it is still incredibly funny to me that gamerstm spent the entirety of the 2000s DEMANDING that games be 'taken seriously as art' and then proceeded to spend the entirety of the 2010s violently, shakingly furious that people actually did so and, y'know, critiqued it like art.
like, I know this isn't a fresh observation by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm still wondering what they thought people did with art. like they just thought 'art' was some kind of blanket-positive label and any value or statement being made by the work was immaterial to how people should see it. 'art is good, ergo, we want our thing to be regarded as art.' but that's, like, never the end of the discussion?
the point of art is to provoke sensation and feeling! art appreciation isn't just going to a museum and looking at pictures and going 'yup, that sure is some Art' and feeling Very Intelligent about yourself, and if you think it is, you're not very good at appreciating it! appreciating art, valuing it, valuing what it says to us, what it means to us, means opening up and exposing your own relationship to it. it means being vulnerable! it means accepting that you exist enmeshed inside a set of symbols and beliefs and cultural values and preferences and biases and aspirations that you carry with you everywhere like a turtle carries its shell! what did you think you were going to GET by demanding games be taken seriously? did you think it was going to be a conveyor belt of endless, effusive praise for an entire medium, and, by association, you, for pointing at it and demanding recognition? if you just wanted people to call you a 'good boy' you can buy it by the session!
that to me is the pernicious, beating heart of this entire phenomenon. it's validation-seeking, but without even the courtesy to come out from behind the curtain. they didn't want games to be art because they wanted to actually care about art, about the process of experiencing art or making art or placing art in its cultural context. what they wanted was second-hand glorification of a set of consumption-defined virtues which hagiographically defines 'being a person who buys lots of games' as an identity value of Worth and Importance in a complete vacuum of cultural meaning. it's the same impulse as 'I must be a good person because of all the sports cars I own' except for even lower stakes and even more diminishing returns. you might as well ask for a hug from Ronald McDonald.
