished so far is 90% apeing other mediums) or the industry poaches writers from other mediums and puts them to work, allowing video games to build off of what's established in literature and wherever in a way that's at least professional (for some reason video games love spending ten million dollars have Patrick Stewart speak for five minutes but are loathe to hire the guys who wrote all of his most memorable lines and instead leave that job to whichever intern drew the short straw).

Which corporate overlords are tripping over each other trying to create GOOD storytelling? Where are the AAA releases using GOOD storytelling as a selling point? A few fartsniffers releasing a The Last of Us sequel every few years (not even a very good game, by storytelling or game standards) doesn't count for anything. There's no mainstream drive to innovate, or even do a good job, in storytelling and you know it.

>>9642658
>we can make better quality games and they still sell
It looks to me more like people are reaching the opposite conclusion but I know that's too general a claim to be helpful. Cheap crap seems plentiful and all of the expensive stuff plays it pathetically straight.

Nobody's made Shakespeare that's better than the original as a movie but there are undeniably Shakespeare screen adaptions that stand on their own. Derek Jarman's 'The Tempest' is one of my favourite movies.

There's a glut of information and media and only so many hours in the day. Literature takes the least time and it's the only one that people have to do in education, thus being associated with work instead of pleasure or relaxation

>>9631431
I'm very dubious of the idea that forcing kids towards reading does any good. No-one ever forced me, I just liked to do it.

>>9631549
I wouldn't say that "atheism" leads to despair, as if atheism is some sort of choice. Atheism is simply the logical conclusion of a clear-headed look at things. There is no rational justification for belief in any sort of deity that takes cares of us or pays attention to us in this material life, at least. The idea of some sort of mystic, transcendent aspect to existence is defensible... and the hard problem of consciousness, indeed, points to it. However, none of the Abrahamic claptrap is defensible. The Abrahamic religions are obviously nothing more than the schizoid ramblings of stone age herdsmen.
So it is not atheism as an ideology that has led to despair... rather, it's simply that those people who think at all have become intelligent enough to not buy into the old fairy tales.

>>9631740
So am I

>>9632524
Christ, too, is addicted to porn.

>>9631986
You nailed it, anon. Well said. Heck, look at all the pseuds on /lit/ who rail against "genre fiction", when the reality is that many of what we call the classics of past ages would have been considered "genre fiction" or the equivalent by contemporaries, whereas the best-regarded realistic fiction of those days was forgotten almost as soon as the cultural context it made sense in vanished.

>>9634776
>All of the best English students when I went to school had no idea what they were doing but studied assigned texts like a science until they could process essay topics and spit out high-scoring essays like calculators.
Ugh. That's fucking terrible.

>>9635840
>Why would you read if you could satisfy your most primal and masculine urges by socializing and having sex?
I've fucked a decent amount and have read even more. These activities tickle different parts of my being. Sometimes, in rare and happy moments, the same part. They're both quite rewarding. But there are some places reading/thinking/being intellectual can get you that, as far as I know, sex simply cannot. I have a powerful curiosity. I want to know everything about everything. Sex doesn't satisfy that curiosity.

>>9643539
To be fair, with how schools work at the moment that's how virtually all subjects tend to work out to some degree or another.

https://www.maa.org/external_archive/devlin/LockhartsLament.pdf

>>9640485
Umm... if your dad beat your mom, you probably should hate him.

>>9631431
This is very true. My parents taught me from a young age how to enjoy reading, and I've loved doing it from when I was 4 or so. Same thing happened with music, film, etcetera. It really makes me sad when I see parents use entertainment as a way to just shut their kids up and keep them quiet.

Books used to be the only escapism. Escapism has been evolving ever since from books to film to TV to games to VR. You go from reading, which requires piecing the images together in your brain, to film and TV which puts the images directly into your brain, to games which allows you to actually control the narrative.

>>9640228
Nigga kill yourself if you're not baiting

How does this retarded thread have so many replies?

>>9631603
1900-1950

>>9631431

Oh fuck right off. Most books are utter garbage and not worth the paper they are printed on. A million books could be burnt and nothing of value would be lost.

>>9644155
It's true, fetishizing bad culture is as bad as destroying good culture.

>>9631431
I disagree with the core of your argument. You develop your interests through genetic inclination, with social influences like parents, teachers and friends playing a much smaller role in that development than your post suggests.

Both reading and writing are more popular today than ever before. There are more readers and more writers today than ever before. But writing has become less popular among the talented, because the talented now have other outlets, and the talented have also "surpassed" writing, to an extent. Artistically, writing is outdated. Philosophically, writing has been exhausted at this point. What needs to be said has nearly all been said and we are very close to having nothing left to say without beating the same dead horse for the Nth time, and all true artists these days don't want to just write books, they want to use other mediums that bring their works to life in ways that books cannot.

