'Systems-As-Art' In Games

[wraggster]

GameSetWatch has an interesting essay about the relationship between games and art. Matthew Wasteland discusses the difficulty in translating other artistic creations to video games, giving Moby Dick as an example. "If Melville had so much as allowed for any possibility at all where Captain Ahab 'wins,' no matter how remote, the work's message and its interpretation of the world completely changes. Instead of destiny and fate, we would now speak of probability and chance." He then goes on to examine whether the logic systems and rules that define a game can achieve the status of art. "Distancing the work from the 'entertainment' of popular games is fine, but even the most artsy, obscure and difficult works must connect with an audience somehow. I am not sure a system of rules by itself is the best method to achieve that. If rules are art, could not one just as easily publish a rulebook, and leave it at that?"

http://games.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/30/0218209