luccadeas said:
Like all of you, I try to preach about how games are an art as much as I can and am willing to debate it with the naysayers. But I always get a frequently asked question: what about all of duty or other first person shooters? people understand other games like RPG's because of the story or the innovation but what about FPS's? yes some games are mindless shooting but... those are still fun, and I will defend them. but how can I explain that first person shooter's are an art as well?
Well, to be honest story has nothing to do with what makes an RPG an RPG. It can be added to anything and will improve the overall product.
In the end the thing with FPS games is that they rarely have any kind of a story involved at all, and even if there is one, it's so far away from the game as a whole that you might as well not even know that it's there. The majority of time spent in games like "Call Of Duty" is in multiplayer, some not even touching the single player portion of the game, and as a result it's like trying to argue that paintball is art. You can argue that it IS a competitive sport, but it's not an art. Right now you have a whole movement based around the idea of "cyberathletes", with fingers being pointed towards things like the Starcraft leagues in Korea. FPS games can be defended as an amateur sport waaaay out of on the fringes, but that is about it.
Now if this was to change, I suppose the analysis on FPS games as art could also change, but that would involve also changing the core player base, who are pretty much people who specifically don't want, or actively disdain, anything cereberal. FPS games are designed to appeal to the lowest human denominator, with big explosions, and mindless action.. because that is the audience that has built up around them. Bucking trends like that are VERY difficult. It's very easy to dumb something down for the lowest human denominator, but very hard to build it back up from that. This is one of the concerns inherant in the dumbing down of RPGs, each time they get dumber, it becomes harder and harder to even seriously consider building them back up to their previous level.
See, with an RPG what can make them artistic, other then the story, is the abstract nature of the whole experience with things being represented by numbers and chance. If you can say convey a swordfight into the mind of a viewer using nothing but numbers, that's similar to paintings that convey an image indirectly as opposed to just showing one. It might be over the heads of 99% of the people out there, but it's artistic. In comparison there is nothing all that special abount putting targeting sight over an enemy and hitting "fire", it might be fun, but there is nothing artistic or thought provoking about it.
So basically, my attitude is that no FPS games are not art, but that does not mean that they potentially could not be. I do however find it unlikely that we will ever see them reach that level for financial reasons. They have evolved to be like this for a reason, and that reason is the money.
