like it seems fucking obvious, right? any medium that can contain degrees of symbolism, has the potential to provoke viewer interpretation, has the potential to contain specific or vague messaging from the creator, and just generally can be used for self-expression has the potential to be an art form.
Why the fuck is/was this a point of discussion? to the point of heated discourse, even! Was it just the most geriatric people they could find on the street? Weird snobs?
like, the second games started having narratives this should have been a moot topic. why the fuck did Kojima parrot it?
reading his statement, i feel there's two different discourses happening, the already solved (:lt-dbyf-dubois:) point of "can video games be art" and the more interesting question of "does the video game industry currently have a culture that promotes artistic endeavor over mass appeal"
to which my personal answer is 'no, but we're slowly getting there with the rise of auteurism (despite some of the problems inherent to it) in acclaimed development teams (:praise-it:) and the indie scene's entirety, and we'll see if it starts to push against the corporate board schlock in the future.'
but still, god damn, half of this debate comes from the same place as the video games cause violence bit and the other half is just people being annoyed with call of duty schlock, which, fair. but why is the former even a debate that happened/is happening. i'm genuinely curious.
The discourse of the Last of Us 2 shows that gamers lean towards conservatism and are angry at what they see as their own ecosphere being invaded by SJWs and other such people (because a trans kid was in their video game as a secondary character). This game, and others that include things such as non-sexualized female characters or plotlines that have LGBTQ+ stuff or villifies fascism can lead to quite a lot of backlash. Hell Wolfenstien 2 got flak for having the main characters as "too sensitive" when recounting how his father was a piece of shit abuser and racist (or that the KKK were in the game and were rightfully painted as villains).
aren't gamers predominately middle aged women on their phones who don't know what a sony nintendo is?
Yup, except capital G gamers would have a aneurysm over that, like wine snobs reacting to boxed wine or some stupid shit like that.
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