selene tan

Game Design and the Arts

by on Dec.16, 2003, under Blog

I just realized that I can add an option for a “title” field to posts, so I’m going to do that now. This might not help given that I tend to, well, ramble, as the blog name suggests.

In any case, I’m slightly irked at the way that various schools (colleges and whatnot) seem to class game design in with, well the school of (graphic) design. (A lot of schools don’t mention the “graphic” part, but if you take a look at the courses, it’s obvious.) I feel that game design has much more in common with writing, filmmaking, acting, or even composing than it does with art. I think the main reason is that art is static. Games are not. A game without movement and change is boring and, arguably, not a game.

Of course, there might be the argument that website design is also lumped in there, and it seems to be doing fine. Or maybe not. I think it’s probably progressed more from research into user interfaces than it has from people making pretty pictures.

This makes me think of Chris Crawford’s article, The Tyranny of the Visual. Interesting points. The guy has a lot of other interesting articles in his library, although they’re not all good.


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