>>9644155
90% of everything is crap

>>9631431
>tfw father is an immigrant and my mother never went to high school
>dad always bought us books
>one day picked up The Count of Monte Cristo off his bookshelf
>loved it, ask him for a recommendation
>he encourages me to read more challenging literature
>read voraciously from then on

I take my upbringing for granted now that I think about it. My privileged classmates in uni couldn't read for longer than 20 mins, most of them never finished the assigned readings. I'm a lucky bastard now that I think about it.

>>9643811
How do you enjoy reading? How is it taught?

There's problem more people reading bookas per 100 people now than most other times in history

>>9644444

>>9643169
I'm saying that they already have improved, mechanics and graphics are the only two publicly lauded aspects of video game improvements, meaning one has to actually pay attention to them and critically evaluate them. You're on a rather pessimist roll and ignoring what isn't publicly lauded, making me wonder if you're not just an intelligent troll.

/v/ will never have the capacity to agree on "canon" because of the disparity between fanbases -- not enough people like, say, both Resi & Silent Hill series to say they both have merit in horror/survival horror, and even fewer people can comprehend both series also fit into adventure, action, and fantasy; probably others, as well. Movies have literally done nothing more than what books can do, besides technical achievement and experimentation... which is exactly what video games do, which is exactly as literature did with the media before it, and exactly as that media did with music and lyric. I'll wholeheartedly agree the entire industry (actually the wider entertainment industry as a whole) treats decent or better writers as shit while designers and even voice actors get major public recognition.
>Then again, there's also James Patterson in literature, and even King and Rowling (and Meyers and James, by definition of Fiction, count as literature).
>And literature hasn't had much higher quality works come out the past decade or two, or improved on the whole. Most of the greatest works are from people long-since dead, and video games have not been around long enough to get anywhere near that stage.

Hahaha, they're tripping over themselves because they're seeing a movement in the fanbase aiming toward GOOD storytelling. >Fanbase.
Overlords are figuring out they may actually have to deal with better quality writers, and teams are coming up with options better than the intern with the short straw. If you don't like The Last of Us, or the latest Alien-ShootEmUp-Hero franchise installment, that's fine. But if you're admitting you can't see any difference in quality besides what's publicly lauded, you're no different from those who can't differentiate nostalgia-YA from literature canon. The Last of Us is definitely a good game by gaming standards and a huge improvement in storytelling compared to games with similar concepts (Resi 4 & 5 both come to mind).

You also seem stuck on the big players and the AAA titles. There is an insane mainstream drive to innovate, have you not seen No Man's Sky? You know the main reason it flopped wasn't that it didn't deliver everything it promised (which was too much anyway)?
>There was no storytelling, no goals or point to do anything, and people were pissed they essentially got a sandbox fantasy flightsim.

Then there are games like Northgard, Jotun, Too Human, EITR, RuneMaster that are all taking from Norse mythology in different ways. Not every change has to come from AAA to affect change in the industry.

>>9643169
It looks like the opposite because it's a change from literally the bottom up, which is in itself pretty shite. It's a lot like anime and manga in that regard, actually, specifically ero/ecchi. As more people get into it, the fans have a greater say/impact on what's being made. That can lead to awesome works, like Ranpo Kitan, some of TypeMoon's stuff, Attack on Titan, and Berserk getting spread much farther than they otherwise would have. The shit side of that is fanservice and pandering to public opinion or online forum/popularity polls to change works mid-way through (Bethesda is terrible for this, so is whoever picked up Halo from Bungie). It's honestly going to look like shit for at least another decade or two, and then we'll be lucky if we see 30% decent titles and 70% mass appeal. In all likelihood, video games will need another sixty years before they catch up to where television is today (and where movies were just before the 70's) as an acceptable representation of literary merit. The expensive stuff with massive budgets take as little freedoms of expression and innovation as possible to milk as long as possible, until an indie or smaller studio smashes through. It was the same way with social media, search engines, family brands, even publishers. Indie and self-publishing is pushing hard on the "Big 5" or however there are traditionally, and people are saying no to them because they can make more in the long term on their own. (Albeit, the quality of much of that market is about on par with what you think of video games as a whole, haha.)

