Looking at the videogame industry, it's in it's youth. It's only been around for about three decades. Still a wee infant learning to walk. But one thing it needs to learn before it can walk, is that blockbusters aren't the pinnacle of the form.
In movies, nobody considers the latest Indiana Jones to be high art, nobody thinks that the new Batman is going to be thought provoking and innovative. What they will be is high grossing blockbuster events. They will make hundreds of millions the weekend of release, they will be all over TV, in magazines, on your computer, everywhere. As with all the big summer blockbusters, they are high budget. They use state of the art technology to deliver incredible special effects, incredible talent from all over the industry to choreograph intricate fight scenes and action, create costumes, and the art direction of the set. They have experienced directors and producers behind the scenes to polish the product, and make sure it's of the highest caliber. The actors will be top notch talent that everyone knows. From a technical standpoint, they are marvelous.
They are also formulaic, trite, completely predictable, focus group tested, not straying too far from the conventions of what they know people like, trying as hard as possible to imitate the previous iterations that were so popular for largely the same reason in order to make as much money as possible. And they are no doubt quite a bit of fun to go to and watch. My wife and I love summer movie season. But Iron Man, or Indiana Jones And the Crystal Skull, for all the technical marvel, aren't the pinnacle of the medium, far from it.
The truly brilliant movies are usually the ones that never make it to the oscars. Foreign films made on ten grand and some sandwhiches that nobody except film students watched. Maybe a skilled known director, that only manages to get a limited release in a few big cities and manages to make just enough to fund his next project. And though it may not have been high grossing, it was appreciated by the educated film student, discussed by them, things were learned. Some of the students may even go on to make their own films or help make them, and incorporate said learned things in the future. And even if they don't ever make anything of their own, they make sure the art form is appreciated and understood.
Now take our young medium. It's completely the opposite. The GTAIVs, the Zelda's, the Halos, The Killzones, they are the pinnacle of our medium. The top talent makes them technical marvels using the latest technology, program tools, and methods. They finely craft remarkable cities, dungeons, enemies, water effects, and environments. They put the best voice acting, musical composers, directors and polish them to a high gloss. And they are completely trite, formulaic, unsurprising, and yes, fun. But they are considered the high art of our medium. Games that we were playing a decade ago, with new skin.
Now here is the even bigger, and much more startling difference. The low budget, inspired, innovative games are not only not considered high class, but are often considered crap, or just "meh" among the gaming "elite". Now when the majority of movie goers that know nothing of what goes into making a film dismiss "2001: a space oddysey" as being wierd crap, you can't really fault them. They don't get it, and you don't really expect them to. Now if the film critic elites, their "hardcore" movie goers that knew film history, knew what goes into making a movie, knew about direction, who are aware of the symbolism almost unanimously declared that Adam Sandlers "Zohan" was the better film, the medium as an art would be in trouble.
But here we have the "Hardcore", the elites of gaming, the ones that care so much about gaming that they spend innordinate amounts of time talking about it, following the industry, have played countless games, can name companies, producers, directors and their work out the yin-yang. And they all clamor for GTAIV, and could care less about low budget games. Games like Boom Blox, Psychonauts, Planescape, No More Heroes, Killer 7, The World Ends With You, the Earthbound Trilogy, ICO, Lost Winds, Okami, Shadows Of The Collossus, De Blob, ect. You can pick individual examples out of that and say they are crap and not art, and you may be right, I'm not going to defend every game I think as being artistic in this thread, but the point stands. As a medium, the innovative, the low budget, the off the wall, the unique, the interesting, the games travelling down the path less road, are ignored and/or ostracized by the community at large in favor of the formulaic blockbusters. And we're not talking about the hundred million plus "non-hardcore" community that enjoys Halo, buys a couple games a year, but would never dare to set foot in a forum to talk about it. We're talking about the elite, the ones that know videogames forwards and backwards, the ones that should be heralding it as an art and defending it as such, and demanding that it be developed and treated as such. There are always a few that know about these games, and love them, but you have to look long and hard to find them.
How can a medium develop as an art when not only the public at large doesn't care, but even the educated connoisseur demands the formulaic over the inspired?
You can find me on facebook as Markus Van Rijn, if you friend me just mention you're from VGchartz and who you are here.
