[Harry]

As Pu knows well, I always loved the idea of art built within well-defined boundaries. But I prefer to leave my awful personal first-hand experiences aside. John Ford is a great example, Hemingway is another that pops into my mind, and blues players are another example of "less is more". I cannot hide I have always had enormous admiration for all those people that were able to create with poor means forced onto them by circumstances, or within well-defined limits they choose themselves as the canvas and tools for their art.

In my opinion, artists that work in this way are more able than others to create things with raw power, with a poignancy that most of the people using the "fancy" effects are missing or hiding under layers of nothingness. And the question you are asking is very important nowadays, where technology allows almost everybody in the rich part of the world to have endless creative means in any field. Speaking of music, everybody, in these days, can record a professional sounding song using a computer and a decent and relatively inexpensive software. They can cut away the bad stuff here and there with a click of their mouse, compress the sound until it sounds like other millions of records out there, add 32 different tracks even if they are playing just 3 instruments; maybe, if they have the time, a couple of days after they have finished their song, they add the sound of birds in another track, or a bell, or a car horn, or their grandma swearing, just because it sounds "original". To me, most of these songs mean absolutely nothing. Of course, there are artists that have the brain and the experience to make great use of 32,64,128 tracks and create something great with them - but most people make bad use of it all simply because they are unable to focus on the essence of what they are doing, lost in a technology that make you feel like you are a great artist while you are not. And yeah, since we are still on a gaming website, this applies wonderfully to games. If you look back at older games, they were often developed with very poor means in comparison with nowadays' professionally developed titles, yet it is difficult to find games developed in these days that we know will be considered classics some years from now.

But most of the things I have said above are my idiosyncrasies, and I am often criticized for them, and I generally accept the criticism. In fact, I believe that each person should do art the way she/he prefers to do it, as long as they are honest about what they are doing. If you feel like you need an empty virtual canvas with all the colors in the visible universe to do something good, well, then find a way to get all those colors and start drawing, if you are really able to make good use of them. But at the same time, don't come bother me because I like to draw with a pencil and an old notebook.