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Academic Journal on Computer Games
Espen Aarseth writes: "The world's first academic journal on computer games, Game Studies, is now online. With several international conferences and a peer-review journal, 2001 is the year that the academic world finally takes computer and video games seriously."
Art is a very subjective thing (disclaimer)
But usually one would note the difference between artwork and popular culture/entertainment. For instance, although the talent level is often of the same level, most people will differentiate between comic books and "gallery" art. Same thing with novels. Most people would like to seperate Tom Clancy from Ernest Hemmingway.
Computer games require alot of talent to create in every facet, from the story of Myst to q2dm1, but still remain an elaborated fantasy for the purpose of entertainment.
Unfortunately the area between art and entertainment is often hazy because viewing and interpreting art is considered entertainment. Perhaps the best distinction for me between art and entertainment is the goal. Does a computer game intend to comment or question life/humanity/etc? Or does it seek to entertain?
Art has always been for entertainment. Its just that most people don't see thinking as entertainment anymore and so we get art that you don't have to think about.
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I think part of the reason for the attitude you encountered might be that coding games requires (I imagine - I've never done it!) heavily optimised, very specialised code.
I'm thinking of "hitting the hardware" and writing hacks to get the absolute maximum performance out of the system.
I could well be wrong in assuming that's how games are written - I suspect the days of hitting the hardware may be gone, but I think that's the way a lot of people view game development.
That kind of coding goes very much against the grain with academics who learned how to code from K&R and Knuth, teach how to code out of K&R and Knuth, and place great importance on formal methods etc. In scientific disciplines there's a very strong mindset towards following convention, and many people's view of game development is that it is unconventional. For many academics I think it is too easy to equate uncondtional with incorrect.
As an aside, surely a student will learn so much more from a project they are interested in and engaged by than grinding out a solution to someone else's problem?
Seems to me that CS courses are wildly out of step with the real world.
If a student recently wrote a game using the "old school" attitude than I think his professors would be perfectly justified in at voicing dissatisfaction with the students work.
Most (PC) game interface code is written with DirectX, yes, and lots of strategy and other games that are not dependent on FPS can be done using nothing but higher-level DX API calls. However, FPS and 1st person games are still done at the low level with lots of C and asm. Example: EverQuest's graphics engine was written mostly in assembly. I happen to know the guy who did it (Howard Dortch), and he's one of the few assembly gurus left in the world. He was hired strictly for tuning the C/C++ code with assembly at critical points. He now works for AMD doing test and tuning code for the Athlon line. - JW
A game is a place that you go or a thing that you do, not a story you listen to. Game designers who ignore this (usually ones stuck doing a game related to some Hollywood property) produce games that lock the player onto a story track. Such games get lousy reviews, and are only played a few times.
On the other hand, the game designer can easily create a world in which life is nasty, brutish, and short. That doesn't, of itself, make it interesting, although plotless pure first-person shooters do have a substantial market. There's a temptation to add a plot or backstory to give the game depth. But the two are hard to mix. The usual options are to lock the user into a series of challenges to be faced in order, or to build an adventure game with free movement but a finite set of puzzles. Getting beyond those models is a hot topic among game designers.
The author of the journal article was, clearly, totally unaware of these issue. So they were thus unqualified to write that paper.
But at least they didn't quote Derrida.
I'm majoring in discrete math (I don't want to do anything with computers, because CS majors are morons). Because I am not doing something practical, people think I'm strange. Also, I would like a degree in philosophy, but the closest thing is a degree in philosophy of science and technology which sounds pretty worthless to me.
The original purpose of college was to teach you a wide variety of things, not just to prepare you for work, but because it makes you a better person.
Oh, and my proof that CS majors are morons is pretty simple. They think that Snow Crash is a good book.
My only political goal is to see to it that no political party achieves its goals.
Games today will be more complicated and more graphics-oriented than in the past. It's what the market dictages. But by taking advantage of software engineering practices, even lightweight ones like XP, programmers will find that its easier to develop robust, extensible, maintainable engines -- they can then spend more time working on the gameplay issues instead of constant rework on the graphics engine or squashing bizarre, intermitant bugs.