Sorry if I come over as kind of a dick here, I like this site and its community quite a lot, but sometimes I don't get Destructoid, or gamers as a whole. On the one hand you repeatedly crucify every movie critic who doesn't take video games 100% seriously as an art form that is worthy of serious discussion every bit as much as film or literature. See Roger Ebert or, last week,
Roger Moore.
And then there are statements like
"You can't win a Pulitzer for writing about Princess Peach", which isn't from a Fox news show, but a Destructoid motto, where you insist that video games are basically nothing more than silly, time-killing fun, and that no one should ever take them seriously.
Ironically, when trying to proof how video games are equal to other art forms, the argument that is coming up mostly is "But I cried when Aeris died in
Final Fantasy VII", citing a game that is extremely cheesy and silly itself (I mean, come on). Do you really think you can impress Roger Ebert, whose favorite films include
Au hazard Balthasar,
Battleship Potemkin,
The Bycicle Thief,
Persona and
Tokyo Story with
Final Fantasy VII? It's cases like that when the seemingly splitted personality of the gamer ("Games are silly fun/high art!") unites into a bizzare whole.
So please tell me: Is the medium of video games, its possibilites and its industry worthy of serious discussion
or will it never be more than a mindless diversion you shouldn't think too much about? Please make up your mind and tell me what you think.
Perry Simm's blog
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You see, in movies (or art) the point is to make you feel, think, laugh, whatever. In games, it's to play. So, if you feel emotional after playing something or you realize something you've never thought of before, thats a by product, a marketing technique to get you to play the game.
So, games are only art if they get you to play them.
Quick response.
PS Games are art when they are able to take the panties off because of the game and not money.
That's pretty much the whole premise of Don Quixote - a guy reads too many romance novels, goes crazy, and goes on wacky adventures thinking he's a knight in shining armor. Cervantes was poking fun at the people who thought that reading books would actually drive people to do this.
So when the current generation, which has played video games their entire life, grows up and starts to take positions as writers, critics, and other productive areas of society, games will become accepted as a valid medium for "art."
Of course, not all games can be considered "art," in any medium you're going to get a lot of crap for every treasure (See: Sturgeon's Law). And as long as there are bad games and stupid game developers, Destructoid will be there to make fun of them. :D
A videogame blogger will get a pulitzer when they stop acting so bloody childish.
We're serious ... as balls.
What you say makes a lot more sense, but in that case the statement is horribly phrased. When in history did an article that is "lackluster and filled with nothing but the facts, which you can find anywhere" win a Pulitzer? I took "win a Pulitzer" as "write something relevant".
People on the internet have varying opinions. Some want srs articles about srs games, some want to talk about weiners. Some people want brightly coloured, fun, innovative games, some want gritty multiplayer shooters. I wish I could project this into the minds of all the people who are confused by contradiction on the Internet.
It is not a hive mind. Different people say different things.
That's good to know!
Okay, seems I really just misunderstood the statement. But it is badly phrased.
@Uglyphil:
Yes, I'm aware of that. The overgeneralization in my post was more of a polemic response to the overgeneralization present in the cited statements.
We play games for various reasons, which is why we need games that aim to be mindless fun, as well as games that attempt to tell a brilliant story. I also feel that you either get games, or you don't. And Roger Ebert doesn't get games. End of story.
Nobody claims that those things aren't art, even though they have both high ends and low ends. Games have high ends and low ends too. They're just as much an art when done right as anything else. There have been children's finger paintings that have been regarded as more artful than games, and that's not quite right.
I don't know if it was real or not, but I'm writing anyway, lol.
Case closed.
Video games can be art(sy) if the people behind it choose it to be, just like with films. They can be both mindless diversion (yay!) and art.