![]() This is a deeply emotive and intellectually engaging game, but it's one of those cult hits I touched on earlier. That's not to say the writing rivals Shakespeare, of course, but it aspires to offer that kind of depth beyond the literal narrative. Persona 4 was perhaps the first game I played that convinced me that we can study game narratives as we would the likes of Shakespeare. It expresses and explores Japanese cultural values, but I think it also reaches deep into nihilist and existentialist philosophy. Many of the games I featured are personal favorites, too.īut there are three other games, outside of those that appear in Game Art, which led me to write this book. Well, obviously I think all of the games that appear in Game Art definitely illustrate that games are moving away from being toys and into offering a greater depth of meaning. ![]() What, in your opinion, have been the most essential releases in moving games from the toy arena into the arts? Do you have a favorite game or two that actually inspired the making of the book in the first place? Games are clearly a popular medium for creative expression, and fans of gaming can help the general public see this by encouraging popular culture, as a whole, to legitimize art-house games as it has art-house cinema. I think that for the games industry to develop further, everyone has to recognize that games are much more. That's not to say we can't have our shooters and sports games, but even cinema would not be worth nearly as much as a creative outlet if all it offered was superhero movies. Games are on the cusp of breaking away from that same reputation right now, and part of the reason I wrote this book was because I wanted to join that discussion. When novels were a new and innovative form of writing, critics of authors like Daniel Defoe harped on how inferior the novel was to the purity of poetry. ![]() To continue having important discussions and debate about and through art, and for art to even maintain its relevance in society, we have to consider all dominant forms of creative expression, which includes video games.įilm originally had a reputation as a mindless distraction. Games easily compete with any other form of entertainment and art in terms of sales, and that puts them in the public eye more than ever before. Is it fair to say that games are processing inspiration now just as much as any other means of expression? And if that's the case, what do we as fans of gaming "need" to do to make sure the public en masse sees this, and doesn't think of games simply as shooters and sports titles, the dominant commercial genres? The book showcases a wild diversity of aesthetic approaches and cultural influences. It's all out there, and that's a basic fact. Some game directors play a similar role in this industry to Quentin Tarantino, Steven Spielberg, Jean-Luc Godard, or Antonin Artaud in film. We have experimental post-modernist stuff, cult art-house hits, and local industries producing games almost exclusively for local audiences, similar to what Bollywood does in cinema. That said, games can certainly be described like art is in other mediums. And everyone knows how important Citizen Kane is, but how many people have actually watched it? Not so many. Think about the film industry: even people who don't really watch films know that alongside blockbusters like The Avengers there's a robust art-house scene. While blockbusters like Call of Duty and little time wasters like Angry Birds are artful in their own right, the challenge lies in getting those outside the industry to recognize that the world of video games extends so much further, even if they never play anything but mainstream commercial successes. Matt Sainsbury: Before we start dividing games down those lines, I think it's important to get general society on board with the idea that games are art. ![]() That being the case, can we divide games into categories of art, as we do other mediums-high art, low, and so on? Or should it be the developers making these calls? In your preface, you say that games are art, and that the book accepts that as fact. That chapter is published in full below, but before that is a chat Sainsbury was kind enough to have with me about his new book. One of the book's most striking chapters focuses on 2014's genuinely gorgeous puzzler Tengami and speaks to its studio's (Nyamyam) co-founder Jennifer Schneidereit.
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