Video Games Aren't Art, We're Better
jeff-vogel.blogspot.com
jeff-vogel.blogspot.com
I stopped reading when the author offered clickbait "best games of [year]" lists as evidence of the artistic accomplishment of video games. I'm totally excited by video games as a medium, but I've never seen anything that compared in creative quality to something like Pynchon.
The question is always if games even qualify as a medium by which to express art, for which the answer is of course. Once you accept it as a medium for art, there is no question of what is "better." That's just up to you.
Some of the best artistic experiences I've had have come from Portal 2, Ori and the Blind Forest, Papers Please, Okami, among many others. I'm not here to argue if Pynchon is better, to me he's not. There's no competition, because it's subjective, and a waste of an argument.
The question is whether individual video games qualify as quality or "good" art.
Unfortunately, I think the answer is generally a "no". But the potential is certainly there. It's a very new medium.
I won't get into any comparisons of books and games, but I can absolutely say that I have played games that, at the very least, can objectively (or as close to objectivity as you can get when discussing art) be considered good art.
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Also, I don't really reject the possibility of there being a fact of the matter as to the aesthetic quality of things.
I don't really affirm it either, and if it is true I'd say it is entirely permissible to have aesthetic preferences that go against the true fact of the matter as to aesthetic quality.
And if it turns out that there is no fact of the matter as to aesthetic quality, then arguments that something is of good aesthetic quality could often be transformed into explanations of why that person has those preferences, which still seems like it could be worth knowing.
So, I think it could make sense to not reject all arguments for a thing being of good aesthetic quality
Try Undertale. Or Planetscape: Torment. Or Dwarf Fortress, but that one is a huge time investment to even begin to get into it.
If you are saying that Dwarf Fortress is itself the product of a jam session, then I understand your point; I simply disagree.
Both are art in my opinion, just different kinds.
Same as a play scenario is art, and a play performed on a stage with audience participation is art as well, but different.
The question is, are they worth spending time on? I do spend a lot of time on certain video games, and I have my doubts.
It's sort of like someone saying a book was so compelling that they read it in one sitting. Yeah, okay, so the plot sucked you in, but are you happy afterwards that you did that?
The trick is recognizing these diminishing returns and separating them from your enjoyment of the experience.
It may sound glib, but I find it much more worthwhile than writing comments on Hacker News only to experience the stress of having them nitpicked by pedants trying to score imaginary internet points. We're still doing it, but I don't think it's worth my time. Rare is the comment reply that changes my mind and I bet that goes for most people. I'm just a masochist I guess.
Last year was special though. I really can't describe how impactful The Witcher 3 was for me. It really opened my eyes to just how great of an art form video games can be.
I don't regret a single moment I played that game and its expansions.
Why did I have to read this comment ... ?
:(
Better story, and no craptastic combat system to struggle with. Wohoo.
It's that good.
It's uneven - some sections are significantly stronger than others - but the strong ones are incredibly so.
Uh, yes.
Why wouldn't I be?
Should art not be compelling? Enjoyable? Must it necessarily be "challenging" (whatever that means) to be "worthwhile" (whatever that means)?
Frankly, the real problem with the author is they give a crap what people think about games as a medium.
Art. Not art. Who cares? When Dickens was writing, he was writing to entertain a mass audience. At the time I'm sure there was someone somewhere complaining that since it wasn't written in Latin and thus accessible to folks it wasn't worthwhile.
And in the end it just doesn't matter.
So enjoy your games or books or comics or whatever captures you and let others do the same. Life is far too short to waste time giving a crap about stuff like this.
Yes, you can use your free time however you like. It's still a decision everyone needs to make, somehow.
But do it based on what you want and what you value, and let others do the same.
Wasting time being concerned if someone else thinks what you're doing or reading or playing is important or valuable is a silly waste of time that could be better spent actually living.
I don't agree that thinking about what you want to do with your life is a waste of time. I also don't think you need to decide on this alone - talking to other people about it seems quite okay.
You can argue the gaming subculture shouldn't care what people outside of it think, but it's too often been picked on and used as a scapegoat for societal ills. Ignoring that kind of 'opinion' is a bad idea.
I don't think gaming has been a specific target of moral panic for 10-15 years. It's far too engrained in our culture, now. I'd argue the Internet has taken its place in that respect.
Hell, I'd say the pervasive belief that gaming is somehow under attack is the exact kind of victimhood you're talking about.
