[lbo-talk] gaming (was Vietnam (as dev state))

Matt lbo4 at beyondzero.net
Thu Feb 26 07:34:19 PST 2009


On Wed, Feb 25, 2009 at 02:57:00PM -0800, John Gulick wrote:


> Uh, OK. I've no interest in contesting this, even though I find your
> waxing about the liberatory potential of gaming to be a little off the
> deep end. (But who I am to say, since your knowledge about it eclipses
> mine by a factor of ten thousand.)


>From http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html , "Is It Art?"

There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation

as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the

non-audience. Books, films, TV, dance, theatre, music, painting,

photography, sculpture, all have publics which either are or

aren't interested in them, but at least know that these forms

exist, that things happen in them in which people who are interested

in them are interested. They are all part of our current cultural

discourse. Video games aren't. Video games have people who play

them, and a wider public for whom they simply don't exist. (The

exceptions come in the form of occasional tabloid horror stories,

always about a disturbed youth who was 'inspired' to do

something terrible by a video game.) Their invisibility is interesting

in itself, and also allows interesting things to happen in games under

the cultural radar.

Matt

-- GnuPG Key ID: 0xC33BD882 aim: beyondzero123 yahoo msg: beyondzero123

We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

-John Perry Barlow



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list