Initial Post; The Purpose of This Blog

      This is the first time that I've had to keep a blog for the purposes of classwork.  I'm actually sort of looking forward to it.  If anything, interacting with the Blogger interface on a regular basis may even help me to keep my personal blog updated.

      The principle focus of this blog is going to be the compiling of information regarding video games as art, and the issues surrounding that topic.  Initially, I'll likely be trying to develop a working definition of "art" which can be used in the process of analyzing arguments for or against the idea of "games as art."

      I've done a bit of looking to find some blogs related to the above mentioned topic as well as the topic of artist's rights.  Perhaps I've simply done a poor job of defining my search criteria, but I've found very few sources dedicated solely to either of these topics.  There are, however, many tangentially related blogs that have touched on and discussed the topics.

      Regarding "games as art" the author of this blog post is speaking primarily in terms of traditional games (tabletop role-playing and strategy games, such as Dungeons and Dragons or Warhammer 40,000), however I believe that much of what he talks about regarding art at the design philosophy level could be equally applied to video games.

      As per the class assignment, figuring out what I like or dislike about the blog I found:

      I like that it's got a very clean, basic layout.  In that regard it lends itself to text-heavy posts (such as the linked example).  I would however have preferred a slightly less intense black/white contrast between the text and background, as that tends to cause eye-strain during prolonged reading.

      I'm interested to see how the blogging-for-a-grade process plays out.

-Geoff

[EDIT: Altered the links to open in new windows, rather than redirecting from the current page.]