>>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
>
that is just plain weird, that article. i'm remembering the first meeting with "the business" after the holidays. 20 marketing/business types in a room, all discussing the video games they got, gave, or played with. these weren't techies, just ordinary people.
moreoever, as someone who'd agree with gulick on my interest level, i have obviously played video games -- and i've played them obsessively, for hours at a time. my son loves them, as well, and can play them obsessively.
but you'd never call me or him a gamer and he'd probably find DR's obsession with the cultural importance of video games weird -- though both he and I have benefited from DR's advice about what to buy, XBox or...?
this author writes as if the problem is that we don't know about gaming and have never been involved. But that's not the problem. He's really talking about obsessive fans, like obsessive comic book fans or obsessive baseball stats fans or obsessive film buffs. No one would ever conflate the guy who can reel off baseball stats with claims about what all baseball fans should be like and then say, Since clearly most people don't care about baseball like the obsessive baseball stats fan, then there is some Hyoooooge Meaning With Which We Must All Be Concerned! Life As We Know It -- with a dearth of interest in gaming - Must Change. NOW! Because We Are So Obviously Lacking As A Society In That We Are Not Taking Video Gaming Seriously As A Cultural Artifact!
Arnold Matthews Must be Proud!