I should start off by pointing out that the I don’t currently have a solid definition for ‘art’ and everytime I come up with one that I like  It tends to be fairly different than the previous one, with the exception being that they all containt the following caveat: art encompasses pretty much everything.  I think that’s probably for the better.  The general consensus is that we don’t want our art to stay constant;  We want it to evolve, to change.  Why, then, should the definition stay as such? 

On my bulletin board right now, there is a quote that someone printed out from a show I  once performed in, a birthday card, a large finger painting of my name, a coupon for 75 cents off of some Hot Pockets, and a picture of Simba from the Lion King that a friend colored in for me.  All of these are art.  Someone took the time to arrange all of these things in some way, from the size and layout of the text  in that quote and in that card, to the colors chosen for the picture and the painting.  Even the graphic design on the coupon was chosen for various reasons. 

I may not really care about the value of that coupon as a piece of art, and there is a lot of art that I’d much rather take in than that coupon, but the thing is still art.

My computer contains a folder called ‘Thrawn Shared’, which is where I keep all of the soundclips that I  find or rip from games, movies, TV shows, Podcasts, and whatever else happens to amuse me.  Certainly, there is more engaging sound to be heard, but they still fall under the broad category of ‘art’. 

From that, I guess that my definition of art is perhaps ‘a thing a person made’.  Fair enough.  It’s a broad definition, but that’s the entire idea. 

Some people are so adamant that games are not, and never will be art (until maybe a really long time has passed, then perhaps they can be the simplest, most basic, chicken-scratch level of art forms, maybe.)

I don’t get it.  does admitting that games are art somehow invalidate the potency of Citizen Kane, or the Mona Lisa?  Of course it doesn’t.  All art is not equal.  No one is claiming that it is.  Why, then, is the title ‘art’ like some exclusive club that games have to wait outside of? 

It pisses me off that Roger Ebert felt the need to ask why gamers needed so badly to have their chosen medium named as an art form, when he brought it up in the first place.  (Yes, he’s responding to Kellee Santiago, but she wasn’t requesting to be accepted in to the art club, she was declaring that she already had admission.) 

In fact, He really comes off as a bit of a troll during the course of his lengthy attack.  He’s clearly never played any of the games Kellee talks about, and, in fact, makes judgments about them based entirely on the trailers he found on Youtube.   Ron Gilbert pointed out that doing so was akin to judging the quality of a movie based on reading the script, and I can’t think of a better analogy.

I can’t understand why Ebert doesn’t learn something about the medium he’s shitting all over before he pulls down his pants. He’s obviously a smart enough guy that he knows what he’s saying is going to piss a lot of people off, and certainly ‘number of people pissed off’ shouldn’t be a factor in whether or not he writes about something.  I can’t for the life of me however, imagine a situation in which telling a group of people “The stuff you spend years slaving over isn’t good enough, and it never will be.’ is a good idea. 

Shadow Complex is a game that is pretty awesome, I’m told.  I don’t know much more about it than that it is based on the metroidvania style of exploration-based gameplay. Which does sound awesome.  Oh, and that it was based on the novel Empire, by Orson Scott Card, which could be awesome.  I haven’t read anything by him other than his Enderverse books, 2 of them being my favorite books of all time, ever.

The problem with this, is that while he is a fantastic writer of beautiful words and novels, OSC is also an enormous douche in real life.  It would seem that all the time he doesn’t spend writing wonderful books is spent telling people how much of a menace gay people are, and how earth-shatteringly bad an idea it is for them to get married to each other.  For this reason, there is a movement to, among other things, boycott the game. Gamasutra has a write-up and editorial on the whole mess, which, as far as I’m concerned, gets it mostly right.