Gaming is accepted. It's here. It may not be taken seriously by some, but to that I repeat: who cares?
Fun fact: googling for "video games mass shootings" finds nothing of substance, other than the odd article about Hatred, which is a very specific case.
Secondly, you apparently looked at your search results with your eyes closed. I typed in the same terms and got some Christian news, as expected, which was published this year [0]. They're half the country (in the US at least), so don't tell me it doesn't count when we're talking about people attempting to blame it on video games. I also got an article by CBS News talking about the 'complex link' between video games and mass shootings, published in 2013 [1]. An article from Fox News (again you may not like them but they're a huge player in the cultural space) published in 2013 [2]. And an article that links through to a piece written by a member of the gaming press lamenting the presence of violence in video games in the wake of the Orlando Shooting [3]. These are all in the first 10 results from the search you claimed to do.
Getting really crazy, I changed the search to "violent video games mass shootings". Advanced level stuff I know. In addition to some of the aforementioned, this also yields a piece from NBC news (video, requires flash) [4], an op-ed from CNN saying not to link video games to mass shootings (the author didn't just wake up one day and write that, they wrote it because it was happening), which also has links to 'research' claiming there's a link between violence and video games [5] and another piece from Time, written in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings [6].
Actually using some knowledge of matters, I searched for "Call of Duty Mass Shooting" and got this same article that keeps showing up at the top of the search results, from Charisma news (I've never heard of them but Google wants me to read their stuff apparently) [7], an article from CNN written in 2012 [8], an article from the Guardian written in 2012 [9], and several articles published in the Daily Mail [10] [11].
That should be plenty of reading material from within, not only the last 10 years, but the last five. So let's move on.
For some reason you rule out Hatred. Why? It was a game that got banned from Steam briefly for being too violent and depicting playing a mass killer. People were worried it would beget more violence of the kind depicted in the game.
And of course there's the ongoing battles with Grand Theft Auto. Banned in Target Australia, many news stories having been run about those games. San Andreas got a lot of attention in particular.
Lastly, I wouldn't even know where to begin getting you local newscasts pitching the same tired arguments, but there are plenty of them.
> I've never seen a serious news article making a claim like that in the last ten years.
We're talking about the larger culture looking to blame video games for societal ills. Why does it need to be a 'serious' news article? If half the country aligns with Fox News, and Fox News runs a piece decrying video game violence, and politicians push legislation on these ideas, does it then still matter that you don't consider Fox News to be a serious outlet? Also, I distinctly recall a clip from the Daily Show where Jon Stewart is objecting to the latest (at the time) Mortal Kombat game. No idea how to find that.
[0]: http://www.christiantoday.com/article/mass.killers.in.us.all...
[1]: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/violent-video-games-and-mass-vio...
[2]: http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2013/09/12/training-simulation-m...
[3]: http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/12/11914658/electronic-arts-e...
[4]: http://www.nbcnews.com/id/7288381/ns/us_news-crime_and_court...
[5]: http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/20/opinion/ferguson-video-games/
[6]: http://ideas.time.com/2012/12/20/sandy-hook-shooting-video-g...
[7]: http://www.charismanews.com/culture/52651-14-mass-murders-li...
[8]: http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/19/tech/gaming-gadgets/games-viol...
[9]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/19/anders-breivik...
[10]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1226588/Call-Duty-Po...
[11]: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2153218/Violent-vide...
Video games are kind of like musical instruments in that they're an artistic object designed to be used and "gotten lost in". You may or may not consider them art in their own right, but the real point is to play them. We've spent a long time figuring out how to make art with musical instruments, but making art with games is very new. With fewer constraints and the right game design, I think technical performances like speedruns and TASes could develop into something like a true art form.
A musical instrument is much more direct. Want to play grumpy and loud? You play grumpy and loud. Want to play soft and singingly? You can do that. Every nuance is controlled by you, down to the finest grain. It might sometimes not sound exactly like you want it, but then you can still train to get it right. There's no limits.
Videogames on the other hand are much more digital/binary. You can't swing your sword in the exact way that you want to swing it. Instead you usually just either swing it or don't swing it.
You might get something akin to a melody, for example in an RPG you build your character's story by choosing to swing your weapon or not (as well as other such things), but a melody by itself, without artistic interpretation, is hardly art in the same sense.
Speaking as a formerly avid and still somewhat interested gamer, and also as an amateur tuba player who misses his horn, I really can't agree with you here. Both forms of expression have value. But they are not really comparable with one another.
