(Note: My first post, and I know it turned out a bit TL;DR. Read on, I don't think you'll be disappointed. If you can't be bothered, just give me your oinion on games as art, and what potential you see in the future of gaming as an Art form.)
There has been a stir of discussion as of late over comments made by Roger Ebert. The legendary movie critic descended from his golden throne at the theatre to inform us mere gamer mortals that our pastimes simply do not measure up to cinema, that games are not art. Gamers were appalled, how dare this arrogant fool make such an uninformed claim. Yahtzee gave his response in a Extra Punctuation article, reserving the legendary rankness of his criticism in favor of showing his respect for Ebert and politely disagreeing. One could almost hear the dry gagging of ZP fans at the utter mildness of our resident bile dispenser.
In the face of such severe backlash, one cannot help but ask why such an innocent comment has stirred up such reaction. Perhaps it is the fact that we are indeed gamers, so tempered by competition that when a man tells us we can't fly, we look for the nearest cliff face to prove him wrong. I believe its something deeper however, a gamer's attempt to reach out and qualify his experience to the outside world.
To understand this conflict, we must first ask ourselves, what is art? Now, philosophers and artists have been arguing this question for centuries, and this essay could stretch lengths to fill a library just to argue the semantics. I'll try to define just the bare essence of art as I see it.
Art is not the frilly satire we tend to see it as, its not a black and white photo of cow tongues hanging off a woman's belly button piercing, that's only pretentious. Art is not strictly beautiful, for there are many pretty faces which are shallow to the soul like concrete, and some of the greatest art is ugly. No, art is not even just something that arouses emotion, as the man who inspires anger by cutting you off in traffic is typically not called Van Gogh. What art is, is truth.
Now, I know exactly what that sounds like, like something you might find in a cross section between Twilight Fanfiction and an Otherkin porno. The rational minded viewer should easily be pulling any number of counter examples; Half of literature is defined as fiction is it not? I'd certainly not like to see one of Picasso's ladies walking down the street. This however, is confusing art with its medium. Art is not oil on canvas, art is not moving pictures, art is not the pressing of piano keys and the vibrating of strings; These are dead things, meager tools in the creation of art.
Art is that moment of clarity when musical dissonance is resolved into a beautiful harmony, it's the understanding that Romeo is dead and now Juliet must follow. Art is a glimpse outside of Plato's cave, it demonstrates perfect and abstract concepts that remain the same even as the objective world continuously changes. Emotion is almost a secondary result in this effect, how can one not help but to laugh or cry at these artistic truths?
As an art, video games find themselves in a very peculiar state. They are filled with artistic material; like a movie they have story, music, visual design, etc. The key difference is that cinema is passive while a video game is an active experience. The ultimate factor is this; a video game is just that, a GAME, an activity that is by its very definition false, synthetic. Art is truth.
The experience of the gamer is much more akin to the creator of art than to the audience. It is our actions that move the story forward, and like the creator, we are much too focused on mastering the technical details of our medium to appreciate the overall artistic impression. We are far too busy "pressing X to not die" to worry about the implication of actually dieing. The pleasures and frustrations of gaming are those of a craftsman working to hone something to perfection, not that of someone who has discovered some immortal artistic truth. In the end, its all just a game.
Something doesn't add up though. Tell all those Final Fantasy players, "It's just a game." as they make sappy video montages over Aeris's death. Tell all those Zelda fans "Its just a game." as they debate a timeline that Nintendo probably hasn't even bothered to pen down. There is a certain line of immersion, the one that when crossed causes you to cease to remember the controller in your hands, or the burn in your eyes from hours of staring at the screen. It's the line you know you've crossed when you no longer see color coded stars, but sacred objects quested for to defeat the dark wizard and save the princess. Only when you forget the medium can you see what its trying to convey, A video game only becomes art when it ceases to be a game.
Its rare to find a video game that manages to pass that line, massively rare, but we know its worth it. When a game manages to transcend that limit, to become something more than a game, then its become not just a art, but perhaps the art. No longer some third person audience watching from beyond the fourth wall, the player finds himself a part of the experience, living and breathing the artistic truths. Why should I care if some bimbo princess is in another castle unless she's promising to juggle MY magic mushrooms, how can monsters chasing some college students compare to them chasing ME.
I don't believe that gaming as it is now will ever be a truly recognized art form, at least not by an outside source. Finding artistic merit beyond the actual game is too subjective and personal a experience. Where you see a touching kiss scene, Roger Ebert will only ever see pixels grinding together. There is however, something coming out of video games that I have great confidence in. Right now, games try to mimic cinema for their artistic value, but I believe in the future, as the technology gets better, we'll begin to see something entirely different; No longer just watching or reading a story, but experiencing it. We're the pioneers of this great new art form, the first to begin to extract artistic merit from what really used to be just games.
My advice for game designers trying to further this vision and make a game artistic; Stop trying so hard to make it artistic. Trying to imitate some artsy bullshit is just pretentious, and it makes you look juvenile to the "big boys" you're trying to impress. Instead, worry more about trying to break that level of immersion for your players with solid story, music, and game play. Don't feel you need to add some secret coded meaning to every symbol and action. Just go with the flow, put in what looks and sounds good. If you get us immersed, we will find more artistic meaning then you could ever have thought of.
