You intentionally left the 'mistake' there, correct? In the end, it was intentional. There are no wrong answers when it comes to making art, but you can disagree with it, and the artist himself can too.
Wavedashing and no Wavedashing are both right answers. It's like an RPG where you can choose stats after a level-up. One can be better, but you're free to choose the one you like most AKA the right one.
You said ''Is the line between intentional and unintentional getting blury yet?'' That is the 'intentional' thing.
You said something like ''Sakurai is making his art something it doesn't want to be.'' correct? You think that because the fanbase you're in thinks that. If the fanbase hated Wavedashing, you'd probably be applauding Sakurai for removing it.
Right answers? The right answer on what the art should be. Art can be anything, the artist chooses what he wants. The artist is right. If he wants gaps for interpretation, he'll leave them. If they crop up somewhere he doesn't want them, he can choose to leave them or squash them out of existence. He went with the later for Wavedashing.
When can we get back to the matter at hand? Wavedashing was clearly unintentional and Sakurai didn't appreciate it's effects on the metagame. He removed it. He doesn't care if somebody thinks it's 'going against what the art wants to be.' His art, his rules. He never had to make it the way you wanted it. This:
Sums it up quite nicely. 'Everybody' expected Brawl to have Wavedashing and got upset because of it, when they shouldn't have of expected it in the first place. It's a disgrace that there's so many people upset over a glitch being removed and that there's people that think it could come back. Sakurai isn't suddenly going to go against his design philosophy he's used his whole life.
1) "You said something like 'Sakurai is making his art something it doesn't want to be.' correct? You think that because the fanbase you're in thinks that. If the fanbase hated Wavedashing, you'd probably be applauding Sakurai for removing it."
No. "
my point is not that removing wavedashing (e.g.) will irrefutably be a case of the creator not letting his game be what it wants to be. my point is only that even if there were such a thing as purely intending or not intending something, the argument that he is indeed not letting the game be what it wants to be will always be available to those who want to make it."
again, you either didn't read what i said, or it was beyond your comprehension. it's like you tripped on the stairs leading up to my argument-house, knocked yourself unconscious, woke up in a hospital and tried to describe my argument-living room to everyone as if you'd seen it. to mix metaphors: you're lost and have no idea.
2) "Wavedashing and no Wavedashing are both right answers. It's like an RPG where you can choose stats after a level-up. One can be better, but you're free to choose the one you like most AKA the right one."
horrible diction/composition/conceptualization. answers to what question? "what can people like, wavedashing or no wavedashing?" how awkwardly conceived. why not just come out and say it: "it should be clear that some people like a game with wavedashing, and some people do not." furthermore, no ****. as soon as anyone enters this argument they immediately realize this--the fact that there is an argument between people on these issues at all means this must be true. people like different things...yes, we're aware. it isn't a conclusion, it's a premise in a more complicated problem, and it was certainly at least implied in my original post.
3)
Nintendo Power: This is one that a lot of hardcore Smash Bros. fans have long wondered about. Was the ablility to "Wavedash" in Melee intentional or a glitch?
Sakurai: Of course, we noticed that you could do that during the development period. With Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it wasn't a matter of, "OK, do we leave it in or do we take it out?"
We really just wanted this game, again, to appeal to and be played by gamers of all different levels. We felt that there was a growing gap between beginners and advanced players, and taking that out helps to level the playing field. It wasn't a big priority or anything, but when we were building the game around the idea of making it fair for everybody, it just made sense to take it out. And it also goes back to wanting to make something different from Melee and giving players the opportunity to find new things to enjoy.
and here we see how you've been misrepresenting sakurai. you make it seem like he was preoccupied with a glitch that tainted his game. not only did he intentionally leave it in in melee, he clearly states that he didn't go into brawl development knowing he wanted to tear wavedashing out because it offended his personal artistic tastes; rather, his
NEW commitment to the casual
turned out to be incompatible with it. there's a big difference between excision and omission: "it wasn't a matter of, 'OK, do we leave it in or do we take it out?'" contradicts much of what you've been saying.
4) "Right answers? The right answer on what the art should be. Art can be anything, the artist chooses what he wants. The artist is right. If he wants gaps for interpretation, he'll leave them."
