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Fun is Fine - Toward a Philosophy of Game Design
David Kennerly writes "The Entertainment versus Art debate flares perennially. These participants may be having fun, but the dichotomy is uniquely inappropriate to games. By the end of this article, we may disentangle the faulty dichotomy. After reconsidering what we think we know about a game, fun, and art we may come to discover that Nomura and Costikyan are correct: 'If you were to write a Seven Lively Arts for the 21st century, the form you'd have to mention first is clearly games.' --Greg Costikyan"
and for most of us games are the only form of art we'll ever come accross.
having worked in the industry and having known many games designers and programmers, art does not come into it. pizza, sure, trash novels, sure, cheap sci-fi and pseudo philosophy, sure, but art? forget it. john
All I Want For Christmas Is My Constitutional Rights
How true this is, let's see a list:
Popular/Good Games - Awful Movies
Good/Popular Movies - Awful Games
And yet, these trends will probably never stop. We keep hearing rumblings about a Duke Nukem Movie, a Doom movie, and we're already getting another Tomb Raider flick. But as long as people keep buying these games, and going to see the movies we'll keep being exposed to this dreck.
Why can't we see more games like GTA that skirt the fine line between movie and game?
Mike
I find, as a graduate English student, that I can't really think of any generation or era where the intellectual art has really lasted well. The popular stuff tends to be what survives, largely because it was actually designed for people to enjoy, rather than praise.
If, in 100 years, we look back at any games as great works of art (And we may not - games are so dependent on the technology they run on that they may fail one of the basic tests of art, which is survivability), I do not think it will be deep and contemplative games. I think it will be things like SimCity, Zelda, and other games that were designed, first and foremost, for their players.
Philip Sandifer's academic website
What is the Sound of One Hand Designing?
"[Do not] mistake yourself for an 'artist.' Our goal is to create newer and more fun games. Art is not our goal." Tetsuya Nomura, Final Fantasy character designer[1]
The Entertainment versus Art debate flares perennially. These participants may be having fun, but the dichotomy is uniquely inappropriate to games. For example among MMORPGs, to Jessica Mulligan, fun subsumes art[2]; whereas, to Raph Koster, art subsumes entertainment.[3] I will challenge the dichotomy itself. Crafting fun is the art of the game.
To paraphrase Stephen King: Put your game design desk in the corner to remind yourself every day that Art supports Life, not the other way around.[4] By the end of this article, we may disentangle the faulty dichotomy. After reconsidering what we think we know about a game, fun, and art we may come to discover that Nomura and Costikyan are correct:
"If you were to write a Seven Lively Arts for the 21st century, the form you'd have to mention first is clearly games." Greg Costikyan[5]
To begin disentangling, we need to come to terms with the game as a unique medium.
A Unique Medium
"Unfortunately, as similar as the two media are, the differences are real and compelling and the superficial similarities can actually make people LESS effective in new, game-oriented roles." Warren Spector[6]
Games are not like other forms of art. To define a game: if it uses points, has players and rules, it's a game. Of course a game may be part of a service or a world or a community, too. To keep a game, as I use the term here, from being confused with all the disciplines that game theory has been applied to (economics, psychology, politics, empirical analysis), call it "a parlor game," if the reader must. But Joe and Jane at the checkout counter call it a game.
As the sound designer for the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers video game wrote:
"It is unproductive to think of games as âinteractive movies,â(TM) although many people tend to think of games in those terms. Let's be clear: games and films are different media. The techniques, processes, and skills involved in the creation of each are unique and not interchangeable. The metrics by which each is judged are also different, meaning that many of the properties that make for a good film would lead to a lousy game, and vice versa."[7]
Narratives, which includes most films, and games differ dramatically, because games donâ(TM)t tell stories, players tell stories. A narrative is a passive experience. One watches and feels but does not do. The audience is not the actor. In a game, the audience is at once the actor, also. Herein is a conflict of purpose. The author of a narrative must control the lives of the actors. Whereas, the designer of a game must abdicate control. To paraphrase Will Wright's first advice for a budding game designer: Games are about players having fun; not about writers solving the narrative problems they want to solve.[8]
Part of the problem is that an intellectual property rarely links a fine narrative to a fine game. Dungeons & Dragons is not J.R.R. Tolkien-in-the-medium-of-a-game. American McGee's Alice is not an adaptation of Lewis Carroll-in-the-medium-of-a-game. Go or Eleusis, which are puzzling, logical, and playfully deep, offers better comparison to Lewis Carroll. Reiner Knizia came closer with his cooperative board game of "Lord of the Rings," which retains the spirit of the novel. But still "Lord of the Rings" is more of a novelty than a fine game.
