andrewducker (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
andrewducker) wrote2010-04-21 02:57 pm
andrewducker) wrote2010-04-21 02:57 pm
Art and Computer games
If we take as a starting point that art is "a designed experience which evokes emotion*", then I think that most games focus on "excitement" as the only emotion they care about. As most highbrow people would tend to look down on that particular emotion, it's not going to persuade them over computer games artiness.
Most games don't go much further than that - but I've certainly been made happy, sad, afraid, and thoroughly involved by computer games. They haven't, generally, been as good as movies at doing so, because excitement is so much easier for computer games designers to focus on, and the bits which produce other emotions tend to be quite filmlike or booklike (depending on whether they are produced by reading dialogue or watching a cut-scene).
My definition du jour of "game" is "a process which provides a challenge for a person to overcome". If you're choosing between options which provide multiple equally "good" solutions (i.e. dialogue trees that don't affect your success level), are they really part of the game? So we're left with two parts of computer games - the bits which are challenges to be overcome (which can produce excitement and feelings of achievement), and the bits which are evoking other emotions. If you exclude those two emotions from the range which count as proper art then computer games are a mixture of interactive art and game, without any crossover. If you do include them, then games are definitely art.
If, of course, your definitions of "art" and "games" are different to mine, which they probably will be, as I only made mine up half an hour ago, then your conclusions will be different. There are a bunch of definitions of "game" <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Definitions">here</A> and art <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art#Definition_of_the_term">here</A>.
Most games don't go much further than that - but I've certainly been made happy, sad, afraid, and thoroughly involved by computer games. They haven't, generally, been as good as movies at doing so, because excitement is so much easier for computer games designers to focus on, and the bits which produce other emotions tend to be quite filmlike or booklike (depending on whether they are produced by reading dialogue or watching a cut-scene).
My definition du jour of "game" is "a process which provides a challenge for a person to overcome". If you're choosing between options which provide multiple equally "good" solutions (i.e. dialogue trees that don't affect your success level), are they really part of the game? So we're left with two parts of computer games - the bits which are challenges to be overcome (which can produce excitement and feelings of achievement), and the bits which are evoking other emotions. If you exclude those two emotions from the range which count as proper art then computer games are a mixture of interactive art and game, without any crossover. If you do include them, then games are definitely art.
If, of course, your definitions of "art" and "games" are different to mine, which they probably will be, as I only made mine up half an hour ago, then your conclusions will be different. There are a bunch of definitions of "game" <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game#Definitions">here</A> and art <A href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Art#Definition_of_the_term">here</A>.
no subject
Games have deliberately and with malice aforethought evoked emotions like joy, fear, wonder, awe, lust, shock. And lots of the mathematical wonder/curiosity I also enjoy in minimalist art or sculpture, say.
It also helps if you play a lot of games. My experience of Call of Duty or Portal would not have been the same if they were my first FPS. Similarly, I wouldn't get the same kick out of Lynch if I didn't have at least a basic understanding of some of the themes, particularly as presented in cinema, such as infidelity and deception.
Which leads to an interesting conclusion. Good art needs bad art.
no subject
I definitely agree that you need "basic" games before you can enjoy more complex ones. The first time you encounter a new concept you don't care if it's been in 3000 movies/games/books - it's still new to you, and you need to have internalised it before you can really enjoy the variations on it. The Big Lebowski is a fun movie, but even better when you realise it's a variation on a theme (the crime thriller), only inverting the main character to be entirely incompetent/passive.
no subject
There was an unexpectedly good thread on RPGnet recently about small observations that made a difference to your enjoyment of a piece of art. Like, count the black people in Friends. Or look at how Paul deliberately constructs his myth in Dune.
I just read his review. Bet he wouldn't have liked Crank either. :)
no subject
He's generally fine with violence, but when a cartoony 11 year old girl is involved it's all too much for him.