I'm by no means professional guitar player, but I do play for fun quite a lot. I also love multiplayer starcraft 2 because of the same things I love guitar playing. It already feels like instrument to me. It's a way to express yourself in a social environment.
You can play macro, choosing one of the safe buildorders and building on that adding small changes in response to your opponent and sometimes on a whim or to throw him out of a loop. You can play risky focusing on early attack and better control of individual units. There's hundreds of proven tactics you can build upon, and with experience of few hundred games you can invent your own (most probably not viable on proffesional level but who cares).
You can switch from one to another tactics mid-game trying to surprise your opponent. Even things as simple as controlling your army have very deep possibilities of customization, because there's tousands of factors and not enough time to focus on everything, so it's a balancing act. Professional players often have their recognizable style (I love how Nerchio outflanks terran oponents, it's magic - everybody knows he does this and yet they fall for it time and again). Korean bio-terrans splitting their marines make one of the cheapest unit kill the units that are expected to be a counter to them (high templars, banelings), all while growing economy, harrasing, etc. Other players prefer chess-like mech playstyle, where you set up lines of defensive tanks and slowly move them along maps - it's like very slow tango - one player moves his tank forward while the other has no scan, the other player must move his units back a little or counterattack, but can't go too far or his units will be killed by the other tanks of the first player. Eventually one player makes a mistake and the army turns to shreds in a few seconds. Or you can just abuse the immobility and attack in a different place while the enemy army moves (but it tends to lead to both players killing each other base in parralel, and whoever is faster wins).
Starcraft is 100 decisions every second, the most important decision is "what decisions are the most important now". And there are lots of viable ways to do these decisions.
There is stuff people do on the higher steps of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (i.e. spending time on other things than survival). Some of it is about creative self actualization and self improvement, other stuff is just about enjoying one self.
The best non-survival stuff improves the individual and provides epiphanies. The worst kind creates repetitive non-value adding habits which people are compelled to do.
Video games are a medium which provide both. Modern video games are packed with industrial art and design. Some provide a playground for creativity. Others provide incredible unforgettable scenes. And others are just slot machines. Is a slot machine art? What's the Venn diagram of the sets 'art' and slot machines like? Which one is truthier statement - "All video games are art" or "some video games are art".
I have no answers. All I know is that claiming "video games are/are not art" is silly. Maybe it's about being jealous of the fame and meager stipends artists get. Or creating a defence againsr nasty relatives who conside video games a waste of time?
But even then I often find that the addiction outlives the reward. If I play a great game for an hour, it's engaging and satisfying. Two hours in, I may be tired and frustrated, but the addictive quality keeps me going past the point where I ought to take a break.
For me, the experience often ends up a net negative. I play longer than I intend to, neglect other activities, and am left feeling restless and unsatisfied.
Sadly more and more games are multi platform and even if they allow you to save it's often only outside/after of a mission, or even if they allow you to save at any point, if you load the save game you are reset to the last invisible save point and have to replay it from there. That's the most off-putting experience and I am pretty sure it also manipulates people to play longer than the want, and as many don't know better (don't even know the free saving possibility from PC) they don't have a bad taste about it.
Quick save and quick load also is or was part of popular PC games, I mentioned above. It allows one to try out something, if it turns out that it was a really bad idea, I can go back and try it in a different way - something that's invaluable in Deus Ex 1 and RTS like Age of Empire series. With console games like Uncharted series or GTA series it's not possible, and I wish it would be possible (at least on PC were the disc space for save games is let's say near infinite). A really cool feature that I know only from Codemaster racing games (and Braid) is the playback feature, that allows you to go back in time (1-2 min) and try it again in a different way. I wish most games would come with such a playback feature, it's really great and useful. And games could limit it to eg 5 playback activation per level like Codemaster games (depends on easy/medium/hard level).
It comes from governments inability to censor art.
The whole thing really kicked off a few years ago when famous movie critic Roger Ebert stated that computer games are not art (while at the same holding that movies obviously where). After that everybody and their dog has been on a crusade to prove him wrong.
But unlike many encounters with art, DOOM never changed my worldview.
DOOM only has an excuse plot to make you go and rip out demon intestines, which is the main feature of the game. With KotoR, the story is.
Perhaps not, but the political narrative of the Deus Ex series has certainly got me thinking on issues I hadn't considered before.
