First, don't worry. It wasn't a personal attack at the end, it just seems most people here take my overly melodramatic, ridiculously superlative, kind of rambling style of writing as a personal insult while i just write like that because i found very entertaining to do so. And in any case if you pay attention it was more of a jab to me ("for once") than to you, but sorry if it bothered you. I'll try to write as a normal person since you are all super mean to me.
Now, i actually think you are right on the medium of games being able to be, like, High Art. Or Art. Or whatever. The problem, though, is that both Art and Maturity are not defined by Themes but by the way those Themes are aproached. And sure, Heavy Rain did some things right but i kind of think it is getting out of control by now. As i said it didn't do anything new and Japanese visual novels have been doing this very same thing for over nine thousand years or so, and have already refined the entire concept to a point Heavy Rain looks like a really amateur effort we if take away the really pretty moving pictures.
Or, say, we hate Japan and all things tentacular. Ok. Let's play Pathologic then, a game that's so complex it became the most precise and deep allegorical representation of Gnostic Cosmology ever entirely by accident, kind of as a side effect of all the political and cultural and philosophical levels it can be understood in. Or Azrael's Tear, who did mature themes in a much more mature, twisted, incidental, and subtle way in times before Christ or something.
There are games and other interactive things out there approaching mature themes in mature ways and really clawing themselves a place among artsy things, and by giving a sweet, wet, warm felattio to a mediocre work by a mediocre author with great production values you are making a diservice both to you and to the genre i want to think you love. Because, sincerely, if i had spent the last ten or twenty years of my life trying to make mature, inteligent, involving adventure games just for the two guys, three girls, and a cat who cared about things so niche and then some random hack with some really weak effort but a lot of money comes and gets lauded as the guy who turned games into an art form and videogame plots into seriouze stuff i would get really pissed, and i would probably send the genre, the fandom, and the industry to fuck itself sideways. Kind of what that guy who wrote Azrael's Tear did so long ago, come to think of it.
By turning a, i say, mediocre effort in a very lauded work of art and true works of something trying to approach art in niche, cult games no one cares about nor knows about we are really asking to be screwed. Dramatically short memories, limited ranges of experience, and an obsession with superlatives and getting carried away by the beautiful stranger we just met are the main vehicles to cultural degradation. To put it into another, more graphical, way it is the local equivalent of watching that Solaris aberration with that Clooney guy and say, WOW, this is really deep and complex and philosophical! This is how mature, intellectual movies should be done! While the original Solaris disembowels it with just little finger and without breaking a sweat, but no one ever watches it because its really old, ridiculously complex, and has a slow begining. And middle. And end, okay.
Sure, totally, Heavy Rain is important for videogames as an example a game based on plot, character interactions, and choices can be mainstream if they throw enough money at the hype machine, buy enough reviewers, and get themselves some pretty amazing graphics... But really, did the plot in some way force you to question your place in the world and the universe? Did you got your convictions and personal philosophies in a twist because of the spin it gave on its themes? It is like a comfortable, just deep enough to seem profound but not enough to destroy your life and your soul and your mind, movie. Yes, it is better than the horrid, acrid trash the industry tries to almost daily drown us with, but that's just like getting the first place on the special olympics. And it is more of a sorry day for videogames than a happy one the day such a pretentious and superficial little work unveils our eyes to how crappy most videogames are. Beggars can't be choosers, i guess.
If anything Heavy Rain shows us this industry is just like that industry in that truly deep shit is ignored because people do not like to be reminded they are retards or have their lives questioned, but semi profound shit carefully designed to give the feel of depth while not reaching the comfort horizon gets the oscars.
But hey, again, sorry if i did sound too harsh. I have a way with words, they say. An awful one, and a bit of an attitude. But i'm nice deep down, really. And warm and cuddly. Sometimes.
So long. Little fingers hurt.
