You take the bad with the good.
It’s a phrase entwined in a thousand fantasy tales; a quest to find the Forbidden Artifact grants the holder ultimate power while rending their soul. A war for rightfully decreed lands yields victory with too many slain men to farm the fields. And as those timeless stories artfully repeat a message to each ear that hears them, their very craft and existence is art itself.
Artists never change; only their medium. The ancient thuds of sticks on logs became a choral opera with woodwind and string accompaniment to dramatic and memorable scripts. Charcoal drawings of early man’s routine life turned into wall-murals as intricate as widescreen Photoshops of today. As the medium changed, so did the content. The content always reflected the current status of culture, because artists are part of that culture and feel a responsibility to record it as they see fit.
And every once in a while, one artist desires to do what has never been done before.
Video games are the art form of the new millennium. It’s not about the presence of interactivity prohibiting games from being art, or art of game play design or manipulating the hardware with advanced coding. The focus is still on where the artistic process all began; the “mere” two-dimensional concept doodles, the simple junction of sound and light and movement to reflect what an artist sees in their head. Not much has really changed since man first drew lines in the sand or drummed around a bonfire; someone had to seed their piece with an idea. But as I said, with the medium changes the content and game designers have been trying to push the envelope for a long while.
When someone mentions censorship in games, most think of violence. Raw, gory violence is a huge deterrent for game publishers, as Mature games can only be sold to an older demographic, and Adults Only games cannot be bought outside of online stores. But there’s little reason why violence can’t be effective as art. People censor violence because they don’t want to see it; it’s too close to home, to real to be seen. For some developers, that’s part of the point; a game with a lot of violence used meaningfully and with purpose will create a better product.
Oh, sure, video games can be fun without violence. But save the violence-free games for the violence-free experience. Like an R-rated film, a game meant to be violent should be allowed to stay as violent and offensive as the artist decrees. Viewers