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Changed Charlie Sheen to Martin Sheen. Otherwise thought it was very good.
A good article. I can't comment too much on the "art" debate which I have not followed in the media.
There are a couple of points though that should be addressed if this is going out post EC.
Should you use "had" not "has" in the second line? It is a sad fact that there is not universal outrage after the EC.
I wonder if a similar situation applies further down. Post EC, where you say there are only different coloured endings, that is not strictly the case anymore. We are still railroaded into that false choice, but with just enough detail to say they are different. It might be helpful to define the narrative failing a bit more precisely post EC.
Seems pretty good so far, but like frypan, I'd say you need some post-EC expansion in the last section. The dissociation of the final choice with the rest of the game is still a valid argument, but the EC did differentiate the choices better.
Also, I'd personally put in something about games as ergodic literature, but that's just me.
I like the article too; my suggestion is just that you add a little bit about some of the things Mass Effect 3 does right (after "Mass Effects succeeds brilliantly through most of its length" might be a logical place). That would help make your discussion of Mass Effect tie in more tightly with the more general subject matter, which is whether or not video games are art.
Also, here's something I'm throwing in just because it might be useful to you. It's from the California Literary Review. It's not amazing or anything (I've hardly read anything else by them, so I have no idea of the quality of their work in general), but it's a good starting point to see what some of the standard moves that the pro-video game and anti-video game crowds might make in the art debate:
http://calitreview.com/19809
Hrm … I'm torn. Which is to say, I'm very certain that I like it, but am torn about whether or not even I agree with any of the constructive criticism I could give. Normally, I'm a big believer in the "Tell 'em what you're going to tell 'em, tell 'em, tell 'em what you've told 'em" structure for something like this.
Applied to your article, that would be a "video games are not considered an artform because they are an emergent artform that allow for an unprecented degree of audience interactivity" summation, followed by the history of other emergent artforms being dismissed as art, the various degrees of interactivity available in current artforms, and the way that the interactivity itself is the art in video games - and then your closing.
But at the same time, the flow is really nice, so I'm not sure if it would benefit from a restructuring. So like I said, I'm torn.
Except for the part where I like it, which I'm sure about :)
fix "whining" <— needs end quotes. And I have nothing useful to add. Great article.
So, Sable - anything you want to add about the EC, or do you want to put this up as-is? (I suggest the former, but it's your call).
Oh, also:
Film Crit Hulk on games-art-etc. Good read, should probably be referenced. Applicable quote:
More from same, this time near the end (it's a loooong piece):
Does that problem of semiotics and thematic consistency seem…familiar?
I usually love flim critic hulk, but there's a flaw in his reasoning there: namely, that's a definition of art that applies more to movies and books than it does to visual media. What's the theme of a beautiful picture of an upper class merchant lady that she paid you a lot of money to paint? Hell if I know, but that doesn't mean that the Dutch Masters weren't producing art.
I also don't believe that if the bulk of a genre isn't art, that means we can't discuss the parts that are art in terms of their artistic value.