The big thing that he says that eats at me is that we can’t judge games like we used to when we were children, which is just entirely false.  People can (and do) play games for  every reason under the sun.  Just because I play, say, Bioshock because I think that the storyline is ethically and morally interesting, doesn’t mean I can’t play, say, Assassin’s Creed because I just enjoy watching people climb shit.  It’s the same story with movies:  I love V for Vendetta because of the political warning and the ties to 1984, but I enjoyed the (first) Transformers Live-Action Movie because it was a bunch of shape-changing robots fighting the crap out of each other.  It’s the same with books, and any and every other medium of art that exists:  You enjoy this things for whatever reason you want, be it simple or complex, political, or… (what’s the opposite of political?) reasonable?

By extension, Even if I disagree with everything the author stands for, I’m not going to not read his books, or play his games, or whatever, unless what I’m reading and playing are designed to push forward his plan for whatever it is I’m in disagreement with.  Ender’s shadow has exactly zero to do with gay rights, and I’d be willing to bet that Shadow Complex matches that amount.

Christian Nutt ends his his article with the question “Are we ‘just gamers’ or are we adults?”  And I believe the clear answer is that we whatever we want to be, whenever we want to be it.  In the end, boycotting Shadow Complex isn’t going to help anyone, or, I suppose, more importantly, hurt anyone.  You’ll just have missed out on what could potentially be a very good game.  There’s no reason to restrain potential enjoyment in order to make a political statement that has nothing to do with said enojoyment.  That said, there’s also no reason not to go, say, protest OSC’s papers and speeches that actually have anything at all to do with homosexuality.  Or don’t.  That’s the beauty of it.  You have a choice.

First of all, this is what set me off.

It’s an article about racism in video games.  Supposedley.  Except that really it’s an article about racism, whether or not it’s too soon to reference a city that housed a natural disaster, and whether or not you should get to play both sides of a war.

So let’s start with racism.

“…One of the games that comes to mind is “Left 4 Dead 2.” Though the game isn’t out yet, it’s already causing an uproar. Set in New Orleans, players will have to fight their way through hordes of zombies - with several of them who appear to be African-Americans.

…Do you have any idea what racism is?

The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary defines Racism as

“ a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race”

So you have a horde of zombies, all of whom attack in exactly the same way, and are, other than differing appearences, completely identical, and this is racist?

Fuck you.  Moving on:

“…Another game, “Resident Evil 5,” puts gamers into the heart of Africa, blasting zombies. I bet you’ll never guess what color they are.

Black people in Africa?  Racist?

Fuck you.  seriously.  I realize that you aren’t the first to jump on the ‘Resi 5 is racist’ bandwagon, but for christ’s sake, use your common sense. No one has ever been surprised to see mexicans in Mexico, or germans in Germany, and you don’t get the right to be surprised about Africans in Africa now.  Or is the arguement that shooting said africans is racist?  Because fuck that:  you shoot the african zombies (and every other race of zombie, mind you, there is more than one,) for the same reason you shoot anything in any other video-game: Because it’s trying to kill you.  Not because of its skin color, or gender, or sexual preference, but because It will end you, if you don’t end it.

If game developers and the like are going to use history and certain locations, they should be prepared to suffer the backlash that comes from it. It could be perceived as being racist - and turn some potential customers off.”

Apparently anything containing non-white characters can be percieved as being racist, so that’s kind of an empty threat, Karkaroff.

By the way: Did you see that reference to ‘certain locations’?  this refer’s to the writer’s 2nd of three points-of complaint.

“One of the games that comes to mind is “Left 4 Dead 2.” Though the game isn’t out yet, it’s already causing an uproar. Set in New Orleans,”…

“When I saw the first trailer for the game, all I could think about was Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath. Setting the game in a city that was scene of dead, bloated bodies floating by so soon afterward was a bad call, IMHO. The city has had enough to deal with — Valve, you should have spared them, even if it’s just a video game.”

Granted, this is the one point of arguement the author makes that may be somewhat valid.  How soon is too soon?  It’s impossible to say, and I could foresee someone being upset by a graphics of corpses strewn around New Orleons after having lived through that once already.

