| DeadNotSleeping said: The prime directive of entertainment is to entertain, and all of the arts are entertainment. |
Right off the bat you're inaccurate. The purpose of all arts isn't just to entertain. Entertainment can of course be on the menu, but it is not the only directive nor arguably the prime one for every art form, at least as I take your meaning of entertainment. You seem to be talking about light or popular arts only, and you seem to be considering only popular entertainment as a guide.
Is the purpose of Shindler's List to entertain? Is it fun watching the kids hide in shit to avoid being taken from their parents or captive Jews being shot arbritarily in the head? Is Citizen Kane or 2001 a comedy to roll about laughing at? Is United 93 or Waltz with Bashir nothing but entertainment?
The arts can have many goals, and particularly outside games a great deal of art is not concerned with entertainment.
Sure for MacDonalds and an expensive film like Transformers 3 its all about volume, satisfying a lot of customers with something fairly basic, generic and relatively appealing to all. But what about single high quality resteraunts or films like Le Prophet - they are simply not offering nor trying to offer the same and cannot be judged using the same metric.
Games do seem primarily an entertainment medium, of course, but even within games there is already enough differentiation to make it impossible to apply one metric for success. Take something like Heavy Rain or Silent Hill 2, which can both be fairly bleak experiences, are they really trying to entertain in the same way as Super Mario Galaxy or Halo 3? Can you really compare something like Limbo or Braid or Flower with CoD using only one metric for success?
Sorry, but I just see sterotypical generalisation and oversimplification in your arguement.
Try to be reasonable... its easier than you think...