"The artist is right" is not a real sentence. again, it means nothing. it isn't even true if you mean "the artist knows what he meant," as previously discussed. innumerable artists have throughout history and in this very forum cede this very point. the closest to true it can be is if you mean "the artist can do whatever he wants." yes, but that's true for kindergartners pushing random piano keys. there is a reason we don't give a **** about their work, you know. but again, as i said in my original post, it ISN'T EVEN ALWAYS TRUE THAT THE ARTIST "CHOOSES WHAT HE WANTS." sometimes this is true, yes. but sometimes, he merely chooses what he happens to choose (whether in desperation, distraction, or experimentation), not really knowing what he wants. sometimes he chooses what he wants and realizes later that what he wants was ****ty--sometimes he comes to that realization on his own, sometimes he gets help from editors, friends, critics, or players. obvious, obvious, obvious, obvious, obvious, obvious.
the point, to summarize is this: "art can be anything," as you say,
including awful and not worth anyone's time. sakurai is in charge, yes. (THANK YOU FOR POINTING THAT OUT FOR THE 4,453,492,204,195,706,349 TIME. none of us knew.) he can and will make the game he wants to make--fine. but think about this: while no one is claiming that brawl is without any merit whatsoever,
what if sakurai created a game that was much, much, much, much worse--one with
practically and virtually no merit compared to the rest of the smash series? what if he completely reinvented smash into a turned base, chibi-style jrpg phone app for $2.99? at the exclusion of any other smash game, ever? where the **** would your argument be then? the point is SO simple: an artist can ruin something in a very real sense. EVERYONE knows this at some level.
5) to recap by responding to you and huxtupleyoo, then:
it could be a bad thing for an audience's expectations to interfere with enjoying a new thing in a new way--a different kind of chair, as you say. but you fail to acknowledge that the different kind of chair might just suck--not
necessarily because it is different from a incarnation that didn't suck, but for any other possible reasons.
in other words, you're conflating same/different dichotomy with the good/bad dichotomy. different doesn't necessarily mean bad, but it certainly doesn't ensure good. i happen to love ocarina of time and wind waker despite how different they are. it would be a mistake to allow oneself to be put off by how different ww is from oot, because it has a lot to offer. however, it could have been the case that it was very different AND not good. surely you recognize that not every possible way wind waker could have turned out is not immune from criticism just because it was different--just like you should recognize that not every possible way it could have turned out is not immune from criticism because of the whims of the project manager. a possible incarnation of wind waker: every time you beat a dungeon, your boat gets a new laser gun that shoots a different breed of dog at your enemies. you can't complain, because aonuma thought it was neat. aonuma was right. it was his baby. you have to be okay with it. art can be anything. no. well, yes, but what it is effects whether it's worth a damn.
well, who's to judge what is good or bad? is this not just a matter of taste? yes it is, but there is only so much variance. some would rather have pizza than burgers, but no one likes dog **** sandwiches and cardboard circles topped bermuda grass and broken glass. well, some people might like those, but just try to replace the big mac and stuffed-crust pizza with them. i wonder what would happen. likewise: maybe you would prefer a photo-realistic zelda, maybe i prefer a stylized one. this doesn't change the fact that zelda has a nucleus, and you can't enter the project being totally nihilistic/relativist about the direction of the series. you can make a bad zelda. "you can make a bad zelda." simple, true. you can make a bad smash. simple, true. an artist's choices can fail miserably. we all know this intuitively, don't complicate it.
and yes, we can potentially get justifiably angry at sakurai if he squanders opportunities with a great franchise. wouldn't you be mad if they only made one zelda movie ever and kevin bacon was link with brown hair and a beard, and zelda was jane lynch? you'd say, "damn, there went the one shot to make something legendary." dialing back the ridiculousness of my examples changes nothing, and leads you to the conclusive argument: sure that zelda movie was good, but it could have been great. sure, star wars episodes 1-3 were good, but they could have been great--and if you acknowledge this, you have to entertain the question, "should they have been modeled more off the successful 4-6?" think of all the possibilities for smash--like or unlike melee--that were excluded when sakurai played it artistically and commercially safe with brawl. when he played it
slow with brawl. different, yes. bad, no. legendary, not even close. to be fair, legendary is hard, but at least give it a shot.
6) kingdom of the crystal skull.
sigh