Foundations: Whose Game is This Anyways

After reading “Whose Game is this Anyway?” from Play Between Worlds I was jarred. Not because any of this information was new—any person who has spent time in an MMO, or game forums knows that people sell their characters, that copyright battles are often ridiculous and dirty. However, this article was written in a way that made all the comments on blogs, all the videos by regular people (and large media conglomerates) seem ridiculous. One section which points out how people argue the market will sort out the game industry, Taylor writes that  “Problems raised around intellectual property and player engagement can be solved through the marker … strikes me as naive” (Taylor 144).  While I have previously have thought this as a silly concept, I am not super into the idea of free market capitalism, it is crazy how many times I have seen and heard takes like these from you tubers like Arlo. 

I also was really interested in the discussion of artistic intent and an idea of an auteur in game development. I have fallen into this trope many times, attributing the success of a game to it’s director without acknowledging that video games (or any games for that matter) are these corporate productions. There is very little artistic intention in games which are the products of corporations. To be clear, I am not saying that video games are not without artistic merit; however, video games are often highly marketed, highly legally scrutinized, money making machines. While any form of art—whether that be literature or painting or film—in the modern world is tied directly to the profit margins it creates, video games are often on another level. This question is complicated by the players. I recently watched a Polygon video about a Minecraft player who built a gameboy that could play Pokemon in Minecraft. Who then is the artist, who is the auteur? Is it the player who placed these Pokemon in Minecraft? Is it Gunpei Yokoi? Is it the designers and developers of Pokemon? (It isn’t Notch because he’s a shitty person.) Video games, in regards to copyright, ownership, and art is completely new and alien.