Collin and I have been reading and talking about the several stories lately discussing whether games are art. As a game player and someone who spends a good chunk of my free time making a game, I find that discussion very interesting.
I think I can sum up my thoughts pretty quickly. I think Collin agrees with this, but I’ll let him chime in if he wants. I see two issues: 1) Can games be art? and 2) Are the games we see on the market now art?
#1 seems easy to answer. Sure, games can be art. I guess Ebert may disagree with me, but whatever. I’m not sure how to really define “art” but Wikipedia says art is creating something “with the intention to create an experience for others.” I’d say that is very much what creating a game is all about.
#2 is trickier. I would say that most games we have now share about the same artistic value as the movie Independence Day. Maybe it was fun and maybe it was worth seeing, but I’m certainly not going to watch it again. It didn’t change my world or shed any new perspective on life or whatever. Playing the latest FPS might be fun and I might recommend the game to a friend, but I usually play those once. They don’t make me think, they don’t change my view of the world. However, as many people in the articles linked to above point out, it’s silly to judge the potential of the medium based on a few examples. One of the links says we shouldn’t judge movies as art based on “Wild Hogs”…
I have seen little glimmers of “art” in games though. For example, I remember just being speechless the first time I saw the D-Day level of the first Medal of Honor game. While now the graphics look a little dated, it still has the same feel as the D-Day scene in Saving Private Ryan but it was interactive. Perhaps reading about it in books and seeing a very realistic depiction in Saving Private Ryan helped make it what it was, but that was definitely an impressive level.
I am also almost ashamed to say that I found the ending to Unreal 2 to be very impressive. I’m not sure if I should just say what happens or not. It was really just another shooter. The gameplay wasn’t great. I seem to remember the graphics were impressive at times, but at least on my machine it didn’t run well at all. However, of all the games I’ve ever played, that might be the only one that I actually remember the ending. As I recall, it actually made me feel something for the characters. Of course, that was like 4 years ago and I haven’t played it since.
Several of the stories above talk about games as a medium being in their infancy, and they compare games now to early movies. I find that really exciting. Imagine a game with the power and capability of a good movie. Of course, just there is still a place for a good action movie or funny comedy, I don’t expect “just for fun” games will ever go away. However, I am excited to see how game evolve. Even though we are by no means doing anything groundbreaking in Crown and Cutlass, I’m excited to be involved in this process in some way.
On a side note, the Gamasutra article linked to from that /. story includes a quote by someone from Silicon Knights about what they call “Engagement Theory”. I was interested in hearing more about that idea, so I tried to google it. I finally found them talking about it a little more in this blog post. First off, I’m not too impressed by the Silicon Knights “guiding principle”. I mean, is that really a breakthrough? It seems obvious that the better all the parts of a game are, the better overall experience the player will have. That is to say, even though a player can have a good experience with poor sound, all else being equal if the game had better sound it would be a better game. Brilliant! Beyond just the cheesiness of expressing that in a formula, it seems like that does nothing to address things like what “better” gameplay or graphics means. Does Wind Waker or Gears of War have “better” graphics? I’m not sure, they are going for different ideas.
Anyway, beyond frustration with their “theory”, I found about a million more links to the already established (but totally unrelated) “Engagement Theory”. I find it frustrating when people hijack phrases that are already in use. I try hard not to do that, so if you notice we are using a phrase that is already in use somewhere else please let me know…