(I'm still working hard on my book! I'll throw a few posts out here and there as I find the time.) As a follow-up to my post on "videogames as…
Video games as art: My favorite games that are more than just ‘point and shoot’
The other night, I stayed up way past my bedtime playing the finale of the video game DragonAge: Origins, the recently released fantasy role-playing game (RPG) by BioWare. Though the game had a lot of technical limitations that drove me nuts, and the fantasy setting was definitely stereotypical (Zero Punctuation had a great review of the game), in the end the characters and the development of the story won me over. The game is designed to force you to make very hard decisions, most of which possess no right answer. Though I made the choices that I felt were right in the game, I was genuinely saddened at the end of the game because of the consequences of those choices. It may seem odd, but it is a game that will probably stick with me for some time.
This reminded me of a topic I’ve thinking of blogging about for some time: are video games artistic? Of course, modern video games have armies of artists producing the graphics and the music, and there are other sites that consider video games as art in a more abstract sense, but I’m really thinking more about the stories that are told and the way they are told.
Roger Ebert has, in years past, caught a lot of flak for expressing his opinion that video games cannot be art comparable to great literature and movies:
…I did indeed consider video games inherently inferior to film and literature. There is a structural reason for that: Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.
I am prepared to believe that video games can be elegant, subtle, sophisticated, challenging and visually wonderful. But I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept. But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.
Roger Ebert has given this a lot of thought (and gotten into arguments with Clive Barker over it), and he makes a very reasoned case. If I understand it correctly, he argues that good movies and literature require the author to tell a story the way he or she wants to tell it — the more one gives the player control over the outcome of the story, the more one is sacrificing their story and artistic vision.
I used to think more or less the same thing as Ebert, but these days I respectfully disagree with him. Firstly, interactivity doesn’t necessarily ruin the story the author wants to tell — it can place the gamer into the story in a way that gets them more involved than a passive reading can do. Furthermore, it is possible to use the very act of interactivity to tell a sort of ‘meta-story’ — showing the gamer how their actions have consequences and showing how those consequences can ripple further along the line in the tale.
Of course, most games don’t do this at all, and I can’t blame Ebert for not being familiar with some of the gems of the genre. Heck, most movies that are produced fall very, very short of being ‘high art’, and someone who casually follows the summer blockbusters would certainly get the impression that movies are shallow and vapid.
With this in mind, I thought I’d share my list of video games that aspire to something more than shallow entertainment. Whether or not they reach the level of ‘art’ I leave it to the reader to decide. Certainly this isn’t intended to be the final word or even a convincing argument in favor; the internet is filled with commentary on the subject.
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Nice interviews with Richard Garriot and Lyn Evans on Vice/VBS.tv
A few months ago, I got a nice email from the folks at Vice Magazine/VBS.tv pointing me to a video interview they did with Richard Garriot (aka "Lord British"), the…
Dave Arneson passes away at 61
And now, we can officially say that it is the end of an era: Dave Arneson, co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died, a little over a year after Gary…
Very odd odds: Unusual dice
I’m still in the midst of a massive move into a new house, but everything has at least been moved from point A to point B; now the unpacking, organizing and fixing of things begins. I’ll hopefully get back to some normal blogging next week.
In the meantime, I happened across (well, ‘Stumbled Upon’) a few sets of very interesting dice for sale: Sicherman Dice and non-transitive dice. Both of these have some rather surprising and interesting aspects, and are new to me, anyway, so I thought I’d do a post!
Gary Gygax has died
It’s official: Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died. (My friend PD alerted me to the rumor earlier.)
I credit D&D for much of my current science aptitude and creativity. I was still in grade school when I took my first foray into the game, adventuring through (like so many others) The Keep on the Borderlands and In Search of the Unknown. Playing D&D and later role-playing games taught me several important skills: I gained an aptitude in basic math and probability from the rules of the games (what are the odds I’ll be able to hit that AC -8 will o’ wisp?), and the development of adventures for my friends gave my creativity a workout.
Some of my favorite video game villains!
One of my vices, if you would call it that, is an endless desire to make ‘top ten’ lists of things. Or top eight, or six… whatever I can find! I’m a lot like John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity (including the history of relationship troubles).
Anyway, today I’ve had video game villains on my mind. I thought I’d make a list of some of my favorite video game villains. My favorites include those with great personalities, those who scared the hell out of me, and those who just kick ass! My list below the fold. Some minor spoilers are involved, so if you’re planning to play the game mentioned, you may want to skip that description…
I wasn’t slain by an elf… I AM an elf!
Now that I’m thinking about role-playing games again, I found a nice questionnaire (h/t The Garbled Zombie) that allows you to determine what sort of Dungeons and Dragons character you would be. It’s a long questionnaire, but quite entertaining to see the results. Mine are below the fold…