Extra Credits Addendum: Discussing the Role of the Player

[Dash-X]

I'm gonna have to agree with Thomas Grip... In a sense. In my mind, the player is not an artist until he/she begins to recount his/her experiences. For example, when a storyteller recounts a tale. Were the events of the tale art as they happened? Most likely not. It wasn't until the events were passed onward that they became art.

For example, my favorite games are the ones that give me stories to tell that don't relate to the narrative (like Monster Hunter Freedom: Unite... Oh, do I have some tales about that game...). While I play the game, I am not creating art -- I'm merely doing my best to accomplish a goal. However, when I tell another person about my experience, I choose how to tell the story. It is only then that I am creating art.

 

[Truly-A-Lie]

While I can see both sides to this, I'd like to think of my part in a game (from the perspective of someone who plays exclusively single player or co-op) that I'm the protagonist of the game, rather than its story teller.

 

[WhiteTigerShiro]

I have to agree with the "Gray Area" stance. The player by no means creates the story, as that's all written ahead of time, but at the same time the player is an important part of telling the story because it requires the player to through the game for the story to unfold; and even in fairly linear games, you can still deviate to tell a slightly different story from how your friend played through.

One thing I think is interesting to note is the stance of the person who feels that only the game developers are the artists while the players only experience the story without actually adding anything to it. Thomas Grip of Frictional Games, developers of Amnesia. Amnesia, for those who don't know, is a very very scripted game. It tells a very specific story, and the same things will always happen at the same points in the game for every player, and every player pretty much has to take the same path through the game. With that in mind, it isn't shocking at all that Mr Grip considers games to be pretty much the same as other media as far as how the narrative is told. However, even in his heavily-scripted game it's possible to deviate slightly. There are a few different endings, and even through the course of the game there are certain events that you can skip or miss. On top of that, while his game is fairly linear, it does have multiple paths before you eventually go down a singular path that leads to another branching set of rooms to explore that lead to another singular path, and so-on.

Maybe one player explores the cellar first, while another looks around in the guest room. Maybe you had to back-track to an area where another player incidentally explored the rooms in their intended order. This, I think, would have helped James' point-of-view a bit better rather than the football analogy. Rather than talking about something that isn't immediately relevant to either player, talk about something that's directly relevant to at least one of the parties. From there, he could have talked about games like the Fallout series. Sure they all have a central plot that needs to be finished, but there are dozens of side missions that all leave the story told differently for every player. Maybe one player's story has the hero focused heavily on the main plotline, doing very few quests, while another player's story makes sure to finish every task given to him, no matter how small.

Ultimately I'm more on James' side of the gray area, as you can tell. While I feel that Grip has his points, I do think that James still has the right idea over-all. Without the player, a game is nothing more than a title screen.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

Snipped for brevity's sake.

I tend to think that a large part of the problem in a discussion such as this is simply that the terms are ill defined. When we use terms like "artist" or "author" or "poet" we of course have a mental image of what it implies but the reality is that these are nebulous concepts rather than concrete things with well ordered boundaries.

For example, I find myself writing a great deal yet would I call myself an author? I have more than once drawn a picture and, when pressed, painted with oil on canvass yet am I an artist? I can play a guitar but am I a musician? In answer to each of these things my answer is no. Simply working within a medium does not make one an artist any more than my basic capacity to work with wood might make me a craftsman.

The way I see it, in order to be considered an artist (in any medium), one must meet several criteria:
1) A person must work with the provided tools of the medium including all limitations and freedoms implied therein (It is quite hard, for example, to sculpt with oil paints just as it is difficult to produce a quality landscape in stone) with the intention of producing art.
2) A person must recognize themselves as an artist.

If I only have point 1 I may be nothing more than a draftsman who is skilled with a pencil or a person who can play an instrument but has no capacity to compose unique music in any form. If I only have point 2 I'd say I'm simply lying to myself and others.

When calling a player an artist we imply certain duties and certainly asking them to participate is a part of that. But if we consider games that are almost entirely procedural, where the only narrative is that which the player creates, even then players can participate in a dialog with the artists but that does not directly imply they are, themselves, artists. When I play Dwarf Fortress, I approach the game as a high level management sim. I do not, at any moment, actively endeavor to construct a narrative beyond "build a better fortress with the resources on hand". Yet others (Internet Kraken for example) have gone to great lengths to use this game to build a narrative that they then share with the world.

What I think game designers need to focus on is not considering the player as an artist but rather an active participant. Give them the tools to create art if they wish and, for those of us who prefer to avoid such things or see no value added by such an endeavor, at least these tools provide depth. The real sin of many modern games is simply that I, as a player, am often only participating in the loosest sense. Give gamers a sandbox with well defined rules and some people will transcend play and move on to the realm of artistry; the rest of us will just appreciate the game not constantly leading us around by the nose and shoving our faces in things the artists think we should see.

