Script: Prince Redbreast, Page Three
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Page Three
Callpygia is in the woods gathering mushrooms when she hears the prince. She is a buxom peasant girl dressed like Cinderella from the Disney movie. Like I said, “Tame”.
Prince: help me…
Callpygia: How is it possible that you still live? You would be the finest man I’ve ever seen, if not for the hole in your chest.
Prince: I am… a prince.
Oh yeah, like that explains it.
The Prince is obviously very weak and in a lot of pain as he speaks. Considering his condition, though, he’s doing remarkably well.
Prince: I came here to speak with the queen of (insert realm name again), to pledge her my heart for all eternity, but it was stolen by a bird and now I fear that I will die without ever seeing my one true love.
Callpygia looks around nervously- maybe the bird is still here, and some kind of serial heart-ripper.
Callpygia: A bird, you say? It must have been a rare one.
Prince: Follow the trail of my blood.
Prince: As each drop hit the ground it will have become a ruby. The stones will lead you to the thief.
Callpygia follows the trail, collecting the rubies as she comes across them. She finds the robin in a tree, where it has placed the heart in a nest.
Roger Ebert doesn’t think video games are art. Some webcomics guys disagree. Cue the giant flaming ball of internet drama!
I know that Wittgenstein said that all arguments are word games, but some of them are more obviously word games than others. Whether video games are art or not is going to depend upon how you define art. Ultimately “art” is a fuzzy word- even if you are using a semi-rigorous academic definition, your choice of that definition is up to subjective personal and cultural factors.
Personally I’d say that video games are art for Tycho and Gabe, but not art for Roger Ebert. Furthermore I’d say that they will be generally considered as art once enough people think of them as such. Sorry, but that’s about as sexy as I can make my epoche… Obviously, I’m not ready for the big time yet.
There was one bit of the discussion that made me think, though. When talking about a computer game, is the game qua game something which can be separated from the presentation of the game? In chess, for instance, it’s easy to see that the game itself is a separate thing from any particular chess set, and the two may be evaluated separately in terms of being art. In video games, where does the line get drawn? Is saying “video games contain art but they are not art” practically equivalent to saying “once you remove all the art from a video game there’s no art left”? It seems to me that there is a line, but I’m not certain that it’s as clear cut as it would be with chess. Is an ASCII remake of FF7 the same game? What about if all the dialog were removed?
April 23rd, 2010 at 4:04 pm
This is a rare thing, but from time to time, even the gameplay itself may be a work of art. In such a case, you may even find the trappings unappealing or uncreative, but the gameplay might have a complexity and even deep meaning which illuminates, if not necessarily the mysteries of a religion, perhaps the nature of relationships or how a small change may create a great event.
Mind, there can be bad art. Sometimes, an attempt to make a profound game simply fails.