>The Tempest
>Not my fave but a respectable choice.
I'll concede some adaptations can stand on their own, but the point remains. Although, on rereading, it may have been more astute (accurate? precise?) to note music/lyrics --> lit --> film --> video games is more like rock-etching --> finger-pigment --> drawing --> painting. Even then, none are really better than where they "came from" or convey what couldn't be conceptually conveyed in the other medium. It feels like video games are getting the same flak movies got when they were first compared to literature, and genre fiction, as well. Even comics (graphic novels, yes, yes) had their fight out and are only now becoming acceptable. As someone clearly intelligent and articulate, I'm not understanding how you don't see the pattern. Or maybe you do and it's that devil's advocate thing. Perhaps you genuinely dislike video games and don't want the same thing that happened with those other media to happen with video games so much you're missing it.

>If you can't tell, I'm terrible at figuring out other people's thoughts, motives, psych, haha; no attempt to belittle or anything petty.

>>9644441

In the world, yes, but take London or Berlin or something since 50-100. years ago and I bet you more people read in those times than now.

>>9645345
True. I think it's safe to say people in the early 20th century were smarter than people now.

>>9645345
You may be correct. It certainly seemed like there were more known/capable people, what with scholars knowing Latin, Greek, their mother language, at least English or French if not already one of them, and another language or two on the side.

Starting to think the polymaths who made it through history are a misrepresentation of the population as a whole... there are certainly plenty of scholars today who are not much better than NEET's.
>and some NEET's who are on par with or better than doctorate-level scholars or researchers in some subjects

>>9645353
I would agree with "smarter" but I think there's higher IQ now. I'd say the difference is application of IQ, which is smarts.

>>9644123
just look at OP's picture and let your question answer itself

>>9634725

For this anon, or another public Ed. Anon:

Do you actually enjoy what you're currently being told to teach kids in terms of literature? When I was high school, classic literature was reserved to honors/AP students, while regular courses were forced to read YA. Are you pro- or anti- this? Thoughts?

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Per the Big 5, are you conscientious? Specifically, are you industrious?

Then you'll probably argue for literature. If not, then for video games. If you're in the middle, you'll argue that both have their place.

How intelligent you are will also play a factor. Video games are by nature repetitive. Lower IQ people are suited for more repetitive. less abstract activities and vice-versa.

Reading great books by great men for the purpose of changing yourself, the world, your skills, etc. requires industriousness and high IQ.

Reading books for pleasure is likely going to be associated with relatively lower industriousness and lower IQ depending on what is being read.

Playing video games is likely associated with lower industriousness and lower IQ. Same shit, different day. You're just flipping bits on a computer and mashing some buttons.

That is not to say playing games / having fun is some terrible evil. Playing around is required for proper development of children. Read Jean Piaget if you're not convinced.

How is this thread still even going I have no idea.

>>9647186
You don't need to ghost post, either for bumping the thread or regurgitating your spiel. The IP count didn't go up and you've spouted this same nonsense about games being "repetitive" several times throughout the thread.

>>9647204
I've only posted once in this thread, and another time in the reply chain.

I felt compelled to post because there has been no mention of conscientiousness or industriousness throughout this entire thread.

Additionally the component of intelligence has only been alluded to. There has been little discussion behind the neurological basis as to whether video games or literature appeals more to a given individual.

I didn't want to add this component because I am a newfag and I want to see whether /lit/ had hope in addressing this topic.

Clearly not.

Try something better than a straw man next time.

>>9631389
it is only a matter of time when video games become a legitimate medium. it's all about getting the nerds to fuck off anything to do with creativity and stick to technical programming.

>>9631530
>tfw hallucinogens get legalized because of limpwristed millennials cant handle inevitability

>>9631449
My brother keeps defending that forcing kids in school to read have what they read tested is the best way to approach it; I think it just makes kids hate reading.
It doesn't help that here in Spain (a country widely anti-intellectual) we force 14 year olds to read XVI works in old Castilian.

>>9639412
>name one storytelling medium that's objectively superior to literature.
Horror stories are better told orally or visually.

>>9647476
4 wat?

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>>9644296
>Philosophically, writing has been exhausted at this point. What needs to be said has nearly all been said and we are very close to having nothing left to say without beating the same dead horse for the Nth time
>He ACTUALLY, UNIRONICALLY believes this

>>9643482
Schools force kids to read, parents should just make a wide range of books accessible and read to their kids from an early age. You've got to provide the opportunity for them to start reading, otherwise they'd never think to do it. It's like you can't force feed them vegetables, but they'll thank you later on for not buying mcdonalds 5 times a week.

>>9644296
>You develop your interests through genetic inclination, with social influences like parents, teachers and friends playing a much smaller role in that development
[citation needed]

>>9648003
>the opposite
[citation needed]