[NewMusic] game-lickers wake up

[ted brinkley]

Just follow the money, and More Important-- follow
where the money DOESN'T go.
Use your imagination for a second---what if people
like, i dunno, let's say:
Stockhausen, Pauline Oliveros, Sun Ra, Braxton, Cage,
Matt Goodheart, Tim Perkis, Splatter Trio, Kevin
Blechdum
had unlimited budgets, armies of geeks,
interns,engineers, and state-of-the-art technology to
go with their visions and drive?
(we have an inkling of what Braxton would do and it is
jaw-dropping),

Truth is, the game world, like numerous other realms
of  current cultural endeavor is a TRAGIC, CRIMINAL
example of outrageously underutilized potential, and
the hijacking of priorities (except of course the
priority of making the rich richer and working the
rest of us like dogs).
....try to imagine all of the currently unknown
amazing work we will NEVER see because all the money
is flowing to the maw of mammon-gluttony. imagine how
those tools could really be used

damn, with even just the freaking lunch money of a
game company exec...some true visionaries could blow
all our minds.

Here is another REALITY CHECK for you: we all know
plenty of folks with composition degrees, bands, etc.,
who work for game companies. why do they work for game
companies? to try and make a living. and EVERY DANG
ONE OF THEM wishes they were at home working on their
own shit. you think they'd hang around and do "ART"
for EA if they didn't have to eat? they'd be outta
there in a fucking second, and back to doing all the
cool stuff that many of them do in their spare time.

Also, have you listened CRITICALLY to those game
soundtracks?
i think it is a stretch to call all that retread
conventional narrative and cliche-signifier cue-music
"creative" or "artistic".
 It is just fucking FORMULAIC.

look at the incomprehensibly huge amount of resources
devoted to generating mediocre cultural crap and then
look around at all the good people and institutions
you know who have almost no resources.
it IS worth asking: is this right?

C'mon stop lying to yourselves (let's review)---the
locus of the video game milieu is not art--it is
commerce.
the enterprise is a commercial endeavor. the entities
who do the funding want to MAKE MORE MONEY.
and the product is not a piece of ART, it is a
COMMERCIAL product. sure, there is a "creativity
component" in the milieu and in the product--which
makes working conditions slightly more tolerable and
which serves to LEGITIMIZE the product as an art-like
object. Apparently a bunch of you are fooled.

Sure, all kinds of cultural product, and cultural
producers, have a PATINA of "art-ishness" applied to
them and their work. (Our Mills degrees are helpful
here, too.)
turds get buffed, jeff koons gets his cock sucked,
shmoes like me keep our gershwin tunes warmed-over,
and most of our brain cells are brought to you and me
by Blackwater, Exxon-Mobil, and AT&T in co-operation
with the bush administration.

I do agree that it is not so much about art vs.
commerce but it is absolutely about power.

--GC