Just now, I asked my lecturer if computer games are considered as art. He told our class that the people in the industry are still making an effort to open that notion up to people, because this belief is controversial. You see, one of the aspects of computer gaming is programming, which is science related (remember that arts and science are viewed as opposites). Heck, even a friend of mine said that the graphical and audio aspects of computer gaming are only the art aspects, which I would prefer to disagree on.

Then, the discussion continued on, where mention is made that graphical drawings are easily regarded as art as it has a millennia long of head-start for people to appreciate it. Oh, and you can slap a handprint on a white paper and call it art by tacking on some meaning like it represents society’s downfall or something. He added that parents generally will deject that concept that video games require a lot of hard work to achieve, because it all comes down to these very four words that makes the fact that video games are art – “It’s just a game”.

Later, I asked my parents if they overlooked the painstaking procedure of game development, and just as I expected, they knew developing games isn’t an easy task. My father wasn’t giving suggestions or extra information, but I told him that if making games is easy, everyone will be doing, just like how drawing pictures is easy, so that’s why everyone is doing it! Upon asking my mother this question, she affirmed the truth, comparing the development of games to movie development in general.

Now this is when things become interesting. My mother told and reminded me of this tale about a man who told his sons that he will bake a cake that is made by a thousand people, and so went off baking. The sons were waiting with expectation a cake of a huge mass when they think of a thousand people baking a cake at the same. The father returned, and what they saw was a sore disappointment to their unrealistically excess expectations. What they saw was an ordinary-sized cake the father brought to them. One of the sons questioned what his father said, and the father peacefully told him that the process of making the cake needs flour, and many people helped make that happen through harvest, grinding, packaging, transportation and so on, and other ingredients are involved that went through a production line as well. Therefore, baking a cake is truly an effort of a thousand people!

My father didn’t think it was possible when I asked him, but I believe he understood the big picture when my mom gave the reasons. Well, that got me thinking: most of us took things for granted, because we all overlooked the fact that everything around us, including common things like pencils or papers, is a thousand-men/women effort, and so we didn’t think how lucky we are to get all these things, so remember the effort that was poured in everything when we feel lack of it.

Have an awesome day!