Heavily-Upgraded Postal Hits Steam

[icculus]

Andy Warhol sold crap to rich morons. They lapped it up and called it great, not a good choice to defend art or moving art forward.

Yeah, well, good for you for sticking to your guns, I guess.

--ryan.

[Hamish Wilson]

I've spent very little time on this, to be honest, and you didn't convince me that Postal 2 is art.

Well to be honest, I don't really need to convince you on it. I have already made my point for those who will receive it. Arguing with you over subjective opinions is getting us nowhere.

[Luke_Wolf]

Andy Warhol sold crap to rich morons. They lapped it up and called it great, not a good choice to defend art or moving art forward.

Yeah... and he sold them that crap intentionally to prove that point about the art industry

[yogi_berra]

All plot devices are meant as an excuse for more action. So are you going to write off all narrative forms as no longer being art? Or is it just games?

Cheap and lazy plot devices are still cheap and lazy no matter the medium.

Personally, I really like Postal 2's graphics as they are grungy, colourful, and over the top in a way that helps to dilute some of the dark themes explored while at the same time still managing to fit those themes like a glove. But that is my own critique of it.

They fit the world they were created for but they weren't great.

This argument has already taken up too much time for both of us. :P

I've spent very little time on this, to be honest, and you didn't convince me that Postal 2 is art.

[yogi_berra]

Offending the audience is a perfectly valid artistic choice, and challenging the definition of art is how art moves forward. Ask everyone from Henrik Ibsen to Andy Warhol, and many before and after them.

Andy Warhol sold crap to rich morons. They lapped it up and called it great, not a good choice to defend art or moving art forward.

[Hamish Wilson]

Care to point out where the Dude muses on Death and his place in society?

Well, there are distinctions between the two mediums, so how it is expressed is going to be different. Hamlet, being an Elizabethan play, is going to consist of lengthy soliloquies on the matter while in Postal we have to rely instead on what the player himself sees, as well as the the comments offered up by the Dude and the people around him. It is somewhere in between were we can work out the Dude's thoughts on death and society, although the game tries to make the player himself more in charge of coming up with how they themselves should respond to it.

When he says "I should kill the women and minorities first" how is that a comment on societies treatment of people?

It is a play on political correctness, which incidentally is a code people are supposed to follow when dealing with people in society. Your statement actually already contained the answer to your own question.

How is the Dude being fired, unfair? How is the attempt to arrest Gary Coleman unfair? How is his wife shooting him for forgetting her rocky road unfair?

Being fired after re-locating your family to a new town the day after you arrived and never even being given a reason does not sound unfair to you? Does someone shooting you for something you have forgotten to do sound like a measured response to you? I am not even quite sure what point you are trying to make with this, but it certainly seems like life shitting on the Dude to me.

There is nothing "unfair" about the Dude's circumstances, you should learn to recognize hackneyed plot devices for what they are: an excuse for exploitative game action.

All plot devices are meant as an excuse for more action. So are you going to write off all narrative forms as no longer being art? Or is it just games?

That wasn't a proper artistic analysis, but at least you attempted to explain yourself beyond an appeal to authority.

To what authority am I appealing? I am not the one trying to create some sort of standard a creation has to attain in order to be considered art.

It is not thought-provoking in the least and no one can seriously call it beautiful, it's graphics were outdated on release.

The thing is, what you have done there is already an artistic critique in of itself.

Personally, I really like Postal 2's graphics as they are grungy, colourful, and over the top in a way that helps to dilute some of the dark themes explored while at the same time still managing to fit those themes like a glove. But that is my own critique of it.

Explain the message, the themes, and why you feel they have merit

I think here I will just take the lazy man's out and just re-post a link to a review that already does that fairly well:

http://web.archive.org/web/20050214102649/http://www.macologist.org/viewtopic.php?t=629

This argument has already taken up too much time for both of us. :P

[icculus]

Stop allowing con-artists a free pass because you are too much of a coward to say "that's not art."

Offending the audience is a perfectly valid artistic choice, and challenging the definition of art is how art moves forward. Ask everyone from Henrik Ibsen to Andy Warhol, and many before and after them.

You don't have to think Postal 2 is art--you don't have to think the piles of dirt are, either--but it's not becoming to sit here and declare things to not be art with an appeal to ignorance ("coward," indeed). Perhaps better said: you certainly don't have to _like_ it, but if you didn't understand it, that didn't mean it wasn't art.

--ryan.

[yogi_berra]

Yes I have, even if you seem incapable of understanding my posts and have done nothing to dispute them other than say that you dispute them.

No you haven't. The ad hominem wrapped in an appeal to authority speaks for itself, though.

Both frequently muse on the subject of death and our place in society, and both have something to say on how their comparative societies treat the people in them.

Care to point out where the Dude muses on Death and his place in society? Is this before or after he shoots the porn viewing Islamic gentlemen in the Library? In fact where does he muse on anything in the game?

When he says "I should kill the women and minorities first" how is that a comment on societies treatment of people?

They both have been treated to unfair circumstances and are struggling to discover the best ways in which they can handle them. Both are also rather over the top in depiction but are still rather introspective and prone to musing, even though I must admit that Hamlet is quite a bit more verbose and long winded. Hamlet and the Dude are also rather prone to sarcasm, passive aggressiveness, and you can question the sanity of both.

How is the Dude being fired, unfair? How is the attempt to arrest Gary Coleman unfair? How is his wife shooting him for forgetting her rocky road unfair?

There is nothing "unfair" about the Dude's circumstances, you should learn to recognize hackneyed plot devices for what they are: an excuse for exploitative game action.

That satisfy you, or am I supposed to argue that it is art in some other way than proper artistic analysis?

That wasn't a proper artistic analysis, but at least you attempted to explain yourself beyond an appeal to authority.

Here is a definition of art:

That's your problem. The only people willing to use that definition for art are the same people that allow Yoko Ono to dump piles of dirt in a room and continually pay Damien Hirst to view a dead cow. Stop allowing con-artists a free pass because you are too much of a coward to say "that's not art."

art (n)
1.) creation of beautiful things: the creation of beautiful or thought-provoking works, e.g. in painting, music, or writing
2.) beautiful objects: beautiful or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity
3.) branch of art: a branch or category of art, especially one of the visual arts

Unless you are incredibly inebriated while playing, Postal 2 does not fit any of these definitions. It is not thought-provoking in the least and no one can seriously call it beautiful, it's graphics were outdated on release.

How does Postal 2 not fit this description?

A bronzed turd on a neo-classical Greek pedestal fits that description. That is not art, it's a piece of shit. Postal 2 is not art, though I found it an enjoyable time-waster.

I do find Postal 2's message and themes to be of merit

Again, you make a claim without supporting it. Explain the message, the themes, and why you feel they have merit (no, a half-assed comparison to Hamlet is not explaining the merit in the themes in the game).

[Hamish Wilson]

I agree with Hamish Wilson

Why does seeing my name written down in someone's post like this make the hairs on the back of my neck stand up?

[Cyber Killer]

I agree with Hamish Wilson