Its Dangerous To Go Alone

(My apologies for not writing this sooner.)

A four-by-four pixelated block performs a dance along my TV screen. Searching for his lost love, but alas, she is in another castle. Each new lesson learned from the last session leaves it's lasting and longing feeling. Forgo that feeling! For it is false! Follow your own direction and disturb the doom and gloom of that Saturday afternoon. Remold yourself to the world of vibrance and beauty. The world does not come in 256 colors.

I miss video games.

For as far back as I can remember, there has always been one thing that I've found astounding and amazing. The virtual world I escape to trapped within my TV. Those wonderfully exotic video games. Since I've started commuting to school, I've spent the majority of my spare time with people rather than driving back home to engage in this (nearly) victimless vice. Nobody has ever really given anything that hasn't been around for more than 50 years any type of artistic merit. Even today, we don't see music as an artistic expression very often any more.

It's no longer being an artist that's important in today's society; being an entertainer has taken front seat. It applies to everything across the board, not just music. Movies either take two forms; drastically unfunny comedy, or trying-too-hard stylish film noir. Video games are just as guilty as well, but have yet to be classified as art. I wouldn't stand by and defend every single game I've ever played as being a new form of high art, but there are certainly a few that stand out, just as with a musicians magnum opus album (coughDarkSideOfTheMooncough), a writer's series of novel (coughTheDarkTowercough), or even a director's film that still leaves it's audience with any number of questions (coughPulpFictioncough). Anything can be art if you can evoke something to your audience that you can't do with just normal small talk and stick figures.

IGN's list of the Top Ten Most Artistic Video Games in response to Roger Ebert's claim that video games can't be art (circa 2007).