Before I get to the core of this post, I apologize if some of it sounds like cultural pessimism, it is actually meant to be the opposite.
A while ago I’ve read about Roger Ebert’s claim that games aren’t art, which was followed by many angered reactions by the gaming community, including many people who didn’t quite seem to get what he said. He later relativized it (in this blog entry).
Ebert’s approach is based on his personal experience, how the game involves him and if the characters make him care, regardless of the overall concept etc. The problem with this approach is that it is far from being academic, yet it is comparable to Roland Barthes’ “Camera Lucida”, about photography.
Yesterday I watched the ending credits of the latest entry of the Sherlock Holmes franchise and thought they look so different from all the current games (at least the ones I know), just because of slight contrast changes and color modifications (so that the overlapping surfaces get have the respective opposite color, so that there is a certain compositional rhythm etc.).
I’ll come to the part of my little epiphany that could easily be misunderstood: I do actually think that as of now, games aren’t really art. We have perhaps the 4th or 6th pioneer generation (well, I haven’t read any literature about this so I couldn’t tell), and we already have achieved a lot, but we didn’t reach the point yet where games are actual art. My reasoning is different though - I’m 20 and I’ve played at least one game of every genre (including The Graveyard, “a visual poem”!); however I agree that the mere act of playing itself isn’t art, neither is making a game. Just like most Mangas aren’t art simply because it was Manga (which is why most art teachers don’t consider kids talented that can only draw Pikachu but nothing else. It’s like claiming that every single snapshot is art, or an oil painting. Most of it is just shit, but thanks to our stupefying pop culture the art market is as brainless as ever).
Let’s take a look at what art does and what video games don’t.
1) Video games aren’t part of public discourse and they don’t cause any debate aside from the question whether they can make loners and neglected people run amok (CSS), or if they cause people to be addicted (WoW), or if they use “state-of-the-art”-technology (LA Noire). A game’s plot needs to be more profound, and they need to stop imitating Hollywood blockbusters (Heavy Rain was basically a shallow Who-Dunnit where you could switch between the characters, even if the technology was stunning) or TV shows (The Wire or The Sopranos, or even Breaking Bad can be interpreted as a portrayal of the perverted American Dream, same for GTA).
One could argue that’s one of the reasons why movies based on video games suck, apart from the fact that you can’t identify with the character. The movie is predictable because it tries too hard to be like the game that tries to be like a movie. To summarize, dare to make the stories (= the superficial action) of your game enable your visuals (= the “subtle” action) to prompt more questions than it answers. The average video game’s plot doesn’t let a lot of room for interpretation, neither do its visuals.
2) Video games look all the same to me. Now that is another blunt statement and if it offends you, please read further before you post. I think that currently games just lack the artistic variety that is already possible. Games either try to be “photorealistic” like Assassins’ Creed or FIFA or most ego-shooters, or “stylized”, like most hidden-object-games. The former is typically a criterium for games that are part of a larger franchise, and it depends on cutting-edge technology. It’s great that these companies keep researching (even though they usually hold back a lot of the stuff they already have planned for the next game to make us buy their products), but such games simply fail at being what they try to be because 3d models still aren’t still the same as photos, if you use a normal computer. It’s a bit like Plato’s “idea-shadows”. You know what the 3d modeller tried to do, but youre constantly reminded that his technological capacities are still too limited for it. As a gamer, I find that a little frustrating. That doesn’t say these games would be a bad thing, but they aren’t anything that could be considered art. Drafts perhaps.
The other category, “stylized” means that you basically hire some wannabe-artist who can provide you with pseudo-cartoony “artwork”. To put this into perspective, just find “game concept”-images on google. It’s difficult to verbalize, but I’ll try nonetheless - after all that is the purpose of this post. You’ll basically get the same results, over and over again. Robots/people with cone-shaped legs, small bodies, big heads, large eyes, often next to no details, the same generic face expressions, and either everything is round, or everything is angular - but it’s all superficial. This trend isn’t limited to video games, it applies for TV shows as well.
Just go compare
McCay’s humble first animation attempt,
or Hergé’s Tintin,
or Lotte Reiniger,
or one of the old Superman-themed Fleischer Cartoons
to stuff like
(while we are already talking about DC heroes…) Batman:The Animated Series, which has been called the “best animation series of all time”, according to Wikipedia (regardless if the plots aren’t as naive as in the 40s/50s, its “art” is still horrible compared to the Superman films),
or Family Guy (regardless if it’s actually funny),
or the hyperrealistic yet completely meaningless spectacle Spielberg called a Tintin film, that resembles more a hit-and-run game than a movie, bears no artistic significance and is the complete opposite of everything Hergé accomplished with his “ligné claire” (reducing things to say something and challenge the readers as opposed to Spielberg’s embellishing to say nothing and make the viewers forget the whole thing after a day or two.)
One could say I’m focusing too much on AAA games here, but the problem is that most Unity developers seem to imitate them (with cheaper means), instead of doing something completely different the Unity engine is already capable of.
I’m not just railing against a cultural decay here, but think about alternative sources of inspiration that seem to have been forgotten. Why not try a game that looks like Sempé or Ronald Searle, or Gerald Scarfe (I’d be the first to buy “Pink Floyd - The Wall - The Official Game”)? Even if you aren’t as talented as any of those, please put more effort into it. Or even something impressionist/surreal (Monet-like Textures, Magritte/Dali-like worlds…there are so many things that haven’t been tried yet, or at least not successfully).
Speaking of Tintin, at the same time TV shows and (action) movies now seem to imitate a video games’ formerly unique characteristics (cameras attached to the main protagonists even during action scenes, wide angle shots, or the text snippets that are integrated in the scenes of BBC’s Sherlock, as if the viewer had a HUD.)
Video games should use the technology, not celebrate it without having anything else to offer.
3) Thanks to the internet, there is no such thing as an art market for video games, where you have only one or two copies to sell. That is a huge advantage to get rewarded for your work, I think. You need to travel to New York to see the MoMA in all its glory.
4) There seems to be next-to-no academic foundation. People in the game industry perhaps know what the Mona Lisa is and some even have an art background, but being good at 3d modelling doesn’t mean you’re a talented artist, neither that you can sell your games and make a living of it. Games are only art if there’s a concept behind it other than making money, if it’s actually thought-provoking, profound, and if the “graphics” are part of the whole.
5) As far as I am concerned, most game communities are missing an opportunity here. There are so many forums and discussion boards, but the basically 50% of the topics are dick-size comparisons in one form or another. Yet they are such a great chance to have sophisticated debates about questions that were raised by the “ideal game” I have tried to outline. I don’t know if this comes automatically with the “ideal game” or if some kind of moderator would need to get the ball rolling. I know I am exaggerating. What matters is that it’s a huge difference from anything we have seen so far. There will always be idiots, but maybe it could make the world a little smarter (e.g. “He’s so depressed his dreams look like something Goya could have painted” instead of “wow the final boss is total badass!!!111!!”).
6) Same as 2), but for the linkability, rationality and likeliness of characters and gameplay instead of art. Everything on this topic has already been said in this Guardian article by Charlie Brooker. I’d add that ithis is one of the reasons for many people to distinguish between virtual and real world, so they can use the internet as some kind of sandbag, and most of contemponary games are entitled to support that notion, although it is counterproductive if games want to be accepted as art.
Disclaimer: I don’t want to promote so-called “edu-tainment” here. I advocate games that parenthecally educate.
To illustrate this, watch this and pay attention to all the scientific remarks that concern crocodiles…
(yeah, I realize it is a little over the top)
(I hope this was halfway comprehensible…I apologize if it wasn’t)
