Are The Press Neglecting Games As Art?

Thanks to the Guardian Online for their article discussing whether the press are rating games seriously enough as an artform. According to journalist/researcher Matteo Bittani, "the games press in general is guilty of treating games as if they had no other relevance than being mere commercial products." He goes on to argue that: "Games are still being assessed by the same criteria of playability, graphics, sound and longevity as they were 15 years ago, causing the analysis to just boil down to 'technological determinism in full effect'." Is there any merit to reviewing games on more conceptual, artistic grounds, or is that idea overly pretentious?

Comments

Re:So does the gaming industry

[Allen Varney]

Personally, I think that the gaming industry cares smeg-all about the artistic merits of games, and only what sells. This wasn't always the case, but seems to be the overwhelmingly prevalent attitude coming out of the industry today.

This /. discussion has so far focused exclusively on computer games, and in that field you're probably right -- though a few folks like Warren Spector are definitely interested in pushing the form forward.

But if we broaden the topic to include other games, there's definitely a strong starving-artist-in-garret mentality in indie RPGs -- the tabletop paper kind. Check out The Forge discussion boards, and the many odd small-press RPGs those designers post on the Web. They're all convinced roleplaying games can be an artform, and they don't care if their work earns a dime.