Taking the next step in gaming
By blog on Apr. 18, 2009.
As a follow on from my previous article, where I state that games are now a medium of entertainment for adults as well as children, I would like to look into the evolutionary steps gaming can take in the future.
Gaming has grown up. No longer are we faced with the same Good versus Evil dichotomy that Super Mario Bros brought us in the ’80s, no, games have grown from there. Today’s games give us gritty characters with morally ambiguous choices. We can play as the paladin like bastion of goodness, the everyday person who is by and large neutral, or the dark self-serving villain, we now have the choice. Games are accommodating more and more complex characters and narratives, and gamers are thrilled with this new era of realism.
There are those, such as Roger Ebert, who believe gaming will never be an art form, that it’s very nature precludes it from gaining the title of art, but many other respected authors, artists, game developers, and game players, disagree with great vehemence. Gaming is becoming widely accepted as an art form, with exhibitions of concept art now taking place, and serious academic work being put into defining why some video games should be considered art.
Whilst the stigma of games being for children lives on, gaming as an art form can’t really get into the air and soar. If game developers are held back from certain content, that is already acceptable in literature and film, then how can this medium compete on a level playing ground? We have read about the darker side of the human nature for the past few centuries, look at Matthew Gregory Lewis’s The Monk as but one such example. And yet, could you imagine the outcry should anyone try to include Lewis’s often grotesque actions of Ambrosio in a game? Well a game in this day and age, Custer’s Revenge will always baffle me as to how that got through.
I find the denouncement of adult content in games often reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the statue of David comes to Springfield museum and the censor group that Marge started because of cartoon violence goes mad with trying to ban the statue for being ‘indecent’.
Film, comics, and animation are among the most recent additions to the world of fine art, and it occurs to me that all of these mediums had to fight for their place in the fine art pantheon, gaming is the newest, but we can be sure it won’t be the last.
Category: Technology