Videogames as art

“Just like paintings, sculptures, plays, films, or symphonies, videogames can both display breathtaking aesthetics and convey powerful messages. Videogames can carry the twin payloads of beauty and purpose as any other artistic medium,” writes CNET editor Will Greenwald. Click “PRESS START” on the page and you’ll see screenshots of 10 examples, among them Bioshock (featuring “brilliant art deco-inspired level design and fascinating analysis of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged and the Objectivist movement”), Okami, Metal Gear Solid, Eternal Sonata, and Alice. Meanwhile, CNN reports that producers in this very visual artistic medium have “largely ignored … the blind.” “With that in mind, a team of researchers at the Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Game Lab in Massachusetts set out this summer to make a music-based video game that’s designed for mainstream players and also accessible to the blind.”