 

[AbstractStream]

Grip has many a point, but because I'm biased (maybe extremely in this case), I'm siding more with James.
I'm just more intrigued by the idea that...

Through gameplay or concentrated thought the player shapes a character and experience that is unique to them.

 

[Henson]

Comparing video games to Dungeons & Dragons is a little tricky. Sure, both have explicit creator and an explicit player roles, but the relationship is infinitely more dynamic. The range of actions available to both parties is limited only by imagination, so there is room for a lot more give-and-take, creation on the fly by both parties. With games, there may be a great degree of freedom, but the actions available are limited by the predefined framework.

Depending on the game, these limitations might not hamper creation by the player, but there are many instances where this boundary feels excessively limiting (ex: I can't ask my own questions of a witness in LA Noire. Am I really carrying out an investigation, or am I just following a trail of carefully placed breadcrumbs?)

 

[ZeoAssassin]

you can choose how your character looks but all of those options were put in by the developers. the player isn't so much creating their own experience as much as choosing which one of the 1000s and 1000s of possible combinations of character options and narrative choices leading to a vast but still limited number or slightly different game experiences that Bioware has created and not the player.

So forgive me if I misunderstand, but if a system has constraints then any work derived from these restraints cannot be creative? So lets say I'm a painter, but the only paints available are blue and red. Lets say the paint manufacturers are terrible around here, or maybe the lord who has commissioned my work has told me only blue and red can be used. At any rate, does this make my work their creation instead of mine? What if they said it had to contain a dragon, or some other specifications? At what point does it cease being creative? Are there a certain amount of choices I'm required to have before it becomes my own work?

In any case, I'm siding with James. Through game-play or concentrated thought the player shapes a character and experience that is unique to them.

Though whether there is anything nearing a "right answer" to this discussion is debatable...

i get what your saying but those constraints are FAR more limiting in a game that isn't designed to have the player be the artist.

ill go to Dragon Age: Origins again, when playing you are able to progress through the game in a number of ways and customize you character in many ways but EVERYTHING you can do is there because the game designers made it so. in that game there are only so many combinations of player choices you can make but all of them were put in place my the developers, every choice needed to result in voice actors acknowledging those choices in some way, every method of character customization needed to be made into the game. Every spell and abilities had to be programed in. restricting a painting to red and blue dragons still leaves an artist with creative freedom involving what kind of dragon, art style, size, etc. the player is not really creating anything as much as they are arranging their game-play elements that were pre-made for them into a certain combinations that the developers allowed, not to mention the main lpot of the story still remains the same no matter what you do (gather army, kill Darkspawn)

I see a game like DA:O that follows a narrative like a series of paintings by the developers; all the paintings have the same core structure but are slightly different depending on the character's class, race, decisions, etc. All of the paintings were made by Bioware and all the player does while playing is decide which one he/she is going to go see.


like i said before though some games do have the player being an artist (Minecraft for example), i just think only certain games that are designed to allow for creation.

 

[Malcolm McCrimmon]

I think the discussion here is confused by the fact that games *can* be straightforward tools for artistic creativity--as in programs such as Photoshop or RPG Maker--but they need not be; there is a continuum from "tool" to "game" that they can inhabit. Towards the middle of the spectrum, for instance, you have games like Minecraft and Spore that facilitate creative expression while also exposing the player to a carefully designed artistic experience--they epitomize what James and the rest of the EC folks talk about in providing the player with opportunities for both "active" creative expression and "passive" creative experience. But there are also games on the far opposite end of the spectrum from Photoshop--the "virtual worlds" that Thomas refers to, where the player acts as audience.

Here's a metaphor that will hopefully clarify the distinction: in the original Extra Credits video, they pointed out that playing a video game is very different from looking at a painting in an art museum, and for the most part I would agree with that. But what about the museum itself? I think we should all be able to agree that architecture is an act of creative expression on the same level as writing a book or directing a film or painting a picture. And yet, the museum is not experienced in the same way that a painting is. Different visitors will come away with very different "narratives" of their experience, won't they? They will meet different characters, experience different settings within the museum, and have different plots that string the elements of the museum together--in all these respects, their experience is very much like playing a videogame. And yet calling the visitors "artists" seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? There is a fundamental difference, I feel, between *exploring* a creative space, as the visitors are doing, and actively *making* something within the constraints of a creative space, as the architect does. (Of course, a good artist ultimately does both--in order to create the best work possible, you must explore the creative space of possibilities--but I think it is a fallacy to assume that exploration implies creation.)

