ABSTRACT
The videogames industry has a rather uneasy relationship with art and the artworld. Clarke and Mitchell’s (2007) collection Videogames and Art speaks eloquently of the issue. In some senses, the book may be seen as a celebration of artistic practice and the uses to which some artists have put videogames both in order to reflect upon them and to utilise them as tools and environments for expression and experimentation (see Clarke 2007; Winet 2007; Hunger 2007, for example). However, as Schleiner (2007) notes, we should temper our enthusiasm remembering that, ‘Many artists, art critics, new media critics and theoreticians have expressed a disdain for games and game style interactivity, in fact, to describe an interactive computer art piece as “too game-like” is a common pejorative’ (Schleiner 2007: 81).
