I mentioned the other day that Heavy Rain pissed me off.

I mentioned the other day that Heavy Rain pissed me off.

 

There's a lot of reasons for that, and one of these days I should find a way to write them all down in detail so I can get them to stop rattling round my head. But the big one was oddly personal.

 

The reviews for Heavy Rain, by and large, confirmed that the gaming press was still as easily led as it was in the bad old days. I don't excuse myself from that assessment -- I was a wonderfully dumb-ass mark in my heyday, in evidence of which refer to anything I ever wrote. But it seemed to me like the people who stuck around the business ought to have learned a thing or two in the years that followed, maybe taught a thing or two to the younger kids who joined them. Nope. Game reviewers, apparently, are still just as vulnerable to artsy pretentious nonsense as they were in 2001.

 

One of the worst instincts of the enthusiast press and enthusiast gamers in general is the need for affirmation that Games Are Art. It speaks to a sort of massive collective inferiority complex, an unfortunate legacy of growing up dorky. It almost exclusively afflicts the "hardcore" gamer, the RPG/puzzle/adventure/"oh my God Ico was such a religious experience" gamer. You may notice that jocks playing Madden and Call of Duty tend not to care much about whether Games Are Art.

 

Heavy Rain attacked that instinct with pinpoint accuracy. It was somber, it was grim, it had mercilessly serious dialogue, it had sex and violence, it was French. It was also relentlessly derivative, badly designed, plotted with a home pasta-making machine, and flat-out misogynist in the treatment of its one female lead (among other things), but folks seemed to miss those bits somehow.

 

Anyway, lemme let you in on a little secret. It does not matter one bit whether Games Are or Are Not Art. It does not matter if the Supreme Court happens to rule that Games Are Art. You do not win a prize if Roger Ebert admits that Games Are Art. Your penis will not grow any longer if Newsweek runs a feature on how Games Are Art. Nothing meaningful will result if society at large collectively declares that Games Are Art.

 

I mean, sure, games are art. I personally subscribe to Scott McCloud's definition of art, which states that any form of human activity not directly connected to survival or reproduction is art. Writing my name in the snow is art. It's not necessarily good art, but that's a separate argument. Roger Ebert subscribes to a different definition of art, one that excludes games. So what's really been happening here for however long is an argument over the definition of art, which is a big fat Philosophy 101 waste of time if there ever were one.

 

If you've got personal problems, the way most serious gamers do, solve 'em. Seek counseling or something. Confront the childhood miseries that lead you to seethe over the lack of respect accorded your beloved artform. And stop taking artsy pretentious Frenchness seriously.