I've recently been coming across an argument a lot that states updates to video games make them too much
of a service to be considered art. One YouTube video has stated the opinion that a video game
fails to be art like a book or a movie if it gets patches. But this is entirely untrue as one of the most culturally
significant books of all time (the Bible) has been rewritten many times and the Christian religion has even
been revised to follow narratives that didn't exist in the Bible such as the concept of heaven and hell for the
after life and how you become deserving of heaven. (False) free speech advocates, which are mostly the most
immoral groups of people also complain about changes in localization which they call censorship, as well as any
changes that address moral and contextual concerns.
The things that these anti-justice bigots and picky purists complain about are a misunderstanding of art, and
therefore video games, as artistic expression. Words do not mean exactly what is written or sometimes the story
could not be told at all without a few changes. The desire of the localizer is to make sure that something can
be expressed and the author can be officially supported in more markets. Additionally, books get new additions
including commentaries and revisioning and these have almost never been criticized compared to revisions in
video games and movies. Art often has mistakes, but if you are to talk artwork, the initial painting will
likely be as precise or careless as intended when it is finally released. Movies and video games are much easier
to have errors in and because of the many production constraints, they are not allowed to be crafted to exactly
what is intended. Therefore, making alterations to a video game or movie is often the most artistic thing that
can happen, assuming it is in accordance with the main creative powers who envisioned it. These mediums are
often desperately in need of much bigger timelines to truly perfect themselves, and the fact that video games
have gained the ability to freely update is a dream come true. Paying for that additional update in major
expansions is only fair as a normal game would never have such depth and quality.
I keep skirting around the issue accidentally, but there is one last very major topic to address in refinement
of art. When an artist makes a bad or careless piece of art, you would think they could have just refined it or
redone it. Sometimes the art is redone or refined, but there is a much more common scenario. When anything less
than the most skilled artists attempts to put their work into form, it will almost always fail to be what was
envisioned. It is very hard to capture what we want to express or how to form it. Instead of remaking the work,
art instead often becomes a concept that is held onto as more images are made to represent the theme that is
trying to be captured. An artist's whole gallery can become essentially an effort to properly capture what
they tried to express in a picture made long ago. And they can also have forgotten their best visions, which
means that it is even more important to have that flexibility for the day they can remember the best form of
what they intended. A video game is an art gallery and redesigning or adding to that gallery is just freedom
of artistic expression.
Video games are an amazing medium that allows people to embody experiences, read book length stories (remember
that description of action takes up a large portion of any fiction book), become easily immersed and have the
correct audio to go with scenes. But this is a lot to design and patches will ensure that what is intended will
be put into place. Movies are somewhat immersive, give short stories worth of content most of the time and
focus heavily on sound design and advertisement of the people involved. Because the goals of a movie are lower
the director's cut or DVD/blueray release is usually a single release which will just show off cut content or
in the case of the director's cut, everything they decided to cut out for appropriate time in a movie theater
release, and maybe some details to address lack of clarity in the film. When it comes to books, they can tell
grand stories, but they often have to carefully balance sensory detail, telling of plot detail and character
expression to create the right feel for a book. Perhaps the worst aspect of books is that they often have one
author, who will often not bring as much life as a movie, video game or TV show team could bring to a story
and end up having more content with less meaning unless they are very skilled. And the moral messages in books
will often be below those in a production by a team. Lastly, these books go through an editor and possibly
translator who receives little supervision and likely has no real reputation to learn from and ending up with
the wrong editor could create a much weaker story than was desired by the creator. In all of these cases, revised
and more faithful remasterings or revisions are a vital part to making sure that the art of the creator is
genuinely expressed without regrets.