In this bonus footage from CollegeHumor’s Bleep Bloop, pop culture journalist Chuck Klosterman argues that, unlike works found in literature or film, games can be reasonably said to have gotten better and better as the years have gone by in every conceivable way.
“Even if the technology changes, no one looks at Avatar and says, ‘that’s absolutely a better movie than Star Wars‘ or whatever. But in videogames, it’s pretty much impossible to ever say the old games were better than the new games.”
Before you retrogogglers get your pitchforks, remember that Klosterman isn’t some ignorant schmuck; he’s the guy who rightfully said that people who don’t take videogames seriously are “the same people who question the relevance of hip-hop and assume newspapers will still exist in twenty-five years.”
As for Klosterman’s argument, I don’t think I buy it. Games have certainly gotten much more intuitive and pretty over the years, but I can’t think of any games in the last decade that match the complexity and thematic depth of Balance of Power or Planescape: Torment.
[Thanks, PrivateFunction!]