Having said that, Valve clearly isn’t aiming to offend.  In fact, judging by the aforementioned trailer, the game is, shockingly, going to have exactly nothing to do with Hurricane Katrina.  No one gets upset when people set games in New York, even after 9/11.  Same standards apply here too.  I’ll grant you that this was only 4 years ago, while September 11th was 8, but for a game not focused on the tragedy, that should be more than enough.

Finally, we have this gem.

“

The game that really inspired this blog entry was Ubisoft’s “Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood.” The game starts out with players assuming the role of Ray, a Confederate officer, working to save his brother, Thomas, who’s pinned down by Union soldiers. I nearly dropped the controller. I have so much respect for President Lincoln — he wanted to preserve the Union and ended up freeing the slaves — and have just as much respect for the Union Army.

However, the Confederacy, as far as I am concerned, wanted to keep their cheap slave labor and the like. I can not stand the Confederate flag — I resist the urge to burn every last one that I see. To me, the flag represents hate — and offends me and many others to no end. And to play a game, where I don’t have a choice to be on the losing side — and one I detest — made me wonder how much research Ubisoft did for this game.

I can respect that you don’t like the confederacy.  I agree.  No slaves is best for everyone.  But you know what?  You do have a fucking choice.  DON’T PLAY THE DAMNE GAME!  In addition to that sentiment, I’d like to express confusion over what Ubisoft should have done more research on.  This guy’s tolerance of confederates?

It would have been a good thing to give gamers a choice — sure, be a Confederate soldier — or a Union soldier.

No.  now, granted, I haven’t played the game, (I’m going to have to soon, though. It looks pretty nice.)  But if the character is fighting for the south, I’m pretty sure that he’s doing so for a reason.  Be it born and raised there, or just that he believes in what the confederacy is fighting for. in any case, you can’t choose a side, because your character has already chosen his.  This is a game about that character, not a game about you.  A game about you would likely be about mistaking different ideas and mis-defining words.  and I woudn’t play it.

I found this while browsing throught the forums of The Escapist.

You may ask why I’m posting this.  Because this happened to me.  Knights of the Old Republic is a fantastic fucking game.  Amazing take on the Star Wars universe, and it doesn’t interfere with any of the previously-established canon that I am aware of, unlike Some other entries in the series….

Except for one thing:  As you progress through the game, your have the option of outfitting your character with both light and dark side force powers.  You can mix and match if you like, but my chosen style was to use only light-side powers.  Which is all fine and dandy, until get to the very last boss, who has a collection of imprisoned jedi sitting around the room that you two are gettin’ it on in.  I which you two are gettin’ it on.  The fight.

Both you, the main character, and he, the dark antagonist, are fighting in a room.

Anywho, the DA has a tendancy to, when his health gets low, zoom over to one of the many, many tanks containing an enslaved jedi, and go all Count Dracula on them, killing them, and refilling his health completely.  This sucks, until you realize that you can use a number of dark force powers, or one or two light force powers to break the tanks, killing the jedi inside, and robbing the DA of a snack.

Again, fine.  It’s a neat mechanic, once you figure it out.  Here’s the shitty part:  It’s possible to get to the end of the game without obtaining any of those necesary force powers.  The game has a level cap of 20, and each level after… five or so, gives you the opportunity to learn a new force power, or upgrade an old one.  I know that this is possible, because I fell victim to it.  And that was it,  I couldn’t beat the game.  It is theoretically possible to kill the DA 20 times over, or whatever it would take, but that sure strikes me as something that only a masochist or someone asking for a challenge would do.  Considering that I always play games through on the easiest setting the first time,  I fall under neither category.

Game Designers take note:  DON’T PULL THIS CRAP.  Don’t ever ramp the difficulty up so much that the game becomes all but impossible on the easiest setting.   And you know what?  Especially don’t do this because someone procedeed through the game in a completely realistic fashion.  And finally, if you are going to do this,  Give some goddamn warning, well beforehand.