First of all let me apologize for my recent absence. Psychology class is a demanding mistress.

So here's the deal,

I was looking through the PAX East contest finalists, and I realized something that saddened me a little.

Just be forewarned, this is gonna be an article about games and art, so if you're looking for entertainment, you probably won't find it here, it should be an interesting read though. It's also probably going to end up being pretty pretentious, though I don't intend it to be.



So I was watching the five videos that were put through to the finals of the PAX East contest, and I watched them all except for the one that was an apocalypticly long 9 minutes, of which I watched around 3.

I voted for the video by Scary Hair Studios. While it was slightly unoriginal (he acknowledged the fact that it was a Yahtzee homage), I believe it was the most well put together video. It probably took the most time and skill, it was pretty fresh for a home-made video, and he actually brought up some good reasons to send him. So I thought, yeah, I'll vote for this guy. After I did, I was shown the current state of the pole. He was dead last.

He was losing to people who made videos that really didn't inspire me. I mean, they were passingly funny, but, at least in my view, they weren't as good. They were meant to be entertaining, and the one I voted for was somewhat entertaining, but mostly it just presented solid, acknowledgable reasons to send him to PAX, and it made me sad to see what I viewed as superficially effective videos beat him.



Now if you saw my entry to the contest, it also was along this serious tone, but was pretty much bereft of anything entertaining, and I just want to exaggerate the fact that this article is not supposed to be me whining because mine didn't get chosen.

So back to my main point. I think that we can use this contest as a facsimile for the games industry as a whole. We like what entertains us, and what entertains us sells well. For a game to be successful, it does not in any way require some deeper meaning or some commentary on the human condition. For most people, games just need to be fun, and that's all that they should ever be.

And that's all they're ever going to be, as long we stay on the path that we're on right now. By lapping up these message-less games that devs keep putting out like dogs at a cup of spilled milk. we're basically telling them that that's all games ever need to be to make them money. A friend once told me to vote with my wallet. It is for this reason that I refuse to buy Apple computers.You're paying for an OS (admittedly a fabulous one), a sexy case, and the social image of the thing. And for these bonuses, you pay far more than is justifiable than you would for a PC with comparable internal parts. But this is not a PC/Mac throwdown.



My point is that we as a community and a culture need to vote with our wallets as well, and support a game that makes a successful attempt at injecting some art into itself. Obviously if it's a bad game, it's a bad game, but there is no reason that a game with a message and slightly lacking gameplay should sell any less than a game without at a message. Quite the opposite, it should sell more. It ventured out and tried something new.

And as the Burchinator (start this meme with me, I dare you) said, an evolution of the game industry into an art form would not mean that these mindlessly entertaining games would disappear. Games like Gears of War and God of War will always sell. Because they're LOADS of fun. But the point is that if that's all that games will ever be, if that's all we tell them they need to be, just fun, they've evolved as far as they can, and we have nowhere to go but down. And it will be our fault.

If we want games as a medium to mature, our taste has to do the same.

~ Om nom nom nom