Video Games as Art
I've been thinking about this recently, since I had a talk about it with some people at Oz Kafe over martinis about it, and not long afterwards there was a Rev Rant on Destructoid on the subject... but I'm sorry, video games just aren't art.
Not yet, anyway.
The problem with video games as being art is that to be art, there can exist no other function than to be art, to connect you to something beautiful. As much as people may argue otherwise, video games simply don't fit the criteria.
I'll use an example. Max Payne 2 damned near made me cry... and I won't deny that there are elements within the game that are artistic. The graphic novel storytelling style, etc... it's honestly better than most noir tales I've ever set eyes upon. However, at its heart it's still a game... the core mechanic of the game is a whole load of jumping sideways and firing guns. The way I primarily interact with the game doesn't connect me to anything but.... shooting things.
And that's the problem... games may have many artistic elements to them, they might tell amazing tales, have fantastic pieces of design in them, but unless a game does nothing but connect me fundamentally to the human condition, to some kind of beauty that stirs me deep inside, then it's not art.
That's not to say the possibility doesn't exist. From what I've seen of Flower, though I haven't laid my hands on it yet since no one I know owns a PS3, it doesn't seem as though your hands manipulating the controller really does anything significant but to show you something beautiful. We can do these things with video games... we have so many possibilities if we could just break out of the genres we have grown up on as the 'hardcore' crowd, and do something that just speaks to us.
I'm not saying we should make all games like that, obviously. I derive countless hours of enjoyment from my shooters, my RPGs, all that good stuff. It's like movies... sometimes I'm just not in the mood for something deep, something that speaks to me... sometimes I just want to see shit blow up, watch a crappy ass summer blockbuster and turn my brain off for a little bit.
That's fine. But we can do so much more, so why not, sometime, give it a shot?
Time for me to grab a late lunch and shake off this hangover.
(EDIT: There's a pretty decent debate about this on my facebook import of this blog post, if you have me on Facebook, come and join in. If not... oh well.)