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Videogames Doomed for a 'Comics-like Ghetto'?
At the Newsweek blog LevelUp, journalist N'Gai Croal wrote this week about the sometimes-precarious position of videogames in popular culture. The frustrations of legislators, lawyers, and 'pro-family' groups aside, the popularity and record sales of the gaming industry would seem to indicate rising stock for gaming as an art form in the US. And yet, there are some folks who see gaming as just another fad, which in some time will be equal in popularity to comic books or tabletop roleplaying. N'Gai starts to form his response by noting that learning to play videogames is considerably easier than developing an appreciation for literature of any kind. He then goes on to note that the (oft-cited) lack of weighty subjects in gaming is more due to the 'pop culture' nature of the hobby than the medium itself. "Popular fiction generally outsells literary fiction. Summer blockbusters generally out-gross arthouse films. Is this any different from, say, Call of Duty 4: Modern Combat out-NPD-ing BioShock last year, or Madden doing the same to Shadow of the Colossus in 2005?" He discusses some ways to address that, but do you have any solutions? Or are games doomed to be the playthings of adolescent boys for the rest of the century? (And yeah, I resent the 'comics ghetto' label too.)
Of course, it's really pretty simple. If there's a demand for games, more games will be made. If there isn't, there won't. We can go around and around on whether X is as popular as Y or is it as popular as B? Who cares?
Right now, the gaming industry is moving a lot of units. There are also a lot of really good games out there now, too. Is this because it's a lucrative market or is the market lucrative because of the good games? Again, an argument that really doesn't matter to anyone that's not trying to get ad clicks.
In summary, if you like to play games, play them. If you don't, no one's forcing you to. No big deal. Life's short. Get some fresh air now and then too...
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Only if videogames learn to use gameplay mechanisms that don't involve violence. Right now, the majority of videogames are violent, whether that be shooting, punching, or stomping enemies. If the games industry were hollywood, this would belike having 70% of the films be action movies. Of course, 70% of movies are not action movies. Video games need to diversify.
Not everybody is even good at the gameplay mechanisms required. Portal is intellectually challenging with its puzzles, but the coordination required makes it hard for a lot of people to play it. I think adventure games had this right all allong: a simple interface, gameplay that involves puzzle solving and curiosity, and the opportunity to create a good story driven by the player. Instead we have shoot shoot, a cutscene with story here, shoot shoot more shooting.
It's gettign better, but it's not there yet.
I think you've missed the point. While gaming may be a medium that doesn't mean that it can't have high quality. Literature has Steven King but it also has William Shakespeare. Music may have Britney Spears but it also has J. S. Bach. In the first case you have simplistic pop culture phenomena that is just for brief entertainment and in the later you have works that will enlighten you. So where is the Shakespeare or Bach of gaming?
... American Comics deserve every bit of ghettoization they have. The vast majority are of the superhero type, which are mindboggingly complex in their timelines, crossovers, retconning and super powers galore. Compare this with European comics (specifically Belgian and French), and you'll find everything from High Art to Low Art, super heros, Sci-Fi, Fantasy, surreal, spy, WW2, funny, serious, story-driven, art-driven, and anything else you can think of.
As an example, after hearing so much about the Sandman chronicles, I browsed through one. I found the art disappointing, and the story mildly interesting. However, it was still miles beyond any of the DC and Marvel comic books next to it.
Yes, there are great examples of American comic artists - Frank Miller comes to mind. But they are the vast exception in a sea of mediocrity.
This is also why I think that videogames will escape ghettoization - they are a worldwide phenomenon, and this alone will prevent them from sliding into a state that is as narrowly focused as american comics. To some extent, I think they already have. I can think of a number of games that are more art than game - Psychonauts, for one. Okami, for another.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
a friend of mine who is a fellow bookworm were talking several years back, and i told him about how i hadn't been touched by the plot of final fantasy 7 in the way that a lot of other people had (there's a touching bit where the female lead character dies and i had heard from several people who had said they'd been deeply moved by it).
he looked at me and said "maybe you and i aren't as affected by it because we actually read".
the cinema, theatre, and music can all be as deeply stirring as a good novel. comic books don't seem to get it most of the time, but there are "graphic novels" that attempt to speak in an adult way about adult situations.
games are just another popular art form, for better or for worse.
I think it's entirely possible, and I think it's quite a good analogy--but not in the same sense that he's using it.
Part of the reason why comic books, at least in the United States, aren't accorded as much respect as an art form can probably be traced back to the hysterical allegations of Dr. Fredric Wertham in his book Seduction of the Innocent. In short, he claimed that within those pulp pages, the amount of violence, of innuendo and sex, and the like would twist and stunt the growth of the children consuming them--and lead to crime, as well, by glamourizing it.
As a result, the publishers themselves began to censor their books with the industry's own Comics Code, refusing to take chances with so-called weighty subjects, and ultimately consigned themselves to a niche audience that, until recently was utterly unable to get any significant mindshare among the general public; even today, comic books and graphic novels are rarely accorded the same respect that other, textual novels are given, so much so that movies such as Road to Perdition try, somewhat, to obscure their source material.
