Let's Continue...

A year ago I created this blog with the sole purpose of staying "active" in a literary sense during the summer.  The concept was to combine my love for gaming with a generalized idea that games could develop into so much more on an artistic and sociological level.  However, I soon found that while I was working on this blog, I was less likely to be working on writing fiction, which is more align with my true passions. 

But now, I feel more or less like returning to this blog from time-to-time, as my old remedy of simply formatting my musings on pop culture into Facebook status updates is, once again, no longer efficient.

So after a year of additional experience, how shall I best start again?  I think the best answer would be to return to my first aim when I started this blog: explaining where I think some games may in the future evolve.  Before, I had trouble wording what I wanted to say, but now I think I have a better grasp on it.


 Basically, I believe that from video games, an entirely new medium should evolve.  This medium would share a large percentage of DNA with video games, but it would be analyzed on an entirely different set of criteria.  Perhaps we could call examples of this new medium "interactive digital expressions"... or IDE's for short.  Classic video games, or just video games I suppose, are all about the players expressing themselves in the setting the developers have created.  IDE's on the other hand, like most other forms of classic art, are about the developer expressing themselves to the viewer, who in turn, evaluates and analyzes the work.

Obviously, both games and IDE's would share many common components, but by and large, they would most likely be appreciated by two entirely separate types of audiences.  Video games are for fun and escapism, while interactive digital expressions are for feelings, and analyses.  Please don't think I'm giving a free pass to any such IDE's that fail to utilize the "interaction" in a meaningful and unique way.  For this medium to truly exist, simply walking around and observing an environment cannot be the primary limitation of interaction for all, or even the majority of this type of art.

I believe that games that match the criteria for IDE's already exist, and have seen many mixed reactions.  This whole debate about games as art will be much more functional and less cumbersome if and when we make this solid divide and consequentially acknowledge the gray area that the two mediums will inevitably share.