Developer, Tale of Tales has recently published their Art History of Games presentation onto their website. It’s a worthwhile read, and fairly thought provoking even if one disagrees with the core ideology. This presentation is a bit of a continuation of their recent New Year’s Resolution, which can also be read over at their site.
Here’s the gist of the Tale of Tales presentation (which I remind you again, is definitely worth reading). They start off with the very broad statements, each one extremely controversial in its own way, then they explain what they mean for each: Games are not art, Art is dead, and Videogames are not games. They continue by talking about the funk which video games have sunken into and become quite comfortable with. Then they declare an intention to make “notgames.” Interactive art that is not within the genre of video games.
A quick summary doesn’t really do the presentation ANY justice. But, there have been a couple reactions from people within the independent gaming community. A comment from Daniel Benmergui (“Today I Die”) on their New Year’s Resolution post seemed to empathize with their goals:
“‘Let’s focus on interactive entertainment that is not games.’
Odd… I’ve been having the same kind of thought lately… the problem is, that something needs to be really good. They need to be among the best of that unnamed class of work.
Also, I just noticed that you ‘not’ a lot.”
Josh Larson of Intuition Games (“fig.8″) commended the thinking of Tale of Tales and said that his next game might be “Myst minus the puzzles.”
This isn’t exactly “video game” related news, but it is an interesting direction for some game developers to head. I would love to see more interactive entertainment emphasizing interactivity and not “gaming.”
