TOWARDS THE ART OF THE GAME
Essay by Gordon Farrell
Art is a shared experience.
When people try to determine whether a particular painting is a work of art, they have to be able to stand in front of it, each person soaking it in, each person absorbing the same visual experience. The painting cannot alter from viewing to viewing, even though different persons will view it at different times and in different places. So, too, for a poem. Or a novel. To be considered art, people must be able to read it, unaltered, over a period of time, each person confident they are sharing in the same experience as the others.
Art is also shared across time.
When I read a Robert Frost poem, or listen to a Bach sonata, I know that voices from many decades ago in the first instance, and from hundreds of years ago in the second instance, are being faithfully reproduced. I am experiencing what millions of people before me have experienced, essentially unaltered, in the same form that they experienced it.
Then what is art?
Art is a shared experience that we agree as a society has a significant aesthetic impact on our emotions, our minds, and our sense of ourselves as human beings.
Games will be regarded as art when they meet this standard.
They can only meet this standard when they are shared by many persons, across time, in the same unaltered form.
And only the single player campaign can accomplish this.
The multiplayer game, without a doubt, is the more exciting social phenomenon. When mainstream media reports on games, it is the multiplayer phenomenon that makes for attention-grabbing headlines. But the multiplayer experience can never be shared unaltered. It can be viewed through recording media, but it can’t be experienced, because its value is in the intensity of the moment. Its resolution or conclusion is never known ahead of time by the designer. It cannot be planned, or authored. It is not art. It is sport. Thrilling, uplifting, spiritually enriching sport, but sport nonetheless. Sport exists in the moment. In sport, we experience the competitive human spirit alive inside us right now. It is the perfect complement to art. Art is planned, and it is re-experienced by everyone who absorbs it. Art exists unaltered across time. Sport is exciting exactly because the outcome is unknown. Art is exciting because the outcome has been predetermined, yet it lives in the mind of the viewer as a fresh experience every time it is seen.
As a result of this, only the single player campaign can be art.
And when games are finally acknowledged to be art, it will be the experience of the single player campaign that is cited as proof. It is through the single player campaign that the art of games will be documented.
Do single player campaigns have a significant impact on our emotions, our minds, and our sense of ourselves as human beings?
Everyone who is passionate about SP gaming has, in fact, had either an experience that meets this description, or gotten damned close to it. Now, I can only count on one hand the number of times it has happened to me. But this, too, is common among those who are passionate about the SP game. Most of us have only had a game touch us in the core of our being a handful of times. But they are unforgettable moments, unforgettable because the art of game is so different from any other art form.
The first electronic game I played on a home computing system was Privateer, a space combat game spun off from the Wing Commander series. The premise is that you’re a Han Solo type bounty hunter, smuggler, and all around fighter pilot for hire. You take on jobs, get paid, and buy better weapons — which allow you to take on bigger jobs, get paid more, and buy bigger weapons, etc. When I started playing the game, as far as I could tell, the whole point seemed to be upgrading your ship so you could travel to cool new worlds and explore them.
Whenever you went into space you encountered an interplanetary police force. They scanned your vessel for contraband (which you never had) and from time to time they’d help you fight off pirates. A very nice part of the game’s overall ambiance.
So content was I in collecting my bounties and upgrading my ship that I never realized Privateer had a storyline.
Nor was I ever compelled at any point to enter the storyline.
But at each base where I landed was a bar. And the bartenders would regularly suggest that if I was ever in New Detroit, I should look up a man named so-and-so. Eventually I decided that I wanted to see what New Detroit looked like, so after some fierce battles enroute there, I arrived and looked around. New Detroit was very cool: a city that covered a whole planet where it rains 24/7. Very dystopic and unlike anyplace I’d seen so far in the game. Good stuff.
Eventually I made my way to the bar and sure enough, there was the guy I’d been told to look for. He said he’d discovered a mysterious alien artifact and he offered me a huge fee to travel to another planet and acquire some information he needed to decipher the writing on it. I was low on cash and I agreed. Well, one thing led to another and I soon discovered that I’d been tricked into running drugs for interplanetary criminals.
I will never forget the moment when it hit me:
I was transporting what I thought was a perfectly innocent package when the interplanetary police did a routine scan of my ship — and suddenly they went on attack alert and I was compelled to fight for my life. As soon as I could stop and assess what had happened to me, a chill ran up my spine. These benign, occasionally helpful policemen were now my mortal enemies. I was a marked man and I was on the run. I had unwittingly crossed over a line and there was no way I could go back.
The sheer emotional impact of that moment is something I’ll never forget.
Later I had the opportunity to describe the game to a film producer I was working with on a movie. “It was the best movie I ever played,” I said.
