Dear Videogame Industry, Please Stop Making Games

I will say this; I have a clear preference for some modern stuff over the older stuff. The biggest one is modern TV vs. older TV; going back to 1960 or 1970 and trying to watch TV for me is simply infuriating; it's all so damned slow. Actually running it 30% faster (as in, watching it literally sped up 30%) helps quite a bit.

We find more recent works more interesting than older ones, not necessarily because they're better, but because they speak to us more usefully -- similarly, we can find surprisingly old works surprisingly relevant for the same reason, or can rediscover materials that previous generations scoffed at.

Most of the plays of Shakespeare fall into this last category -- they were hardly ever performed in the late 17th and 18th centuries, and when they were, they were jazzed up with special effects along the lines of fireworks and performing bears. The gulf between the 18thC and our own is an enormous one in general, come to think of it; play _Empire: Total War_ for a sense of just how different even the visual aesthetics of their era were from our own.

Don't look at the art assets that are, necessarily, more or less faithful to the period; look at how the game's developers try to make the era look interesting to a modern. What most stood out to me was the vast gulf between the national flags used in the 18thC and national flags depicted in the game -- in particular Austria, where the red-and-white national flag is replaced by the yellow-and-black dynastic flag of the Habsburgs, and Russia, where the white-red-blue national flag is shame-facedly tacked on to the Romanov coat of arms. (The loading screens are the second most extreme illustration.)

My point is that, in my opinion, there is no progress in art exactly for the reason you have just given that there is no objective "better" to measure progress with.

About TV..., if you are talking about TV shows I wouldn't consider them art at all.

But remember that there is also progress in at least the technically oriented arts. Even the best games of the past look positively dated compared to modern fare. I played Planescape Torment very recently. It is probably one of the best video games ever in my opinion, but it was painfully dated when compared to even budget games on my PS3. In music the entire Techno and Metal Genre's are relatively recent (I am a huge fan of Savatage for instance) and could not exist as they are today without technology that is relatively modern. Avatar is an example of a movie that could not have been made ten years ago....

Even in books, recently written books are often more timely than the classics. I love many of the classics in literature, but you will find few of them dealing with the issues raised by Artificial Intelligence (not none, Frankenstein and The Island Of Dr. Moreau are at least close, but very few).

So, I agree with you, but I think you are glossing over the very important factors of improved technology and timeliness of subject matter.