Comment by Barrin92
6 days ago
>I feel... uneasy about the idea. Are games art?
Yes, which is precisely why they shouldn't be treated like a commodity. Nobody is telling artists what art they can make, what the initiative is about making sure public continues to have access to works of art.
Which is normal for everything that's considered to be of cultural relevance. Film studios and novelists don't get to burn libraries down the moment someone stops paying them. It's exactly because games are art that preservation and access need to be priorities. Can you imagine if Amazon started to delete books from your Kindle? (I'm pretty sure they tried that once actually, with 1984 no less)
The destruction of art is, in most civilizations, seen as completely obscene. The reason why game companies got away with it was precisely because games had a lower status.
How do you feel about art that changes over time? Temporal pieces. Plays that were only ever to be performed once?
Those are cool! They're also designed that way for a specific art-based reasoning - the temporality often has a deeper meaning.
Games designed for limited play, however, are designed that way for the sake of profit churn.