Arthouse Games
by Mark NelsonSaturday, May 3, 2008 [4:23 pm]

I tend to be okay with needing creators' statements if, after reading them, I can still get something additional out of the work. What I don't find engaging is when it feels like the creative statement is an interesting proposal for a game but there doesn't seem to be a game attached to it that could qualify as even a partially successful realization of the proposal. But by that measure, I think this game qualifies as fairly interesting; and definitely moreso than The Marriage did.

I'm more familiar with the debate in avant-garde music, which I think has some parallels. You can come up with a cool concept for an album---say, Nurse With Wound's Shipwreck radio project made entirely of sounds recorded on an isolated island and manipulations of those sounds---but what you end up doing with the concept matters too. In this case, I personally think the NWW album is quite successful; but I could easily imagine an album based on the same premise that would be incredibly boring and uninteresting, and the creator's statement wouldn't save it in that case.

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