#30 - Are Video Games Art? (Page 1 of 2)

I don't think that the blanket statement "video games are not art" can possibly be correct. Anything can be art, but not every example of that thing has to be. Is Call of Duty art? I don't think so. Is Braid art? Yes, unquestionably.

There's a quote from one of Aleister Crowley's books on magic (which are damned fun, given he thinks he's doing for the occult what Einstein did for physics) where he claims nobody experiences anything the same as any other person. That painting on the wall, no two people will see it from the same angle, at the same time, and with the same life experiences. It is unique for every viewer. Looked at that way, video games aren't much different then any other form of art.

Here's a working definition of art that I have. It isn't fully fleshed out, and it's pretty broad, but I like it. Art is something that was consciously shaped and molded and created in order to provoke some sort of emotional response in others.

Last edited by Doctor Submarine (2012-05-01 03:54:23)

Art is defined by both the intent, and the interpretation. For a movie reference of this idea, see the floating bag in American Beauty.

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This intermission is infuriating; oh to have been in the chat room for the recording of this one.
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Last edited by Dave (2012-05-02 00:15:27)

Great episode guys.  Jeff, worry not; this was "good." Welcome to the couch.

Now, a couple things.  Brian mentioned handguns, which I have some experience with.  While I fully accept the fact that they only exist for one purpose, I submit this example:

This is a Springfield Armory 1911.  It is a .45 caliber handgun and has, ostensibly, a single purpose: to allow one human being to kill another.  On the other hand, there are aesthetic choices being made that, all other things being equal, draw me to this particular model, over all the others.  Granted, those materials, textures and finishes; the small details like the holes in the trigger and the skeletonized hammer; the grips cut into the frame at the front and the back; these things were all chosen for practical reasons, and while Springfield didn't set out to create a thing of beauty, they certainly had an eye on aesthetics, and the end result is one handsome looking weapon.  Is it art? No, but I can look at all the 1911s on the market, and choose this one, because it is pleasing to look at.

On a related, and on topic tangent: there are people who shoot competitively, and their handguns are setup specifically for that purpose.  In this sense, those handguns are being used in what is essentially a game.

It's also interesting that at no time during the discussion about what art is or is not, that Exit Through the Gift Shop never came up.  Granted, that could make for a whole episode on its own.

On a semantic note, I dislike the arguments that go "Are _______ art?".  This implies that everything that could be defined as ______, is or is not art.  I would posit that the question should be "Can _______ be art?".  Is every intentional attempt to apply paint to a canvas art?  I would argue that they are not.  Certainly with sufficient skill a great many such attempts can be art, but not all of them.  So can video games be art?

Regarding the interactivity of art:  Without the human element of a player, a video game will just sit there.  Maybe there is a cut-scene when you hit "start," but after that whatever purpose that game has, it cannot fulfill that purpose without a player.  To add a wrinkle, even your "traditional" forms of art (film, paintings, sculptures, etc.), require a human to view them in order to fulfill their purpose.  So art has always been interactive, it's just that with video games, that interactivity goes both ways; the game shapes how the player plays, which shapes the game, which shapes how the player plays, etc.  It's the same as how a series of pictures can become a movie, or the cycle of art imitating life imitating art imitating life. Video games simply take these kinds of cycles and put them into a personal experience.

Getting back to the question of "can video games be art?", I would say yes, they can.

Edit:
By the same token that I enjoy the design of that 1911, I enjoy listening to these episodes.  I listen to educate myself, to grow as an artist and a person, but also because it's fun.  The conversation is lively, intelligent, intelectual...and it's damn entertaining too.  On a more personal note, I don't have the opportunity to have these types of conversations with a group of people terribly often, so the whole "friends in your head" aspect is there as well; probably more so in my case, since I consider many of the panelist friends in reality, and these shows allow me to hang out with them vicariously.

Last edited by Matt Vayda (2012-05-03 06:29:10)

I do have a mighty roar.

I wish I had been in the chatroom for this.

On defining "art", I generally agree with Scott McCloud. His definition is extremely broad and encompasses any activity that humans do that isn't directly related to survival or reproduction (although I think you can take it further and eliminate a lot of the aspects of reproduction, just not the instinct...  some people are artists in bed...)

He drew a comic to illustrate this. The first page had a caveman looking to catch and procreate with a female (reproduction), but is interrupted by a sabertooth cat which he runs away from (survival). Here's the second page:

At this point I have to plug his book, Understanding Comics, which is one of the greatest books ever written and applicable to pretty much all things creative, not just comics.

The little segment with the cave paintings illustrates why art is so great. Some caveman was 'arting', just dicking around and realized that he could make marks on a wall that resembled whatever, and then used that new knowledge to draw a tutorial on killing buffalo, or used it to draw some significant event that he remembered from the previous week. Either way, if those images were meant to be practical, then those paintings are literally the most significant bit of human history we have, as that's the oldest 'written' history or store of knowledge. All cause some caveman was dicking around with a bit of charred stick on a wall.

My issue with videogames is more to do with story, in that games aren't inherently a storytelling medium, they're a story creating medium that people are trying to use to tell their stories.

People didn't play Pacman or Joust because they had amazing stories, but those games did have stories that you created while you played them. They had a beginning when you put a quarter into the machine, a middle while you were playing the game and an ending when you either beat the game or (more likely) ran out of quarters or just decided you didn't like the game. Based on that story, you decided whether you'd ever go back and play that game again, or whether you'd go try a different one. The novelty of games is that the experience you have is different every time you play it (ideally). The rules and mechanics are the same every time you play PacMan, but the game will be different every time you play it.

