[Ben Reed]

I'd buy that video games are art in the "creative expression" sense but I don't know that I would call them art in the CONVENTIONAL sense, simply by virtue of the experience they impart onto the player is determined by ACTIVE PARTICIPATION -- by actively changing the state of the game in a way that will inevitably unique from someone else's experience -- but at the same time, their aesthetic experience, unlike a physical art form such as dancing or music, is not completely generated by the participant. Even if you're playing a cover song, you're doing it through the agent that is your own instrument, held in your own hands and controlled by you -- even if you pick up Brian May's own Red Special, the music coming from that guitar is ALL YOU unless you are Brian May himself.

Case in point: when two guys look at one of Michaelangelo's frescoes, they don't LITERALLY see completely different naked Greco-Roman people doing the pull-my-finger gag -- it's always God and Adam, and by definition you go from there. When two guys go to see Lord of the Rings at the same theater, one of them doesn't see a musical finale to the crumbling of Sauron's tower, excellently choreographed and with very impressive footwork on the part of Ian Holm as Bilbo.

But when they both sit down at different SNESes to play Super Mario World, their experiences in altering the initial state (i.e. the game without somebody at the controls are quantifiably different, down from where and when they drop, to the angle at which they tag the flagpole, to the pixel at which jumping Mario's fist makes contact with the ? block above him. Evven if the two play the same stage in exactly identical ways, jumping at all the same times, pressing the button at exactly the same time, the experience they generate will always be different simply by virtue of past, present, and future experience -- i.e. one guy might be a superplayer who's died only a handfull of times, but the other guy might be kinda bad at the game but somehow magically manages to pull an identical performance to the first player out of his ass.

But at the same time, unlike music and dancing, there are clearly defined rules by how much one can totally alter the content of the experience. Let's go back to the example of the Red Special -- even using Brian May's own guitar, you are not in any way, shape, or form limited to songs associated with Brian May. You could play Queen standards like Hammer to Fall, or you could do something entirely different and go into Zep's Heartbreaker, or you could just flick random strings at random times and make a whole lot of awful noise. If you're on-stage doing Swan Lake, there's no one stopping you from spontaneously stopping your pirouette and breaking out the windmills for your unwitting audience. But no matter how many times you boot up that SNES, unless you hack or otherwise alter the game -- and thereby create your own game -- you will always be limited in Super Mario Brothers. You can be Mario. You can be Luigi. But if you want to be Kirby, or turn it into a 2D SSBM, you're going to have to make your own game.

Bear in mind that this is not to say that video games have no aesthetic elements, and certainly not to say they are unworthy of serious cultural and academic appreciation. But I honestly believe that in order to properly appreciate them, you have to approach them from an entirely different angle than other expressive media. You are dealing here with the fusion of aesthetic elements and a rule-based system of competition (namely, a game) -- just picking one set of rules for judgment from one of those categories and applying them to video games simply won't work.

Thank you, and God bless America.
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[Ben Reed]

[Ben Reed]

[Ben Reed]

P.S. Pikachu, I will make you a deal.

If you can find me a good, standard avatar-sized portrait of Gene from God Hand (or Shannon, or the gay leopard-twin midbosses, or Olivia in the bathtub wielding the axe...I am not terribly picky), I will promptly retire Master Asia so that you don't have to look at him anymore.

I would prefer the concept art from the manual or something similar, but a very clear, close-up screenshot cropped to appropriate size would also suffice. A hilarious facial expression is a must as well.

I have looked myself on Google and 4chan for a worthy image, but to no avail. Perhaps you will provide the answer that I seek.

Cheers and crumpets,

Benny
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