Should video games be considered an artform? It is a debate which is endlessly entertaining – with the emphasis on endless. So perhaps it is not surprising that in the pursuit of ease I often settle on the Jaggeresque position – it’s only rock and roll but I like it. But deep down I know I appreciate games more seriously than that, and I believe other people could too.
Let’s start with a rough and relevant bit of history. The first video games were born out of advances in computing roughly forty years ago. You may note that minus a couple of fads like furbies and the internet, this prehistoric world was not too dissimilar from our own. Crucially, the world was still ruled by consumerism.
So like the 20th century film and music industries, the video game industry aimed to sell its product not to the elite, but to the masses who gobbled up entertainment. Of course, unlike those other industries, which ostensibly bastardised pre-established art forms, video games were characterised from the outset as crude entertainment. Due to this primary function, games were considered utterly distinct from the aesthetically concerned world of art.
Since then the game industry has grown to overtake its 20th century rivals. Pac-Man’s handful of kitsch sprites and soundtrack of bloops and bleeps apparently paved the way for audiovisual feasts complete with photorealistic graphics and soundtracks recorded with full orchestras. Veritable armies of techno-savvy creatives are drafted in to produce today’s bombastic video games, so it would surely hold to reason that video games have become more artistic?
Unfortunately, the debate is not that simple. After all, many of the biggest names in the business hardly smack of artistic excellence. In spite of tremendous budgets and undeniable visual feats, Call of Duty still boils down to the mindless culling of virtual combatants in their hundreds.
Meanwhile FIFA is identical to football on the telly, except you’ve got a bit more hope in influencing your team to win. But this is hardly the whole story. Games have also delivered us to crumbling underwater cities (Bioshock) and steampunk worlds rendered in gorgeous impressionist style (Dishonored).
These games are surely more worthy of canonisation for their exquisite world-building, but that is not to say they aren’t problematic. In fact because these games are artistically laudable they help reveal the issues that games face when seeking a higher status as art. Both games are derivatives of the first person shooter (FPS) — meaning that at their core they both involve you viewing the world down the barrel of a gun and avoiding death... but mostly by dealing it out in vast quantities.
Sure, Dishonored might let you sneak around and avoid fights, but the point is that each game is very much defined by either shooting things or, if you so choose, making great efforts not to shoot things.
Here genre tropes fundamentally limit the experiences that such games can convey. They practically ensure that artistic achievement will come across either as an addendum or a thinly veiled excuse (for shooting things). In other words, artistic purity is often jeopardised by genres and their associated gameplay mechanics which dominate the overall experience.
This is a rather large problem because genre is arguably more important to video games than it is to the other mediums which straddle the art/entertainment divide. Typically, genres simply serve as helpful labels for consumers. They help me know what I will enjoy. However, while I am entirely capable of listening all the way through a Oneohtrix Point Never album without any knowledge of experimental electronic music, the first time I play a shooter I might end up struggling with controls, confused by seemingly arbitrary limitations and ultimately end up frustrated. I might not get past the third level.
Essentially, video games demand an active rather than a passive role from the player and this results in barriers to entry and barriers to enjoyment. How has the industry sought to overcome these barriers? By relying on a great deal of familiarity and then dressing it up in a different costume. It’s totally understandable, but you can’t say it doesn’t hinder the medium’s chances at achieving respect as an artform.
But wait, that’s a bit damning, and wasn’t I meant to be arguing in favour of games receiving your artistic attention? Well here’s the good news: The real take-away is not that games cannot be an art form, but that if games seek that lofty status they must do so wholly. Gameplay (the fashion in which player actually interacts with the game) must stand up to being subjected to the magnifying glass in unison with more typical artistic elements.
Take Darwinia. The player is put in god-like role and tasked with saving a species of evolutionary AI from a virus which is corrupting their virtual existence. S/he is presented with a beautiful take on digital a life cycle in which the souls of dead Darwinians drift up to their heaven, glowing like stars, to later be reprogrammed and reincarnated.
But what really completes the game is how, contrary to your typical strategy underling, each little Darwinians acts semi-autonomously, lending credence to the argument that they are worth protecting.
What’s more, video games have the unique advantage of interactivity, which turns out to be a pretty nifty trump card. As proponents have long touted, they are able to involve their audience, and doing so surely enhances their experience.
For example, 2013′s Antichamber set players to work solving puzzles in an Escher-like world of ‘Non-Euclidean’ (read: makes no sense) geometry. Think about that for a second. There’s looking at an Escher artwork, and there’s being invited into a world which breaks our fundamental conceptions of space. That is plainly ludicrous! It will surely spur a revolution! Who let this happen?!
Answer: No one did. Digital distribution has significantly lowered the costs of putting out a game, so a plethora of small development studios have formed in the knowledge that they can completely eschew the traditional big publishers. So alongside an admittedly large dollop of retro fetishism, these nimble ‘indie’ devs are able to take risks that the giants – what with share holders to satisfy – ‘can’t afford’.
Try and tell that to Jonathan Blow, who self-financed his damnably clever platformer Braid. It is surely the perfect example of an art game: Not only does it do a great job of breaking down gaming’s classic and too-often patronising ‘save the princess’ motivation, it also manages to weave themes of regret into its story as well as its gameplay with a hefty dose of time-manipulation.
The indie scene is proving to be a veritable breeding ground of art-games since auteurship can exist unstifled. There is no need to make concessions to the suits and visions need only be communicated across a handful of developers.
If I were to deem one more art game to be worthy of your attention I would pick Dear Esther, a particularly atmospheric game which uses tricks typically employed by linear FPSes to subtly guide players through an explorative journey in the Hebrides. Starting out with the most lifelike environment I have ever seen in a game, the player’s environment become increasingly surreal as the narrator’s contributions become mired in hallucination. It is an experience that is hard to quantify, but is also one I’ll never forget.
Of course certain commentators have questioned whether taking a stroll on an island with minimal interaction can truly constitute a game. Did I mention that this debate is endless?