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.
I think there is truth to this. I dont think I've seen anyone analyze sports or try to conclude that the rules of American Football is inherently fascist (though I would love to see it), people have been playing games since they've been alive, which is why it's called "video games". I think one would have to take serious the virtual aspect of video games , Deleuze I know has theorized about it. Much like Miyazaki calls his films "manga-films", I think developers who want to make more 'artistic' games should market themselves as "virtual interative media" since video games are different from the traditionally art form as every person will experience the art differently due to freedom the player is given and the limits the player will eventually find on what they can and cannot do.
I wish speedrunning had been analyzed more thoroughly after the Petersonian twitter dramaa. I would love to see the theories of Paul Virrilo and Fredric Jameson used to describe it since both talk about the philosopher of speed and the virality that is given within the internet space. At least the person was trying to understand speedrunning as a phenomenon even if their own framework was nonsense, it's easy to laugh at some big Other while being content with your own probably equally nonsensical explanation for it that remains unstated. Of course who cares about speedrunning, but it should have been a moment to produce at least an interesting explanation for it.
i've seen some america dunking that does this in a comparison to regular football but it was mostly not serious.
Actually you can do an analysis on the economy of scale in American football and other sports since it's all for the purpose of generating profit. American Football is probably the worst since it only exists as a way to make profit since the equipment needed for it is way to expensive and way too damaging for your own body. Its quite easy to see the exploitation that high schoolers and college players are subjugated to. Flag Football would probably replace it in socialism. Athletes are commodified and emasculated under current American Football play.