As part of his response to a recent Gamasutra essay from EA producer Jim Preston, “
The Arty Party",
Crash Bandicoot, Gex and
Uncharted designer E. Daniel Arey tackles a difficult question -- should games just stay games?
Arey passionately disputes this: "
While I fully understand and support that games are a wonderful play pastime, and that gameplay and fun are the beating heart of our business, I find these assertions to keep everything the same as a set of false boundaries that foster cynical limitations by those in power to assure the status quo is comfortable and predictable."
Counter to Preston's position that games and comic books stand outside the mainstream of "art," Arey says both, having found both multi-million dollar success and multi-million audiences, are precisely in the artistic mainstreadm:
"Again, this idea that we want to be in with the art party is a fallacious construct. We already are on the inside! We are a (some would say the) major entertainment medium, commanding millions of eyeballs the world over! People with a new vision for games who wish to push the boundaries are not interested in a proverbial old-timers' party."
But, says Arey, further change will come from the fringes, and not from the hallowed halls of EA: "
I know how to make a best selling game, and so does Mr. Preston at Electronic Arts. In fact, EA is the center of gravity in our business, and I can see where from their point of view, nothing should change and everything is just fine as it is.
But as is always the case, and since Mr. Preston is a philosopher he can attest to this, change rarely happens in the center of a paradigm, but instead occurs fitfully on its fringe, in that frothy rich, cross-pollinated soup that mixes with other arts, ideas, thoughts, and mediums. "
You can now
read the full feature, with Arey's complete and poignant rebuttal of Preston's piece (no registration required, please feel free to link to this feature from other websites).
