Yes, video games are an art form. Today I give some love for the video games.

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Music and links from this episode

To run in an elevator in a dream in a fiction in space by Monplaisir

Simplify and Black Riders Anthem by Little Glass Men

YFMIFY by Alpha Hydrae

Line-by-line notes

Videogames have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember

I don’t remember much of my youth

Because I have a terrible memory for important things like that

But I do remember pretty much all of my video game consoles

And boy, did I have a lot of them

Atari, Commodore 64, NES, SNES, Dreamcast, Mastersystem, N64, Playstation, XBOX… I’ll stop there

Today I want to talk about design in a different medium

The video game

This is AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

MUSIC

Video games are dismissed

And they’re dismissed a lot

They’re dismissed because they’re dangerous,

they’re silly,

they rot your brain

they make you fat

oh yeah, and they inspire you to kill people, rape people, or generally do harm you wouldn’t normally do to people

And finally, Games are for kids, right?

Wrong

Despite making a cool $91 billion per year globally

And that’s more than Hollywood by the way

Video games still aren’t taken seriously

They’re not considered a serious medium

And they’re still seen by lots of people as something for kids

People don’t say this about music, or books or films

But they do still say it about video games

And if I was to tell you that video games are art

I’d be laughed out of at least 50% of the rooms I walked into

But, they ARE art

And they’re more engrossing than every other artistic medium that exists today

Games have made me laugh, made me sad, made me scared, and made me question my entire existence

Sometimes they’re throwaway experiences and sometimes they’re serious

Every single one of them have affected me in a way no other traditional art form could do

And it’s all because video games have a secret trick up their sleeve

It’s because they're interactive

And this is the power that video games has over any other medium

Sure, some pieces of art can be interactive

But a lot of it isn’t

And most pieces of music you listen to you can’t affect with your actions

And most movies you watch don’t change depending on what button you press

This is the power of video games

And it turns it into a completely different art form

Just that one simple thing—interactivity—pulls you in to it SO much

The fact that it’s me controlling my character walking down a corridor

And I’m not just watching passively somebody walk down a corridor

Enhances the experience ten fold

And then when we extrapolate that out to experiencing different things

Driving a car I could never afford to buy

Or running around in an action game doing things I could never dream of doing

Games become much more than what they appear to be on the surface

Not only are they easy ways to escape from the humdrum of normal life

They’re easy ways to experience things you’d never hope to experience

Games allow you to live your dreams, quite literally

People who make video games are making dreams

And then unleashing them on the public to let these dreams by experienced by lots of people

I’m not trying to use hyperbole here, I’m being genuine

If you don’t like playing video games

Or you’ve never got into them

I urge you to go give them another chance

Start with something like Unchartered, an absolute modern day masterpiece

And come back in 2 months time and tell me you didn’t experience something really special

Games are an art form, no matter what anybody says

They’re a very special art form unlike anything else

And they’ll always have a special place in my heart

MUSIC

This was AADA, and I’m Craig Burgess

Music featured in this episode was:

To run in an elevator in a dream in a fiction in space by Monplaisir

Simplify and Black Riders Anthem by Little Glass Men

YFMIFY by Alpha Hydrae...