[originally sent to Costik via email on 2/26 as a response to http://playthisthing.com/response-costiks-lack-critique-post ]
Dear Sir:
I would like to take you up on your declaration that video games need critics as opposed to just reviewers. Games have the possibility of being art but it is up to the community itself to provide criticism of the art form rather than rely on the outside world or critique to do it for them. Old Art will never call any video game ‘art’ and it is the video game crowd’s responsibility to declare and define what art exists in the medium as New Art.
[addition from the original text] Old Art would laugh in this entire New Art argument's face. [end]
I agree that the need exists for critique as opposed to review; however, your definition of critique needs a bit of change. A review exists, as you said, to get a consumer to spend money on a game/movie/etc. However, critique exists both as a serious discussion of the medium, but also cements that game’s existence in popular culture and beyond because writers took a serious look at the medium outside of ‘buy this game because reason X and Y’.
I disagree with your assertion that critique is “In a sense merely ‘writing about’…” a subject, such as art or video games. Criticism seeks to understand why a work (in this case a game) is something more than its surface appearance. Criticism aims to dissect the nature of the piece of art and why it rises above the rest of its contemporaries, not just to simply ‘write’ about the subject. Writers do not write about Van Gogh’s work for the sake of writing about it. Writers critique Van Gogh’s work to reveal the nature of why his work is art instead of just paint on canvas.
No one attaches a number score to Van Gogh’s work.
New Art movements are always called ‘crap’ in the beginning because the Old Art movement wants to hold on to control of what is and what isn’t art. Once their time of relevance passes Old Art loses control of both their own art and also lose control of what is art. Old Art would call this entire argument ‘crap’ because video games are not art to them because they have no control over that market of the possibility of art. Not all video games are art but there are some games that supersede their being a game to become art, which is where game reviews fall flat.
The Simpsons is art. Chrono Trigger is art. Super Mario Brothers is art. Beavis and Butthead is art, be damned what anyone else says.
Oh. Cartoons and comic books also have the possibility of being art.
Beavis and Butthead is art because it represents a bygone era where the worst of America’s problems were destructive teenagers on TV and the teenagers that were imitating them in real life. Beavis and Butthead serves as a photograph of America’s teenaged innocence of the time during the Clinton Era. Beavis and Butthead didn’t have to worry about terrorists, gas prices, or the economy. All they had to worry about was getting caught whacking it in Anderson’s tool shed. (Jackass is not art. Jackass lacks any redeeming value outside of a DVD being used for a coaster on the coffee table.)
SMB is a piece of art where the rest of the series was created to cash in on popularity of the first game. (SMB3 is debatable. I‘d say it‘s art, but for different reasons.) SMB was the first side scrolling action title, revolutionizing video games as a whole. SMB wasn’t just ‘shoot stuff’ (Space Invaders) or a singular screen of action (Donkey Kong). SMB had its own universe with different worlds for exploration.
I am not giving you my argument on Chrono Trigger because that is an entire article to itself. I would also call Square Soft during the SNES era an ‘art house’ due to the consistent quality of their games in that period of production.
The Simpsons is art but that subject has been exhausted for the moment being.
Monet was blobs of color on canvas according to Old Art when Monet was just starting out.
James Bond in ‘Goldfinger’ proclaims that the only way to listen to the Beatles is with ear muffs on. James Bond was Old Art and The Beatles were New Art. Now both are Old Art and we are the New Art. Bond would have said the same thing about video games if he were thirty-five in 1985.
By acknowledging the lack of criticism on video games, you have thus created a market for that critique. The response created on the forum alone proves what can of worms you’ve opened.
This acknowledgment is a double edged sword. If you are calling for video game critique, then you are and your site is responsible for the support and the forum needed so that critique can exist.