 

[drummond13]

As much as I like a lot of what James has to say in general, I feel like Thomas won this one.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

On the football analogy: First of all, football is a game, a sport. It is not the same as a videogame. A videogame is a virtual world with strict unbreakable laws, whereas football is just a bunch of non-compulsory rules that forms the basis of play among a group of people. Yes, there are football games, but I would say these are very different. A football videogame is not just the basic rules of football, but there is a whole virtual world added on top of that.

Games you play in real life also have unbreakable rules and a finite possibility. The Laws of physics, Newton ect. apply in a football game. Mass, Force and velocity are part of what's going to determine whether your make a field goal.

 

[Halo Fanboy]

Uh I think the player isn't a creator if he's playing the game to attempt success (as defined by the game.) If he's making up his own rules or his own criteria of success then he's creating his own game.

 

[bjannot2]

Here's a metaphor that will hopefully clarify the distinction: in the original Extra Credits video, they pointed out that playing a video game is very different from looking at a painting in an art museum, and for the most part I would agree with that. But what about the museum itself? I think we should all be able to agree that architecture is an act of creative expression on the same level as writing a book or directing a film or painting a picture. And yet, the museum is not experienced in the same way that a painting is. Different visitors will come away with very different "narratives" of their experience, won't they? They will meet different characters, experience different settings within the museum, and have different plots that string the elements of the museum together--in all these respects, their experience is very much like playing a videogame. And yet calling the visitors "artists" seems like a bit of a stretch, doesn't it? There is a fundamental difference, I feel, between *exploring* a creative space, as the visitors are doing, and actively *making* something within the constraints of a creative space, as the architect does. (Of course, a good artist ultimately does both--in order to create the best work possible, you must explore the creative space of possibilities--but I think it is a fallacy to assume that exploration implies creation.)

Agree for the most part. The way architecture is made and experienced is a great example to distinguish the artist from the audience. I think, though, that observing a painting and playing a video game are not fundamentally different experiences.
Any one observer will see a painting differently than another, and interpreting it is a creative act. I don't see video games as an essentially different art form than any other in this respect. Admiring a painting, reading a book, listening to music, watching a film, and playing a game all require some form of effort from the audience.

 

[Waffle_Man]

I got the feeling that this conversation was more of an argument about the definition of art than a conversation about video games.

 

[IvoryTowerGamer]

Sorry for the following wall of quotes, but there's one aspect of the Portnow argument that I don't really understand and I was hoping that at least one of the people agreeing with him could explain it to me.

Wow, this discussion is great. I'm so glad we decided to throw this up. I'm not going to defend or clarify because this conversation is so much more important than whether I'm right or wrong.

I'm going to keep this short and say that I agreed much more with James, and wanted to bring in some key examples of narratives created almost entirely by the player of a game.

I certainly think this is the kind of thought process that Mr. Portnow is trying to make in his argument. The game itself is nothing without the player, just as a tabletop session is nothing until it is played and interacted with by the players.

Grip has many a point, but because I'm biased (maybe extremely in this case), I'm siding more with James.
I'm just more intrigued by the idea that..."Through gameplay or concentrated thought the player shapes a character and experience that is unique to them."

In any case, I'm siding with James. Through gameplay or concentrated thought the player shapes a character and experience that is unique to them.

I'm going to have to mainly agree with James here.

The way the player experiences a videogame is fundamentally different from how one experiences a book or a movie. Whether or not you want to go as far as putting the player at the same level as the developers, I suppose thats a judgement call - but its undeniable that a player is fundamentally different than a 'watcher' or a 'reader' and should be treated as such.

Long story short, I like the D&D player analogy. Yeah you didn't write the rules, you didn't write the setting, and you didn't write the setting (however many of which the DM may have), but you made a character. You made a person with a personality, wants and needs, strategies, backstories, and whatever else you may have put in. Much of it is within certain bounds, but it still becomes something that is yours as well.

While I can see how you could make the argument that players are artists too, I don't think you can make the claim that video games are special in this regard. Every medium allows some sort of leeway in interpreting works of art. For example, you might not be able to change the plot of Macbeth, but that hasn't stopped readers from coming up with countless different (and often conflicting) interpretations of the text. How is that any less creative than players who create their own in-game narratives for their characters? Moreover, which of the two actions has more of an impact on the work's overall themes and meaning?

I guess to try and pull this back on point is to say that if you read a book, beyond speculating about a character's motivations if and only if they aren't spelled out, the character of a novel or film will always be exactly the same. It cannot be changed simply by force of will, once something has been set in stone about the character, it will always be that way. The Lone Wanderer, Samus, Lara, Shepard, any character you care to mention, their actions are informed by the way you play the game, and thus their personality is always partly under your control, because no one will ever play the game in the same way that you will. They won't, to compare to books again, read the same words as you do. They are creating through their actions.

