/vr/ - Retro Games

I didn't know whether to post this on /v/ or here, but I wanted to post it here because the discussions are generally more intelligent and the user base is a little bit older.

Now I'll preface this with saying that criticism and theory of criticism for forms of art like Film, Literature, and Popular Music really interest me. I think in the literature the concept of whether the author's intentions really matter for interpretation is really interesting for instance.

That being said, I don't think that video game criticism has really progressed or grown much in the last twenty to thirty years. I think video games are far behind where film criticism was at the same time in its invention. Video Games still seem to be mostly judged solely as commodity and there isn't a lot of in-depth dissection or view of the medium as art like in film criticism.

Now I think there are some intriguing theories as to what makes good game design, but in the same way there really aren't a lot of major collected theories or theorists on Video Game criticism.

Anyway, I'm open for thoughts on this, any video game criticism theories you guys have, or even some retro games you guys feel are real art and maybe some reasons why.

DarkSeed 2 is a good one. It is about a man stuck at a carnival and the horror is he can't win any of the simple games.