On The Road Again

"On The Road" was first published 50 years ago today and everyone who likes books is all "Greatest American Book", "a true portrait of what America was feeling at that time." I have read it and it is kinda true that it is one of those media corner stones that gets what it is like to live in America.

There are other American media triumphs that do the same thing. For movies you have Scorsesy Films, paintings there is Edward Hopper, photographs are Richard Avedon, and with music most people say anything by John Mellencamp.

There is a bad habit of mine in which I compare games to other forms of media as purly an exersise in determining how they differ from eachother. So I wonder, is there a game that represents the American Experience? I mean there is Grand theft Auto, but that is made by a bunch of Scotts so GTA is more like Alexis de Tocqueville "Democracy in America" which is a perspective of America not by an American. We could be cute and metephorical and say World of Warcraft because it represents a culture of object gatherning and tourism. But, WOW takes place in a world where there are elves. I think there is nothing that is acutely American because video games are so weird and they rarely have any reference to something in the real world. It is even more rare to find a game that is set in a real world place. For that reason I am going to settle with Bad Dudes.