Many game-movie crossovers, such as Tomb Raider or Mario Brothers, failed and so did movie-games, such as Atariâ(TM)s E.T.[9] or Braveheart. Their lesson: satisfy an audience for a movie, a player for a game. A bleak road lies before one who seeks a movie experience in a game or vice versa~$?ugh the fine game invokes something powerful inside the willing player, don't look for J.R.R. Tolkien or Lewis Carroll in a game. He's not there. Equally, there
*boggle*
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Alright, did anybody else cry when then got to the third level of Homeworld by Relic? You know, the one where um... something bad happens.. (no spoilers wanted).
Alright, I didn't actually cry, but for some reason it affected me alot more than most of those 'tearjerker' movies out there. Maybe I was just starting to really 'get into' what turned out to be a really awesome game.
Umm... I hope this didn't sound *too* pathetic...
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
This guy makes the mistake of equating "art" and "good." This is a common mistake among people who don't know much about art history and the art world. "Art" is a type of thing, not a value judgement. So, at best, his essay makes a case for making Good Games by taking inspiration from Fine Art. This is a totally different thing from suggesting that Games have a place in Fine Art ie: that Games are a type of Art. I'm certainly not saying that games are not Art, I'm saying that that is a completely different subject.
All in all, this guy's lack of understanding of the art world, and especially contemporary art, makes this essay just about worthless.
Art is something that should be thought provoking and challenging, right? Great art is that what makes you challenge your assumptions. It makes things interesting.
I once read an interview with Sid Meyer of Civilization fame. He said the way to make a great game was the give the user interesting choices. Great art does the same thing.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I read in a recent interview with Shigeru Miyamoto that he doesn't consider video games to be art. He considers them to be products, made to entertain people and - well - make money.
He drew a comprison to opera - long ago, opera was not considered art, it was made to make money. The operas had to follow the fashion or people wouldn't pay. It's only recently that we've started considering opera to be an artform.
Hey, I find a well-rendered explosion or the graceful arc of blood spraying from a flesh-eating zombie to be a very powerful statement of man's... um... insignificance in the face of the world's indifference... um
Ah, hell, just give guns, cars, and innocent bystanders, I'll make my own art: six wanted stars with a chainsaw.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
1. Read headline
2. Make reasonable comments on the headline, saying "I disagree, here's why".
3. (Score:5, Insightful)
4. read posts pointing out that you actually probably agree with the article.
If you had bothered to read the article, you would have realized that the author agrees with you that nice graphics or an involved, non-interactive plotline do not make a good game.
thank you,
Bryan
Art is creatively overcoming the limitations that the artist sets upon him or her self. It does not matter what the limitations are, but if the artist can successfully express more than what the limitations should logically allow, then I think it is successful art.
For example, if I had to convey the mood in the park next door to my house I could bring you here. But that is not possible. So, I can decide to express the mood in the park to you only via words, no sight, no sounds, no smells. Then I am a writer.
If on the other hand I choose the limitation of being only able to express in colors, then I am a painter if only through the medium of colors I can convey the mood in the park to you.
Or if I accept the limitation to be just using sounds, no sights, no colors, no smell, then I am a musician.
I can even choose to express the mood in the park by using only matchsticks, or some other arbitrary limitation. As long as I can overcome the "self" or "else" imposed limitations to convey more than what the limitations should logically allow, I think I am a successful artist.
I think gaming is the same way. By accepting limitaions on the medium of the computer screen, keyboard, joystick, the game attempts to transport the gamer into another world, another reality. If it can do that, it is succesful art. It is almost like movies where you suspend disbelief and enter the world of the movie. If you thought about it, all it really is just colored light flickering on a screen in a darkened room, with a bunch of speakers around. If with just these things the flickering light and sound can transport you to antoher world, it is art.
And so, Game Design is an art. Maybe coding by itself is not art, just like an artist can use artisans and craftsmen, but the game design aspect, I believe, is definitely art. It is art because it is able to creatively able to overcome limitations.
And using my definition of art, we can apply it to life too. The limitation of our lives is that they will end. The limitation of life is death, and so if we can live our life in such a way that we can transcend our physical death, our lived life itself then becomes art. So, I guess, in some ways I am saying the way we live our lives is the art of our life.
