Fantastic Blognanza!

Does anybody actually care about video games/art? Because it seems like not many people are actually reading these entries. Is it because they’re too long, or that you’re just not interested? Please let us know!

Either way, this is my response to Greg’s response to my original post about video games as art:

I think the analogy of video games to film (before TV, of course) and even to theater (before movies, of course) is pretty apt: when a new medium comes along, the older one gets elevated to the status of “Art” an the new one to “entertainment.”

On what people interpret as “Art”: I think it is less important that somebody, somewhere interpret video games as art than it is for there to be:

1. A general consensus that some video games are art (as, obviously, some but not all movies are art)
and/or
2. The institutionalization of video games as art

Prime examples of such institutions for film were the Academy and competitive film festivals. Currently, there are institutionalized forums for video games, such as E3, but the focus of E3 is on entertainment and industry: therefore, not on art.

On interactivity and art: that’s a pretty lame excuse. I don’t have much experience with “interactive art,” but I’d be willing to wager that somewhere there is an exhibit that is not purely a gimmick or a novelty. Furthermore, there were aspects of theater that have since been dropped that were fairly interactive, though usually in the direction of the audience to the players. Is the Blue Man Group art? That’s pretty interactive, though I’m not willing to argue for it either way.

On Myst and Shadow of the Colossus: I also haven’t played Myst for a very long time, so long that I don’t feel qualified to judge it, either. On the other hand, Myst specifically did come to mind while I was writing. I admit that Myst was beautiful, but I don’t think the fact that its game mechanic combined “infinite exploration” with “un-negotiable rules of advancing” made a sufficient emotional impact nor a sufficient commentary on the State of Things. I would really have to replay it to think about that… I guess the same thing goes for Shadow of the Colossus, though I couldn’t really get into that, and I wasn’t really feeling the story when I played it… so I only beat the first two or three Collosi.

On cut scenes/glorified film: Wouldn’t reducing review to merely replaying cut scenes reduce the video game to a sort of “unlockable” movie? I don’t think so. There is, or should be an emotional response from the gamer to player-influenced/driven/created/whatevs events in the game: if there isn’t, I would be willing to claim that the particular game is not art. (There has to be more than just that, though…) Assuming those emotions were retained during the review of the cut scenes, I think it would take on an aspect foreign to film.

On Eternal Darkness: Yes, it was eerie… but that you had a sanity bar (you DID have a sanity bar, didn’t you..?) significantly detracted from the impact of the “crazy” scenes, though they were still often discomforting… but minimally impactful; I hardly remember specific ones now.

Etc.: I think video games certainly have the potential to be art. They could, with difficulty, but immensely meaningful and troubling. A game could chronicle the player’s gleeful descent into depravity, a route which the player has the full capacity to reject, and only too late does the player realize the disturbing nature of his actions. On the other hand, many gamers enjoy being bad, which could significantly detract from such an experience. It would have to be carefully crafted, and I think that, in the end, your character would have to die. Perhaps it would be a tragedy.