Bogost on NPR — Video Game Makers Favor Diversion over Depth
Ian Bogost is featured in this NPR story on video games — entertaining diversions or substantial implication-rich forms of creativity? There's no one answer, only conversations around this topic. With the video game industry proclaiming that it is all grown up (110%+ growth in the last year, etc), the "industry" will decide for itself what video games become, what their role will be as cultural artifacts, and what the larger public considers them to be.
Cobbling together a few choice bites from Bogost, I get this:
Artists have a long tradition of pushing the status quo, but not game designers, despite being important culture makers of the 21st century...I'm not sure the game industry wants to see games as an art form. I think they want to see games as a primary form of entertainment..Art is about changing the world. Entertainment is about leisure.
Comments
I am reluctant to credit Bogost's views by responding to them. There are a lot of conversations around this topic, and many of them are growing fatigued. "Art" and entertainment are not mutually exclusive categories. The indictment that the games industry doesn't want to/cannot make art is facile, and fails to engage other aspects of games development, commercial or otherwise.
As a medium, games have a lot of anxiety about growing up (which is why the industry crows so loudly about its financial success) but to deny their artistry is to infantilize the medium and the discourse around it.
Posted by: Max Geiger![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://interactive.usc.edu/members/jbleecker/nav-commenters.gif)
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April 16, 2008 2:24 PM