first post! LOL - intro and gaming as art

I apologise for the title, but I am of the "interweb" generation... While I don't participate in this juvenile behaviour the humor of opening with it was too much to ignore.

For this first post, I want to start by introducing this blog and myself, I call it "Keeper3's Blathering Blog" primarily because I shall be blathering about stuff... and one of my interweb names is Keeper3. In fact, it was my first name online, and it has an amusing backstory... One day I may go into it, suffice to say it was inspired by my near worship of a game called "Dungeon Keeper" back in late 90's.

I'll be focusing on gaming; the games I like, the peripherals that are interesting, issues of censorship and anything else in gaming that catches my fancy. And now I shall segue into my first topic... Gaming as art, or my alternate title...

In response to Roger Ebert;

I make no assumptions that Mr Ebert will ever read this or that I'm on his level intellectually, but his sweeping comments on gaming as art disturbed me even though I found myself agreeing with parts of a recent article I found re-posted on one of my favorite World of Warcraft blogs.

Essentially, the post appears to be in response to some video that attempted to push some recent games as art which sounded to be too corporate to be taken seriously, at least from what Ebert wrote.

Instead of countering his points against the video, which I see as a worthless endeavour anyway, I will focus on my opinion and back it up with a few examples.

First; what is art? Ask anyone and you will get a unique answer... unless they don't care. For me, art means something, anything that is human created that provokes thought or emotion; but even then, that's vague, can I include games that infuriate me through bad controls? How about games that are so boring that I fall asleep playing them?

Clearly, calling something art is almost a pointless exercise, as almost anything can be art to someone. Even murder, to some people, can be seen to be art and just the thought of that is disturbing to me... an emotional response you say? Shocking.

So can games be art? For me, a game to be art has to provoke intelligent thought, consideration for the issues in the story that supports the game and how the playing of the game affects the story with an appropriate aesthetic(graphics and sound) that suits the setting. A good example is Deus Ex, summarised it is a story about the folly of putting too much power into the hands of a few... The old story of power causing corruption, absolute power corrupting absolutely... And the rebellion of a few that cannot accept this. The name itself makes it sound presumptuous, arrogant... Perhaps. But it was an amazing game that few have been able to replicate.

A bad example, and there are many but I love and hate this game... love it because it's a great example and hate it because it's hardly a game (nor is it art!). Heavy rain... touted as some great storytelling masterpiece with multiple endings and paths, something Deus Ex did not need to move me, ended up being an insipid game where player interactions were effectively predefined and the "multi" path and ending rubbish boiled down to merely a good ending, a bad ending and shades of grey. I mean, who ever heard of a murder mystery where the killer is always the same?!?

*ahem*

Perhaps I digressed there a little, but my point is that Dues Ex remains in my mind like a good book, just as classics like Romeo and Juliet it's part of my memories and I can recall some of the emotions I felt as I played the game... Where as the only emotion I got from Heavy rain was annoyance.

Can games be art? Wrong question, it should be "Why can't games be art?"; who declares what is art and what isn't? Are we to accept the talking down by Ebert? A smart man to be sure, but he's not of the gaming generation, he didn't grow up with it like I did, like many of us did... it's in my blood! I played computer games with my Dad just as much as he would read to me when I was a child, if not more so... Were the stories art and the games not?

Supposedly we now spend the majority of our time in games... Some of them bloody well better provoke deeper thoughts than "I wonder when I'll hit the next level"... And I think denigrating games by declaring them as never being art gives gaming companies a free ticket to release insipid games (all too common), to ignore writing and creativity in favour of more pretty CG or explosions (like a lot of recent movies, eh Ebert?)... we should acknowledge that games can indeed affect how we think and feel, and ensure that more art and thought enters into our games and ignore those, who from on high, feel the need to disregard gaming as simply incapable of being considered art.

I mean, in the end, beauty, or art, is in the eye of the beholder, is it not?

"The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity." - Alberto Giacometti

Sounds like a good computer game to me!

Keeper3