I'm going to go ahead and assume that a great deal, if not all of you Escapists, have played games like the Sims or Spore, or even From Dust. If so this might interest you. Anyway, I was in my room thinking of ways to debate those who say video games aren't art when I thought of this,"Why not make it art?" I know this sounds stupid so let me explain. I was working on a theory for this sort of argument and came up with this,"a canvas can show a landscape, but you cannot feel it; a musical score can make you feel the painted landscape and let it breathe, but not know it; written word can teach you of the breathing painted landscape, but never allow you to explore it; a videogame allows you to explore the world of the living and known landscape, whose size expands the ideal canvas, this is why video games are not only art, but the perfect art." And that's where I got the idea from.
Basically here's how it would go: give a player (or artist if you want) a grid of any huge size* and allow them to shape it how they will. An open canvas in it's most essential from. Let the player use landscaping tools to shape the land, textures to show us what the terrain is, effects to give it life (like snow or rain), sound effects or grand musical scores(or music like that of Bastion if you want, it's your world), and a little script to tell us about why that world is special. And to tie it all of, once the landscape is done, the player must choose an ideal spot to take a sort of "screenshot" that shows the entire world he has made and that shot serves as the cover of that grid and maybe even the spawn point. Than once it's done, they could post it to a giant bank with others works and take turns exploring each others worlds. It'd be real interesting for people who are into painting really surreal or crazy things.
I'm sure this sounds dumb, but feel free to praise or flame it, I'm leaving it here. I for one would love to do it, it'd be pretty fun, even though it might have to run on the PC.
*(600 x 600 meters minimum, I'm sure someone will come along and say something like,"there can only be 400x400 meters at any given time ya n00b!," and congrats to them.)
Basically here's how it would go: give a player (or artist if you want) a grid of any huge size* and allow them to shape it how they will. An open canvas in it's most essential from. Let the player use landscaping tools to shape the land, textures to show us what the terrain is, effects to give it life (like snow or rain), sound effects or grand musical scores(or music like that of Bastion if you want, it's your world), and a little script to tell us about why that world is special. And to tie it all of, once the landscape is done, the player must choose an ideal spot to take a sort of "screenshot" that shows the entire world he has made and that shot serves as the cover of that grid and maybe even the spawn point. Than once it's done, they could post it to a giant bank with others works and take turns exploring each others worlds. It'd be real interesting for people who are into painting really surreal or crazy things.
I'm sure this sounds dumb, but feel free to praise or flame it, I'm leaving it here. I for one would love to do it, it'd be pretty fun, even though it might have to run on the PC.
*(600 x 600 meters minimum, I'm sure someone will come along and say something like,"there can only be 400x400 meters at any given time ya n00b!," and congrats to them.)
