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Video games are mostly an entertainment medium at the moment, but I think we'll see more and more people agreeing that there's art somewhere in there.

I often liken early (and even modern) video games to movies where moustachioed villains tie women to railroad tracks while our stalwart hero struggle to rescue her (woo!). That's entertainment, not art. However, movies later had their more respectable Citizen Kanes and Seven Samurais, as I hope we'll have for video games. Not all movies are art (we still have our summer blockbuster action flicks), though we do have artistic "films." Similarly, we'll have video games meant for entertainment, with a handful specifically pitched as art. Call 'em "interactive media."

A side-thought I had is that while most video games rely on making the player feel gratification for their actions ("Hooray, I won!"), an "artistic" video game would be one that didn't rely on this as its primary reward mechanism ("I just finished playing The Illiad, and I detested every minute of it. It was great!"). But I'm just talking out of my rump there, and may be way off.
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they followed neither the spirit nor the rules of the system they were supposedly based on, and gameplay was just constant grinding with very little story, puzzle solving, or individuality. The graphics were bad even by the standards of the day.

(Score:1, Flamebait)

Flamebait? I think Nomadic has a point on many counts! Compare Pool of Radiance to Dungeon Master, which came a year before it. I enjoyed some of the Gold Box games, but I always felt like they were stamped out of a machine. The Ultima series and Dungeon Master were dew-picked and flown from Iraq, cleansed in the finest quality spring water, lightly ki- sorry. I meant that they felt like they were lovingly created by hand. You could tell that their designers lavished care on them.
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I always think of EA in its mid '80s form, back when their logo was also their loading screen. (I could swear I read somewhere that the circle was a softball that got lodged in the typesetting, but maybe that's my imagination.) I suppose the point of the Gamasutra article is, in part, that during that period, EA put its designers out there, front and center, whereas nowadays, they're more an amalgam of smaller studios.

One thing that always stuck with me was how, upon seeing the cover for Pinball Construction Set, everyone would assume that the game was called "Bill Budge." Even Sid Meier didn't get that big a billing!
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I think independents have a chance at providing compelling games journalism in the way that someone like Ze Frank does. (Which is to say: from the fringes, on little or no budget, with an organically growing viewer base.)

We're about to enter Season 2 of our own show, and though we're struggling with format (should the show be 5 minutes long? 30 minutes? 1 billion hours?) and content (should we cover only indies, or all innovations in game development?), we've gotten a pretty good response.

Viva la indie developers with time to waste on experimental crap!

"Great Works" in video games will come about as a result of natural evolution in game design. Right now, we're strongly focused on visual aesthetics -- we haven't yet achieved photorealism, so every step towards that is exciting. (That's not to diminish the importance of gameplay -- but I liked UT2004 over UT because it was prettier, for one.) But once we achieve that goal, gamers will say, "hey, it's time for something new." Designers will likely branch out and try to create interesting games in other ways -- compelling unrealistic/surrealistic aesthetics; new and interesting modes of gameplay; and (why not?) attention to "serious subject matter with cultural implications."

But I don't think we're through with the "flash" phase yet. Photorealism is still new and interesting to most of us -- and players still buy games for their graphical splendor. Once that stops happening, developers will really start experimenting -- after all, how else are we going to get your money?

(BTW, did anyone see Ernest Adams talk in Worcester yesterday? I missed it, but it must have been great.) _______________________________
Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years.
Indie Superstar - A video webcast bringing you news about games you won't hear about in mainstream media.

One of the largest benefits of many of these programs is that they bring a student through the entire development process, from concept to polishing.

Take De Blob, created by nine Dutch students for (I believe) the city government of Utrecht, in The Netherlands. I think it's a fine game; not perfect, but well-polished and (most importantly) complete. This means that the team has seen both the great and nasty aspects:

* "Let's create a great concept! This is going to be so rad!"
* "Prototype's done. Let's kick the tires."
* "I know we have the same machine. I'm saying it's not working on my machine."
* "That prototype sucked. We need to re-design our core game mechanic."
* "What do you mean we created our art assets too early and have to discard them?"
* "Time for the alpha. Our programming lead just left to become a nun?"
* "This game is so much fun that we play it for hours on end instead of working."
* "We have a bug where the game crashes if you move the mouse too much."
* "Why does everyone outside the dev team not like our game? We love it."
* "I want to quit. I want to quit. I want to quit. Rrrrr!"
* "Okay, now more artwork. Someone tell the artist to stop using 4096x4096 textures."
* "Everything's running smoothly. Beta time! This should be cake."
* "What do you mean, 'nobody can run the beta'?"
* "It's finally done! Hahaha!"
* "Wait, what do you mean it's not done?"
* "I'm so freakin' tired. Damnit, if I quit, I'll fail the course. Can't quit. Gotta keep going."
* "Finishing the final 10% should only take us 10% of our total dev time, right?"
* "Our playtesters are smashing their controllers against the walls."
* "Okay, our playtesters are finally happy."
* "Time to ship. That wasn't so bad. What's that yellow thing in the sky called, again?"
* "I need a drink."

Presumably, folks who have been through a project of any reasonable size have some idea of how development goes, and can recognize some not-so-obvious mistakes. And the ability to stick with it through a grungy project (and they're all grungy at one point or another) is a plus.

While that's not enough to recommend these programs outright (and there many be many other points that make them not worthwhile), I view it as a big benefit.
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Dejobaan Games - Bringing you quality video games for over 75 years
Indie Superstar - Indie games news in an exciting video webcast. Woo!

I'm very much into independent/homebrew games... is there a site that's "the place" for the indie/homebrew scene?

It's not quite "the place," but Indie Superstar (shameless plug) does video webcasts (iPod video podcasts too) about games that mainstream media doesn't cover.

That's an interesting thought. The article makes it out to be a bit like a magical cure, but some aspects of it sound good to me. You can often improve the "wow" factor by tossing in "more" of something. Denser foliage; more of the tiny rocks that make up the detail; and so forth. Procedural generation would mean that these wouldn't have to be placed by hand, so this could make it easier to scale the visuals with system power. Similarly, particle sprays are often done procedurally, so being able to tweak those "up" to create more complex fireworks for mysterious future hardware could also work.

Some games are still played for years after they've fallen behind the curve on graphics; this might mitigate the future ugliness, adding longevity to a popular title. Keeping gamers interested in (and talking about) your game makes sense, whether you'll be producing different titles in the future or will be focusing on sequels.

Ultimately, though, my hope is that algorithmic content generation will bring game development costs down for indies. Maybe I'm dreaming. :)

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