Video Games & Literature

2»

Comments

  • DiscoZombieDiscoZombie Join Date: 2003-08-05 Member: 18951Members
    I'm constantly trying to tell conservative people how legit video games are as an art form. This topic shouldn't be specifically about VGs as literature, but as art, IMO, because literature is art and video games are more than literature, and paintings and movies are art and video games are more than paintings and movies. I think MonsE said it best way at the beginning when he said new media types take time. Cinema wasn't widely studied in schools until several decades after its advent. Heck, most great authors and artists themselves aren't taken seriously until decades or centuries after they're DEAD. There will be a time when games like Planescape: Torment and Final Fantasy 6 are studied in college... I also wouldn't be surprised if there comes a day when many books we consider classics are no longer studied, or perhaps books will be phased out completely over time... I mean, compare book sales and movie sales, for instance...
    <!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Books don't sell many copies. Even top sellers. A million copies sold in a year (a total reached by only a handful of books annually) only averages out to less than 3000 copies sold a day -- about the number that attend a successful Broadway show in a big theatre on any given night. (By comparison, even a conservative estimate of the number of movie-goers who saw Austin Powers III on its opening weekend, comes out to about 10,000,000 (in only three days).)<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    Books are becoming purely academic, while movies and video games are a part of our culture... I've read some good books in my day, and I think the best books I've read have affected me exactly as much as the best games I've played... no more, no less...
  • Seph_KimaraSeph_Kimara Join Date: 2003-08-10 Member: 19359Members
    edited December 2003
    <!--QuoteBegin--CanadianWolverine+Dec 22 2003, 08:53 AM--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> (CanadianWolverine @ Dec 22 2003, 08:53 AM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin--> Heck, I find myself reading in my latest issue of PC Gamer about a show which features folks trying to reinact historical battles for a telivision show in the UK called Time Commander using Rome: Total War from Creative Assembly! How many other facets of human knowledge could be made more relevant and interesting enough for imaginative and playful children to remember if they were made into a game?!? <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
    I was wondering when someone would mention Time Commander. A game of that calibre in classrooms would be a GREAT tool to teaching kids how exactly the battles they're reading about were played out, and with what troops, and how exactly they performed. I watch the show whenever it's on.

    And seriously, why resrict the number of educational facets that we could potentially be providing? We already have books, movies and TV programming in schools, games are the next step.
Sign In or Register to comment.