You must have heard of Greg Costikyan - he designed Pax Britannica, The Creature That Ate Sheboygan, and much much else. Check out his new weblog: Games * Design * Art * Culture.

And how's this for a manifesto?

Low art is what's fundamentally important. Low art reflects what's actually going on in our culture today. Low art expands the boundaries of the possible. Low art is vital, exciting, vibrant, disturbing, cool--and, generally, fun. Popular music, genre fiction, comics, independent film, weird shit on the Internet--and games.

That's where it's at, man.

Grand Theft Auto isn't art? Then I guess neither is Fatboy Slim, Sandman, or King Rat.

This is a dumb argument. Games are art. Most of them are bad art, to be sure.

You don't have to agree with me... But this argument is fundamental to everything else that's going to appear here. This blog is going to treat games as art. Everything else follows.