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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?
Games cannot be considered serious art by the "mainstream" because most video games right now, by and large, are "technological determinism." Why? Because that's what sells games.
GameSpy just had that "Underrated Games" column, which included both Rez and Ico, two very hypnotic and "purposeful" games. It's pretty clear that the non-standard sort of experience that really captivates the player simply doesn't appeal to the big "middle-crowd" of system owners; people who only buy a few games that appeal specifically to their tastes. Very few people seem to be "hardcore" enough to want to experiment.
Games will reach that point, but they haven't reached it yet. As for pretentiousness... well, almost any art can be called pretentious.
"Come on, let's go drink till we can't feel feelings anymore."
Why focus only on the Press, here?
Consider the recent Australian federal gov't's
response to an arts organisation giving a $25K
grant to the developers of a game that deals
with a very -current- news item (including
Refugees' Children in Detention, in very remote
centres, like Woomera, South Australia):
Strong scrutiny of the arts organisation &
that Au$ 25,000 grant.
PS The -free- Escape from Woomera game is due
any day now (eg, Oct 2003). 'can't wait...
... in Sweden we have two major gaming magazines, PC Gamer(sort of like PC Gamer) and Super Play(sort of like Edge).
PC Gamer is just for PC games, they only care about the games that sell.
Super Play is multiformat and gives high scores to games like Ico and Rez.
Guess which one I like the most... err... I don't know, I subscribe to Super Play.
Is it any wonder the press uses the same scorecard?
At least for certain genres. . . For some games, things like mood and storyline matter a hell of a lot, for others not so much. For example, lots of people still say Final Fantasy 6/3 is the best one in the series, but it's far, far, far behind 7 on technical merit. Why do people love it so? The storyline.
The same goes for the adventure game genre - I've played adventure games with bad graphics and terrible game mechanics that were still fun to play because they were funny, or the storyline was interesting, or somesuch.
Even the Quake games didn't escape from this. Sure, on a technical level Quake 2 and 3 were far better than Quake 1. The graphics are better, the control is tighter, the weapons are more balanced. . . but there are diehards who still say the first one is the most fun to play, because it is the one that succeeded in creating a mood.
Heck, there's a subgenre that's entirely based on creating a mood - survival horror games. Some of these games (Silent Hill 2 comes to mind) would never have been good games had it not been for some excellent artists and 'scriptwriters' behind that game.
So yeah, I'd say that asking whether there's merit to rating games based on conceptual grounds is pretty asinine, considering that it's pretty well accepted as an important part of many games even if that doesn't make it into the itemized star ratings you see in a lot of magazines.
But then again, I'm not too sure that the concept behind a game and execution thereof should be rated in such a manner, because what one person likes conceptually another person will dislike. Such aspects of games deserve to be reviewed in prose, the way books are. Of course they already are, so I have no idea why I'm even bothering to talk.
There are some sites, however, that are treating games as more than just entertainment forms. I feel that Insert Credit is doing a fine job of analyzing games and gaming with a critical eye, as opposed to just writing trash like many of the other game-centric web sites do.
Actually, once I found Insert Credit I stopped visiting any other sites. It's clear from their writing that the contributors love what they're doing, and they're not just pandering to the lowest common denominator. Check out the 'reviews' of F-Zero GX or The Wind Waker to see what I mean.
"Max, come over here. French-Canadian bean soup. I want to pay. Let them leave me alone." - Dutch Schultz
Games should be, and are, judged ultimately by only one criteria... is it fun?
Take, for example, "American McGee's Alice". Artistically, it was a tour de force. But it was plagued by mediocre mechanics and gameplay, and, despite the beautiful level design, the levels were like a "rail-shooter", there was only one path to follow. It got good initial reviews because of its sheer beauty, but people soon came to realize that it just wasn't much fun.
Artistic? Yes. Fun? Not really. So, as a game, it wasn't very good.
Long term sales are the best indicator of a game's quality. All intellectual pretension aside, the people vote with their wallets. Word of mouth will ensure the success of a game that most people find fun.