Various video games stuff lined up this week...
On the BBC's Front Row on 3rd Jan there was an interview with four of the UK's culture barons. (The people who run the big UK arts establishments). The talk at one point turned to the conflict between live, high-art and video games. The talk began predictably enough - with dismay over diminishing attention spans - but then Michael Boyd of the RSC actually said something interesting:
"I think the attention span required to really get a sense of satisfaction from a Final Fantasy computer game, or San Andreas, or GTA...the dedication, the concentration required by that...I think equips kids really well to cope with the complications of narrative and actually makes them an awful lot less naive than maybe our generation was when we were that age, about interpreting Shakespeare...much more skeptical, much more used to intervening and making choices."
Which reminded me of the little article posted above from Wired. Orchestral performances of the Final Fantasy soundtrack are popping up in concert halls all over the world.
And I was reading Icon magazine - reviewing GTA: San Andreas as a design/architecture exercise. Which reminded me of this fantastic post over at thingsmagazine.
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