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October 07, 2003
The Case for Crit
It is nice to see <a href="http://www.mbftoday.blogspot.com/">Matteo Bittanti</a> getting some <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/gameswatch/story/0,12453,1055582,00.html">attention in the press</a> (plus some <a href="http://games.slashdot.org/games/03/10/05/073253.shtml?tid=127&tid=186">thread time at Slashdot</a>). He jazzed the participants of last month's <a href="http://www.igda.org/academia/events.php">Academic Day</a> with his <a href="http://www.mbftoday.blogspot.com/2003_08_31_mbftoday_archive.html#106238157461331209">manifesto for improved game criticism</a>.
On the whole, I agree very much with his point and think that the writing and analysis of games needs to improve dramatically. When will the game industry have its own Rolling Stone (ie, when it was "important" during the 70s)? And, will anyone really be interested?
I suppose that if games were more <a href="http://www.igda.org/blogs/realitypanic/archives/000046.html">intential in terms of their social commentary</a>, there might be more to talk about - in a critical sense, that is ;)
Certainly, Nintendo's pushing their <a href="http://www.suntimes.com/output/lazare/cst-fin-lew01.html">implied impact on culture</a> with their latest ads... And, GeorgiaTech's <a href="http://idt.gatech.edu/projects/gamemorph/overview.html">Game Morphology project</a> is a nice stab at "creating a critical vocabulary that will help expand the expressive power of the medium"... Nice to see people looking into things at this level.
Admittedly, I am very excited that Matteo accepted my invite to speak at <a href="http://www.gdconf.com/">GDC</a> in March!
Posted by della at October 7, 2003 12:32 AM
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Comments
The biggest problem I see with video games is that they do not age well. In particular, within a decade of a game's release, two things have happened:
[1] It becomes difficult to find a platform capable of playing the game. Movies do not have this problem, as platforms like the VHS tape and DVDs last for many decades. People can buy a movie and not fear platform obsolescence.
[2] Games are still highly technology driven, and therefore games that are a decade old look dated compared to present day games. Again, all but the most special effects reliant movies avoid this problem.
The result is that we can still enjoy movie classics from the 30's (Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz), while it's very hard to enjoy a game classic from the early 90's.
Posted by: Scott Miller at October 8, 2003 09:50 AM
Hi - writing from Rome, Italy! I wait for an essay to be published by Matteo in a forthcoming publication, just to inform you I know enough about your point. I would like to add to "Game morphology project" what has just (26 Oct 2003) read Costikian on his own blog, concerning the 300 games every designer/gamer should know. I ignore whether Greg has played all of them (but probably most), but it's a darn good list to face... Byes
Posted by: Alessandro at October 27, 2003 07:57 PM