New York Times op-ed about the potential of the games medium
Daniel Radosh has written an op-ed about the state of the interactive medium in the New York Times. Some choice quotes:
Games boast ever richer and more realistic graphics, but this has actually inhibited their artistic growth. The ability to convincingly render any scene or environment has seduced game designers into thinking of visual features as the essence of the gaming experience.[...]
If games are to become more than mere entertainment, they will need to use the fundamentals of gameplay — giving players challenges to work through and choices to make — in entirely new ways. The formula followed by virtually all games is a steady progression toward victory: you accomplish tasks until you win. Halo 3, for all its flawless polish, does not aspire to anything more. It does not succeed as a work of art because it does not even try.
None of this should be news to anyone inside the industry. The real news is that there is a decent article about games as an art form in the New York Times.
(Via Grand Text Auto.)