Jack Krull

[Bobtheduck]

EDIT: THE NAME SHOULD BE KROLL NOT KRULL. END EDIT

I was reading penny arcade, because I had heard that it is where "Megatokyo" got it's inspiration from. While I was there, I read a strip that brought back some major memories. (It's at the bottom of my post)

Anyhow, read that first before you read this. That quote is from a Newsweek article. I actually did a speech on that article to refute the jerk who wrote that. The article was to prove that Video Games could not be considered Art. I beg to differ.

One of the arguments he brought up was in the comparison of a PS2 samurai game to Akira Kurosawa's "Ran" He mentioned that he was moved by ran, but found the movements in the game to be stale and the characters unconvincing... Well, along that same note, I have watched many movies I found to be stale and unconvincing... I have also played "Metal Gear Solid" and "Metal Gear Solid 2" which had very convincing characters (MGS1, even with the faceless characters, was so convincing that when I finished it, I said "That was a great movie" Of course, I was like stoned on night at the time from staying up so long to beat it before I had to take it back) And I was moved to tears by [spoiler="Metal Gear Solid Spoiler"] the death of meryl and especially by the death of Grey Fox...[/spoiler]

He stated in his article that solitary play contained no redeeming value to it, saying that only social play could better a person. That was ignoring the fact that "solitary play" in video games is more like "Solitary book reading" or "solitary movie watching" than it is like "solitary ball kicking" or "solitary tag playing" (hehe)

This article is an example of the remnants of predjudice against new mediums of art. This person had an elitist attitude about his love for mediums like Paintings and movies, and ignored the fact that people get all of the same things out of video games that he got out of those other mediums. The key ingredients for Art are

1. A human makes it... Video games fall into that
2. It is a demonstration of human emotion and story. Once again, video games fall into that as well. His primary objection was that he said "it was made by a computer" but that very premise ignored the fact that paintings are "made by paintbrushes" and films are "Made by cameras" by his logic.

Even before the days of PS2 or whatever, I found emotion and human elements in games all the way back to "Metal Gear" for the MSX (and even the dumbed down version on NES) It was quite emotional as you progressed in the game, and at the same time FF2 began to tell intricate stories (FF2 for Famicom with Leon and the others, not FF4 with Cecil which was for Super Famicom) and required no human actors, only the simple 4 celled sprites that the HUMAN ARTISTS designed to be the mode of transportation for the story.

Has anyone else read his article? It's probably no longer available to download, so you have to go by memory, but what do you all think about this.

[Bobtheduck]

What, did I label this in a way that doesn't draw attention? Maybe I should have said "Newsweek article about video games"