Richard Wagner, the great romantic opera composer, envisioned combing music, poetry, drama, and setting into one great form, one full and supreme artistic experience for the audience; I'd say that maybe, just maybe, we've found it.
There has been a stir of discussion as of late over comments made by Roger Ebert. The legendary movie critic descended from his golden throne at the theatre to inform us mere gamer mortals that our pastimes simply do not measure up to cinema, that games are not art. Gamers were appalled, how dare this arrogant fool make such an uninformed claim. Yahtzee gave his response in a Extra Punctuation article, reserving the legendary rankness of his criticism in favor of showing his respect for Ebert and politely disagreeing. One could almost hear the dry gagging of ZP fans at the utter mildness of our resident bile dispenser.
In the face of such severe backlash, one cannot help but ask why such an innocent comment has stirred up such reaction. Perhaps it is the fact that we are indeed gamers, so tempered by competition that when a man tells us we can't fly, we look for the nearest cliff face to prove him wrong. I believe its something deeper however, a gamer's attempt to reach out and qualify his experience to the outside world.
To understand this conflict, we must first ask ourselves, what is art? Now, philosophers and artists have been arguing this question for centuries, and this essay could stretch lengths to fill a library just to argue the semantics. I'll try to define just the bare essence of art as I see it.
Art is not the frilly satire we tend to see it as, its not a black and white photo of cow tongues hanging off a woman's belly button piercing, that's only pretentious. Art is not strictly beautiful, for there are many pretty faces which are shallow to the soul like concrete, and some of the greatest art is ugly. No, art is not even just something that arouses emotion, as the man who inspires anger by cutting you off in traffic is typically not called Van Gogh. What art is, is truth.
Now, I know exactly what that sounds like, like something you might find in a cross section between Twilight Fanfiction and an Otherkin porno. The rational minded viewer should easily be pulling any number of counter examples; Half of literature is defined as fiction is it not? I'd certainly not like to see one of Picasso's ladies walking down the street. This however, is confusing art with its medium. Art is not oil on canvas, art is not moving pictures, art is not the pressing of piano keys and the vibrating of strings; These are dead things, meager tools in the creation of art.
Art is that moment of clarity when musical dissonance is resolved into a beautiful harmony, it's the understanding that Romeo is dead and now Juliet must follow. Art is a glimpse outside of Plato's cave, it demonstrates perfect and abstract concepts that remain the same even as the objective world continuously changes. Emotion is almost a secondary result in this effect, how can one not help but to laugh or cry at these artistic truths?
As an art, video games find themselves in a very peculiar state. They are filled with artistic material; like a movie they have story, music, visual design, etc. The key difference is that cinema is passive while a video game is an active experience. The ultimate factor is this; a video game is just that, a GAME, an activity that is by its very definition false, synthetic. Art is truth.
The experience of the gamer is much more akin to the creator of art than to the audience. It is our actions that move the story forward, and like the creator, we are much too focused on mastering the technical details of our medium to appreciate the overall artistic impression. We are far too busy "pressing X to not die" to worry about the implication of actually dieing. The pleasures and frustrations of gaming are those of a craftsman working to hone something to perfection, not that of someone who has discovered some immortal artistic truth. In the end, its all just a game.
Something doesn't add up though. Tell all those Final Fantasy players, "It's just a game." as they make sappy video montages over Aeris's death. Tell all those Zelda fans "Its just a game." as they debate a timeline that Nintendo probably hasn't even bothered to pen down. There is a certain line of immersion, the one that when crossed causes you to cease to remember the controller in your hands, or the burn in your eyes from hours of staring at the screen. It's the line you know you've crossed when you no longer see color coded stars, but sacred objects quested for to defeat the dark wizard and save the princess. Only when you forget the medium can you see what its trying to convey, A video game only becomes art when it ceases to be a game.
Its rare to find a video game that manages to pass that line, massively rare, but we know its worth it. When a game manages to transcend that limit, to become something more than a game, then its become not just a art, but perhaps the art. No longer some third person audience watching from beyond the fourth wall, the player finds himself a part of the experience, living and breathing the artistic truths. Why should I care if some bimbo princess is in another castle unless she's promising to juggle MY magic mushrooms, how can monsters chasing some college students compare to them chasing ME.
I don't believe that gaming as it is now will ever be a truly recognized art form, at least not by an outside source. Finding artistic merit beyond the actual game is too subjective and personal a experience. Where you see a touching kiss scene, Roger Ebert will only ever see pixels grinding together. There is however, something coming out of video games that I have great confidence in. Right now, games try to mimic cinema for their artistic value, but I believe in the future, as the technology gets better, we'll begin to see something entirely different; No longer just watching or reading a story, but experiencing it. We're the pioneers of this great new art form, the first to begin to extract artistic merit from what really used to be just games.
My advice for game designers trying to further this vision and make a game artistic; Stop trying so hard to make it artistic. Trying to imitate some artsy bullshit is just pretentious, and it makes you look juvenile to the "big boys" you're trying to impress. Instead, worry more about trying to break that level of immersion for your players with solid story, music, and game play. Don't feel you need to add some secret coded meaning to every symbol and action. Just go with the flow, put in what looks and sounds good. If you get us immersed, we will find more artistic meaning then you could ever have thought of.
Richard Wagner, the great romantic opera composer, envisioned combing music, poetry, drama, and setting into one great form, one full and supreme artistic experience for the audience; I'd say that maybe, just maybe, we've found it.
