Can a Video Game Be a Work of Art Essay
Why Video Games Aren't Art (At Least Non All of Them)
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Bethesda Software
If video game fans have any designs on getting their hobby into a museum, with the argument that video games are art, they would exist wise to bank check the Internet connection in the exhibition hall.
This week sees the highly predictable Fallout: New Vegas unload on Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, and PCs worldwide. As in other Fallout video games, players land in a massive, postal service-nuclear American town with endless quests, hundreds of characters to talk to, and moral choices that define the path. In an era of go-anywhere, do-anything video games, the Fallout series has proven the smartest of the genre.
Trouble is, New Vegas is a bit off in the head. The reviews are in, and most concur that the game is loaded with glitches and crashes. A pop fan video shows a caput-spinning bug in the opening scene, prompting a reddit.com user to call it "Fright and Loathing in New Vegas."
Yesterday, its makers announced "patches/updates" to fix the glitches that volition exist downloadable "as quickly as possible."
Last month, world-domination sim Civilization V launched on PCs with a similar wave of hype, targeting the series' loyal, nerdy post-obit. Simply fans balked, equally did renowned game critic Tom Chick, over the game's obvious bugs and not-so-obvious "intelligence" problems. Computer armies make stupidly mad dashes to their bitter cease. In-game attempts at diplomacy, a series cornerstone, tend to end with caveman-like rebuttals.
In response, last week, its makers announced patches and fixes that will be downloadable in the about hereafter.
On the surface, this isn't special stuff for modern video games. Patches and fixes have just about go the norm, whether to add new content or to fine-tune rest bug in versus games.
But this mod circle of gaming life—this expectation of a little fix, man—has turned reviews of games like Fallout: New Vegas and Culture V into wishlists. Promotional dialogue, even.
"[Civilization V] is a disappointment that needs a lot more work before it earns its place equally the successor to Civilization IV," Chick ended, equally if to goad the developer into doing his bidding—and to goad fans into waiting to buy the game when, not if, the fixes come downwardly the pipeline.
Motion-picture show critics didn't plead with Scorcese after Gangs of New York underwhelmed. And music writers didn't send remix requests to The Flaming Lips upon hearing the sprawling, overwhelming anthology Embryonic. People will complain and disagree with a release, simply that's an issue of "bad art" vs. "good fine art." The outcome of games every bit fine art goes ane further than that, cheers to the expectation of an endpoint—a vision mulled over and finetuned until, hopefully, complete.
I don't mean to demean the creative potential of video games. As Super Mario Bros. celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, the classic game remains a document of the emotion and delight simply a game tin conjure, equally much with mechanics as with looks. But what would Super Mario Bros. be if information technology had been "stock-still"—if its "minus world" had been patched, among other glitches? Those weird corners of the game are a crucial part of its charm (and were left in the game when it was re-released in the '90s for other systems).
I'll certainly continue downloading patches and fixes to make my games more than enjoyable. On some occasions, they create an ecosystem of changes and updates that could be called artistic—a mass of activeness molded past both its makers and audition into unexpected shapes (in detail, the years-old Team Fortress two has been updated over 120 times to corking consequence). But in terms of buggy, incomplete games reaching the market place, the hobby is doing neat impairment to itself. When video games depend on patches, they lose all creative potential and become broken advertisements for their future selves.
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2010/10/why-video-games-arent-art-at-least-not-all-of-them/64927/
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