| Reasonable said: Not at all. In know there work and do appreciate it. Rather ironically I'm actually behind some (I mean it would be terrible if they all did) videogames moving much further into Art. But while I would defend Ueda, for example, I am also painfully aware of the limitations of what he's achieved so far versus the highest standards of literature. Art is Art, I don't think the criteria differs so much as elements to understand of the medium. I'm just annoyed that Twestern came out huffing and puffing that there's no reason to doubt videogames abilities in this area when, sadly, on the evidence there is every reason to doubt there ability. The potential is there, but its almost entirely unrealised at this point, and its just plain silly to argue otherwise. Many videogames, probably correctly, seek nothing but to entertain as a game, a smaller percentage look a little beyond that, but only in the most faltering way. A tiny few shine brightly vs their peers. But they represt the first baby steps. Hell, I'd argue that the best films still lag miles behind the best literature - which might be expected given how long we've had written literature vs films. Videogames are so recent they're in many ways still where cinema was when it was about amazing people just with what it was, not what you could potentially do with it. |
I just thought it was worth noting - the talent is there, and they are doing great things. Mr. Avellone is also behind Neverwinter Nights 2, Fallout 2, and Planescape: Torment, for what those names are worth (to many, they are worth a lot).
I have no particular comment to make concerning twesterm's arguments; the fact that I have been as deeply affected by some games as I have has little or nothing to do with the experiences which have affected him.
I think that it may be fallacious - even harmful - to attempt to compare games to literature, for many reasons. The value placed on storytelling as a component of experience is very different from medium to medium - but it's also different from story to story, too. One of my favorite novelists alive today is Cormac McCarthy (you've heard of him, he wrote The Road and No Country for Old Men), and it could be argued that in many of his works, traditional narrative focus is blatantly cast aside. The artistic value subscribed to by, say, Hemingway, is nothing like that subscribed to by our good friend Orson Welles. Or Thomas Harris. Or Stephen King.
I think the worst part about discussing gaming as a growing medium is that people tend to want to compare it with other media in terms of its growth and profundity, when that growth and profundity operates in very different ways. Yes, ICO affected me more than The Road did, though I loved that book very much. I'm not ashamed to admit that. There is some advantage incurred to it by sheer virtue of interactivity - and if it's not an advantage, it is at least a qualitative difference that has to be taken into consideration in discussions like this one.
And you are right, gaming is a very young medium, but that's not quite the proper perspective to take when comparing it to films or books. I would argue that we already have our Citizen Kane, our Wizard of Oz, our Gilgamesh - but even if we don't, it's understandable. Books and cinema are much older than they seem.
Cinema in particular doesn't exist in a vacuum, because it was born from theater, an art that's older than books, an art that's older than Rome was. It took a long time for them to realize what they could do beyond the boundaries of those storytelling methods, yes - but Citizen Kane, and the Seven Samurai, and countless other movies, were built on the shoulders of those traditions.
I don't have to tell you what kind of storytelling traditions that the novel is built on. Oral storytelling is probably closest and it predates recorded history by a considerable margin.
Video games are unique: we've never had interactive storytelling before. This is the first truly infant medium that we've really ever seen as a civilization. That we see out of it what we do now is marvelous. I make no excuses, because I feel that games as they are don't need any, but that perspective, that knowledge of the medium's real youth, helps us understand exactly how far we've come in so little time.