It's a prevalent theme amongst Dark Souls players in particular.
To me it is a historical artifact. Just like the author mentions of games, it transports my life to that of a child in post war Japan. I have not played any game that gives an experience like that. I am actually quite a big fan of fantasy, science fiction and fiction in general, but this movie blows me away by how real it is (despite containing a bus made out of a cat).
I think video games have a lot of potential, but generally lack focus. In fact the long running nature of games and ability to explore everything works against them. The more freedom you give the user, the harder it is to focus them. They push the boundaries and find that there is nothing behind them. Alternatively, they are locked into a perspective unnaturally.
Video games are a great medium for art, but I think there is still a lot of virgin territory to explore.
Not all art is passive though. There has been performance and interactive art that can be pretty engaging. "Sleep No More", for instance. So I think the OP needlessly argues about the popular connotations of the word "art"
That said I completely agree with him that games such as "Last of Us" are not the ideal when it comes to video game as art. Just because a game's cutscenes can compete with a feature film in terms of theatrical quality does not mean it's great art as a video game. Nor does lacking cinematic quality disqualify a game from being art.
So far my favorite artistic epiphany from a game, not including games that shoot for being "art" more than being a playable game, came from the original "Portal".
There's a segment late in the game where you're asked to kill a inanimate object that you've been carrying around for most of the game. You know that it's inanimate. Yet as the narrator taunts you, I was tense the entire way because I was almost convinced it was a living breathing thing, solely because of the length of time I had been interacting with it. I half expected it to scream when I killed it. When nothing happened (I think) I laughed out of sheer relief. It was a feeling much more intense than watching a horror movie, and the only reason it was so intense was because of the interactive role I had -- both in carrying it and then killing it. That's the kind of unique artistic experience that a game can have that's not easily replicated in other mediums, certainly not film or books.
Limbo, Papers Please, I Am Bread, Please Don't Touch Anything, are all good examples of games I would also consider art. These games are genuinely different and many of them are considered incredibly enjoyable by most people.
If you want something which really is just art and not much of a game, The Cat And The Coup is free on Steam. Frog Fractions 2 is also free and you can find it using Google (you have to play the whole game to understand).
For the most part I think gamers and developers are a bit sensitive about their medium, trying to argue it's "art" because it has a positive connotation. I think they should just enjoy it for what it is, as most games are designed to be fun instead of something else. That said, I think VR might try to change this. A friend of mine at Oculus mentioned how it's the very early stages, comparing VR to movies from ~100 years ago. Back then they just filmed plays, as they didn't realize what they could do with the medium. I'm sure VR will have lots of typical blockbusters following generic formulas, but I think indie developers (of which there are more every day) will build some pretty incredibly stuff in the coming years.
That the gameplay is actually fun is what makes PP shine to me. If it weren't fun, then you wouldn't put in the time needed to feel like an overworked border guard.
* Doom was only considered art by some people to prevent the German or British government from censorship. Remember, Wolfenstein is illegal in Germany because of the swastika, and Doom was banned in Germany for over 17 years for glorification of violence to protect minors. I.e. it could be sold and used, but it was illegal to advertise it. Similar to the movie "Starship Troopers" which was an artistic farce, not even a commercial game.
* The art aspect of Doom officially came with "Arsdoom". Only this game mod was considered art. By art historians and such.
Many people seem to constantly yearn to define some sort of video game literary canon. To earn that sort of platform takes many more years and a society more willing to accept video games as valid emotional experiences and/or effective question posers. They are not ideal for either, they are ideal for producing addictive feedback loops. The author here is keen to put these loops under the same banner as Kubrick or Tolstoy, presumably to justify his investment to himself as much as anyone else.
Loving Doom is nothing to be ashamed of; you can love Tarkovsky films too.
Games like NBA, FIFA and others follow a known formula and stick to it. They are more akin to artisanry than art.
• Dwarf Fortress – not so much a learning curve as a learning cliff the depth of Valles Marineris
• Kerbal Space Program – also rather steep learning curve, and needs mods to achieve proper depth, but really deep with them in place
• If you haven't seen it already, OpenXcom is a proper remake/port of the original game and just makes it run properly on modern machines (no more DOSbox!), fixes the bugs (no more 80 items limit) and gives it a modding API.
It plays exactly as the original, just with less technical limitations, like on resolution: http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/42932168557625...
Civilization 5 is not even in the top 20, and that's just steam games.