Postby feilong801 » July 26th, 2007, 12:58 am
Interesting thread with many different "sub-threads." I'll tackle a few that interest me.
Steerforth, I agree largely with your OP. I am usually in the absolute tiny minority who writes some sort of comment saying "we should at least care A LITTLE about the high levels of violence in games."
Though some of us here can articulate the "we shouldn't care" position very well and with solid reasoning (even if I don't agree with all of it), I tend to notice most of the folks that leave comments on Gamespot and other sites come off as very thoughtless. I doubt they've pondered the issues that we do here. It seems as though they only are motivated by a selfish desire to have access to anything they want, regardless of any consequences.
As to the art issue, I do believe games are an art. I agree with m0zart in that I am not a cultural elitest. While something can be of higher quality than something else, I don't tend to put something on the "high art" shelf. Attending a pompous, stuffed shirt liberal arts college, where idiots composed trite music that was lauded by their tenured for life professors as brilliant, cured me of any such arrogance. Fortunately, since I studied Jazz at college, a medium (while certainly having its share of stuffed shirts) which requires a degree of humility, as the local bar is still your main venue, not the concert stage.
When it comes to movies and videogames (and books), I look for an experience that takes me to another world. I look for that "out of body" experience when I play/watch/read. So games that do that, such as Twilight Princess, Resident Evil 4, Actraiser, Final Fantasy VII, etc., that is when I think something has achieved a greater level of artistry.
It is possible, though, that I was only entertained. But I don't think so. In games, so many different kinds of art have to be engaged to make this happen. We know that there are visual and auditory art that is going on in a game. But what about the artistry of gameplay balance? Level design? The programming (the efficiency of which determines whether it will work at all?). I love the cross-disciplinary aspect of games, and to me that gives it "art" status. This is also true of movies, which was why I was shocked when Ebert made his infamous opinion.
As to pre-20th century Western art in general, I have always felt that some of the limitations present in those days created, well, better art. Again, this comes from a bias that I will readily admit: witnessing what passed for art by tenured university professors who had their jobs guaranteed but have almost zero accountability. Shoot, most college music programs have attendance requirements for the students, so even the most insepid composers/performers are assured an audience (I do think the attendance requirement for music programs is good, despite this). I mean, I have literally listened to pieces of "music" that consisted of television static and some fellow taking a trombone apart while playing random notes into it.
This is not to say that we should "go back" to the way it was. Most of my issues are with the current university system anyway. But the masters (forgive me for being music centric, it is what I know) like Beethoven and Mozart managed to make music that was not only "elite," but was indeed listened to by the "unwashed rabble." Today was seem to have P Diddy on one end of the spectrum, and Philip Glass on the other.
-Rob