Vindication. At least that's what I was thinking while visiting the new Art of Video Games exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C. this weekend. It was a small exhibit true; just a handful of interviews with video game legends,  some concept art, five playable game apps that pay real money and a room with around two dozen video stations each devoted to a different platform over the past three decades. Yet it's mere existence will stir the heart of any gamer. For while some classics like Myst and Monkey Island sat desolate restricted to trackball and three minute playtime, the crowd thrived around Flower and throughout the exhibit in general. It was inspiring.

The question of course is are video games art? Besides perhaps a handful of indie titles, games exist as products first and foremost. And while company's like Tim Schaffer's Double Fine or thatgamecompany continue to push the artistic merits of games, its still a challenge to find an example of something that is both game and art while not being some strange interactive experiment. The crowd at the exhibit further had me questioning if games were art. After all, it's not often you see such a large and diverse crowd at the Portrait Gallery. And on top of that, the personal reactions we have make them like no other form of "art" out there. When I saw the Mona Lisa, my first thought wasn't "Oh! I remember looking at this painting every day after school as a kid!" yet I heard such sentiments throughout my time at the exhibit.
What is unquestionable however is the number of artists now involved in the games industry. Yoji Shinkawa's art has been an inspiration to me since I first played Metal Gear Solid on my cousin's PC at a young age. His art combines the beauty of Japanese prints and ink wash with an undeniably modern, near electric, flavor.

Sadly Shinkawa seems to have next to no web presence so I have no comprehensive portfolio to send you to. However from the gallery above, extracted from the series' art books, you can see his outstanding talent. Part of what makes his works so attractive to the eye is how personal an experience they appear to be. Their smoky nature creates an illusion of impermanence; if we look away for even a second, the image may no longer be there, like a mirage in the mist.

There exists an extremely strong relationship between video game and web design being the two most important and interactive mediums of our age, possibly our history. The only difference being that the former is a vector for entertainment while the latter is one for information. However both together helped establish the interactive metaphors we now all take for granted: menus, buttons, navigation, etc. The two mediums continue to inform one another's evolution even as they begin to merge via the gamification of everything web (see "badges") and the networking of everything game (see "massively multiplayer online games").

While some sites embrace this relationship in a direct, semi-ironic way, others simply exceed at ingraining the joyful nature of games in their very fabric. The site for SpellTower, an interesting iOS game which just saw a huge swell in sales thanks to an intelligent social marketing push, is a fun romp through minimalist web design at its best.

I love the sites simple long form layout and bright colors. The fun animations that play out as you scroll as well as the news banner give the otherwise static page a sense of life and connectedness.

Of course the medium most affected by video games is video itself. And while there are plenty of amazing cinematics done for every major video game release, these are really just animations set in their respective game's universe and have little to do with games itself beyond said shared setting. However 8BITS is a short animation that succeeds in celebrating the complete history of  gaming while putting a twist on the classic damsel-in-distress scenario so many games rely on. 1UP.

The Sketching Mechanism is a series of weekly posts, published on Mondays, containing the artistic musings of Mobile Designer/Developer Ben Chirlin during our Monday morning meeting at the NY Creative Bunker as well as his inspiring artistic finds of the week.
Source: www.boomtownbingo.com/sailor-bingo-review/.