And some may say that modernity is overcomplicating things and computers are the very reason for it. Others yet may say that computers are oversimplifying our own thinking. The point is that I think you're also oversimplifying things out of desperation. You said you're being overly optimistic, but I think you're being quite the opposite. The world is no less full of art and culture today as it ever was, it's just full of noise. I think we have to be careful about how filter that noise, lest we filter out too much.

In any case, how can you say that computers are a superior medium to others if you believe that the appreciation of art happens in the viewer's mind. What difference does it make then what it is that something is made of or how it is made?

I think we're all on the same page here generally in our choice of using computers, I just think we should be careful and not get too carried away sometimes.

And second, this medium is far more important. It is the medium that can help us save the planet, save ourselves.

This strikes me as a bit (actually quite a bit) imperious. Do you care to elaborate?

Hm. Somewhat unrelated to games as experiences, but I think chess had a pretty big effect on my life. I learned it at a young age and while I couldn't tell you exactly how it affected me, I'm pretty sure it had a big impact on my thinking.

As far as video games, I agree with everyone so far, that compared to books, film and music, I couldn't name a single game that can compare to films that made me cry, books that impacted my thinking or beautiful music that I come back to time and time again.

That said, I think that, there have been many game experiences for me that were beautiful in one way or another, so I can't disregard them completely. Unfortunately they were few and far between for the most part, and eclipsed by other things in the game, so they failed to form any real memories.

Hey Paul! Nice to see you here.

I always found it really interesting that Merce Cunningham used choreography software for many of his pieces (it seems every one that he did after 1991).

http://www.merce.org/about_danceforms.html

That is of course a very literal connection, but I think a very interesting one nonetheless.

I just remembered a game that is (was?) in development on the tigsource forums. It doesn't seem like the devlog has been updated in months, but the first video posted of it I really enjoyed. Somehow I found its style very evocative and immersive even though it's very simple. Maybe it was the music. Here it is:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2OqQ6-ESp4

EDIT:
I found a video of some landscape shot with a camcorder by the same user in his channel. It's interesting to see the parallels between it and the game he was working on.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejsvalFW_DI

Hey, you're the nanodoc guy, right? I recognize your name from Flixel...

Yes, I have the dubious honor of writing nanodoc, although Adam is not using it anymore afaik.

What motivated you to do this (as opposed to just using an existing engine)?

I think I ask myself that question every day I think mostly because I was unhappy with what was out there at the time. Unity was expensive and prohibitive, Processing and Flash were too slow and unportable. So I ended up writing everything in C++ and compiling a library of reusable code, which eventually, with some organization turned into a solid engine. Then after playing with Unity I realized the value of scripting and being able to export the results to multiple platforms, so I wrote a Lua wrapper and a system that compiles a custom "executable" format as well as its own development application. I'm pretty happy with where it's going and I can't wait to share it with everyone once all the bugs are ironed out.

I'm sharing the enthusiasm about Becoming Animal here. Are there any videos of this project?

Unfortunately, Becoming Animal was very poorly documented, so the little video I have is not very good. I'll see if the guys I did it with can dig up any better footage.

Hello,

My name is Ivan Safrin. I've spent a long time being an utterly technical person, the past two years of my life being mostly occupied with writing a very ambitious engine (my own Unity/Processing of sorts), and thinking a lot about what I want to do with it. The project started out of a desire to make games, but the games I have been making with it (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2rs1Yo3zO0) have been failing gloriously at the "game" part. I've always had an immense interest in interactive art, graphic design, visualization and information design, and I think that there is a lot to explore where all of these things meet games, notgames and all the other beautiful things out there.

This looks like a good place to explore them, and I'm happy to join.

Here's some stuff that I've worked on with other people (in various degrees of involvement) that you may find interesting:

http://adaptivelandscapes.com/projects/pastiche/index.html
http://www.minimaforms.com/project/becoming_animal.html
http://www.minimaforms.com/smokesignals/