Night_Trekker said:I apologize in advance to everyone on NeoGAF for even bringing this subject up in a thread not devoted to it. I hope it won't spiral out of control and ruin the thread.
No. I'm not claiming that "games are art" at all, though I'm all for the possibility that a game could be art. And I do think that once people collectively get their heads out of their asses, there are some games already in existence that will retroactively be described as such.
I know this showcase is really all about the tech, about how exciting it is and what it could mean for the future of both film and video game development as the same technology is used in both and the lines between film and video games sorta blur further than they already have, and that's cool and all. And I also recognize this showcase is actually just marketing bullshit.
But the game's presence at any film festival, even a very commercial one, still seems to imply something about the status of L.A. Noire before it has been released, experienced, and criticized by people who know what they're talking about (and, by the way, I don't think traditional video game critics are those people, necessarily). LAN is in a medium that a ton of people don't even agree is an artistic medium. And yet it's being showcased at a film festival.
It just seems presumptuous and... I don't know, gaudy. I mean, L.A. Noire could come out, everyone could play it, and then we could all collectively go, "Wow... outside of the animation techniques, this was a derivative piece of shit!" We don't really know much about it, but: film festival! That's kinda of embarrassing to me, as someone who sees a lot of honest storytelling potential in video games but also sees a lot of attention and praise being directed toward games that do not (or in this case, might not) deserve it. That's all I meant.
Now back to the thread already in progress...
Fair enough. And I'm up for games possibly being art myself, so I wasn't taking a shot at you or anything. Sorry if it seemed that way.