Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mercurius" data-source="post: 4911153" data-attributes="member: 59082">Agreed, but this is a half-truth. All things in moderation but not all things equally. Moderating donuts means something different than moderating spinach. Or, if we want to be as extreme as possible, moderating crack vs. moderating water.Yeah, I know. There is a spectrum, of course, and I'm certainly not saying that video games are inherently addictive, but that A) many do become addicted to them, and B) serious "users" display characteristics similar to drug additions. At my school last year, for instance, we had a variety of computer gamers in terms of how much they played. Funny. And I hear your point, but I think it really depends upon how you play, how the game is approached. I've met quite a few gamers who play D&D in a very analytical/tactical and even non-imaginative way. For them the game is all about the battles, the numbers, the dice rolling, etc. There is nothing inherently wrong with this, it is just that it precludes a lot of really good stuff. I mean, you have Thor and then you have his stats. If you only see his stats than he's a bad-ass that would put up a pretty good fight. If you see Thor himself, then you see this mighty elemental deity who wields a great hammer of thunder and lightning. That's party of the beauty of RPGs, actually. They tantalize both the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Sort of like baseball, with its endless statistics but also rich history and drama. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Ah, but they may be central to this discussion?Yes, good point. But what do we mean by "good"? Why is the Mona Lisa "good"? Why is some art that is technically mediocre so much great than other art that is technically perfect? I remember when 3E came out and everyone hated Todd Lockwood, calling his art soul-less; people would wax nostalgic for Erol Otus....now technically speaking Lockwood is miles beyond Otus; Lockwood is art grad school while Otus is junior high. But what was so evocative about Otus? Is it the "Golden Age of 12" factor mentioned in another thread? Is it nostalgia? Or is there something else there?It is that "Something Else" that I am interested in, which I feel is what brings the imagination to life.Yes, and it really worked for what it was. But it didn't go deep; no one watched an episode of friends and came away feeling like they had experienced something profound, that they had witnessed a great work of art. And I am not saying that all media needs to be "great art," but that we should recognize that there is a spectrum, and a place for all "locations" on the spectrum. You might be right here, and I am probably somewhat of an elitist when it comes to imaginative creations. Not every fantasy novel needs to be the Silmarillion; heck, I loved the Belgariad--actually, the characters were a lot more enjoyable than Tolkien's, in many ways. They were certainly funnier. Ultimately my favorite kind of art is that which manages to run the gamut to some degree. Unfortunately it is very, very rare.I think part of the problem is that the standards for imagination are set by television and film because they reach the widest audience. And they tend to have a gravitational effect: What you see on TV won't be terrible in that it will at least be professional and decently edited, but it will never be great because its greatness would be lost on the masses. Very very occasionally you can find a gem that is both accessible to many, but also deeply profound and "archetypally resonant." The Lord of the Rings is one such beast. Star Wars and Star Trek at their best are other examples. Harry Potter, unfortunately, is not.</blockquote>

Verification