That’s the declaration of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which plans to exhibit a selection of classic games early next year in a move that will either resolve a great debate or further complicate it.
Paola Antonelli, senior curator of the museum’s Department of Architecture and Design, in a Thursday blog post announced that MoMa is installing 14 video games next March, with 40 additional titles to be added over the next few years.
Much as I love the EVE developers, and as cool as it is visually, I don’t know that it really sets any precedent in art. That goes double for The Sims.
It could be argued that EVE and SimCity may have sociological value. EVE especially is a game that can well illustrate what people do in harsh environments, whether it be forming mini-societies for mutual protection, charity toward others, or killing and theft against other players to even an antisocial degree.
Meanwhile SimCity is particularly notable as an early mainstream sandbox game, and creative sandboxes open up another whole can of worms.
True. I was hung up on the definition of art being “visual media” (graphics and visual style). I feel bad for not thinking that they were viewing the games themselves as art.
In that regard, yes, I would agree that those games have earned their place.
Having had some time to analyze that list the one thing that strikes me immediately is the lack of any major FPS. While I personally am NOT a huge fan of the FPS Genre(with the exception of Duke Nukem and Half Life), the non-inclusion of a single major FPS in the list looks peculiar to me.
I wonder if this will follow the trend of Movies. In Movie Making, its quite difficult for an action movie to be considered art. So, in video games will FPSes find it very difficult to be considered art? I hope not. That would be a real shame.
It’d be tough for an FPS game to be considered artistic. They’re primarily “point and shoot”. I would like to think that this is a great sign that there is endless room for innovation in the genre. We simply need to create an FPS that causes its players to think and feel, while still logically making sense as a shooter.
Thats true. The Point and shoot aspect does do that. I personally think that its disappointing that it should be that
way.
From Wikipedia
The Encyclopædia Britannica Online defines art as “the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others”. I would think that some good FPSes would meet those criterion
Hm… what about Unreal? What began as an artistic vision by gamers evolved into a successful franchise, and eventually into top-of-the-line technology for others to realize their artistic visions.
Unreal, Bioshock, Halo, Half-Life, Crysis any of those big names actually. I wonder whether they were even considered or just discarded with the “Ugh!! FPS” scorn