The plot will always be the same, but that doesn't mean the implications of the narrative won't vary greatly from person to person. Conversely, just because the individual actions of The Lone Wanderer, Samus, and Shepard may differ from play session to play session doesn't mean that the overall themes of the game do. Heck, even your Other M example seems to support Grip's point more than Portnow's. If Samus really was a blank slate then there would have been a number different interpretations of her character, including a number of people who agreed with Team Ninja's depiction. This wasn't the case. Even the Extra Credits episode you mention notes how the earlier games characterized Samus through gameplay, and it explains that that's why most people saw her character as being stronger and more independent. If anything that shows that the developers had more of a hand in Samus' earlier characterization than players did.

 

[mikespoff]

I'm with James and the EC guys on this one.

The football analogy is the most clear to me. Despite Grip's arguments to the contrary, a game of football (or any sport) is dictated by rules just as strict as its virtual equivalent. The rules of play define the space in which the players create the game.

Grip seems to say that the rules of a video game are stricter; I have to say that I have yet to find a video game with rules that are more rigidly enforced than gravity and conservation of momentum, which are two of the rules that govern most sports...

 

[Bostur]

Sometimes a video game is just a movie, sometimes a video game is just a football game. And sometimes a video game is not a game at all.

The terms become confusing because games are many things, and much broader than traditional media.

 

[Dead_Boy]

Great initiative.

First off, I don't think the disagreement is very huge. It seem there is agreement on all key point.

Does the player create a narrative? Soundly yes from both of you.

Is the act of creating a narrative artistic? Soundly yes from both of you.

Does the act of creating a narrative in a pre-created environment specifically created by another artist for such an act, constitute the same artistic merit as the artist creating the environment? Soundly no from one of you.

I am currently studying the practice of creating interactive music. A practice which its key-point very similar to that of a lead game designer, or dungeon master (a field which have enjoyed 10 years experience in). I would like to quote from Musical Gestures: Sound, Movement, And Meaning (Godøy & Leman. 2010. pp 13):

"When dancers are connected to a computer system that produces music based on features of the dance movements, then the dancers also can be considered musicians because they generate the sounds"

As a designer of interactive music, a game or a session of table top role-playing. You have to design your piece for interactivity. You are allowing people to take part of you creation, this will give them part, however small, in the creation process and they can therefore also be considered creators of the piece.

A game designer has more in commend with creators of new musical instrument, then Hollywood scriptwriters.

 

[Shreddie]

Great discussion. I think another interesting topic is how the gamer perceives themself as an artist or participant in the creation of the narrative. If you were to ask players to summarize the story in a game they've completed, they would most likely just cover the major plot points that were established by the designers and there wouldn't be a whole lot of difference from one summary to the next. This would imply that the narrative is primarily created by the designer and not the player, and it's because of this that I'm more inclined to agree with Thomas. However, future games may end up changing my opinion. Skyrim with its Radiant Story, for example, may result in players having more personalized narratives that they have a larger role in creating. Still though, that would be something the designers implemented, so... I don't know. I'm just confusing myself now.

 

[Bostur]

It seems to me some players, especially of the RPG variety, love to talk about their playthroughs, their protagonists, their view of the story. I see this as filling in the blanks, if games have blanks it leaves opportunity for players to be creative. Sometimes if there are only a few blanks players get even more creative, like a rush of creativity trying to fill in the few spots available.

This trend isn't much different than what can happen among fans of litterature or movies. Especially the Fantasy and Sci-Fi genres have a lot of potential for this.

But I agree with Thomas Grip that this process is very different from a true artistic process. Gamers are more like people building model airplanes from pre-made kits, or solving crossword puzzles. The real artistic process is that of designing the kits and puzzles, which is often a very tedious task.

There is room for expression and interpretation for the player, but it is very small.

 

[Halceon]

The main point from the whole discussion I'd like to support and emphasise is that we can't keep calling the players the audience. The player's ability to be a co-creator and actual attempt at being one varies from game to game. E.g., Mario is a game about a plumber defeating an army of weird creatures to save a princess going from A to B to C. The variation is minimal and the story can be retold and experienced in pretty much the same way by anyone. On the other hand, Dwarf Fortress may be a tale of stalwart colonists or a tale of a cruel social experiment.
In the first case you can compare it to a book with some minor plot points missing, in the second - a basic outline of a story, covering only the setting.

The player's agency in determining the plot varies, but across the whole medium, the player isn't purely audient nor a sole creator. In most cases it's a peculiar position that doesn't really follow the rules of either extreme.