This post it's going to be a little bit different from the other's I've written, because this time I'm going to be talking about video games. This is weird because it's actually the first time that I talk about video games in this blog and I'm quite an active player, so I wonder what took me so long. But anyway, this post it's completely inspired by the whole debate surrounding the following question: Are video games art? I'm sure that all gamers would agree and I'm sure that all non-gamers would NOT agree. One of the most peculiar things about video game criticism is that people who criticize video games in the most savage of ways are people who never play them. There are people who speculate that video games are only meant to entertain and again, these are people who don't actually play video games or they are not knowledgeable players because video games have shown us again and again that they're not just about entertainment, games like Deux Ex,Grim Fandango, Journey, Mass Effect, Half-Life, Heavy Rain, Metal Gear (even tough Kojima doesn't have the same views on this) Ico, Okami, Flower,Limbo, The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, Spec Ops: The Line and many others are perfectly capable of exploring the human psych and to show beautiful landscapes and situations in which the player is not only watching but he's actually engaging with them. Of course triple A games suffer the same paradigm than hollywood blockbusters, they need to appeal to the masses ,so they have to follow a general structure and they have to stay inside the box. But for more indie or adventurous games this is not the same and they can follow or break the common gaming rules whenever they want to, they don't need to make their video games appealing to the masses, they can just use mechanics to express and create the experiences they want to. Video games like this are becoming more present because the technology is already available and accessible to different kinds of artists, that's why we are seeing all sorts of video games that seem to break the paradigm of what we previously believed in.
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The Passage of an entire life time in just five minutes[/caption]But in this post I won't be discussing this question at all because, for me this question is a no-brainer and it's not worthy to be discussed; of course, video games are art and the ones who are not able to see this are either non-gamers ,people who don't know what art is or people who don't know in which type of art to categorize it. I'm actually here to make a bolder statement. In my point of view, video games are not only an art form but they are the highest art form there is (or well, they are showing signs that they are). Of course as Dr. James Asher affirms: "Teaching is the highest art form of them all" and I completely agree but when it comes to aesthetic and visual arts; video games are the winners.
First, we need to consult our friends, the ancient Greeks, to understand what are the proper divisions of classical arts that they originally developed. Before anything else, we must understand that in the process of art there are two entities involved: The artist and the audience. According to the ancient greeks there are 2 types of fine arts: The high arts and the low arts.
- The high arts are the ones in which the audience can perceive the art only with their superior senses (which according to the greeks were sight and hearing) and there was no need to interact physically with the art. In this category we can find: Painting, Music, Architecture, Sculpture, Theater and Dancing (and I guess we could also add Film and Photography).
- The low arts are the ones in which the audience has to perceive the art with their inferior senses (which according to the greeks were taste, smell and touch) and a physical interaction from the part of the audience is mandatory. In this category we can find: Gastronomy and Perfumery.
If we are to begin to think of video games as an art form, in which of these two categories would they belong?, or maybe this distinction between art forms is already to obsolete for this era. But anyway, let's say that we are trying to classify video games in this spectrum. Soon we realize that something curious happens. Video games can fit in the category of high arts. We engage with them with our eyes and our ears but they have something different from all of the other high art forms, the audience actually engages with them, the audience has to interact with them, a feature that none of the other high art forms has. By this maybe we can consider it a low art, after all, the interaction of the audience is mandatory. But here comes another point of view to this whole "category" thing: At one point in time, people said that theater was the ultimate high art form because it involved all of the other ones such as music, dancing, architecture, painting. Then it came film, and people considered film the ultimate art form because it also included photography. Now let's look at video games, they include all of the other art forms and even more. In a video game you can find photography, music, acting, scripting, drawing/painting, architecture and also things that are not consider art forms such as programming and development of artificial intelligence. So, how can an art form (that combines all of the other high arts) be a low art? Seems like we're facing a paradox here. But this exercise makes us realize something: Video games are a complete new revolutionary art form by its own and I guess we cannot really categorize them with the old ones.
Video games are not the art of sounds, nor the art of movement nor the art of color and pigments, they are the art of experiences.
They're emulators of experiences, they create an experience and you have to engage it and live it, this is something that none other art form can perform, so why we cannot consider this the greatest art form? All art forms try to imitate or express the beauty of life, video games are capable to do this in a deeper way because in video games you have the factor of choice, you have actions and you have consequences and you have to live according to the things you've chosen, just like in real life:
And if you're still cynical about this idea, try to make a good video game yourself and you'll realize this. Or watch the process of making a good video game and you'll see everything that its require and how immensely creative these programmers need to be to work in this medium.
