Posts Tagged: art

Culture — 8 Comments
18
Apr 10

Thank you, Roger Ebert

I’d like to thank Roger Ebert.

The world’s most famous film critic, and noted long-time opponent of the idea that games can be art, has written another article explaining why games are not art, cannot be art and never will be art, at least within the lifetime of anybody alive today. He bases this argument on two assertions: that art requires complete authorial control:

I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist. (…) Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices.

And that games are crap:

[V]ideo games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic. Continue reading →

Academic / Culture — 12 Comments
2
Oct 09

Boring Art, Boring Debates

The ‘videogames as art’ debate has gone around and come around. Sure, we’re all bored with it, but is that a good enough reason to drop it permanently?

It’s no secret that videogames struggle for legitimacy. Every gamer has their own personal memory of their hobby scorned, buried deep in their unconscious, waiting for the right moment to erupt and turn them into a blubbering mess of Freudian analysis.

Personally, my own was born of a games journalist. Three years ago, Chris Buffa rightly took apart games journalism. It was inspiring stuff, but the most devastating quote encouraged videogame journalists to “keep in mind that no matter how successful you may think that you are, there’s a very hot person in a bar that’s going to laugh in your face when you inform them what you do for a living (they’ll be sober, by the way).”

Oh. Continue reading →