Feb 21, 2011
Dead Island Trailer Recut, Video Games as Art, and More
What’s also interesting is that many people online are recutting the trailer to be in chronological order. So here it is like that:
The Dead Island trailer has got to be the most successful video game trailer of all time, racking up many millions of hits over the past few days. In fact, it seems like it has to be the most successful trailer PERIOD of all time. Perhaps other big movie trailers have gotten more hits, but they’ve all been around established properties and stars, not a video game most people hadn’t heard of before last week.
Someone tweeted me that the trailer makes a good argument for video games being art. This doesn’t work for me for two reasons – First of all, it’s a trailer, a short film really, NOT a game. So although the trailer is most certainly art, who knows what the game will be. More importantly, though, is that people who argue that video games aren’t art are silly. Video games have certainly been art (by most definitions of the word) at least going back to Myst, if not further (I have a pretty wide personal definition of art, so for me it would go back further). Almost every single person who argues that video games aren’t art is someone who DOESN’T PLAY VIDEO GAMES. That makes them no better than the people who burned Catcher in the Rye because they “know it’s filth and they don’t want to read filth” or the people who picketed The Last Temptation of Christ who never saw the film.
Okay, that’s a little unfair – those people are a little worse because not only are they judging something as wrong, they’re imposing their wills on others. But, still, the logic is the same. It’s no logic. Which means to argue with someone like that is fruitless. Have you ever tried arguing with those folks who think Jesus rode a triceratops? I have. It’s a losing battle. As the Jerry Springer Show proved for years and years, idiocy will win a person’s inner argument every time.
James
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