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Community Spotlight

Highlights from our community blogs, featuring the perennial games-as-art debate and the universal potential of modern multiplayer.

I Am the Manta responds to the recent Edge article The Art of Gaming, bringing us his musings on the subject. He makes the point that the commercial nature of games will always be a limiting factor in their acceptance as artistic works, but part of this comes from the intangible nature of videogames. The Mona Lisa cannot sell more than one of itself. Wii Sports, on the other hand, can sell 60 million copies and, in essence, all are the original. Despite this, though, Wii Sports isn’t art, just as every painting isn’t art. Perhaps the question we need to ask ourselves isn’t "Are games art?" so much as “Which games could be?”

Meanwhile Ambrus_Veres has been playing the Battlefield Bad Company 2 and Aliens vs Predator demos, and felt compelled to write about the beauty of multiplayer he experienced. Everyone has their own story, be it clawing back a draw in Halo 3 with two players having dropped out, or Accrington Stanley losing gloriously to Real Madrid in the last minute of extra time in FIFA. No matter the game, all have the potential to create moments unique to that player, and that’s largely the attraction. Films may allow us to draw our own conclusions but it’s still a pre-set story. Games, especially in multiplayer, allow the player to script their own story, and as a result draw on stronger emotions than a film ever could.

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