‘Emotion Engine’? I Don’t Think So.
Why can’t these game wizards be satisfied with their ingenuity, their $7 billion (and rising) in sales, their capture of a huge chunk of youth around the world? Why must they claim that what they are doing is “art”? And should anyone care whether this emerging medium is art or not? The point is, the game designers care. They lust after the title of Artist. You might think these cutting-edge, post-post-everything guys would scorn such an ancient calling. Not so; you don’t hear them boasting, “We’ve gone beyond art. Art is moldy old stuff for moldy old people.” No, they need art, because, being very intelligent, they know that art is crucial, that human beings and art have had a–what’s that buzzword?–synergistic relationship from the beginning, from the prehistoric cave paintings to Homer to Shakespeare to Mozart to Tolstoy to Charlie Chaplin to Picasso to Robert Frost to Louis Armstrong to Balanchine to Fred Astaire. Phil Harrison, vice president of research and development for PlayStation, foresees “a game designer in the future who can have thesocial impact of a great movie director, author or musician.” Game masters like Harrison know all about the history of art, which is the history of humankind’s ceaseless attempts to grasp and express the meaning of the world and their own nature.
We’ve been addressing the question from many different angles. I very much like John Sharp’s point of view that – in a Ludic Age – games are the highest form of cultural expression, and that “art” is the wrong validator.