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Sunday, April 20, 2008

We don't have to turn out a masterpiece everyday. To paint is the thing, not to make masterpieces. -Henry Miller

After looking at various examples of art and artists I came across Henry Miller’s view on art which had I found pretty interesting. It got me thinking about the process of producing a piece of work being just as much part of art than the final product and just as much of what makes it good or bad.

Since this subject matter is vaguely related, I’m gonna use it to talk about some peoples’ opinion of games not being classed as art. Maybe people have come across film critic Roger Ebert’s view on games in relation to other media and cultural things and his opinion is that due to player interaction, games cannot be classed as art. I would say that due to player interaction they can be classed as art in an entirely unique way: you are able to experience and build upon a collaboration of various people’s talent and art in your own creative way by playing the game, which is an artistic process in itself. Maybe this is just a step up from using the excuse of playing games for “research”; now we can say “I’m creating art!” when people ask why you’re playing a game and not working.

“I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.”
Roger Ebert

It’s hard to read this quote without getting at least a little bit riled up about this pretty ignorant opinion. It’s clear that Ebert has never come across some of the many more sophisticated and arty games, but who can blame him? With the legions of shooters and movie-games that saturate the market it’s difficult to see past them all making it very hard for the untrained person to distinguish the good games from among all the bad ones, which is a great shame since everybody should be able to enjoy the sophistication and the certain unique experiences that only games (good games) can provide. To say that the nature of games prevents them from becoming art is inappropriate since the potential of the genre allows for many different artistic perspectives such as story telling, visuals and player interaction.

In conclusion, the current state of the market in general seems to be giving the entire games genre a bad reputation due to the vast amount of uninspiring games being released. Hopefully in time as games become more popular and respected, we’ll see more of those rare and venerable classics that are very rare at the moment.

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