Games as Art

Nice to see games inspire fashion beyond ironic, hipster T-Shirts. Designer Anrealage incorporated low resolution or pixelated graphics into a recent collection shown in Tokyo.

Hanno Hagedorn is a 3D artist that worked on Crysis, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception. After promising (mostly himself) to create an online portfolio of his works, it's (mostly) done. Most impressive among his work are these digital sculptures of characters from Among Thieves. If they could be recreated in resin, I'm sure they would be mounted proudly on the bookshelf of every Uncharted 2 fan.

Starting this Thursday (Feb. 24th), the New York University Game Center will begin screening it's first Film Series. This series consists of four short films, each dealing with at least one aspect of the gaming culture. Each film will feature a brief introduction by Game Center Researcher, Charles Pratt, and followed by a Q & A session with the creators of the film. The event begins this Thursday (February 24th) with the screening of Play! at 7:00pm in the Tisch School in the Skirball Center for New Media at 721 Broadway, Rm 006. The series is open to students, faculty and the general public.

Are videogames art? Many in the industry have been asking that question for a while and it has spawned many a debate. Those who believe they are in fact art, point to games featured in a museum or gallery exhibit as a sign that they are and that people outside the industry are viewing them as such. None other than The Smithsonian American Art Museum is putting together an exhibit called The Art of Video Games. But the museum and its curator are asking gamers to help select which games will be featured in the exhibit.

To categorize cinematic action games as intrinsically shallow or lacking in value would be the worst sort of genre-as-pejorative thinking. Their approach to game storytelling has produced many strengths, but one central characteristic of the genre is also a critical weakness. The great artistic limitations of cinematic action games come from their disinterest in the player as a creative force.

Uncharted represents not a new kind of game unto itself but an exemplary actualization of certain values in game design. Here I intend to put a name to those values and show how they relate to the characteristics of games in this group, which I think of as "Cinematic Action" games.

As anyone who has the misfortune of following me on Twitter will know, I've been engrossing myself in Phoenix Wright for the past few days, and the game has pretty much been riding solo in my newly acquired DS. I'm just about at the end of episode 5, so not totally done yet. However, unless the game suddenly turns into Mega Man X7 within this last case, I can safely say that Phoenix Wright will rocket straight to the top of my "late to the party" list. And as a bonus, I have the correct spelling of "Phoenix" memorized after years of always relying on spellckeck.

I've been going through some of my gaming backlog recently, partially due the to the magical appearance of a Nintendo DS Lite in my closet. I have no idea where it came from, I don't remember buy and none of my old roommates reported losing it. I've approached it somewhat apprehensively, lest it be the focal point of a plot by some supernatural force. Enough about The Lost DS though. I'm here to talk about something much different.

Why do so few video games have truly great stories? We have some suggestions for developers and share some of our favorites. Plus: Roger Ebert breaks our hearts, and Chi and Tim finally have a reason to talk about Wing Commander. Brad is thrilled! Featuring Chi Kong Lui, Brad "Likely Going To Hell" Gallaway, Richard Naik, and Tim Spaeth.

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Topics discussed:

• Dragon Age: Origins
• Portal
• BioShock
• Final Fantasy series
• Wing Commander series
• ICO
• Way of the Samurai series
• Front Mission 3

Please send feedback and mailbag questions to podcast (at) gamecritics (dot) com.

Jim Sterling gave Deadly Premonition a score of 10 points out of a possible 10, easily the highest score the game received among major gaming review sites. In his review, he makes it plain that this game does not deserve that score in any "objective" sense. The graphics are dated, the gameplay is limited, and its systems pay too much attention to irrelevant details. This is to say nothing of its absurd plot and characters. In comparison to almost any other game, Deadly Premonition is awful, but within the bounds of a certain kind of sensibility, that does not preclude it from also being good. Sontag identifies that sensibility as Camp, and it's an idea worth thinking about in connection to games.