Art and Computer games

[andrewducker]

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>.

Comments

[broin.livejournal.com]

How are you differentiating (and why?) between those portions of what makes for a gamey experience?

You don't see art by just opening your eyes. You have to throw yourself in and hope for a reward. Isn't that the same as, say, moving across a map and experiencing melancholy (cf Shadow of the Collosus)?

[andrewducker]

Because those bits feel qualitatively different to me, so it makes sense, in my head, to differentiate between them.

Exploration doesn't feel as gamish as combat, for instance, to me.

[broin.livejournal.com]

They're different parts of the experience, sure. I don't see how that's important. Let's see if we can tease this out...

Take Portal. You've played it to hell and back, right?

Portal is a very good jumping game. Pow pow jump jump. I'd suggest that what makes it art, though, are the blacker-than-black script, bleakly clean level design, hints of backstory, and GladOS as a satire of lots of end bosses. Even the bit about the button. The game knows it's just a button.

Altogether, you've got art. Every time the game struggles (so confidently) against the typical and the ordinary, it's art. The individual pieces are good, and the jumping is good, but they give you a reason to jump.

This seems no different to me looking at a piece of sculpture. Sculpture's quite a good example, actually, as there's often an assumption that the audience's position in space relative to the piece matters. As does the light, say. You need to explore the piece, in a sense.

[andrewducker]

It comes down to the same thing as whether architecture is art. And some people feel that the basic "there's a wall holding the ceiling up" bits aren't, but the stuff you plaster over the walls and paint on the ceiling can be. I think I feel the same way - the jumping bit isn't art, but the script bit is.

It's all artificial definitions in the end - "art" is a feeling in people's heads.

[broin.livejournal.com]

When you first start to use your portal skills to escape, was that an experience with artistic qualities?

[andrewducker]

Not to me.

Which isn't to say that it wouldn't be to some people.

[broin.livejournal.com]

So when you defined art as a designed experience, are you saying the design is irrelevant and the emotion it evokes is the crucial thing?

[andrewducker]

The design is vitally important, insofar as it is what provokes the experience.

And also, that there is intent. A sunset isn't art - because it's not designed, it just happened*.

*This opinion to be revised once we reach levels of tech necessary to design sunsets. I'm looking forward to voting for my favourites at the yearly award ceremony.

[broin.livejournal.com]

That's Iceland getting a head start on the technology. :D

When I get back, I'm going to run some deliberately artistic RPGs for you.

[andrewducker]

RPGs aren't Computer Games though - they definitely evoke a very wide range of emotions, and the mechanical gamist aspect tends to be a lot lower in most games than it is in most computer games. As your focus tends not to be on the mechanical side of things that'd give you a high art quotient :->

[broin.livejournal.com]

Hehe!

But you have it backwards. I focus on the mechanics in order to produce art.