{"id":1372,"date":"2007-10-19T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2007-10-19T12:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1372"},"modified":"2007-10-19T07:00:57","modified_gmt":"2007-10-19T12:00:57","slug":"eternal-sonata-and-folklore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=1372","title":{"rendered":"Eternal Sonata and Folklore"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just after putting up yesterday’s post on Art & Videogames<\/a>, I spotted this news story<\/a>, which talks about videogames as art. Specifically, it talks about the games Eternal Sonata<\/a> (XBOX) and Folklore (PS3) and the subjects they tackle. The article makes a big deal about the games taking on serious subjects:<\/p>\n

But the question is: Is this world simply one of Chopin’s fevered dreams, or is it reality? And who’s to say which is which? This surprisingly sophisticated story also asks the player to consider heady topics such as the plight of the poor, the tyranny of the powerful and the damage done when mindless consumerism and modern “progress” steamroll the eternal rhythms of nature. <\/div>\n

I guess that’s more in-depth than Duke Nukem, but there have been games taking on serious subjects for years. Decades. A Mind Forever Voyaging<\/a> took on all sorts of philosophical and political themes, and that came out in 1985. (It was, of course, text only.)<\/p>\n

I do see more and more people talking about games as art. As much as I like to have people on my particular bandwaggon, I doubt this is due to the pursuasive skills of zealots like me. I suspect they’re coming around because computer graphics are finally getting good enough<\/em> for the medium to be taken seriously. In years past, lots of people would look at the blurry, blocky sprites bumping around the screen and dismiss the whole thing as a bunch of nonsense. Now that we can create evocative imagery, people are sitting down and listening to what the game has to say. <\/p>\n

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I won’t be playing either of these games any time soon. Both are on next-gen consoles, which puts them several hundred dollars out of my reach. Still, I’ll hazard a guess that they probably aren’t breaking new ground from a storytelling perspective. They’re probably as smart and interesting as many other games, but now they have the candy coating needed to get new people to try them. This is a good thing in my book. The more the merrier, and so on. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Just after putting up yesterday’s post on Art & Videogames, I spotted this news story, which talks about videogames as art. Specifically, it talks about the games Eternal Sonata (XBOX) and Folklore (PS3) and the subjects they tackle. The article makes a big deal about the games taking on serious subjects: But the question is: […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1372","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nerd-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1372"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1372\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1372"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1372"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1372"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}