yesterday my animation teacher, two other students and i all got to talking about how to get people who don't typically play games to PLAY games. and i thought about how animation isn't considered a fine art in america. animation is considered childish and art is often considered feminine. games at this point also haven't been considered a fine art outside the indie gaming community niche, though video game artists are hitting all of the intellectually and emotionally sensitive topics that american animation hasn't been able to hit as an industry (it's a market here.. not art). So, the rift between people who play games and don't play games... yeah. I was thinking about games as art. animation as art. what is art to a person who experiences it? what is art therapy? why do people get SO hooked on games, like a drug? perhaps we have never given games and animation the psychological foothold it deserves in our society. Art therapy is taken seriously, but why not games? Game therapy. What if a therapist could prescribe a game to walk a patient through a journey in grief, compassion, redemption? There is so much we haven't hit here, games should be for everyone and animation should be recognized as the powerful, limitless medium for communication that it is. art is powerful and the way we have compartmentalized it in the USA could possibly be inhibiting our development as a society.

this was all sparked by my teacher's mention of a game that digipen students made called "Solace," which was a game that took the player through the 5 stages of grief. it was so, so cool. you should look it up, it's pretty interesting. people who played it who recently had a loss said that the game was actually very powerful/calming to them. isn't that cool? the game was recognized for being innovative and excellently done, but of course no company would pay to have it distributed or anything like that. but it just goes to show that they really were on to something that non-"gamers" could benefit from. really cool.