MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM ONE) Johnny’s Playing the Video Game or The Glassy-Eyed Stare that Frightens Parents

If I was a connoisseur of computer games and computer games designing, I would say now: it was in the early 1980s that I played Space Invaders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Invaders) for the very first time. It was in the Vienna Prater (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prater), the Austrian currency was Schilling and Groschen then (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Österreichischer_Schilling), and I believe that I still have a feel of how these coins felt in one’s hand, some very light, surprisingly light, some, I believe, having ornamental borders to them that also could be felt (tactile values!), and of course I still have a feel of how it felt to play Space invaders, of how these rather abstract enemy spaceships did attack from above the screen, and especially of how some spaceships peeled off the fleet, taking a curve to the right or left, until they finally did attack.
And I can still see these rather abstract images in my mind, images that obviously did leave a deep imprint in my memory, but how is that?
When traveling, decades later, to New York, it did move me that, like in a museum, a vintage Space Invaders play station stood there, at one gate of Kennedy airport. And I did recall, then, these days of childhood, when we once travelled to Vienna, where my father did attend a congress, and where we did play, incessantly?, no, not incessantly, but from time to time: the game of Space Invaders.
My parents certainly did not like this, but there were also moments, when my parents were probably relieved that we could play Space Invaders (I also do recall other, rather gloomy impressions of Vienna, this gloomily fascinating city, with a Hofburg, but also with a vivarium in an old flak tower (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haus_des_Meeres), and I also believe to recall a copy of Rubens’ Maximilian I, hanging in the lobby of our hotel, a painting with an obvious hole in it, that seemed to be stemming from a bullet.

MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM

What I would like to recommend here is check out this fascinating Into the Night feature-documentary about two computer game developers from two generations (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zA_0_dSD3-Q). It is about two romantic dreamers, one might say, about two Don Quixotesque idealists, but I do stay aware that these Don Quixotesque characters do know infinitely more about these games than I do, about the technology, but also about the various philosophies inherent to these games.
And these two developers could, without any doubts, also be called connoisseurs of games, and this for many reasons. And despite, or because of an air of Don Quixoterie, possibly also inherent to that scene of game developers: what this documentary brings out delightfully is not only passion, idealism, artistic conscience (to some degree), but also: critical reflection as to the consumption of computer games, as to the glassy-eyed stare, for example, that scares parents (but can be explained), as to the puritanism of American culture that makes computer game designers develop a bad conscience (because it is largely, but not exclusively, about adding fun to this world of ours; and a thinking of game designing as an art form, of course, does ennoble this maybe not generally or wholly per se justified ›genre of art‹).
Last but not least: this program brings out, and this partly indirectly, critical reflection as to the industry of games, as to consumerism and as to capitalism as such. And the protagonists, the critical thinkers, are the two game developers, two men, representing their two generations as well.
Both developers, Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Rohrer ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Crawford_%28game_designer%29), are critical to the games industry, and while the younger, Jason Rohrer, does apparently adhere to the philosophy of Simple Living (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living), the elder, Chris Crawford, has this one moment in the program, when, being asked if he had doubts about an 17 years ongoing undertaking, and if he had moments of regret, he does answer with disarming simplicicty ›I don’t know‹, because having put his whole life into that one project, he would consider his life a failure if this project would fail in the end (commercially).

MICROSTORY OF ART ONLINE JOURNAL FOR ART, CONNOISSEURSHIP AND CULTURAL JOURNALISM Chris Crawford’s 1992 Don Quixote performance, respectively the game developer’s giving of his ›The Dragon Speech‹ (picture: tollethese.wordpress.com; see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xqMwmdvf8v0 , and read at: http://n42c.com/2014/03/02/thedragonspeech)

All in all a documentary that also teaches much about what art as such could be about, if contemporary art would be driven only by this kind of dreamy, technically equipped and also very realistic idealism displayed here. In brief: do watch how these two characters immediately turn into a discussion when first meeting, and do watch their play of features, which tells something about dedicating one’s life to something that one does love most profoundly. And about the risks of dedicating one’s life to this one passion. With this recommendation to watch this program we open our new series about the relation of connoisseurship and consumerism, with a contribution that also could be filed under ›Ethnography of Connoisseurship‹, since it is not about (or not only) about Old Masters here, but about game developers, its various philosophies, and not least: about the turn from very abstract, powerfully abstract games (like Space Invaders) with abstract conceptions of space to the powerfully illusionistic mainstream game whose dominance makes game designers as Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford, that are interested in shifting the boundaries of the genre into new territories (and that seem also to love retro design), idealist outsiders, but also connoisseurs, experts, dreamers in their own right.

Jason Rohrer and Chris Crawford (picture: youtube.com/Arte)

›I love this retro graphics‹ (picture: youtube.com/Arte)

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