Zachary
Schlanger
Elinor
Rogosin
ENGL
112
18
September 2013
Thought, Sound, and
Sight: Videogames Becoming a New Art
Do you consider video games to be a
form art? If you do not, why don’t you? What is art? can you define it? When
you define what art is, or at the very least try, we can better understand
videogames as an artistic medium. If you bring the craftsmanship, and thought
that goes into most games to the forefront, and compare it to the thought that
goes into all other art, the concept becomes easier to grasp.
Art takes many forms, whether it is a
story, a song, or a visual piece. Art communicates any number of ideas to
whoever may experience it, and may even cause an emotional response. Videogames
are not limited to being just one of these art forms; they can take on all
aspects of art, to include an emotional story, as well as compelling and
beautiful design. The music and sounds can draw you in, and bring you to a new
level of immersion into the experience. With all that videogames have to offer
of these ideas, a new media that triumphs aspects of painting, composing, and
cinema is created.
Videogames
sit on an interesting plateau on the subject of art. Some people, such as Roger
Ebert, are very adamant that “Video Games
can never be Art (Ebert).”, which is the actual title of his article
addressing the matter. On the other hand, there are less people who are
steadfast believers that games are an absolute art. That isn’t to say that the believers
are not passionate, they simply just are not as straightforward. Ebert’s sole
source of information for him to base his argument upon is a 15-minute
presentation by a videogame producer named Kellee Santiago. One of the games
she uses as an example is called Braid.. The main thing that Ebert focuses on
is the aspect of the time travel affecting the game: “You can go back in time
and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and
negates the whole discipline of the game. (Ebert).” Art is supposed to tell a
story, or give the viewer or player an experience, and what better experience
is there than a learning experience. Another game mentioned, which in my
opinion after playing it, is an amazing and beautiful experiment in the form of
a video game, is called Flower. You essentially control the wind to gather
petals and make flowers bloom. Underneath a very simple gameplay experience,
there is a suggested story that is almost entirely left to the player to craft
and understand. The basic idea is that the human race has polluted the world
and caused a dark energy to form, and you as the player rid the world of the
human race’s mistakes. Ebert asks
multiple questions of Kellee regarding whether you can win the game, or if it
is scored. He seems to completely negate his original idea of games not ever
becoming an art. Art is not scored, and you do not win at art; why does a
game have to have either of those elements, just because a large amount of
games have them. It seems that Ebert is stuck in a world where games are only a
way to show your skills and to one-up an opponent, as opposed to them being an
interactive experience. Ebert seems to have watched Santiago’s presentation
already knowing he was going to disagree in whatever way he possibly could,
making his article a very weak building block in the argument against
videogames as an art form.
Chris Melissinos,
on the other hand, was the guest curator of “The Art of Videogames” at the
Smithsonian museum in 2012. He grew up with videogames, and has much
stronger points that support videogames, than Ebert has against them. Melissinos says "It is interesting when you take a look at video games
because they stand apart from so many traditional forms of art because they are
an amalgam of all…Some games are an amalgam of historical
context, of art progression, of music, of narrative of social reflection, you
know, all wrapped up in a social experience. (Tish).” What he says rings true,
and boils down to the fact that what sets videogames apart from traditional
art, is what brings it into the family of art: it is made up of so many types
of art. Clive Barker, who is a well-known novelist, illustrator and playwright,
directly responded to Roger Ebert’s original claim in 2006 that video games
were not an art form. Ebert said that video games were inferior to mediums such
as film, to which Barker responded, “This is a medium that’s barely 2
decades old, and he (Ebert) is saying oh, there’s no 'War And Peace' yet – of
course there isn’t! (Sheffield).” It would be hard to convince anyone that video
games are a new form of art with only these arguments between just two people.
What really makes me believe videogames are an art form, is how they include so
many classic art forms in the most basic sense: storytelling and narrative,
music, and visual art.
Humans
have been telling stories for millennia, and videogames are quickly becoming
the best way to convey a story in current media. In the article The Boundaries of Narrative… by
Johnathan Ostenson and Lisa Fink, the idea that videogames are reaching a point
in their storytelling where they could be studied in an English classroom.
Ostenson writes, “There's a place for a
purposeful study of video games in today's English classroom because they
represent some of the most important storytelling in the 21st century
(Ostenson).” This is not to say that every videogame on the market is a
literary masterpiece, or that any are for that matter, but the article does
mention a few games that have been praised for their narrative and their
ability to draw the gamer in with emotional attachment and immersion into the
world. Two games that are mentioned are Mass Effect and the Fallout series.
Mass effect is a game where you assume the role of Commander Shepard, and
attempt to save the universe from an array of threats. What sets mass affect
apart from most action oriented games, are two main ideas, which games have
begun to adopt, in an attempt to gain the same critical praise as the Mass
Effect series. The first of these ideas is the how your decisions change the
outcome of the story and can even cause another character to live or die. The
series is a trilogy, so the decisions you make in the first game continue with
you into the next two games. The second radical idea, which is different from
the perceived idea that all games are about killing hookers and causing
bloodshed, is that almost the entire story is presented to the gamer in the
form of conversations, to go along with the choices they make.
The second game mentioned in Ostenson and Fink’s article is
Fallout. What helps drive the story of Fallout, is partly the same as Mass
Effect; that the entire story is presented in a verbal and written form, and
that your decisions can effect the outcome of the game. What sets Fallout apart
is that all of this is set in an open world, where you can go about completing
the game at your own pace, and explore. What my schooling as a child taught me
about exploring the world and hearing loose structured stories is that the best
stories you can think of, are the ones you create yourself. In an open world,
you are free to assume parts of the story and explore the experience. Another
game that tells its story in an expert fashion is Naughty Dog’s 2013 game The Last Of Us. The game takes place in
a world where plant spores have overrun civilization and turned the majority of
humanity into zombie-like creatures. Instead of the entire game being handed to
you in the form of a 90-minute blockbuster, you spend hours at a time on the
edge of your seat, exploring a wasteland and connecting with expertly written
characters. In the first 30 minutes of the game, Joel, the protagonist, has his
10-year-old daughter shot by a panicked solider, and you see and feel the loss
in his heart. The game then fades to black and the title of the game is
presented in bold lettering on a black background. There are few films that are
able to cause this much of an emotional reaction in their audiences, and this
is why video games are such an important example of the next step of narrative
as an art. Video game stories have the ability to pull the audience in much
more and for much longer than other visual mediums have the ability to. Also,
because you, the player, are involved with what is happening, you experience
catharsis in a much stronger way, and much easier than in most other mediums.
This effect that interactivity has on the player within a
game allows topics and ideas that are normally outside some people’s
demographics to be addressed and explored in new ways. The video game Bioshock is hailed not only for its rich
story, but also for some of the modern
issues it addresses, despite its early 20th century setting. Chris
Melissinos states, “The game’s (Bioshock) narrative
engages with contemporary ethical issues and questions. Stem-cell research,
boundless scientific exploration, and political oppression are all facets of
the story (Melissinos 162).” Another way games address new ideas, is that many
are set in specific historical time periods. One that takes place during
multiple periods, in different games is Assassin’s Creed. Some of the games
take place during the time of The Templars, Renaissance Italy, as well as
American during the Revolutionary War. While they are not completely historically
accurate, they still immerse gamers into the story and feeling of the period.
Figures of the time are in each, such as Leonardo DaVinci, the Borgia Family,
and George Washington.
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