About 10 years ago, my then-roommate Antonin Bechler (who also wrote this survey of Japanese role-playing games) declared about Final Fantasy VII that this was the moment video games became art.
If we follow Aristotle's Poetics, maybe video games could be an extension of drama when done well (the notion of narrative being accepted; for the video game-as-art without a narrative, see Loco Roco) for its cathartic elements.
And we accept the idea of art as being a historical moment put under a magnifying glass, maybe video games are more relevant than fiction or poetry. Take for example Metal Gear Solid 4 and how it comments on the treatment of war.
Cue Baudrillard ...
If we follow Aristotle's Poetics, maybe video games could be an extension of drama when done well (the notion of narrative being accepted; for the video game-as-art without a narrative, see Loco Roco) for its cathartic elements.
And we accept the idea of art as being a historical moment put under a magnifying glass, maybe video games are more relevant than fiction or poetry. Take for example Metal Gear Solid 4 and how it comments on the treatment of war.
Cue Baudrillard ...
Comments
They certainly interrupt the clearly defined audience of objective participitation that reached its apogee in the Brechtian Tragicomic Epic. . .
Aside from complicating the objective position of the audience in drama, the video game is cathartic in a way that complicates the theatrical. Video games include the television - they manifest the aesthetics of realistic gesture and 'the close up' (I am thinking particularly of the later Final Fantasies), making for belazsian aesthetics that outstrech the possible grasp of theater.
In this way - because the video game is Aristotelian drama - we have a difficulty where drama becomes mutiny against half of theater - the audience.
There is no audience - only players