Is it Art?

John Lanchester asks this question about video games. I have a few observations to add:

1. When I was a teenager, my friends and I spent tons of time at the arcade, just throwing quarters into videogames. (I always preferred pinball, but videogames were more available.) I haven’t played a videogame in decades and have zero interest in doing so. (This is not something I’m necessarily proud of, just a statement of fact.) And now I can’t figure out what about videogames was so appealing to us, back then.

2. Different people read different sorts of books, often with little overlap. Stephen King, John Grisham, Danielle Steele, etc., are the super-sellers, but lots of people would read one of these and not the others–and lots of readers don’t read these blockbusters at all. In contrast, everybody who’s into movies is aware of the latest major releases, and it’s my impression that people who would rarely read a bestseller of the Stephen King sort would still watch a big-budget movie.

To put it another way: My impression is that the default for reading is to pick something in a niche that you’re interested in, but the default for movie watching is to start with the blockbusters and then go from there.

3. But with old movies, I think it’s different. Back in the old days, everybody might watch whatever old movie was being shown on TV that night, but what with videos people will now make their choices. And if a movie is old, the whole blockbuster thing seems irrelevant.

I don’t know exactly how video games fit into all this; I just wanted to point out that the same audiences seem to expect different things from different media.

3 thoughts on “Is it Art?

  1. If you preferred pinball to video games, you might like the Wii. You'll have to bring the boys over some weekend and try it out.

    Since you didn't link to it, I'm assuming you're unaware of the raging debate about just this topic under the heading "the long tail".

    The investment to make a movie is huge compared to a book, even if you have Stephen King write it. The bar for entry is much higher for movies technically, too. So there's less variety overall. Oh, if there were only dozens of nautical fiction film series to choose from!

    Could it also matter that we often watch movies with others? Sure, two isn't a "large number", but I still think it drives the combined taste toward the mean. Because neither Mitzi nor I like the usual blockbusters, we don't see them.

    And what about music? I think it's more like books. Some people lock in a taste for movies high school that never changes.

  2. I second the Wii recommendation, especially since you can use it to play "Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection" ($25). With modern gaming, you can relive the good old days with surprising fidelity. :-)

    Cheers,
    Tom

  3. I still enjoy the video games we used to play in the 1980s, on the rare occasion I can find them. The games they make today are nothing like them. Heck, even the games from the early 1990s (when the Street Fighter / Mortal Kombat type games took over) are quite different.

    I continue to enjoy pinball and play semi-regularly. The idea that "if you preferred pinball to video games, you might like the Wii" baffles me. Wii is a video game, is it not? If you prefer pinball, why not just play pinball? For me the appeal of pinball is in its physicality. It's satisfying to manipulate actual moving parts rather than images on a screen. (It's also nice to get out of the house. I wouldn't want to play pinball by myself in my basement.)

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