Research Essay Final Draft

                         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. 

And yet 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 fewer people who are steadfast believers that games are an absolute art. That isn’t to say that the believers are not passionate, they simply 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 by Ebert, 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, responded directly 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, state that 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 Effect 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, sees 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 20^th 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.

Music and especially sound in general plays a huge part in everyday life. Music is one of the finest and most beautiful art forms, dating backs thousands of years, each era with a different style. Music immerses the viewer of the cinematic arts into whole new worlds, and this same effect is even truer in the world of video games. The question that I have is: why does the art world not recognize the presence and beauty of the music in video games, as they do for film? Well just in the past 10 years, I have noticed a huge appreciation for video game music growing, to the point where the same finesse and quality that goes into film scores is going into the scores of video games. In the year 2012, a small game studio called Thatgamecompany released a game called Journey. The game was not only beautifully visually, but was also an incredible, haunting experience on the ears. In April of the same year, Journey became the first video game to be nominated for the prestigious Grammy award. In an article on Forbes, Carol Pinchefsky says “Journey is recognizably orchestral yet spare and distanced from the dramatic surges that frequent other videogame soundtracks. Wintory also made it free from cultural clichés (Pinchefsky).” 

With the addition of complex, professionally composed, thought-provoking scores in video games, a new sort of performance art has immerged: live orchestra’s playing music form select video games. While this all occurs outside of the game, this is an example of and art display, and the music is played with the visual aid of scenes from each game. Games such as Halo, The Legend of Zelda, Mass Effect and Battlefield, have been immortalized in concert, drawing a completely different demographic towards the finer musical genre’s and events.

Music in all medias compliments the visual aspects in front of us, and draws us in. Everyone has heard the idea that if you were to watch the scariest movie without sound, it would be severely, or completely devoid of the effect it normally has.  Sound and music immerses the player into the world they have been pulled into visually. Depending on the environment, the music can change. Music is sometimes used to compliment the narrative; the same way it is used in most movies. The atmosphere of one location can be enhanced tenfold, giving tension and urgency to the player with only the soundtrack in the way that it accompanies the narrative and visuals. Some other games use the music to tell a story in a slightly different way. Games such as Portal 2 and Flower have their soundtrack have a basic underlying theme, but as the player interacts, and the visuals change, the soundtrack dynamically changes. Music is one of the key unifying pieces of videogames, and is one of the most convincing pieces in the argument that video games can indeed be an art form. While interaction, and visuals have been changed from the conventional art norm, music has stayed the same as it has from millennia, while still evolving in other aspects.

What would an argument that video games are an art form be without the key word; “video”. The visual of videogames are what makes them what they are. The majority of video games today are essentially a gigantic stage that you, as the player, must explore or fight your way though. “In video games, the “shape” of the game, its progression, is determined be the space in which it is played (Kelman 116).” When you play a video game, you can stop and take in the environment, and in general the screen time of each environment is much greater than in other cinematic medias. In movies, you may see an extreme long shot to show the scope of the environment, and the rest of the time, you may only catch a glimpse. Conversely, in most games, you feel small compared to the scale of the scene. In this way, the environment in video games is much more important, and therefore, is a huge opening for artistic exploration. Most of the time you will take notice of the space you are exploring, and the character, despite being the most important aspect of the game, will become your secondary focal point. The environment can become a piece of the narrative, adding to the story and becoming part of a broader metaphor. Chris Melissinos writes the following on the game Portal, and how the Aperture Science test facility feels. “Portal’s environment is antiseptic, unnerving, and eventually starts to break apart at the seams; this coincides with the deterioration of  (the antagonist) GLaDOS’ personality from pleasant to sociopathic (Melissinos 171).” Games are able to tell new aspects of narrative, and use symbolism to enhance and create an intellectual experience.  

Art is to express one’s imagination, and to make one think, so this gives even a stronger idea that video games can be, or already are an art form. One video game in particular game that I feel has a selection of environments that are unforgettable and inspiring is Alice: Madness Returns; an incredibly dark take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. When designing wonderland, the creators wanted to bring certain aspects of Alice’s personality into the world. “Everything in Wonderland is amplified and mutated by Alice’s disturbed imagination, filtered through her uniquely insane understanding (McGee 73).” 

The world of videogame’s can range from beautiful to tragic, to horrifying. Each game has a different impact on the player, and the visual appearance of the inhabitants of such a world has an equal effect on the player. Months go into the design of every artistic aspect of a video game, but especial detail must go into the living or in some cases, dead people, you will meet and play as in the world. Just as costume and fashion design is an art, the creation of characters is a form of art. Games can take place in any number of time periods, and sometimes even change time periods, such as the game series Assassin’s Creed. The design of wardrobe and characters must adapt to the world and story the characters with live in. Video games have inspired fans to create real-world versions of the clothing that character’s wear in game, bringing one form of art from the video game world, and using the textile and sculpting arts to render them into existence.

Video games can be dissected into various sections, separating the art into story, sight and sound, but where they really shine, is when you recombine them into a whole. You can pick apart a painting, trying to find what the artist wanted to make you feel, but in many cases art is much simpler than it seems: artist want to simply make you feel, to experience their art. This is my final offering to the topic of video games as an art form: video games are a means to express a story, a set of emotions, and moving painting. In this way, video games are the most successful of all the arts, because they use every previously established method of expression, and compress it into a diamond.