Museum of Modern Art does some games and stuff

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Deef
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Museum of Modern Art does some games and stuff

Post by Deef »

http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/ ... 2B11-29-12" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Been poking around Eve a little lately (trying to find the fun part), and they're a bit chuffed about this. Here's the current list of 14 games in the MoMA's current exhibition:

• Pac-Man (1980)
• Tetris (1984)
• Another World (1991)
• Myst (1993)
• SimCity 2000 (1994)
• vib-ribbon (1999)
• The Sims (2000)
• Katamari Damacy (2004)
• EVE Online (2003)
• Dwarf Fortress (2006)
• Portal (2007)
• flOw (2006)
• Passage (2008)
• Canabalt (2009)

I'm too young to really appreciate Pac Man or Tetris tbh. Myst is crap but at the time it was a big deal... but I'm not so sure it should be known as "an outstanding example of interaction design". It wasn't that great, really. But eh, I guess this is a list you'll never have solid agreement on.

Vib Ribbon, Dwarf Fortress, Passage, Canabalt.... never heard of them!

Anyway, reading that link, the comments, and upcoming games they plan to include (Mario (1985) and Mario 64 are there after all, rightfully so), it's a bit of a warm & fuzzy. So much more interesting than movies imho.
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Re: Museum of Modern Art does some games and stuff

Post by Gamma »

Wow, a lot of the commenters missed the point. I think the only one I haven't played is EVE, funnily enough. Here are some links if you want to check out those titles (Passage is well worth the five minutes):

Dwarf Fortress: http://www.bay12games.com/dwarves/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Passage: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Canabalt: http://www.adamatomic.com/canabalt/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Not sure if Vib Ribbon works properly via emulator but it's worth checking out- it's one of the few PSX games that still gets a semi-regular look-in on the PS3.
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Re: Museum of Modern Art does some games and stuff

Post by selfish »

This guy is a dick, but he makes a good point: http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/ ... -games-art" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
There needs to be a word for the overly serious and reverent praise of digital games by individuals or institutions who are almost certainly too old, too intellectual and too dignified to really be playing at this stuff. Gamecrashing? Gamebollocks? Spiellustfaken?

I first encountered this trope of the inappropriate elder's interest in the newest games a few years ago at a philosophy conference in Oxford University (I was an interloper in those hallowed groves). An aesthetician – a philosopher who specialises in aesthetics – gave a talk on his research into games. He defended them as serious works of art. The art of games, he argued, if I understood him right, lies in their interactive dimension and liberation of shared authorship. But he never answered the question: what was a professor doing playing all these games?

Now the Museum of Modern Art in New York is up to the same manouevre. MoMA has announced that it is to collect and exhibit games from Pong to Minecraft. So, the same museum that owns such great works of art as Ma Jolie by Picasso, Starry Night by Vincent van Gogh and Vir Heroicus Sublimis by Barnett Newman is also to own SimCity, Portal and Dwarf Fortress.

MoMA claims these games belong in its collection because they are art. Really? Is that so?

Casting my mind back to the philosophical debate I spied on in Oxford, I remember a pretty good argument for why interactive immersive digital games are NOT art. Walk around the Museum of Modern Art, look at those masterpieces it holds by Picasso and Jackson Pollock, and what you are seeing is a series of personal visions. A work of art is one person's reaction to life. Any definition of art that robs it of this inner response by a human creator is a worthless definition. Art may be made with a paintbrush or selected as a ready-made, but it has to be an act of personal imagination.

The worlds created by electronic games are more like playgrounds where experience is created by the interaction between a player and a programme. The player cannot claim to impose a personal vision of life on the game, while the creator of the game has ceded that responsibility. No one "owns" the game, so there is no artist, and therefore no work of art.

This is the essential difference between games and art, and it precedes the digital age. Chess is a great game, but even the finest chess player in the world isn't an artist. She is a chess player. Artistry may have gone into the design of the chess pieces. But the game of chess itself is not art nor does it generate art – it is just a game.

And so is Dwarf Fortress.
I think the bit about "a work of art is one person's reaction to life" is a fairly good argument for the ability of some games to be art - like Dear Esther or Papo & Yo or Journey certainly present a reaction to life, but does Pac Man? At a stretch, maybe...
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Re: Museum of Modern Art does some games and stuff

Post by GameHED »

Games are basically more like drugs or junk food or gambling because they create addiction. This is how the freetoplay mmo system works by getting you hooked and then you pay for your fix to keep yourself happy after you can't survive without regular dose. It destroys relationships, families, interferes with work,probably makes people violent or suicidal. (kids getting angry when they lose virtual items or their password was hacked/stolen)
"A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad." -Shigeru Miyamoto
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