I understand that in a strange way I have come around to define just about anything as being possibly art, and so maybe I am taking away from the exclusivity of the art. But, not really. because for it to be successful art it has to transcend the limitation, whether the limitation is real or arbitary. Thus, though everything has the potential to be artistic, it becomes art only if it overcomes the limitation. And it requires creativity to achieve that, and not everything is creative. So, not everything is art. Whatever is left, is then definitely art.
Anyway, let me get my fourth cup of coffee. My head is spinning, and maybe if I could do something by overcoming that limitation, I could be an ... artist (?) (!)
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Half the crap that passes for art nowadays isn't art. I know people are "pushing boundaries" and crap, but when you get stuff like this passing itself off as "art", then the whole fucking concept of art doesn't mean any more to me than a bunch of industrially sealed cans of someone's piss. (Which a British museum paid $35,000 for.)
Art is a joke. People use the term to describe things they don't understand and think are cool for no apparent reason. True art, like sculpture, paintings you don't have to be high to come up with a meaning for, orchestrated music, good writing, poetry that rhymes, and isn't just someone pulling stream of consciousness shit out of their ass and wiping on a piece of paper for you to read...this...THIS is art.
Unfortunately, art's been so diluted by utter crap that the public uses it to describe any and everything. "Look at that goal!" screams the unwashed mass, "That is art!"
No, it isn't.
Don't get started on that, "well, it's art to me" shit, either. If that's all that it needs, then Everything == Art, and the discussion is still equally useless because there isn't anything that can be claimed to not be art.
The only Art is see anymore, if the guy who works across the hall from me. He isn't a game, and games aren't him.
This insistence on attempting to pigeonhole crap that someone throws onto celluloid, canvas, hard disk, etc. is such bullshit. There's no such thing as art as a separate entity from everything else that people create. Art is strictly a matter of opinion, and since everyone's opinion differs, there can be no definition. Video game renders are as good as anything that some sweaty old man smeared squished plant matter all over.
This is just more of the same ignorant elitist shit that keeps that stupid art vs. pornography debate alive and kicking, frivolously pissing away time in our courts. If you create something and someone else likes it, then good on you. If they don't, throw that crap away and try again. Its bad enough that we've gotten so fucking stupid as to require the government to tell us what we find acceptable and what we don't; we sure as hell don't need these jackasses wasting anyone's time by trying to elevate their chicken scratches to a higher level of being through some arbitrary decision to promote it to the mystical realm of ART (cue angelic choir).
Shawn
Because you gotta bitch
I think there is a distinction between entertainment and art that lies in the interaction of the person with the artwork, not in the artwork itself. Games are required to be entertainment and have the potential to be art.
An entertaining movie/game/book/whatever stimulates the imagination as you consume it, pulling you in to a temporarily vivid world. But if it's only entertainment, an hour later you're hungry again. Art, OTOH, remains with you, changes you somehow, provides you a hook to hang future thoughts and emotions on.
Sure, if you play a game for X hours, you'll dream about it and find a thousand ways in which it is a metaphor for the events of your daily life, but how rich is the metaphor? how flexible? Does the extension of the game into your psychic life narrow your field of view, or expand it? If the game is multi-player, does it encourage social interaction along the single dimension of the game's progress, or does it provide a jointly formed framework for exploring many dimensions of social interaction?
I have a higher bar for the term "interactivity" - any shoot-em-up can absorb you and provide you with choices which impact the game, but a richly interactive game will also keep on interacting so that after the pixels have faded from the screen or the last stone has hit the Go board with a satisfying thunk, it will contnue to generatively engage you on multiple levels.
Fine art is not only the ceiling of the sistine chapel, but also the gazillion portraits painted of the virgin and child, still life and scenic meadows. Fine art is not only Beethoven's ninth and Miles Davis' solos but also the minor works of Saliari and the Spice Girls. Fine art contains Gone with the Wind, Schlindler's List, and Freddy Got Fingered. Fine art is Shakespeare, Vonnegut, and silly romance novels. The creative use of media on a professional level to entertain is fine art.
Fine art CAN have a philosophical point, be deep, meaningful, emotionally wrought, thematically interesting and all that, but it can be and often is quite shallow and trite. Every see Andy Warhol's Campbell Soup can? Ever listen to modern pop music? Have you been to a movie lately? Have you ever tried to delve into the meaning of Christopher Wren's St. Paul's Cathedral?
Sure the history of painting and sculpture contains masterpieces, same with music, architecture, literature, movies, and even TV. I'll tell you this for nothing, the history of video games is going to contain masterpieces as well, and because the medium is interactive and popular, it has the potential to produce more of them in the future than the other media combined.