Videogames ... Art

I don't have anything particularly coherent to say on the "are video games art?" thing that Roger Ebert launched on an unsuspecting internet recently.

Games are made by artists. Certain levels of games are certainly artful, just as individual chess pieces can be works of art. Images of (sometimes imaginary) games decontextualised from the game are art.

It seems to me that a lot of games that are mentioned as art are art only when the user stops interacting with them (Knight of the Old Republic has a fabulous twist that comes in a cut-scene, for an example).

One reviewer, sorry I can't find this, of Lego Star Wars mentioned that he'd played it co-op with a friend and right at the very end the friends had to turn on each other to finish the game. He reckoned this act had more more emotional resonance than the whole prequel trilogy. He may well be right. No doubt Ebert would say "Ah but is it art?" as if he was the devil in the Conundrum of the Workshops. Is Kipling art? Do I like Kipling? If Orson Welles is the one being Kipled then: yes and yes!

Anyway, Bookslut claims to have found a confluence, or perhaps a slight bumping together in Machinima Poetry. To be honest, the example given here does't work, it's three mildy related things shown together in the hope that someone will find the creator "deep" or "soulful" or something. But the page promises more and the examples might get better...

Some Videos

A couple of things caught my eye recently and one or two of them may not have been blogged so much:

• Becks & The Bullets: Last Waltz. I think this channels Cure-era Tim Pope quite a bit, but in a good way.


• The Krugman Blues ~ Loudon Wainwright III. Could only have been more aimed at me if the video was made in Lego.


• Brutal Legend first twenty minutes walkthrough. As narrated by Tim Schafer. I don't like heavy metal or Jack Black but this looks like it will rock!

On the Jack Black problem, I also liked Kung Fu Panda very much. Perhaps he's better as a voice over artist where you can't see his perpetual mugging and the animators tone him down a lot.

You Can Mix Anything With Lego

I remember when Lego Star Wars (just the sets) was frowned upon and after that grown men, who should have known much better, questioned the sanity of Lego Star Wars The Videogame. Actually, I suppose Travellers Tales could have messed this game up but they managed to make Star Wars fun again, although getting 100% was sometimes an exercise in controller-throwing frustration.

In the same tradition, how could they lose with Lego Indiana Jones? Both franchises spring from pulpy origins, B-movies with A-movie budgets, if you like, and Indy having the advantage of lending itself to more puzzle based game play.

Well, they triumphed again. The game is probably just a little bit easier than the Star Wars games, "True Adventurer" is almost pathetically easy to attain on most levels compared to the previous games' "True Jedi" status, and the supporting cast don't have quite the variation (and is it me are all the black characters mechanics?) but it shares the same joy at breaking everything in sight and tweaking the nose of the films that spawned it.

Indy Lego has some hilarious moments and nice touches. I liked that but all the bad guy soldiers, not Nazis I hasten to add, had blues eyes. The graphics are subtly improved all-round. The backgrounds, in particular, can be quite stunning and, as before, some of the most interesting rooms are the hidden secrets (the Star Wars Cantina, for one example).

Which is all to say it's not too surprising when some enterprising YouTuber tries to recreate the Simpsons intro sequence in Lego. To be honest, it doesn't quite work, the timing feels off and there could be more detail, but you have to applaud the effort and it's worth a watch despite the flaws.