The Forge and Art: Why so serious?
Musings Guest Writer: Klink258
TrueDarkFusion will return next week with the conclusion of "A Forging Retrospective"
Videogames are not always taken seriously. After all, they have "game" in their title. People will play simply to relax, mess around, and just be generally laid-back. Who hasn't popped Halo 3 into their Xbox 360 just to mess around in Forge? Bungie said it themselves - "People are going to love The Forge because they can spend hours dropping tanks on each other's heads!" Players have even made an art of not taking things seriously, with the practice of "Underdogging."
But one could argue that games are so much more than just something for play - they're an escape from reality, a fantasy world where you can act out the wildest fruits of your imagination. When someone disturbs our fantasy, it's a random person invading our dreams, and there's nothing more sacred than our dreams. So, we of course get angry at that person.
This brings us to why Forge is something to be taken seriously. What is it that gets you so angry when you see your map has been stolen? Why do people take so seriously that the presentation of your map should be neat? That you should care about convention unless you totally blow it out of the water? The answer: it's art.
Forge is a form of expression. Artists use a canvas and paint to show what they feel. If it's sloppy, people might not like it. If someone tries to steal it and claim it as their own, that's the theft of their feelings. In Forge, it's a place to build with items instead of paints. Not only that, but it's a place where you imagine people live, and people (spartans) die.
So the next time someone says "Dude, it's just a map," say to them: "It's my art."
TrueDarkFusion will return next week with the conclusion of "A Forging Retrospective"