The problem, though, is that smart games like these are vanishingly rare, particularly among mainstream developers. This is what I meant when I wrote that “games, with very few exceptions, are dumb.” Out of the hundreds, if not thousands, of console and PC games that emerge from the dark and mysterious caves of development studios each year, only a handful are what a reasonable observer might call smart or artistic—a disturbingly low batting average by any metric. The rest are…well, as I said, they’re typically pretty dumb.
Most Popular Video Games Are Dumb. Can We Stop Apologizing for Them Now?
By any metric, eh? Well, let’s take a look at the list of movies for 2012. Vampires, rom coms, comic book movies. Way better batting average. How about books? The NYT Bestseller List looks pretty smart - John Grisham, Nora Roberts and “Fifty Shades of Grey”, an adapted Twilight fan fiction. Music is smart, too - just look at the Top 40! Katy Perry, Kelly Clarkson, and Justin Bieber.
Guess we shouldn’t expect anything poignant from mister Taylor “who the hell is Notch” Clark, but this guy’s articles are fractally stupid. Take even the smallest part of it, and it’s still stupid.
I’ve gone on record as saying that Portal is a work of unblemished brilliance, for instance (though I did not write the accompanying headline proclaiming Portal 2 “The Best Videogame Ever”), and there are many others that I consider terrifically smart. To name just a few recent examples: Bioshock, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP, Red Dead Redemption, Fez, Uncharted 2 (the apex of games as Hollywood movies), Limbo, Dark Souls (for sheer visionary weirdness), Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and so on.
Uncharted 2. He thinks Hollywood action blockbusters are art, but Gears of War ain’t. Really. Also note the lack of Minecraft or anything before 2007 on there. This just oozes credibility in the gaming world.
The biggest problem with “games as art”, or even “games as intellectually stimulating and emotionally satisfying” is that most of the people making them are giant heartless corporations seeking mass appeal. And what appeals to the masses? Familiar, juvenile crap. No matter the medium.
The second biggest problem is that games haven’t been around long enough to build up a coherent library of diamond-in-the-rough, intricately beautiful masterpieces. There aren’t 19th-century French video games - games haven’t existed for a century, and French isn’t a style.
Finally, games are extraordinarily hard to make. To do even a simple platformer well you have to master illustration, animation, programming, sound design, and writing, let alone actual gameplay design. It’s not as accessible as learning the guitar and making music with it. So you see fewer studios and fewer indie projects than in other industries. Thankfully, that’s changing too - better tools are coming out, and new models of funding and collaboration are becoming possible.
Give it time, let it develop, and enjoy the gems when you find them – and there are already lots out there. Don’t bitch about how dumb popular (“AAA”) games are, especially if you can’t put in the effort to find slightly less popular games that might fit your sensibilities better.