I have no doubt that most people in the game industry can recount similar, unforgettable experiences. For a lot of us, I think, these not only made the particular game a permanent part of our treasured memories, but drew us into the industry, and made us realize we wanted to commit ourselves to creating experiences that would be similarly unforgettable.
What I experienced with Privateer was a scripted narrative event. It happened exactly the way it was supposed to happen. I’m not prepared to say it was art, but it does point the way towards art.
In the 4th Century BCE, the Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle described the dynamics of art and how it impacts the human soul. He went on to point out profound similarities between the way art works in general, and the way narrative structure in particular impacts our hearts and minds.
In other words, art is narrative.
Every work of art is the story of an experience that alters the human soul.
I’m going to take a deeper look at this idea. What does narrative structure tell us about the journey we take when we experience art?
What is the journey we take when a game alters our souls?
March 2nd, 2008 at 2:53 pm
I never really thought about it this way; but as I look at it I can definitely see your point. As I think about some of the games I’ve played recently I’m thinking there might also be a difference between open-world and closed-world games, too. Two recent games I’ve been playing are Assassin’s Creed and BioShock - both wonderfully constructed, almost perfectly designed masterpieces. Yet a year from now I doubt I’ll still think much about AC, while I have the feeling that I’ll always remember BioShock.
And, in no small part, the reason is because of the story - the experiences that I shared with so many other gamers. From the first sighting of a Big Daddy to the penultimate meeting in Andrew Ryan’s office, the game is, in my mind, one of the best works of art in gaming. The end outcome is set in stone, but it’s the way we’re guided there that overpowers us.
Great read, Gordon, and I look forward to your next one.
March 4th, 2008 at 8:33 pm
I have been enjoying computer games since the original atari pong, through the 2600, the Apple 2, atari 800, commodore 64 and the PC compatibles. My favorite types of games have always been role playing and text/graphic adventgure games where you can live a story by puzzling and fighting through it. I have seen graphics and sound capabilities increase immensely, but I can’t say that I have seen storytelling improve quite so much. In the days of Zork and the other great infocom text adventures, I was working in a software store and I still remember to this day someone describing what they ’saw’ when they were playing the text-based adventure game, Sorcerer. They described a scene from the story with their hands fully animated intricately showing how the wizard in the game was casting a spell and I realized at that moment that no matter how good of graphics and sound that you have, the best graphics are in our imagination. If a story is written so that it piques our interests and touches on our intimate memories, feelings and desires, it can bring those feelings back to life and make those dreams of being a warrior/thief/etc come true and perhaps, as you mentioned, touch our soul.
I started off playing games and now in my more mature years, I find myself wanting to make games. I am scoffed at by my wife, but I have come to think of computer games as an art - as a living story that if done well, can reach through our daily facades to the human being beneath that fears, cries, hates, loves, befriends, etc. I appreciate your legitimizing (single player) computer games as a valid art form and I look forward to your next essay.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Yes I do feel as though you are right on that point of what is art and what is sport. Yet the art of the classical period may only be replicated and never will be beaten for a long time. The only place where modern art is making headway is in building construction. It is finally stepping out of the boxy modern shapes to the free and artistic new designs. Yet even these need work to compare it to the Parthenon, Versailles, and many others. We must remember and appreciate all good art and graphic art at its best must also!
March 7th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
By your definition, I find it problematic to define games as art, when the very word ‘game’ rather suggests a closer connection with sports, your antithesis to art. If art is narrative, then games have to be narrative to be considered art, right? But when I play a game like Tetris, the absence of narrative elements is irrelevant to the experience. Even the visual aspect is irrelevant, in terms of aesthetics. A game like Tetris would actually suffer from narrative elements since they draw away attention from the gameplay.
Tetris has often been compared to chess in the sense that it is ‘gaming’ in its most distilled form. Is chess art? It is definitely mathematical in its nature, and some people can look upon equations and fractal sets and say: ‘this is art’.
My point is, I don’t think that a narrative element is enough to define games as art. Metal Gear Solid was considered art by some when it came, mainly because it took the narrative qualities of gaming one step further. But with every step games take along this path, they lose a piece of their origin, their core. They become something else. They become film.
I don’t think video games are compatible with the ‘classic’ way of judging artistic value. Art require us to be passive onlookers, but games require us to be active participants. Playing a game is like being an actor on stage.
Maybe your strong experience in Privateer had nothing to do with the actual quality of the prescripted event imagined by the game’s creator, but rather with the fact that you actively made a choice in the game that led you to a turning point. In your mind, you were creating your own experience.
A game where the outcome is already set is utterly boring. What matters is the feeling we get when we actively make choices in the game, knowing they will lead to consequences.
