> I've played loads of puzzle games and the sad truth is that they're not THAT truly taxing on the intellect

I agree and this kinda reinforces my original point about triple-A games. I don't think exploring languages in more depth would necessarily yield an academic-level game, but it still wouldn't be enjoyable by the average dude, which makes it economically unfeasible IMHO. I suspect they'd run into the same problem if they tried an AAA reimplementation of Captain Blood, by the way.

> Looks like the opportunity is still open for someone to hook up a game engine to ChatGPT and watch the fireworks

ChatGPT itself seems like a very elaborate sort of game if you ask me. If anything, it's more interesting from this perspective than from any "problem-solving" angle OpenAI et al. are trying to sell us.

> I guess my point here is that great games are rarely carried by their innovative mechanics

I agree. Recently I've started playing something called Lego 2K Drive, a sort of Need For Speed set in the Lego "universe". Most of the gameplay, save for the setting, is copied piece by piece from newer Need for Speed games, i.e. you have a career mode with missions and travel between maps, plus the whole role-playing thingamajig. Still, the racing mechanics are quite fine, i.e. they require a certain type of practice with the controls, an aspect which fits very well into the console-arcade market on one hand, while on the other it makes it a whole distinct experience from the so-called "realist" trend -- seriously, if I seek realism, I'm going to choose Asetto Corsa or Gran Turismo anytime over NFS.

So getting back to "linguistics" games à la Chants of Sennaar/Captain Blood, AAA studios could certainly copy the mechanics and make it into something enjoyable. The only remaining problems are what market this sort of game would address and whether it'd make enough money to justify pouring all the resources into it. Both could be summed into the same issue, i.e. that marketing is not a very good mechanism to enable such creations. After all (and inevitably getting back to the discussion on art), great things such as, say, great castles, weren't made for commercial profit -- the folks in power had altogether different objectives in mind when making these, and they used all the surplus derived from milking the masses into making them happen.

I'm rather skeptical that triple-A level resources could have pushed this game much further tbh. It already feels like it's juuust the right length and complexity before it starts to drag. Taking it to the next level would require a major redesign of the fundamentals, and I get dizzy thinking just what that might look like. You could have more, bigger languages to discover, more exploration opportunities (including dialog choices), starker differences in grammar and ambiguities, more twists and turns in the story... But who has the IQ to sit through all that? Boffins like you and me, deffo. But we're an ever-shrinking minority. I've played loads of puzzle games and the sad truth is that they're not THAT truly taxing on the intellect, they just create a convincing illusion thereof (ok, some of the bonus puzzles in The Witness really are helluva hard). Fully exploring the potential of the language gimmick would produce too academic a game for our species, I'm afraid. Would love to be proven wrong.

It seems to me that if games like Portal, The Talos Principle, The Turing Test etc etc. are any indication, what AAA studios do well is they take some core idea, not too innovative or complex, and provide excellent window dressing (graphics, writing) to keep the player invested in solving the puzzles for many hours on end. Stripped to its puzzles alone, Talos would be just an exercise in masochism, that's for sure; it becomes much more bearable when you know you'll get a chance to dig through the lore, discover the history of the world and slowly unravel what's behind Elohim's obvious lies. And there is value in that, certainly; a good story can turn boring crap into greatness; Marathon, which I've mentioned previously, is a perfect example. I guess my point here is that great games are rarely carried by their innovative mechanics, although it can happen (e.g. Metroid, DOOM). When it does happen, AAA-level resources pose little to no advantage. It's all about the inspiration of the main visionary behind the project, as well as extreme levels of what we highly advanced philosophers call, bulan.

We definitely need to dig deeper into what "nobleman" and "pauper" mean in today's context. We may have had a Zappa, a Prince and a Michael Jackson just yesterday and there's certainly some talented kids around the corner looking for their own places in this panoply of "artists" -- where we can without shame include Xenophon and Caesar, why not; let's add here a couple of my favourite examples, i.e. Dostoievski and Solzhenitsn. All the same, we can't ignore the fact that mentioning their names... well, this takes them apart from the masses. This alone would indicate that these folks aren't or weren't really middle class in the usual sense.

I can't shake my belief that art, like all things, must be rooted *somewhere*, and in the case of Mozart and Beethoven those somewheres counted among them people such as Joseph II or van Swieten. Similarly, today, especially with democracy on the way out, I couldn't possibly expect artistic work to be commissioned by anyone without the intellectual and material capital to back it, which of course also excludes actors such as the EU from any such deals.

Which brings me to my original point: how could some kid working his or her ass off at Kramerica Industries, Inc. make art? 'Cause otherwise there's plenty of middle classing to go around for the time being.

I love Jarre too, but, eh, mixed feelings about the quality of the rendition and choice of the track used in Captain Blood (Ethnicolor I think).

With one exception, I don't know of any other games featuring Jarre music, he probably only licensed this for Blood because it was a French product. Funnily enough, the exception is a beat'em'up, "Yie ar Kung-Fu", covering Magnetic Fields. It's as bizarre as it sounds. Otherwise, I'm pretty sure I heard some excellent Jarre covers in some homebrew Spectrum 128K music demos. Will look them up someday.

