Little to highlight. Just a good interview of Henry — especially the part on “games as art”. I’m generally disinclined to care about this debate (i.e. If games are entertaining people, that’s good enough for me. Who cares what you call them?) But Henry makes some very good points:
- The debate about whether games are art matters on several levels. First, it matters on the level of public policy. I recently was in a debate with a state legislator who wanted to restrict access to M rated titles because he felt violent games led to real world violence. I argued otherwise. His response was to say that his view should dominate either way. “If I’m right, then I’ve protected kids from the threat of youth violence. If you’re right, all I’ve done is insured some kids spend more time playing outside. No harm either way.” For this argument to hold, we have to assume that games have no positive cultural contributions to make, that they are commodities, like cigarettes, and not artworks.
- We need art to speak to us about the nature of trauma and loss or of human aggression because these are core aspects of our lives. So, the idea that we should get rid of media violence is absurd and unthinking.
PS. Wired just published an article pleading for games that let you experience being a wild animal. It made me think of the dragon game. 🙂
