A brief history :)

–Dave

But then, maybe they’re all a bit too low-class for the high-art of video games… certainly they’re not very interesting if the main goal of all this is the legitimizing of video games in the public mind.

I, too, would fear the over-intellectualizing of a medium that, for the most part, is entertainment. Before people start pulling out the “Art vs. Entertainment” artillery, keep in mind that while I DO see “art” in some forms of the medium, I find it hard to see the same in “space marine kills aliens 5″ (CliffyB says Hello).

The problem is defining what people mean by “art” as it relates to games.

I think if the medium starts approaching art, it will probably alienate most of the current consumers of games. Wether or not this is bad thing is really a subjective point of view. On one hand, you get games that explore unknown territory (experimental) or more mature games (aimed at an increasingly aging population), however, the funding model is pretty market driven. So, really, we have a two-pronged problem:

1 – In order to the push the medium, we need a funding model that is open to risk in order to make experimentation possible.

2 – We need players who are willing to put down the “junk food” and start being interested in deeper games. It’s a hard sell when most players of “Bioshock” don’t see the Randian overtones and instead see the “cool mutant powers” and Art-Deco visuals or the love between the two characters in “Ico”, instead of the Inverse Kinematics of their movements.

This largely applies to what I would call A-class production (high budget, large dev team)

The indie devs have sort of an easier go at it, so far, on the PC side. This is changing a lot on the console side with XNA, Wiiware, and PSN (however, Microsoft cutting royalties to the devs by 50 percent is a worrying trend).

The problem I am finding is also the tools we use to generate games. Right now, it still semms a big technical hurdle that seems unavoidable; the exception being the mod scene or off the shelf engines but its still largely a techie solution to an artistic problem.

What would a game by Phillip Starck look like? A game exploring Existentialism?

Or am I over-intellectualizing? ;)