Video games haven't reached the goal of becoming the greatest art form or even a recognizable one yet, but everything indicates that they're just in the right path to become the highest art form, new artist are joining this medium and creating things that we have never experienced before so the possibilities are endless and let's face it, this medium is still in diapers. I would recommend you to watch Extra Credits, it's an amazing web series that will give you a completely new perspective of what video games are and everything correlated to them, it will give you a new perspective of this entire medium.
Here's the link for Loneliness: http://www.necessarygames.com/my-games/loneliness/flash
I also recommend you to watch Errant Singnal's videos, amazing video games analyzes there:
Well, this is all that I have to say right now and I would like to know what other people think about this topic, leave a comment if you have another point of view that I'm missing. This would be all for now and thanks for reading. :)
I enjoyed this. Shadow of the Colossus excels in its commitment to environmental storytelling. I found it incredible how such an "empty" world could tell so much.
ResponderEliminarThanks, in the shadow of the colossus, the enviroment and the atmosphere tells us everything that we need to know while playing. The same goes for Ico. The main storytelling devices of these games is their design and athmosphere.
ResponderEliminarFor sure, a terrific game to say the least. It is kind of ironic how games with such a simple presentation can have an incredible impact on you even years afterward as opposed to large, mass market titles which, for the most part, come and go - with few exceptions to that rule.
ResponderEliminarHi Emanuel,
ResponderEliminarthank you for your blog, I found it very interesting and cleaver. I completely agree with your thesis, I too think that "videogames" are indeed one if not THE highest art form of our time, especially because of the interaction component that shifts the entire experience of the medium forward. If you think about it, as you mentioned teaching, that too has evolved with centuries and today everybody could easily tell you that a interactive teacher who asks for feedback and make his/her students participate and engage in the process of learning, using all sorts of aids, is better than one that just reads out of a book, no matter how passionately so.
The irony in this is that, again to reference the ancient greeks, their form of teaching was highly interactive, Socrates himself encouraged everybody to question facts and challenge opinions, did they have an incredible insight, or is it that today's general public forgot what art has always really been about: communication.
In a broad sense it's the expression of feelings that reach out for others (or ourselves) to perceive. Communication opens the way to dialogue, interaction of minds. A painting, a novel, a ballet piece, they all communicate to you, but you can't have a dialogue with them, for that you have to go to source, the authors.
Then why be surprised if we say that some "videogames" move that experience further than anything else? They are a continued dialogue between the audience and the artist, during which the audience is engaged into taking decisions, changing outcomes, challenged in the realm of thought and skill in virtually any field of knowledge. The elements of the experience are not fixed, not even the outcome is, sometimes. It's as if we were both watching for the first time AND directing a theatre play at the same time.
To say these "videogames" are mind-blowing it's a huge understatement.
Now the reason why I put inverted commas around the word is not because I think that some videogames are art and others are... what then? It's because I don't think the word makes them justice. As much as XVII century sculptor and craftsmen of wooden and metal toys would be surely considered an artist of his epoque, albeit of an unusual field, so our game developers should be considered such. It's obvious that there are good games and crappy games, as much as there are good and bad novels, paintings etcetera.
I think that what shies people away from videogames is 1) accessibility of the field (there is a HUGE amount of science in videogames, they are not for everyday Joe Bloke to make, unfortunately), but that is changing now, as you said. 2) stereotype driven barriers (they are not cool because they're geeky stuff that people feel don't belong in their literary salons and their art galleries), and 3) the old classic bad apple syndrome (I'm making that up, don't know the actual name), where in a new phenomenon you always have a few bad examples that lower the standard and you can be sure that public opinion will mostly focus on them to bash and dismiss the whole category down. It happens with everything.
If I had to give it a name I would call it: ignorance.
First of all, thanks a lot for reading. I think the same thing that happenend with comic books will happen with videogames, that is, the rise of a new term that describes the videogames that are clearly more than that. In the case of comic books we now have graphic novels and I think that a new and more respectful term could be created for the games that rightly deserve it. Videogames have a terrible reputation in mainstream media and news, they are always seen as instruments for evoking violence with addictive tendencies, everytime that you see videogames in the news, is to inform something negative about them and they are never appreciated, not even a little bit. I agree with you with the stereotypes, but we also must admit that the videgame industry still needs a lot of maturity from both the videogame developers and gamers alike. Trolling, sexual discrimination and racism are all present in the gaming community, with those types of attitudes, the whole industry will never be taken seriously in any artistic term. And regarding video game developers, they must stop trying to be hollywood filmakers and start thinking about video games as a new revolutionary art form and not interactive blockbuster action films, (not that action videogames are wrong or anything but they need a new approach because they're starting to fall into the same stuff over and over again) thinking about videogames in a different way is exactly what indie developers do and that's why they've created really memorable and deep experiences. Pop music is going down, hollywood is going down, is time for videogames to rise as the freshest and dominant art form. Take care.
ResponderEliminar