Bluh. I really don't agree with this article at all, and, against my better judgement, I'm going to post why. So bear with this post as I begin the process of picking apart and debating your argument.
Videogames clearly have potential; they just have not accepted their role as an art form yet. Gameplay is king in most videogames. To play them is to compete in a sort of digital sport.
Gameplay is king in most videogames because, shocker, games are all about gameplay. And who says that the only use of gameplay is to compete in sport? The potential for developers to use gameplay outside of combat-oriented situations
does exist. Think of a multiplayer
Minecraft game set to Peaceful difficulty: there's no competition, no goals set by the game for the players to strive for, nothing. And it's not like having goals is a bad thing, either; in fact, I'd argue that not having a specific goal would actually be more damaging to games in the long run than having them. Cinema and literature have goals, too--it's called a plot, and a lack of one is usually a really big detriment to the overall quality of a piece of media--but the difference in games is that the plot is taken at the player's leisure and puts the player in the role of fulfilling or even failing the plots and subplots presented. Hell, if someone comes along and really knows how to make a game that doesn't completely focus on successful completion and actually make it
matter, then game developers will realize an incredibly powerful tool at their disposal for conveying messages.
Art Is About Something. Games Are Not.
The
Mona Lisa is about nothing. Okay, not entirely true, it does depict a woman of somewhat notable stature [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_del_Giocondo], but other than that, it's pretty shallow. There's no deeper meaning, no metaphor or symbolism, hell, it's not even complete. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Hieronymus Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Garden_of_Earthly_Delights], which is clearly about something, but crosses over into the True Art is Incomprehensible territory in that
no one can actually nail down any sort of overarching metaphor other than the whole "Garden of Eden/Earth/Hell" thing going on. Of course, since these fall on the extreme edges of the "symbolism" spectrum, games must fall somewhere in the middle. That is, unless you want to tell me that
Mother 3, especially its final battle, is somehow less symbolic and less artistic than the
Mona Lisa.
Instead, videogames are manufactured as commodities produced to fulfill a certain need. Unlike other commercial media, what videogames are about is rarely significant. Their entire reason for existing is to provide fun to their customers.
Uh, that's just basic marketing and basic business sense. If you're not catering to your consumers, you're not going to have consumers to cater to. This is true of every form of media, not just games. And it's not just fun, it's general escapism. Most people want to consume media to be entertained; gaining insight on different topics is just a neat little side-effect.
We minimize the importance of the story and draw attention to our cool mechanics and the fun our players are having. At the expense, of course, of cultural significance and expanding the audience.
Instead of embracing the artistic potential of the medium, we have retreated into the comfortable zone of gaming.
As opposed to what? Endless cutscenes, a Powerpoint of supposedly thought-provoking stills, a forty-minute narration or a block of text over the same flame animation as it slowly scrolls upward imparting a meaningless and nonsensical story? I'd argue that "retreating" into gaming is
exactly what we need, because that allows to take advantage of the artistic elements of the medium itself: nonlinear storytelling and the ability to purposely effect meaningful changes in the gaming environment, both things that practically need the interactivity of gameplay to actually work.
We don't need to have avatars that merely move around and acts as vessels for cutscene deliverance. We already have those, and they're called movies.
The games industry does not allow videogames to evolve into a mature medium out of creative opportunism. Not being recognized as an art form gives game creators a certain amount of freedom that they would not have if they were to take up their responsibility as authors. Today, game developers don't need to be concerned with the message that their game is sending to its audience. They can simply continue playing with technology and hide behind the fact that their only purpose is fun entertainment.
It's not a matter of shirking responsibilities as authors--when you publish things,you're responsible for any messages it sends out, including the ones that come about outside your own interpretation. Or maybe the backlash against
Resident Evil 5 or
Six Days in Fallujah means nothing at all. After all, they're just games, they're not about anything at all. Alternative argument: maybe the developers are too concerned about actually creating and polishing varied gameplay schemes (y'know, the things that actually matter) to worry about adding some high-concept bullshit that's going to matter very little in the long run of the actual
game.
This kind of freedom, however, can only thrive within a niche of like-minded individuals. When confronted with anything outside of this dedicated sphere, unpleasant collisions occur.
And when companies like Pop Cap and Zynga pop up, or when companies like Nintendo began to expand its audience, a majority of the current audience throws their hands up in the air and enact three-day boycotts. Funny, that.
And no, this is relevant. Animation didn't gain widespread acceptance by being a bunch of high-concept pieces; it gained public acceptance by appealing to a wider audience. And games can and will do this by making games more accessible, not by trying to frame them and hang them in museums.
Technology has increasingly offered more tools towards the creation of this spectacle. Oil-based paints gave birth to almost tangible representations of food and fabric and skin. Printed books allowed us to dream away into fantasy worlds without the need for anyone else. Cinema combined visual representation and narrative flow with the representation of movement.
But the creation of those techniques didn't call for abandoning old techniques, too. Oil-based painting built upon the techniques learned from tempera painting, print combined oral storytelling with the highly bureaucratic method of record keeping (and even then, the price of parchment/vellum, transcription, and even basic literacy restricted the medium to only the extremely wealthy, and even then most surviving Western examples of the oldest books and codices were just parts of the Bible), and cinema was still built upon the theory of persistence of vision and early animation devices like zoetropes and nickelodeons.
We shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If we want games to be accepted as art, we need to fully embrace the actual game part of it, not shy away from it.
Art, however, is created from an entirely different motivation: to explore certain themes or to convey messages that cannot be said in any other way.
You mean like through gameplay? If anyone wants to convey stories or emotions in a game from visuals, audio, narration/dialogue, or anything else that's not gameplay, then that story is not fit to be told through the medium of a game. Write a book or go film something instead. That's practically a point of Chris Crawford's
Art of Interactive Design: don't try to force an interactive medium to fit within the confines of non-interactive elements.
...the design process needs to start from an idea, an emotion, a concept. Then all interactions, graphics and sounds are created to support the expression of this idea.
And if gameplay is the unique way for a game to convey a message, why just give it second priority? Gameplay should be co-designed along with concept, not developed as an afterthought.
In a small studio like our own, we solved this problem by only hiring people who already create the kind of art that fits with ours.
So, in essence, templates, like what you just decried prior to this statement.
Art creation is not a team sport. Everybody needs to work in function of the expression of the ideas of the author.
And the author needs to work under the needs of the people paying for the work. Michelangelo wasn't just given a fistful of cash and told to "paint the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel." He did have to work with the Church to actually get the plan approved.
And also, what we don't need in this industry are unflinching auteurs who are completely closed to outside ideas and influences of their teams. It doesn't create good working environments, and it's a bane to interpersonal communication that teams so desperately need to thrive. And artists can really only grow when their are is actually critiqued by both peers and consumers alike, not by giving them complete dictatorial control over a project and given express permission to block all input from team members that doesn't gel with their own interpretation of their work.
And that looks like the end of the article. I think I'm done here for now. And please, to anyone who is thinking of quoting me,
for the love of God snip this thing.
It?s relevance is questionable, but I also think you are wrong here. Yes, the videogame industry isn?t in its infancy, but artists can get away with anything, if their work is considered art. Think of some of the shock art that was produced by the YBA?s. Medal of Honor was slammed for featuring a battle that was playable as Taliban, something an artist could paint, sculpt, perform or film. With an artistic meaning behind it, games could produce what they want, and for the most part, they do and are able to. 
