There have been many small steps in the past towards this goal, but I think the one giant leap has finally been taken by the Smithsonian Art Museum in the US of A – video games are art. Their soon-to-be exhibit, ‘Art of Video Games’, is, in my humble and often overly excited opinion, the biggest slice of the recognition pie the gaming industry has received in the past decade.
I, like many of my fellow video game lovers, have encountered many people who see video games as nothing more than a kid’s toy or a pointless, waste of time hobby. I’m not talking people who simply aren’t a fan of games, or have no real opinion either way, they’re just going about living their lives as they see fit – no problem there. It’s the people who totally belittle the creativity, industry and work that goes into video games and their creation. I’ll happily admit I’d rather neck a bottle of pain killers and wash them down with a pint of whiskey than suffer through a 8-10 hour presentation on Claude Monet, but I’m perfectly accepting of the huge artistic merit his work carries and the people who take time in their lives to appreciate and analyse that. Others, however, are rarely so gracious towards the same argument for video games.
However… NO MORE, my friends, no more. Now, the next time an overly pretentious person “awww”s at you because you said your plans for the night consisted of playing the new Mario game you can now smack them back down… WITH SCIENCE! You’re busy studying the next generation of art and culture. The first thing I did when I heard the news of the announcement of which games would be included was to begin leap-frogging through the designated ‘Eras’ and watching some of my favourite games of those console generations sit proudly in the list: from Pac-Man, to The Legend of Zelda, to SimCity, to DOOM II, to Metal Gear Solid and finally to Portal and Fallout 3 – all soon to be upon the walls of one of the most distinguished museums in the world, stunning.
I’m not saying this is going to be the magic duct tape which will fix the perception of video games globally across every person who has ever flicked their tongue at the idea that games are anything more than a “Murdering Your Fellow Humans for Dummies” manual, but there’s finally some tangible, credible evidence to the contrary. I’m excited about the prospect that this could be the beginning of the big push to video games finally being handed some of the kudos which they are long overdue. I love this industry, I love the people, I love the product, I love the process and I love the lifestyle. I love every cog that turns to bring every person involved in the machinery of video games together and I would love to be able to see the public at large, at the very least, acknowledge that it deserves more credit than it has ever had in the past.
For the time being though, I love that the leap has been taken and in such a fantastic and seemingly impossible way. Call me a dreamer, call me overenthusiastic, hell, call me a total moron if you really feel the need to; it warms my heart to see what I’ve grown up with, what I’ve always loved and what I hope to spend a large chunk of my life on, officially titled as the art form it has always been to me. If gamers had a flag, you’d better believe I’d be flying it right now like an American who, while drinking a Budweiser at a Yankees game, just heard Osama Bin Laden had been taken out.
We’ve come this far, and setting aside temporarily the focus on the future of gaming, I’d like to take this moment to try and maintain the seriousness and reflect, ponder and smile at just how far video games have come in a mere couple of decades, and where they have reached today…
Okay? We done? Brilliant! Now, onto the even more serious matter: can somebody with Photoshop skills PLEASE make a gamer flag? I want one to put on a very long stick to take to festivals!
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