Videogames Doomed for a 'Comics-like Ghetto'? 354
At the Newsweek blog LevelUp, journalist N'Gai Croal wrote this week about the sometimes-precarious position of videogames in popular culture. The frustrations of legislators, lawyers, and 'pro-family' groups aside, the popularity and record sales of the gaming industry would seem to indicate rising stock for gaming as an art form in the US. And yet, there are some folks who see gaming as just another fad, which in some time will be equal in popularity to comic books or tabletop roleplaying. N'Gai starts to form his response by noting that learning to play videogames is considerably easier than developing an appreciation for literature of any kind. He then goes on to note that the (oft-cited) lack of weighty subjects in gaming is more due to the 'pop culture' nature of the hobby than the medium itself. "Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005?" He discusses some ways to address that, but do you have any solutions? Or are games doomed to be the playthings of adolescent boys for the rest of the century? (And yeah, I resent the 'comics ghetto' label too.)
video games as art? (Score:5, Informative)
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070721/COMMENTARY/70721001 [suntimes.com]
There are some good thoughts in there even though Ebert is definitely in "Get off my lawn" territory.
I love the Half-Life series. I think there's a lot of wit and intelligence and creativity there that you don't see in a lot of other games. But every time I sit down to play a new episode I inevitably think: "It's just a First Person Shooter." Portal gets even higher marks for creativity. The way they develop the GLaDOS character and the use of plot twists and the out-of-left-field use of music is brilliant. But is it art?
I guess I tend to think of video games being "artful" rather than "art".
Re:Label maker. (Score:5, Informative)
Kids don't read comics anymore. Most comics readers _are_ over 30. I'm 23, and most people I see at the comic shop are older than me.
Now American comics, the print kind sold in stores, they petty much suck. Heroes in spandex, boring plots, recycled everything, yuck. But if you take a look at the manga section in bookstores, it's off the charts. There are plenty of young people reading comics, even girls! But it's manga they're going for. Since the American comics aren't developing a new audience, they have to enhance the value for older readers to keep them coming back, like the tobacco companies spiking the nicotine in ciggies. And that means more masturbatory aid females, more fan service, more pandering, just to keep the books moving. It doesn't help that rising prices have pushed comics out of the casual purchase territory for today's teens.
As for pencil and paper RPG's, the demographic is there, same as always, even bigger than before! But they're playing the games on computers now. Video games are poaching those dollars.
There are so many more companies competing for dollars compared to when I was a kid and compared to the previous decades before my time, it's even crazier. DVD's, video games, CD's, MMORPG's, cars, ipods, laptops, computers, not to mention books, comics, etc, too many things to split the entertainment dollar amongst.
Now if they want to talk about video games getting ghettoized, just look at the Wii. Old folks play it. Over the holidays, my sister brought her Wii along and the whole family enjoyed it. It's the first video game system my mom's liked since the Odyssey from the early 80's. Nintendo proved the market is there, companies just have to get inventive about serving it. Same goes for the comics. No self-respecting geek gamer wanted a Wii but it looks like the market is bigger than that. No self-respecting comic publisher would want to trade spandex heroes for yaoi but the girls are buying it up in droves. There are ways to make money, they just might not be the way the industry leaders want to make it.
Re:Label maker. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Not a chance (Score:5, Informative)
I would be curious to see a comparison of total man-hours spent enjoying WoW or EVE vs total man-hours spent watching a production of a Shakespeare play. Wow has about 6.5 million players, [arstechnica.com] if we assume a safe average of 100 hours played per player [parc.com] WoW has been played for 605 million man-hours. Meanwhile, In 1600 the population of London was 200,00 by 1700 the population of London was about 600,000 [demographia.com] So assuming every single person in London saw two productions of Shakespeare every year, that's only about 200 million man-hours of Shakespeare enjoyed in 100 years. I would say that by some measures WoW is already a greater cultural influence that Shakespeare.
I really roughed in these numbers (but do have sources), if someone who is better at figuring these things would be so kind as to try to supply some better total estimates I appreciate it.
Re:At the risk of sounding elitist... (Score:2, Informative)
~Jarik
Re:Not a chance (Score:1, Informative)
The premise behind Romeo and Juliet wasn't Shakespeare's he took the characters and plot from a previously existing play. The whole idea behind Shakespeare's "genius" is precisely the thing that most people don't understand anymore: his language. In his day, Shakespeare was quite gifted with his ability to make puns and create satire, but in a very subtle way. Compare Shakespeare to Douglas Adams. DNA certainly had a gift in making a sentence funny, regardless of content. Hell, in the first HHGG novel, the Earth is destroyed in the first half of the book, and body really dwells on the fact that 6 billion people are dead, they just move on with the humor, and everything is okay.
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Not a chance (Score:5, Informative)
You might want to educate yourself [wikipedia.org]