It could have gone so wrong. So badly, horribly, terribly wrong. From the very outset - from the first announcement of a Lord of the Rings massively multiplayer title, nine years ago - we had terrifying visions. The much loved world of Middle Earth, mutilated beyond recognition by the clumsy hand of a developer who needed to bludgeon Tolkien's narrative into a levelling grind. Hobbit warriors slaying dragons. Elves throwing fireballs. Bunny-hopping humans called 4rag0rn-LoL bouncing through Rivendell shouting "rofl elfs r gay".
Video games is such a diverse medium that it is somewhat easy to forget that differing opinions, however alien they may be to your own, are welcome for a critical debate. Recently, a forum user named Melaisis posted a rather interesting article titled “Games Are Not Art.” I won’t go into much detail here, but suffice to say, Melaisis gives the theory that due to the inaccessibility of certain games by the general public, games cannot, all things considered, be art in the sense... read more...