| bdbdbd said: I came to this thread thinking it was one of Rols. Either we have a new challenger, or someone was serious. Anyway, first i'd like to point out, that Nintendo seems to be the least of the problem of rehashing content by looking at what the other big publishers are putting out. Wii was designed so that new content could be created, instead of rehashing content with the blockbuster businessmodel. And when you take a look, you may notice that Nintendo have put out lots of new content on Wii. Whether they are the games you like, is rather irrelevant, since it's new content anyway. In fact, the whole success of Wii is based on the new content it brought. For the art, if you look at history, every piece of art that is seen great, have been commercially successful. For example i myself largely dislike Picasso, but due to circumstances at his time, he was forced to have different businessmodel than the other artists, which made Picasso popular fast. However, you seemed to present art as something else than it is, art, in itself, is the creative asset put into the product. And what's destroying the art in the games, is the rising cost of development, that effectively destroys the experimental creative aspect of the game, for the sake of high profit. Not the platform that offer you the best potential to make art. Also, the art of videogames is very different from other forms of entertainment. For example, a movie you could call art, would be a slideshow of famous painting playing Sibelius on the background for two hours. |
Err, got to say I disagree with you on a few things. One, you're wrong (I'm afraid factually vs opinion) if arguing all great Art is successful. Many artists, across many forms from sculpture to canvas, were commercially unsuccessful during their lives. In some cases their works ended up with a high value many years later, but of course there also remains plenty of great Art that wasn't a huge commercial success. You simply cannot say commercial success = successful Art. I'd also note that often short term commercial success tends not to lead to long term critical and commercial success. Blockbuster movies, airport page turners, etc. all tend to date pretty quickly and fade from view.
I also disagree with your statement films are primarily to entertain. They can do, and I'm very happy that is one use of the medium. But it is by no means their primary aim IHMO. What you're simply describing is the fact that the more commercial films tend to be more successful. Or maybe you think Transformers 2 is Art? I don't. I believe in US this is a very strong of view of films, but I don't take US as representative of the world, only itself. In Europe in many countries film remains as much an Art form as an entertainment, which is IMHO a preferable place to be.
What it comes down to (the fact one man's Art is another's junk) is that the aim of something using the same form may be different.
A sculpture may exist purely as Art, not intended to sell for huge sums nor make the artist rich and famous. Sculptures can also be churned off an assembly line to sell as souveniers, purely for commerce.
A film may exist essentially as Art (most Kubrick movies spring to mind, or Lars von Trier or David Lynch) whiile others are purely commercial in nature - hello Transformers 2 again.
A novel may exist primarly as Art, or it might be an Airport blockbuster written from the get go simply to entertain and make a lot of money.
The same goes for canvas, music, etc.
You cannot state that the commercial use of a medium defines its most successful artistic efforts - in fact, in most cases it's the other way around.
I therefore see videogames as no different. There is no reason you couldn't use the medium to produce Art (so I'd disagree, very gently, with say Roger Ebert there, as by definition anything can be used for Art), however I'd say that very few really try to. Right now Videogames are primarly about commerce as entertainment - which is fine and what I was referring to in my first post. However, there is no reason a few titles shouldn't be attempting to be a little bit more than pure entertainment - titles like Ico, or SOTC.
Nintendto I see as primarly focused on entertainment, which is fine. As is MS. Sony is too but they do seem to produce some of the more eclectic titles out there, for which I'm glad - Flower, ICO, etc. are real gems that manage to blend decent gameplay with actual theme and content to produce somthing akin to Art.
In the end I'd hope to see the big developers, EA, Activision, etc. adopt a policy similar to many film studios, where the big money spinners also allow funding of more interesting, smaller, artistic projects - although I won't be holding my breath on the Activision front. Right now they are square behind commerce, I feel potentialy even at the expense of fun but hopefully not.
Of course, I could just be a well edcuated European elitist!
Oh, and Montana, I find it rather sad you'd see any notion of the videogame form being used for more than simple fun as a 'bad thing' or some form of threat. Fun is great, it's why I do go and see good popcorn movies, read good escapist novels and play fun games. But I firmly believe that it's a richer existence to experience both fun and a healthy dose of something a little deeper, a little more challenging. Something that asks you to experience and consider other, less simply emotions.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
