Video Games And Art
How are video games and the arts related?
Video games and the arts are related very strongly. When you look at the production of a video game, from the conception, to the artistic sketches, and the writing, it involves everything else that we hold to a higher art form like movies or music. All these elements are incorporated in game making. That's not to say that every game that's made is art, but a lot of them really are, and a lot of them incorporate the same kind of skills and talents that other things that we view as artistic, and having artistic merit, have.
Are video games considered a legitimate art form?
Whether video games are considered a genuine art form depends who you are talking to. As I've said before, some games are art forms and some games aren't. You have you games that are kind of dashed out, that have not much thought put in to them, and then you have your games that have spent years in development. They've got a team of really talented artists behind them, talented composers, talented programmers - people that can program games to amazing things. It doesn't seem like art to anybody else, but even collision detection and the frames that something can run on elevates the technology of video games and is something that I do think is an art form. If you don't consider the technological ability behind video games as some sort of art, there is all the elements of character design, and creating these worlds and these universe, that look very different from anything that you've seen before.
What skills do video game developers and artists share?
Video game developers and artists share a vision, probably, of being able to know in your head what you want this final product to look like. When it comes down to technical ability, if you've ever seen the character art, like original drawings for games; it's beautiful. It looks like something you would see in a comic book or on a painting. It's really amazing. I definitely think they have a vision too. It's like asking if you think the director of a movie has artistic ability. Yes, they're seeing where this is going; this world that they're taking us into, definitely.
How will video games evolve?
It's amazing to see where video games are going from a technological aspect, up from very early Pong in 8-bit. Now you have the cell processing on the PS3 and you have the XBox 360 and the rendering in these graphics. Now there are just these amazing games that look beautiful and are nothing like I could have imagined when I was playing games for the first time years and years ago. If that's what they can do now, I'm going to be amazed to see what they can do in the future; to see if everything is photo realistic, and if we're going to see things like virtual reality come back. Where can they go next?
How will video game culture evolve?
I'm also going to be interested to see how accepted it becomes, or if it's just going to be a continuous battle over people that think it's just a waste of time versus people that find it to be a way of life, especially with things like World of Warcraft, and these giant MMOs, where you have tons of people; these large communities playing together, and the numbers of people going up all the time.
