Email: Your rampant romanticism post

Hi. I recently read your arguments about how the “rampant romanticism” of gaming is killing the medium, and I just wanted to say that what you’re describing is arthouse cinema. The lengthy dragging-out of scenes, the all-important role of the “artist”, the critics’ obsession with the minutae of images and actions within a scene, this is arthouse cinema by definition. I once had to sit through Citizen Kane, the film industry’s so-called “Greatest Film of All Time”, and I was bored out of my skull noticing all the same problems that you found with modern Zelda.

As I believe you said yourself, the whole concept of the “artist” is a contradiction of the video-game experience because it prioritises the artist’s preferred experience over the choices of the player. But the “rampant romanticism” is an expression of love for the artist and his art. It’s the same sort of thing you get from the Sakamoto fans, who praise Sakamoto for the style and themes of Super Metroid.

Needless to say, arthouse has never been popular.

You nailed it. It does sound like the ‘arthouse’ syndrome.

I find it amusing when people found talking about the business side of gaming was a ‘sin’ because gaming was ‘art’ and any talk of business was a ‘stain’ on it. “Business is only for profits!” they say while the ‘arthouse’ was… “for art”.

I’m hoping to point out that the business concern is actually to create a customer. You make the product and put it on the shelf for people to buy. Or, in the past, they would have rich people pay them money for them to perform. And all the great artists have done this. Michelangelo did this. Mozart did this. Shakespeare did this. It astonishes me that any ‘artist’ of today thinks they exist on a higher level than those giants and think that being an ‘artist’ is like being a king.

The artist does not exist on a different plane of existence. Steve Jobs had the phrase that ‘real artists ship’. Perhaps it would be better addressed as ‘real artists sell‘.

Does an author wish to become the ‘best writing author’ or the ‘best selling author’? It is always the latter. Always.