Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

[Mhurron]

Re: Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

Well, the CG was neat at the time though if they were going to use PS1 visuals, why the fuck wasn't FF8 on that list?

If pretty was the only requirement, you would pretty much only see the last games of any generation on there.

[Malacite]

Re: Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

This is about artistic quality which FF8 absolutely dominated over 7 and 9. What it lacked in plot (it was a weak plot though I still liked it) it made up for in the astounding visuals and music. Bull-fucking-shit FF7 makes the list over 8.


And Valkyria is one of the most beautiful works of art in gaming I have ever seen. It's a freaking moving water-painting. At least they included Heavy Rain though.

[DakAttack]

Re: Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

I voted for which ever game I thought was the best. Fuck what it looked like, there's more art than what meets the eye.

[Malacite]

Re: Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

^ pretty much what I did too.

Some of them were really hard sells though, like Heavy Rain vs Flower... both of those are artistic masterpieces in their own right.

[cidbahamut]

Re: Smithsonian Exhibit - Art of Video Games

So I went to see this today with some friends.

Yyg, this probably isn't worth the plane ride down here.

As one person put it, it's a good first step, but it doesn't really do justice to the medium as a whole. The game selection was also horribly skewed in some places, most notably on the coverage of Nintendo's consoles. Seriously I think they had every Zelda game for each console generation. The franchise is important, but make room for something else, Jesus...
For folk who already know the medium there wasn't much to be learned here, but it did give a nice overview of some of the history of the industry's development for the uninitiated. The game demo room with some tame titles for the masses to try out was a nice touch I thought.

Overall I think there was a fair bit of oversimplification to make the whole thing accessible to outsiders, but at the same time they were trying to touch on issues that can't really be understood if you're not part of the culture if that makes any sense. The whole thing was a very mixed bag.