123 - The Art Of Video Games

What this episode covers

Yes, video games are an art form. Today I give some love for the video games. Subscribe: ITUNES | ANDROID | STITCHER | RSS FEED Music and links from this episode To run in an elevator in a dream in a fiction in space by Monplaisir Simplify and Black Riders Anthem by Little Glass Men YFMIFY by Alpha Hydrae Line-by-line notes Videogames have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember I don’t remember much of my youth Because I have a terrible memory for important things like that But I do remember pretty much all of my video game consoles And boy, did I have a lot of them Atari, Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Dreamcast, Mastersystem, N64, Playstation, XBOX… I’ll stop there Today I want to talk about design in a different medium The video game This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess MUSIC Video games are dismissed And they’re dismissed a lot They’re dismissed because they’re dangerous, they’re silly, they rot your brain they make you fat oh yeah, and they inspire you to kill people, rape people, or generally do harm you wouldn’t normally do to people And finally, Games are for kids, right? Wrong Despite making a cool $91 billion per year globally And that’s more than Hollywood by the way Video games still aren’t taken seriously They’re not considered a serious medium And they’re still seen by lots of people as something for kids People don’t say this about music, or books or films But they do still say it about video games And if I was to tell you that video games are art I’d be laughed out of at least 50% of the rooms I walked into But, they ARE art And they’re more engrossing than every other artistic medium that exists today Games have made me laugh, made me sad, made me scared, and made me question my entire existence Sometimes they’re throwaway experiences and sometimes they’re serious Every single one of them have affected me in a way no other traditional art form could do And it’s all because video games have a secret trick up their sleeve It’s because they're interactive And this is the power that video games has over any other medium Sure, some pieces of art can be interactive But a lot of it isn’t And most pieces of music you listen to you can’t affect with your actions And most movies you watch don’t change depending on what button you press This is the power of video games And it turns it into a completely different art form Just that one simple thing—interactivity—pulls you in to it SO much The fact that it’s me controlling my character walking down a corridor And I’m not just watching passively somebody walk down a corridor Enhances the experience ten fold And then when we extrapolate that out to experiencing different things Driving a car I could never afford to buy Or running around in an action game doing things I could never dream of doing Games become much more than what they appear to be on the surface Not only are they easy ways to escape from the humdrum of normal life They’re easy ways to experience things you’d never hope to experience Games allow you to live your dreams, quite literally People who make video games are making dreams And then unleashing them on the public to let these dreams by experienced by lots of people I’m not trying to use hyperbole here, I’m being genuine If you don’t like playing video games Or you’ve never got into them I urge you to go give them another chance Start with something like Unchartered, an absolute modern day masterpiece And come back in 2 months time and tell me you didn’t experience something really special Games are an art form, no matter what anybody says They’re a very special art form unlike anything else And they’ll always have a special place in my heart MUSIC This was AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess Music featured in this episode was: To run in an elevator in a dream in a fiction in space by Monplaisir Simplify and Black Riders Anthem by Little Glass Men YFMIFY by Alpha Hydrae...

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