Victory Game Center

John Carey wrote: Ortega y Gasset himself, in The Dehumanization of Art, reckons that it is the essential function of modern art to divide the public into two classes -- those who can understand it and those who cannot. Modern art is not so much unpopular, he argues, as anti-popular. It acts 'like a social agent which segregates from the shapeless mass of the many two different castes of men'. Ortega welcomes this process. For, being aristocratic, modern art compels the masses to recognize themselves for what they are -- the 'inert matter of the historical process'. It also helps the elite, the 'privileged minority of the fine senses', to distinguish themselves and one another 'in the drab mass of society'. The time must come, Ortega predicts, when society will reorganize itself into 'two orders or ranks the illustrious and the vulgar'. Modern art, by demonstrating that men are not equal, brings this historical development nearer.

John Carey wrote: As an element in the reaction against mass values the intellectuals brought into being the theory of the avant-garde, according to which the mass is, in art and literature, always wrong. What is truly meritorious in art is seen as the prerogative of a minority, the intellectuals, and the significance of this minority is reckoned to be directly proportionate to its ability to outrage and puzzle the mass. Though it usually purports to be progressive, the avant-garde is consequently always reactionary. That is, it seeks to take literacy and culture away from the masses, and so to counteract the progressive intentions of democratic educational reform.

Leigh Alexander wrote: The lack of mainstream understanding grates me too, y’know? This past weekend, I was at IndieCade East, a conference at New York City’s Museum of the Moving Image, hosting a debate about the art and politics of game design, about whether mechanics are imperialistic and political. Upstairs they had games like How Do You Do It, a vignette game about girlhood and the mystery of sex; Consentacle, a card game about consensual alien tentacle romance; things called Snuggle Truck, Karaoke Combat. You know. Nice stuff. Experimental, brilliant, forward-thinking, political stuff. Worthy stuff.

John Carey wrote: The contrast between the coarse scribblers who entertain [the] mob and genuine writers is the theme of [George] Gissing's greatest novel, New Grub Street. Here the struggling novelist Edwin Reardon, who believes in old-fashioned literary values, is modeled on Gissing. He has 'never written a line that was meant to attract the vulgar', and he dies destitute. His opposite number is the young journalist Jasper Milvain, ambitious, cold, shallow and prepared to do anything for money. 'Literature nowadays is a trade,' boasts Milvain. He aims to produce 'good, coarse marketable stuff for the world's vulgar'. He knows there is no value in what he writes. Given certain basic skills anyone with brains can succeed in 'out-trashing the trashiest that ever sold fifty thousand copies'. Encouraged by Milvain, his sisters start to write successfully for women's magazines. He warns them to avoid unusual ideas and confine themselves to 'vulgar thought and feeling', so that they will 'just hit the taste of the new generation of Board School children'.

Milvain is unprincipled in love as well as art. He throws over his fiancee and weds Reardon's widow -- a hard, ambitious woman who reads, of all things, social science. Milvain embodies myths still current among intellectuals. Gissing takes it for granted that in striving to reach a wide audience Milvain must write trash. The idea that popular writing might have 'literary value' is not entertained. It is assumed, too, that writing for a mass readership is easy. Anyone, or certainly an intellectual, could do it if he chose to debase himself.

William Yount wrote: John Simon seems he would be a blast with kids. Probably buy them a puppy then kill it so they can experience real human loss.

John Carey wrote: The emotional intensity a subject feels on contact with an artwork will no doubt soon be measurable. But the wide variation in personal responses to the same artwork that current methods of investigation reveal suggest that emotional-intensity levels will prove similarly variable, and how to interpret the new evidence will probably remain a matter of dispute. Subjects who are easily moved ('shallow' or 'hysterical' in intellectual terminology) may well register intense emotion when confronted with samples of mass art, and, if they do, high-art advocates will have to find reasons to discredit their feelings. We can be sure they will succeed in doing so.

Leigh Alexander wrote: Our obsession with recapturing our childhood, resurrecting memes and masturbating our nostalgia is strangling games, says I. The games of today should greet a new generation outside of the traditional walled gardens with their specific vocabulary, says I. Then you wave a Final Fantasy VII "trailer" in front of me and I cry. Twice. It felt good, of course.

But these are appeals to something other than progress, and no matter my own personal reactions, I'm just not convinced altogether that the future of digital play has to do with giant hardware-makers at all.

John Carey wrote: high-art advocates will have to find reasons to discredit their feelings. We can be sure they will succeed in doing so.

Leigh Alexander wrote: This is perfect. I can’t wait for this ... cash-in fanservice remake of a completely outmoded and likely wildly-overrated Japanese RPG from 1997. I honestly, seriously can’t wait. I get emotional just thinking about it.

keithburgun wrote: Metal Gear Solid V - I guess you have to put this unfortunately, that sucks.
The Witcher 3 - another one you just have to put there I guess.

Brie Code wrote: gaming is perhaps the most powerful medium for learning and for growing and changing as a person

Brie Code wrote: We're throwing out resources of care our parents had such as religion and housewives (which is fine with me), and not replacing them with much (which is not fine with me).

Brie Code wrote: I'm interested in care, in characters, in creation, in finding a path forward inside games that helps me find my path forward in life.

Sam Prell wrote: The Game Awards, produced and hosted by Geoff Keighley, has just released its list of nominees, and it's a pretty contentious one. Uncharted 4 leads with nominations in eight categories, while Overwatch, Inside, and Firewatch all tie for second place with five nominations.