The Greatest Art Form

During the last half century, and for only the second time in over two thousand years, technology has given way to a new groundbreaking and limitless form of artistic expression: the video game. While our society is barely beginning to digest this new medium and redefine our understanding of artistic expression, video games are continuing to evolve and define the medium as the art world's most expressive, dynamic, and evolved art form. All art forms provoke us to reflect, to ponder, to feel, to engage in ideas, to challenge or invoke our strongly held beliefs and biases. They ask us to share and experience the lives, thoughts, and sentiments of others. With video games, for the first time in the history of artistic expression, we are now asked to choose, to explore, to make determinations, to take decisive action, and to follow our choices to their conclusions. We are now world explorers and decision makers, individuals acting on, with, and against the art itself. In The Greatest Art Form: Video Games and the Evolution of Artistic Expression, ideas are explored through the ways in which the video game form's most groundbreaking attribute, interaction, has allowed the video game form to become the most malleable, dynamic, expressive, organic, and authentic art form in human history. As part exposition, part summary, and part critical analysis, this book is created with two distinct audiences in mind. For people familiar with video games and the video game industry, the book serves as a testament and an homage to the profound impact that the video game medium has had on those involved in it, whether they be designers, writers, game directors, programmers, artists, reviewers, or players. However, for those familiar with the other art forms, but still unfamiliar with, or skeptical of, the video game form, the book is meant to provide a detailed analysis and conversation about the countless ways video games have come to communicate with audiences through new and profound methods, in order to provide a new lens by which to digest and understand this new medium so full of wonder and potential. The book contains content that includes critical analysis and dissection of some of the video game medium's most treasured game titles and series, including: Silent Hill 2 Red Dead Redemption BioShock BioShock Infinite Dishonored Ico Shadow of the Colossus Flower Journey The Elder Scrolls Series Fallout 3 Explore the ways in which video games, more than any other art form, hold the most limitless potential to ask us to reflect, not only on the art itself, but ourselves.