Otherwise, Captain Blood is BASED. Deffo check it out, the Amiga or Atari ST version should be the most fully-featured I think. For 1988, it was truly way ahead of its time.

> We have very little idea how much work Timbaland et al. put in those MTV hits, so it'd be at the very least unfair if not downright malicious to classify them as "untrue art" or whatever.

Oh, I agree, other than the "outright fraud" category, the propaganda/money/entertainment art still qualifies as art, yes, even the manele. There is lots of thought and work put into it, clearly setting it apart from randomness. Still, the art in category 5) is in my view the most impactful long-term (potentially) and least fungible/reproducible, which is why I think it is most important, most, quote-unquote, real.

> Eh, what middleclassmen do you know who are capable of making art?

Actually, I'd say it's the middle class that is in the best position to create art, and that it has always been the major source thereof throughout the centuries. We probably envision a different thing by "middle class" though. I agree that the "pantsuits"/"intelligentsia"/etc. lot are unlikely to produce anything great, but they're only a section of all that is meant by "middle class", i.e. anyone that's not either a nobleman or a pauper.

If we're to take famous Romantic composers as an example.. Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Tchaikovsky etc. were all firmly middle class for much of their life. They were not noblemen, had little power, they had to work for a living but didn't exactly till the fields either. Same for many writers, painters, etc., probably topped by Kafka who had the most middle class job imaginable :)) Yes, some important artists like e.g. Dickens, Orwell, Bukowski were heavily influenced by the working class period of their lives, but still had to somewhat ascend out of it in order to publish. When most of your time is spent doing backbreaking work just so that you can survive, it's really hard to create anything except children. And yes, there is also popular art, but on one hand, even peasants get more downtime than the modern working class, and also, their creations, though the most raw and authentic forms of art, are less likely to be preserved post-mortem and become known to a wider audience.

Tbh I'm not really sold on the idea that great hardship/suffering is necessary for art, or that making art is a particularly good escape therefrom. It is, after all, a surplus activity. The hardship cannot be so complete so as to completely deny you the respite needed to hone your craft. Many artists were said to have experienced great hardship and tragedies, but really, when you look in context, they're not that special compared to the lives of the regular folks around them. The only artist I can think of who truly had a hardcore life was Caravaggio (and maybe Xenophon and Caesar, if you consider them artists).

Eh, what middleclassmen do you know who are capable of making art? I seriously doubt that the "middle class" life experience can in the end offer one anything other than... well, mediocrity. Art lies at the extremes, and to make such a thing you'd have to be either rich and capable of choosing your lifestyle, or otherwise so tormented by the hardships of life that the only possible escape would be art.

I'm well aware that we're living in a mentally ill environment, but still, when you compare it, say, to the post-WWII years of hunger...

I had no idea that Jean Michel Jarre got adapted to video games. This alone makes it worth a try, thanks for the recommendation!

> if my theory is correct, and of course it is, this means that we'll always have true art springing from somewhere

Well, "art" is subjective anyway (which is why I for one welcome our manelian overlords), so any sort of "art" may at least aspire to the title of "true art" in some given historical context. We have very little idea how much work Timbaland et al. put in those MTV hits, so it'd be at the very least unfair if not downright malicious to classify them as "untrue art" or whatever.

That's also why, contrary to might be misunderstood from the text, I'm not blasting triple-A games either. They have quite a vast audience while at the same time a shitload of resources are being poured into polishing them, so... who am I to say that they suck? I'm just not particularly attracted to such titles, but mostly because I'm stuck in the late '90s/early 2000s era which gave me a taste for a certain level of substance over sophistication.

I haven't played the game yet, but if it's inspired by Blood, the limitation to "to basic signs such as the usual nouns and verbs" might be very much intentional, so as to maximize the potential for ambiguity. When an alien types the symbols, "YOU PLANET ME WANT", what do they mean? I want their planet? They want my planet? They want me on their planet? They want to tap dat phat ass? Combined with your own struggle of getting your point across using only a limited set of symbols, while also never being sure whether you'll hit the right triggers for the primitive AI on the other end... excessively intellectual types like us could have a lot of fun with that.

Regarding art and the masses, has it ever really been otherwise? Way I see it, what we call artistic activity fits nicely in one or two of the following categories:

1. Propaganda; made to uphold the interests of those in power, or, more nicely, to help a civilization maintain its sense of identity.
2. Entertainment; made to just pass the time without really expanding one's horizons
3. Money-making; nuff said. Often heavily intersects with propaganda as well.
4. Absolute fraud; most modern "art", made to launder money or create make-work jobs for activists
5. Art made just for the hell of it

The rich will of course always finance 1), 3) and 4), in which they have a direct interest, while the broader populace will willingly gravitate towards financing 2). Category 5) is where the "real", horizon-expanding art lies, and it is made either by rich people who literally have nothing better to do, or by middleclassmen who are so obsessed with their vision that they don't care about recouping costs. Not coincidentally, this is also how all truly ground-breaking research and engineering ever happened.

If it's any consolation, if my theory is correct, and of course it is, this means that we'll always have true art springing from somewhere. No era has a shortage of madmen or idle rich.