Today it is my birthday, and so I wish to point you to something. Nine years ago, when I was eleven (to the day), a game called Final Fantasy VII was published in Britain. 
There are certain points, certain things you do or read or watch that change everything. FF7 was one of those things. One fan online described it like this:
"Final Fantasy VII was my door into a higher level of video games. I never knew games like it existed... Each memory I have of my first FF VII file is so clear, I'll never forget any of them. And some of them are so powerful they continue to affect me to this day. Final Fantasy VII changed my life in many ways, even spiritually to a certain extent. I thank each and every person who worked on the game for giving me so much." ("fab" email - warning: spoilers ahoy!)
I often think to myself that very few meaningful things are said about computer games, considering the impact they've had on the world around us (which is enormous). Instead, we get meaningless chatter about graphics technology. To quote one article on IGN: "the HDR lighting, real-time soft shadows, high poly counts, specular and normal mapping, etc, and the 3D occlusion sound allowing you to track enemies are combined with new and established gameplay feeaturs to make the game "next gen.""
Sales patter, puffery and subservient journalism. Where's the passion? Where's the "I spent three years of my life playing this game and it changed me utterly"? Where is the "I think about the story and it makes my teeth jitter and the hair on the back of my neck stand on end"?
Game manufacturers, and hardware manufacturers, vie to make the "most immersive experience", the most lifelike game imaginable. All the while, people get immersed with the characters depicted by words on a page. They suspend their disbelief and watch movies, go to the theatre and read novels.
I don't care about pixel pipelines. I don't care about 3D graphics. I don't care about ultra-realistic simulations of being in a combat squadron killing brown people where you can smell the blood and burning rubber. We've got enough of that going on in real life.
When novels became popular, people warned against women reading them, lest they get ideas above their stations. When rock music became popular, television cut Elvis off at the waist, lest the nation's youth see his jittering crotch and hips. They then set up courtrooms where Tipper, wife of Al, Gore and her merry band of Washington Wives got the full treatment from Frank Zappa (my favourite quote being "May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face", followed by "I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?"). The Parents' Music Resource Center won that fight and, in spite of silly stickers on records, rock music is considered an art form.
A few years later, video games had their growing pains. The United States has the Electronic Software Ratings Board (the ESRB). Britain had the Electronic Leisure Software Publishers Assocation (ELSPA), the ridiculously outmoded British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) and now the Europe-wide Pan European Game Information system evaluated by the Netherlands Institute for the Classification of Audiovisual Media (NICAM).
Just imagine if books had a Pan-European Book Classification with age-appropriate labels on the covers. Or art galleries had age-ratings and "May contain violence and sexual material" labels everywhere. If you can see the ridiculousness of this, you should be able to see why video games aren't currently an art but should try and become one.
When we think about computer and video games, we need to talk about electrifying experiences, as we do with music and film. Final Fantasy VII taught me, at age twelve or thirteen, what this art form could be. Even now it still sends shivers up my spine. That's something FIFA 2007 can never do, regardless of how many NURBS and polygons it has or how "next-gen" it is. All that is a bit like discussing pens and typewriters instead of discussing the books we write with them.
