The Art of Video Games Smithsonian Exhibit

Brother None

Brother None

This ghoul has seen it all
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The Smithsonian is setting up a 5-era exhibit for video games, and hoi polloi gets to vote for what makes it in. Wisely it's been split into eras so it's not just Halo and Call of Duty. Ausir says the candidates of interest to us include Wasteland in Era 2, Fallout in Era 4 and Fallout 3 in Era 5.
 
Yea, I think it's getting a lot more traffic than they anticipated, being that the museum is half a mile from my office I'll be sure to post pictures when it opens.

edit: drats, in a year.
 
Guiltyofbeingtrite said:
Yea, I think it's getting a lot more traffic than they anticipated, being that the museum is half a mile from my office I'll be sure to post pictures when it opens.
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It's not exactly of high-interest. They crammed the golden era of cRPGs full of consoles meaning we're stuck with a bunch of jRPGs. Look at this, man.

Imagine an exhibit meant to teach people the art and history of video games with Fallout 3 and Mass Effect 2, but with no Gold Box cRPGs, no Planescape: Torment, no Ultima VII, no Might and Magic titles, no Eye of the Beholder titles.

Too little thought was spent on the candidate list if you ask me. But whatevz, as long as the kiddies get to vote on Mass Effect and Halo they won't complain. Who even remembers anything from before Era 5? Not a lot of people.

Ausdoerrt said:
The poll doesn't seem to be working properly...
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Just leave it and it'll load eventually.
 
Too early to include Fallout 3, I think. I don't see it influencing many future titles, nor is it really all that "artistic". Even with Morrowind, the only games it influenced are other Bethesda titles, and that's only loosely...
 
That's really cool, I wish that I could go see this exhibit.

It's interesting that it seems to focus on home video games, specifically-- especially since the time period covers arcade games as well as home systems. Many arcade games had a lot of art put into the machine itself as well as the games, so that would be a cool exhibit to see.
 
Fallout is a better game than Grim Fandango, but vote from an "Artistic perspective".

Grim Fandango is more art than Fallout.


If people are going to take the medium seriously as an art form then you have to show them the correct aspects.
 
Ausir said:
Actually
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slightly On Topic:
ahh yes the Grim Fandango vs. Fallout debate rages on as usual I see.

I of course opt to roam the wasteland in a pimped out bone wagon.

Edit: after looking through the site in a bit more detail, I can now say that I think this idea is just stupid. First of all gathering a list of all candidates is hard, and the choices reflect that (mostly what BN said, along with many titles being placed in wrong genres).

I think a better idea would be to just...you know... do the research. It isn't hard to find the most important important (artistically or otherwise) games of the past few decades.

anything would work better than an online poll
 
Polls, Reality shows, and other illusions of involvement in the processes of society are the future mang!
 
@BN: Well, it's an exhibition of art more than anything else. IMO FO1/2 weren't that great from an artistic perspective. Had great music and plot, but nothing great in terms of visuals/artwork that I'm familiar with. Planescape, on the other hand... Although even a lot of Planescape stuff will look odd outside the context of the game.

EDIT: Boy, did they pick the most boring picture ever to represent Baldur's Gate. And yep, PS:T isn't even on the list.
 
PS:T had some great visuals, especially when you got to the higher tier spells.

The best art in the game was far from visual based though. The fact that it had characters of any depth makes it lead well ahead of many many games on the site.
 
Planescape would be a hard game to present at an art exhibit, unless you lock viewers in a dark room, feed them ritalin, and force them to play the game to the ending
 
@Ratking: Well, I know that, same for all RPGs from that period, but PS:T actually had great art to back it up. The loading screen design alone is worth a lot.

Why games like CoD or Epic Mickey are even on the list baffles me. I'm guessing the publishers of those games are sponsoring the event ;) And out of ALL FF games from the 4th era, they had to choose FFVII and FFT, the two ugliest FF games ever made (well FFT isn's so much ugly as visually boring with the oppressively persistent green-brown palette). A nod to the fanboys more than anything else.

Aand, not a single game on PC in era 5 that I've played and thought to be great artistically (well, maybe Portal, but only marginally). Borderlands, Divinity 2, Crysis, Sublustrum, Turgor (and I could go on) deserve to be on the list a lot more than the mainstream games with generic VG art that are on the list. Applies to many other consoles/periods as well - it looks like they're just advertising games from a few big companies (that probably contrubuted funds - would explain why there isn't a single Capcom game on the list), and just have a few random indie games thrown in to appear "comprehensive".
 
I hate that I have to choose between Fallout and Baldur's Gate II. As much as I love Fallout, I think BGII was the greatest RPG ever made so I had to vote for it.

I did enjoy seeing Intellivision games in Era 1. That was my very first introduction into gaming as a kid and it brought back a lot of memories.

Overall I agree that too little thought was put into the choices.
 
^ One point you're missing, people are supposed to vote on the ART, not how GOOD the games were. There's a plenty of good games with bland art.
 
Second, there really needs to be some sort of genre separation. Half-Life is amazing, but I don't think it's the best game from its time period; despite that, I shouldn't have to decide between it and something like Fallout.
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There is. You can vote for 1 game out of each of 4 loosely defined genres.
 
Wow, they've got E.T. for the Atari up there.
Isn't that universally hailed as the shittiest game ever?

Wouldn't that be like showing a crappy stick figure I drew in the Louvre?

edit: Ha, they've got Michael Jackson's Moonwalker too!
 
This poll seems quite limited, not to say absurd at some parts. Some games really don't deserve to have their place here, while some aren't included.
And it's brutal that you have to choose from Fallout and Command & Conquer.
 
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