Modern games have that going for them, but they're no longer that pure. Games have evolved into these interactive movies where the goal is no longer to have an experience based around some mechanics, but to experience a series of events and have some level of control in how things play out. On the other hand, sandbox games like GTA4 and Skyrim are heading in what I feel is the correct direction, but are still trying to crowbar that modern gaming "experience the excitement of playing an epic film" philosophy in there.

To elaborate a little on what Trey said, there's more parallels to be drawn between early films and gaming. The earliest films were just spectacle and amusement. The first games were pretty much that as well. Then movies started telling stories, but they mostly used stage techniques cause that's how you did that story telling thing with actors, right? Then they started using editing and the camera to do things that you couldn't do on a stage, but most of what you did with a movie you could do on a stage. I think that's where games are right now. They're basically making movies, but putting little interactive things in there that only a game can do, but you could make a Mass Effect movie because that's what a lot of that game's storytelling elements are.

When we get to a point in games where you can no longer make the game into a movie and do it justice, that's when games will have come into their own. I think the earliest movies did that perfectly, but purely as a "look at what we can do" sort of way. You couldn't make "Humorous phases of funny faces" a stage production. You couldn't really make Tetris or Donkey Kong into movies because the novelty of them is how videogamey they are. They are purely videogames. In another 30 years we'll probably be at a point where videogames have gone back to those fundamental ideas to tell stories that are uniquely tellable only on the terms of games - probably having to do more with your own personal preferences over how you'd like the story to go, rather than how some guy at EA decided it should.

If you're interested in games that make my dick hard, check out X³, which is a space combat / trading / etc game. You get a space ship or two and a little money and a massive universe and that's the game. There are missions and stuff, but you don't have to do them, and in fact I would recommend not doing them. Just flying around and exploring the world is worth it. It's one of those games where there's a ton of stuff to do and you can play the game however you want. You can be a good guy or a bad guy or an innocent bystander.

Or check out Dwarf Fortress. Or check out any game that has some sort of random mission generator or sandbox mode like Sim City or IL2 or ArmA 2. Check out Tower Climb if you just wanna play a simple 2D game. Check out The Binding of Isaac, a game that has a bit of story but fits that onto a totally random game. Skyrim is a great game to explore in as well, although that's pretty much all you can do if you don't do at least some of the missions. You have to unlock a few things before you're free to just play the game however you want, and even then you can tell that that's not how the game was meant to be played.

Also, I love longplays and let's plays. The best collection of longplays on youtube is here:
http://www.youtube.com/user/cubex55?feature=g-user-u
Those guys upload everything from modern games to old 1980's arcade games and everything in between. No talking or commentary whatsoever. Just the games.

I completely agree with Squiggly's assessment of player's experience with the game being their actual story. An area of this that people often don't talk about is online cooperative gaming. I've been a big enthusiast of Arma 2 over the years, which is basically a military-grade modern warfare simulation that people like to play online. In ideal conditions, you get a pretty good approximation of what actual warfare would be like, and many of the players are often real or ex-military, and use proper tactics/radio-protocols etc. The result is that you end up developing your own shared stories, of how your squad got pinned down, what different people were doing to survive, etc. It's all completely unscripted and unique experiences that end up feeling like old war stories.

To give you an idea of what I mean:

Jump to 21:27 on this one

And I think that's a perfect example of a game conveying an experience/idea that I really could not have gotten from a movie. Trying to command troops in a realistic combat situation and realizing how absolutely terrifying and impossible to manage it is once you start taking fire was a real eye opening experience for me, and conveyed the fear of war more than an "oscary" war movie ever has.

I used to use the 'T'-word when talking about this stuff to people, but...  man you think people react badly to the 'interactive movie' thing... drop the word 'toy' into the conversation. You're totally right, tho. Toys are the perfect description of what I like to play with. Adult toys where I can send a squad of guys to tactically stab another squad of guys.

Or you could compare it to the sort of 'game' that cowboys and indians is. It's not really a game, it's more a defined area of playable space where there are certain rules (if you get 'hit' you're dead, don't go outside the back yard), mechanics ("bang!"), coupled with the potential for a dynamically generated story that the other players (or the computer in the digital world) can add to or alter along with you to suit whatever needs you have for the story at that particular moment.

Cowboys and indians isn't really a game. It's more like LARPing for kindergarteners. I want games to try heading in that direction a bit.

It definitely does have a lot of 'auto' options. You can basically have a fleet of ships automatically trading for you, set up a few space stations and be able to generate mass amounts of money. Definitely a good way to get used to the game and it's mechanics. There's a LOT of stuff floating around out there, tho, and exploration is often rewarded (and occasionally punished severely). I usually tend to have multiple pilots going at once in different save files so I can be a pirate one day or be a cop the next day or be a millionaire supply trader the next, etc.

There are a lot of mods for it. I would recommend snagging one of the various multitude of cockpit mods / collections. Pretty sure there's one that allows you to turn on time compression during non-computer-controlled flight, though there are good reasons why you wouldn't want to do that too often. Also pretty sure there's one that allows time compression up to something like 10,000x, though any computer-controlled flight is sometimes a risk, especially in busy sectors. My current install was made a year or so ago and I only got a cockpit mod. Out of the loop on mods now, so there might be some awesome new ones. I might have to see what's out there now.

But there are lots of mods. Large modding community for that game, and many of them are the nerdiest of nerds. Many of the cockpit mods are ridiculously detailed.

EDIT: nope, time compression mods don't work in my version. In Rebirth they've done something to it, tho? SETA is something I only tend to use in short bursts anyway, and generally avoid it in crowded places.

Also EDIT: I forgot to add that I also like Mount & Blade a lot. Another one of those games that lets you do your own thing with quite a nice bonus feature of being able to assemble large crowds of people to stab each other. I've not played that one as much as I should.

Last edited by Squiggly_P (2012-05-09 02:01:25)