In the recent blog posting I linked a video called "Things of Beauty: Super Smash Bros. as a Spectator Sport." In the video, they briefly described to contrasting elements between sports and video games. That being said, sports have rules, but video games have laws. Articulating on this, for example, in soccer as a sport, players have mutually agreed to not touch the ball with their hands, but they are still able to if they wanted to. But in FIFA the video game, players aren't allowed to touch the ball with their hands because THEY CANT. The system wont allow it. What this means is in sports you can do anything that is explicitly forbidden, but in a video game, you can do anything that is explicitly allowed by the system. What makes this a "Thing of Beauty" is how creative players have gotten with these rules that are defined by the system. In contrary, it is much easier to be creative in a sport because these bodily functions have no parameters. If i wanted to play basketball with solely my head, I would be allowed to. Although it would be unorthodox, I would still be allowed to do it. However, if I wanted to play NBA2K where my avatar has to dribble the ball with my head, I wouldn't be able to without having to alter the source code for the game.
SO
Back to what makes this a "Thing of Beauty." It is the creative nature that players have taken on, as well as the developed strategies that the community has defined that makes this a thing of beauty. Take Street Fighter, Injustice, SSB, and Killer Instinct. In these games, the instructions only include a few combos that are at most 4 hits long. But if you YouTube combo videos for each video game, players have developed combos that could last for infinity, given the dynamics of the game make each player invincible.
It is the strategy and creativeness of the community that has made video games a thing of beauty. Although my view point may be a minority, some might call the YouTube combo videos works of art because each combo video has its own authentic and original value.
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I find the creativeness that the players employ when playing fighting video games extremely interesting. One could take the game to it's utmost limits, as long as the system allows it. This concept allows for maximum competitiveness as to who can maneuver the code as efficiently and effectively as possible. For your two page spread, I believe that you should focus on the competitive aspect of the video game industry. There is a lot of information to expand upon in the competitive scene of a video game such as League of Legends or Super Smash Bros. Therefore, you could interview top players, top teams, or even the developers of the game to see what they feel about the competitive aspect of the game. This would be an interesting topic to cover.
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