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Thread: Parallels of the Fine Art World and the Video Game World

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    Default Parallels of the Fine Art World and the Video Game World

    The other day, while deep in thought, I reached an apithany - videogames' evolution mirrors that of fine art!

    To wit, the art world started out very basic, but artists still had the need to create. Though the tools were crude, art began. At first, with the limited experience and tools at their exposal, the works were primitive, such as cave paintings and haphazard figures made of fur and sticks. Eventually, however, technology advanced, and soon pottery, paints, charcoal, and a plethoria of other options opened up. Artists began to make their work a true art, learning from each other, inventing new techniques and new ways to spread ideas.

    After a time, we reach the realism movement. With all the advanced techniques developed, oil painters and line artists could create unbelievably realistic imagery. While breathtaking in a fashion, the work was painstaking and took a great deal of time to produce, with even the smallest inaccuracies completely ruining a painting for an audiance.

    Then, the photograph was invented. This freed artists from having to slave over a canvas to produce a photorealistic image, for those people who wanted that could now have it simple and quickly. Artists could finally create art once again!

    This spawned a new era in fine arts, the impressionist era. Now freed from the easel, artists could once again experiment, creating new and imaginitive scenary and visuals to feed the mind's higher functions.

    All this is perfectly mirrored in the game world. The early technology was very limited, so highly simplistic, symbolic imagery was used. Pitfall Harry looked nothing like a real human, but the interpretive elements were all there to tell us that yes, he is a man, with arms and legs, a torso, and a head. These early 8-bit graphics can be likened to cave paintings.

    Then games evolved alongside technology into the 16 and 32 bit eras, where new techiques were produced to create more artistic, enjoyable graphics, and, in some cases, more realism.

    Now we have passed the early and middle stages of our evolution, and have reached the realism era, the era where the controlling populous (i.e. the casual gamer) has a say in what is produced in our art. And this populous wants realism.

    Soon, however, I believe the technology to produce this realism will reach its "height." Of course, improvements will always occur, but they will become even more marginal with each generation of hardware. Quite soon, we will reach the point where things can't look anymore realistic than they feasibly can. Somewhere around this time a fast, easy to reproduce method of creating these highly believeable worlds will come just as the photographic camera came before.

    After this happens, the game developers will be free once again to innovate, to invent, to have fanciful thoughts and designs, and a new golden era of gaming will be among us. And just as those higher-thinking individuals who were bored with the low-level thought necessary to interpret the realism era's paintings, we too shall have our shackles lifted by entering a realm where the right, fanciful brain lobe shall be just as active when playing games as the left, logical brain lobe. Then again, in this new time, perhaps the right lobe shall be even moreso stimulated than the left; one can only hope.

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    You sir, are a genius. I can't wait for this new golden age you speak of. Let's just hope your predictions are right.
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    Pac-Man (Level 10) FantasiaWHT's Avatar
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    Great...

    so in other words in a few years we'll be getting Jason Pollock video games?

    I think I'll take a very long vacation when that happens

    Or even worse, video games that are single blocks of blue that you have to pay a few thousand dollars for...

    hehe jk that's a nice bit of parallelism

    One of my senior projects in college (In an American Folk and Popular Music class) was a long thesis defining the evolution of video game music as an art form. My prof loved it

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    Quote Originally Posted by FantasiaWHT
    Or even worse, video games that are single blocks of blue that you have to pay a few thousand dollars for...
    I study art in Leeds College Of Art And Design... and i can so agree with you on that, half the Art around today is utter bollocks, who the hell would pay for a canvas painted jsut grey!?!?!?!?!?! (reffering to a gallery i saw in Holland!)

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    Quote Originally Posted by FantasiaWHT
    so in other words in a few years we'll be getting Jason Pollock video games?
    Did you mean Jackson Pollock?

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    Interesting post, and I'd say that looks pretty spot on. However, I'd agrue that you're actually drawing parallels to Hollywood, as opposed to the fine arts.

    Video game development will never directly parallel the fine art world, except so far as homebrew software and your random mad-billionaire sponsored titles go, because video game studios are commercial money making ventures. Games will eventually close ranks with Hollywood, which itself hasn't undergone any dramatic renouncement of capitalist (or stylistic) doctrine lately.

    What's important, though, is that the new medium - interactive games, books, "Sound Novels," and what have you - is a lot smarter than movies were, so there's room for many conventions of gaming to show up.

    Good post, definitely worth reading!

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    Quote Originally Posted by nz17
    Quote Originally Posted by FantasiaWHT
    so in other words in a few years we'll be getting Jason Pollock video games?
    Did you mean Jackson Pollock?
    I was gonna mention that, didnt want to incase i was wrong :P

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    Gah, yeah thanks for the correction. Jackson

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