I remember playing a game at ludology.org which was about the conflict in palestine. It was quite simple. There were "terrorist" arabs protesting in the streets of a town and the only thing you had to stop them was to launch missiles on them... but it was such a inequal power you had as a player and the impact of the missiles was so big that civilians would be killed as well, resulting in more people protesting in the streets. It was a quite simple demonstration of how "violence creates violence".

I liked what the game "taught" me, that you can't stop violence with violence and it made me just think that there must be something else to "stop all this".

Now that's a great impact of such a "tiny" game, because it really corresponded to what I think about "art" and furthermore it just invited me to think outside of the major discourses that frame the whole issue in Palestine.

The game also reminded me of an art description of Roman Jakobsen who said something like "it is art when it refers to the medium/message itself". I think the game I mentioned, simply referred to its own algoritms, and to its resulting mechanism or balance of forces that made me think about my own thinking patterns about the issue. I got the idea so clear, that I quit bombing around and got even questioning myself why I started bombing at all. It raised some sort of conscience in me, making me think I am the one who might have initiated the whole problem. But what was more imported was that I could "feel" how the medium locked me into my "topos". Which created a feeling close to the "sublime"... I just couldn't stop feeling the awe inside me. It felt intelligent, challenging etc.

Comparing this experience to the type of art that Ernest Adam's demands from game developers in his recent article on gamasutra, just tells so much about the perception of "art" in the industry. For example Adam's mentions Sid Meier and Will Wright as the ones who could be seen as the makers of the Merchant Ivory game that will propel the game industry into something with higher reputation through their true "art" games. The art he descibes is quite "artsy" and I think it lacks to address social criticism at all. Just taking a look at Sim City, The Sims or Civilization makes clear that their designers really know their jobs as designers, but that the art you will get from their games won't be as "critical" as that simple game about the conflict in Palestine.

Pulling games into a "high culture-low culture" debate kills their potential as much as leaving them to the iron rules of the industry.