We apologize for our absence from the comments section last week. Rest assured, we do read each and every one of your remarks, but time simply got away from us over the past several days. In today's edition of "It Came From the Comments," we ponder what StolenName said last week in response to our post titled "The Clive Barker Interview, Part III." He wrote:
I'm 22 at the moment and when I read these interviews I actually feel younger than I am, call it lack of experience, but from what I can glean from your interviews with Barker and the media at large, it seems like critics, whether of art, film or novel, are close minded or myopic. Couldn't their rejection of media like games and music be partly because they have no way of understanding the mixed media, as games are a marriage of visual, audio, writing and player interaction, and actually finding a way to understand that within their on learned discourse?
And also, N'Gai, do you believe that as younger gamers grow older and begin to move into the industry (as I'm trying!) and the older critics move on, that the perception of games as art / not art or for adults (as well as children) will shift? Or is there something about games in particular that forces them to remain an under-appreciated artistic medium by the general public?
To which we replied:
StolenName, every critic has assumptions, biases, prejudices, dogmas and blind spots, all of which add up to what some might call myopia and others might call personal taste. The challenge is for we critics to recognize the baggage that we bring to the table and to constantly engage it--publicly, whenever possible--so that our readers can see us working through our thought processes.
As you correctly point out, games present a particular challenge to older critics because while many older media only require the intended audience to have eyes and/or ears, videogames add a mechanical component that necessitates varying degrees of skill. I'm fond of saying that we "see" games with our hands; unfortunately, this means that a number of people who sit in positions of influence and authority over videogames--parents, politicians, protesters, even some publishers--are for all intents and purposes blind to the medium.
As for whether or not demographics alone can solve the art/not art conundrum surrounding videogames, I don't believe that that alone will be sufficient. First, there are many people who make videogames who don't believe that games are art--Nintendo's Shigeru Miyamoto and Konami's Hideo Kojima among them--and the same is true of a lot of people who play games. Second, those of us who do believe that videogames are art are still struggling to understand and articulate the nature of that artistry. If I had to predict, I would say that the process by which videogames may become widely accepted as art will be both long and incremental, and its success is not guaranteed.
Another comment came from Chro, who wrote:
Video games and animation are conceived as mediums for the younger market simply because that's the way they have been in the past. Arcades were designed to suck up the quarters of as many kids as possible, and consoles and their games were always pitched to children. Animation in America has always been pitched as being for kids (largely due to Disney), whereas in other countries like Japan it was initially presented as a more wide-reaching medium. There are plenty of video games and animated pieces that are clearly not for children, some with depth that rivals other pieces of art. But changing the perception of the country will take time. Americans are stubborn as a whole, and resist change. Why do you think we're not using the metric system?
Movies like Spirited Away change a few minds, but games are further behind animation when it comes to perceived maturity. Until a game comes along that has the depth and beauty to change lives (and get accepted into the mainstream), video games will continue to be seen as a toy.
To which we replied:
Chro, videogames not only present a challenge to non-gamers in terms of their interface, but also in terms of the time commitment required in order to deliver an experience with the criteria that you've listed: depth, beauty and mainstream acceptance. Beauty, thanks to the latest technology, is fairly achievable. By depth, however, I assume you mean in comparison to other narrative art forms, like novels, movies and television. But videogames aren't primarily a storytelling medium. In fact, it's still an open question as to whether they're any good at it, and even if we set that debate aside, videogames are by their very nature not an efficient storytelling medium.
An 8-10 hour game is considered by many avid games to be short. For non-gamers, that's the equivalent of 4-6 movies or one-third to one-half of a season of television. I don't think many non-gamers would be willing to commit that much time to a story-driven game. And when you look at the games that have won over mainstream audiences--Pong, Super Mario Bros, Tetris, The Sims, Brain Age, Wii Sports, Bejeweled, Guitar Hero--it's not because of depth of narrative as we know it. So if those are your criteria--and they're perfectly reasonable criteria--I question whether videogames will get there anytime soon.
What do you think? What do you look for out of the critics you read? Do you see videogames as art, or do you view them solely as diversonary entertainment? And what's it going to take for videogames to more consistently break on through to a wider audience? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
