Last night I went to see Quake! Doom! Sims! at the Walker. I was anticipating the event because it had to do with video games, specifically, making movies with them. Perhaps I'm just too into the gaming world, but I wasn't impressed. The entire time I was sitting there I was wondering why this was being presented. It's not the fact that I don't consider it some form of art, but for it to have a forum such as this puzzled me.

Perhaps it was because the movies weren't very well done. I understand that it's the concept behind the piece sometimes more than it is the piece itself, but I couldn't help but think the only real concept here was "Why? Because we can". It reminded me a lot of people who have video cameras and make wannabe crappy home movies. And I'm not talking about independant films, I'm talking about campy, "two college kids with way too much free time and dad's 8mm" movies.

Maybe I just missed the point. I've see way too many "movies" in games the way it is (hell, new Final Fantasy games are basically stand alone movies these days anyway), so the concept for me is nothing new. And the fact that these people somehow made a new experience by modifying and playing back game engine hacks, well, people have been doing that for decades.

That's not to say these aren't valid things to do, and that some of them weren't interesting or funny, or both. They just didn't strike me as particularly noteworthy, especially in a forum such as the Walker.