When the consequences we face touch us so deeply they have a profound impact on our souls, as you write, that’s when games can be considered art, not in the disguise of movies, paintings or music, but only as games.
@EdyPegasus
What you are talking about is sculpture, not architecture. Sure, it’s sculpture on a grander scale, but still sculpture. The designs we see today by architects Zaha Hadid, Santiago Calatrava and Frank Gehry are not so much architecture as they are solitary objects of mass and space. Architecture requires people to interact with it to be architecture. In a sense, architecture is therefore comparable with games.
This is also why I consider architecture and games the highest forms of art. They are infinitely more complex than painting and music, just because they need to communicate with our entire being, not just with our eyes or ears.
March 7th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Great article though! As you can see it really provoked me into thinking where I stood myself in the question of games being art. Looking forward to your next post!
March 9th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
A very interesting article. While many games may be considered art, you must consider that this article is mostly based on the assumption that only SP campaigns. While this is usually true, there are other types of games suitable for this gaming art-let us call it ‘gart’. As said, a large part of gart is the SP campaign. But consider other types.
For example, many of you may have heard of the game Line Rider-you draw lines (digitally) with your mouse, and the stick person on the sled rides on them. This game stands among few others, in it’s own genre, gart. The simple-yet-raw power of this editor can truly bring about the artist in anyone. Even if you can’t read, the interface is so incredibly simple that anyone can do it. Which brings me back to why I consider it gart.
We may compare gart to other monuments, as said in the aforementioned article, and I agree to this. Why, if a person draws a picture of the colloseum or the Parthenon, isn’t this too art? We could probably call it imitation art-it takes less time to make, and yet it resembles the momuments wholly.
I suppose that one of the things I wish to say about this is, is time neccesarily relevant to the art itself? You could spend years painting a picture of your grandmother, but it may come out terrible or sloppy. But what if you took only one day to paint the same picture, and it came out perfectly, exactly the way you wanted it to?
What I mean to say is, I do not believe that time is a factor, or at least not a main one, in creating good art. The true way to create good art is through a person’s skill, not through time or effort. I realize that this amy sound hypocritical, but I believe that it is true. In short, a game could be art, but only if it is designed that way (You could even venture that the designing itself is also art). As a small sidenote, I would like to post a link to a certain Youtube video, which will conclude what I am saying.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW44BpXpjYw
Peace be with you all.
-Shraze
March 10th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
MOVIES, MODERN ART, THE PARTHENON AND TETRIS
First off, let me thank you all for joining in my discussion about art and games. I deeply appreciate the time each of you has taken to make well-thought-out, substantive and articulate responses. It’s also pretty thrilling for me to discover that other people are having these thoughts and feel strongly enough about them to set pen to paper… er, finger to keyboard… mouse to icon… whatever…
It’s always interesting to me that for many gamers the moment we recognize we’re involved in something more than a mere diversion boils down to a specific moment in a specific game when suddenly we realize we’ve been changed somehow — whether it’s Bioshock, Privateer or a text adventure. I hope to get more of these moments in the mix as SOLO unfolds and develops.
The whole question of whether games do, or even can, measure up to the great masterpieces of classical art frankly never even occurred to me to consider before now. Although, I can’t say as I share EdyPegasus’ apparent disappointment with modern art (if I understood you correctly, EP). Recently I had the unforgettable pleasure to experience the Parthenon frieze at the British Museum for the first time. It was one of the great transformative moments of my life. But I have to say I feel equally transported when I sit in front of Jackson Pollack’s Autumn Rhythm at the Metropolitan Museum here in New York, in the same way that I find the poetry of ee cummings as unforgettable as Sappho.
In any event, art doesn’t have to be great in order to be art. And I’m not saying all games are art. Some games are, well… games. Whether puzzle games will ever be art is something for some one else to tackle, though I suspect the answer is no. Crossword puzzles may look like Mondrian’s “Broadway Boogie Woogie,” but no one is going to suggest they’re art.
In the same way, I wouldn’t say all movies are art, either. Most of them in fact are just diversions. The term “movie” was, in fact, coined to suggest a side-show novelty, “pictures that move!” — like a magic show, suitable only for carnival entertainment. It turned out to be a bit of misnomer, in the way that “game” turns out to be too small a name to describe the experiences many people have had “playing” them. And of course the term “play” and “player” are still used to describe drama presented on the stage, whether it’s “Oh, Calcutta!” or “Hamlet.”
However not all art requires us to be passive onlookers, Oliver, not even classical art. The Parthenon is intended to be entered, to be walked through — in fact, after walking through the Propylae and across the open plaza of the Acropolis. And if I hadn’t walked the length of the Parthenon frieze at the British museum, I would have missed the whole point.