Video Games as art: A convenient follow up!

Saw this a while ago and figured it would be a good thing to link to, particularly considering I just wrote up a blog post about the subject a short while ago.

http://gaming.icrontic.com/article/nea-video-games-are-an-art-form/

In summary, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) of the United States considers video games to be a form of art. This can be seen in this particular paragraph, taken directly from the US Government's statement:

Projects may include high profile multi-part or single television and radio programs (documentaries and dramatic narratives); media created for theatrical release; performance programs; artistic segments for use within an existing series; multi-part webisodes; installations; and interactive games. Short films, five minutes and under, will be considered in packages of three or more.

Specifically the words "interactive games" pretty much cements it. That's one step forward for video games in this debate! BREAK OUT YOUR COPIES OF MARIO PAINT EVERYONE!

Video Games Live: Part 1

A little while ago, myself and a few friends attended a concert just thirty minutes away. This wasn't just any standard old concert, however...this was an event called Video Games Live. If you haven't heard of it, VGL is a show in which an orchestra plays various pieces of video game music. Some of these pieces are from very popular games, while others are lesser-known compositions. Either way, each movement is very well done and professionally performed, but with much less seriousness than you would expect from a usual orchestra. The audience is encouraged to cheer and clap whenever they hear or see something that they appreciate, and overall it's a very lighthearted show that's just fun to watch. I bought tickets for myself and my friends a good while ago, and it was awesome to finally get to go to the concert in April.

In Comparison: Dead Space vs. Alien

There are multiple different genres of fiction out there in the world of entertainment, whether written down in novels or brought to life in the film media. Fiction can obviously be broken down into multiple categories: general fiction can be anything that's not based on real accounts; fantasy fiction often involves lands populated by elves, dwarves, golems, dragons, wargs, and the like; and science fiction, for example, usually incorporates space, aliens, technology, monsters, and other such elements. My personal favourite is sci-fi...that's why I prefer the war-torn wasteland of Fallout 3's setting to the sprawling, mystical world found in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, for example. There's something that draws me to that type of entertainment...I guess I just prefer railguns to wizardry.

However, one sci-fi creation can differ wildly from another. For example, while you may experience a less serious, more humourous take on an alien invasion such as in Duke Nukem 3D or Mars Attacks!, you can also find much more strikingly realistic experiences and fleshed-out universes such as those found in Mass Effect or the Star Trek series (I LOVES ME SOME TREK). While I love many forms of sci-fi, there's a particular movie series that has always stood out to me amongst the rest: the Alien series.