These days, it's Jack Thompson and his ilk claiming that within the realm of the electronic world, the violence of Unreal Tournament, the sex in God of War, the anatomic issues in The Sims and the like are seducing the youth of our country and twisting their growth by forming them into school shooters and contributing to the deplorable state of culture and decline of the US.
This, coupled with ballooning budgets for games, is leading game publishers to not only inconsistently apply their own self-censorship group, but stick to only those games that have made money in the past and try to deflect criticism away from themselves any way they can; weighty subjects are less likely to be tackled in games such as these, precisely because returns for the money aren't as guaranteed, and the response from modern-day Werthams would decry the fact that these games are filled with sin, even if they're as exquisitely crafted as, say, To Kill a Mockingbird, Bridge to Terabithia, A Wrinkle in Time, 1984, and the like.
If anything, it's that mentality that would consign videogames to any sort of cultural "ghetto".
Of course, on foreign shores, like Japan, comics never had to fight the puritanical streak; it's doubtful they're suffering from the same odd notions about games there these days, too.
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Tetris. 'nuff said
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
Maybe you should be asking "How many people under 30 read comics?". One of the reasons why the comics industry is doing so badly is because there are few new readers, and the existing readership keeps getting older.
Kids don't read comics anymore. Most comics readers _are_ over 30. I'm 23, and most people I see at the comic shop are older than me.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Games are different. There will always be games in one form or another. Which form will they take? Well, if convenience and accessibility have anything to do with it, then how about in my living room, on my pc, my cell, or a portable device in my pocket? Coincidentally, these all fall under "video games". So unless these mediums go away, video games are here to stay.
As a species we've been playing games far before we started reading, and surely we will continue far after we stop.
Even in single player games, there is usually some sort of competition.....whether it's a new high score or just to complete the game, there is some mode of competition.
Not everyone wants to compete in a game, either....or at least not in the fashion you are referring to. I play games to see EVERYTHING. I love RPG games because of how much there is to see. I do every side quest. I save and pick various paths to see how they are different. I don't have a problem with walkthroughs and cheats (in single player RPGs - but only when stuck) because I'm more interested in seeing all of the content than I am in feeling like I "beat" the game.
Layne
I think you're right on the money about games being an emerging form, and you're right to compare games to film as well. In fact, the more you know about film, the more striking that analogy becomes. So if you'll forgive a film geek for drawing the analogy in even more detail:
When film first began, it was a widely accepted fact that it would never be an art form. To a large degree, this was because people mistook temporary technical limitations for inherent artistic ones. "Film is silent and in black and white, and theater is in color with sound. Film will therefore always be an inferior version of the stage, at best." Indeed, film was generally seen as nothing more than lowbrow entertainment for illiterates, immigrants, and other types deemed inferior by meanstream society.
But then technicians solved more and more of the technical problems--allowing filmmakers to tell longer stories, and to film in more settings--and meanwhile, filmmakers were learning more and more about the possibilities of this new art form. Even before sound and color, you were beginning to have masterpieces that were recognized as works of art. Birth of a Nation was the first one, although it seems crude (and horribly racist) by modern standards. But by the time you got to the 1920s, people were making films that can still move modern audiences. Yet it took another decade or two for highbrow literary critics to catch on to this explosion of creativity.
The comparison to games is pretty obvious, I think. Technical developments are allowing better and better visual effects, and game makers are getting more and more sophisticated about exploiting the strengths of the form and working around the weaknesses. I would say that Doom was the gaming world's equivalent of Birth of A Nation--a work of tremendous energy that synthesized a whole lot of already existing elements into something that felt new and exciting. And I would say Deus Ex and Thief were like the films of the early 1920's--one day they will be classics, but when they came out, they were still part of a particular artistic ghetto. And now videogames are catching up to the films of the late 1920's/early 1930s--they are very sophisticated, and the outside world is just beginning to wake up to their merit.
One last thought: if commercial gaming began in 1972 with Pong, then the medium is 36 years old. If commercial film began in 1896 with the Lumiere brothers, then it would have been 36 years old in 1932. Which means that videogaming is evolving right on schedule. This means we can expect the Citizen Kane of the videogame world sometime in the next five or six years...
Arr! Read The Government Manual for New Pirates!
As artists can't even agree on what is and isn't art when they're talking about art, it's unlikely we'll come to an agreement with games, but even if the vast majority of games are just there to be popular and fun, there will always be the Frank Millers and others who aren't as popular, but continue to create not because they just want the money, but because they want to actually create something artistic (choose some definition of art: your choice). Even if they don't sell as much, people have a natural inclination to search for what they consider beautiful, and that will always attract a decent amount to the good stuff, even if the rest has no more plot than Packman (even if they're fun).
As a medium, though, games actually have a vast amount of untapped potential, because they are so different from movies or books or paintings. When you start up Half-Life, you are IMMEDIATELY Gordon Freeman. When people talk to you, you have a direct connection to them and you're a part of things. You aren't just reading, "'...', said Gordon blankly." You get to be Gordon... err... blankly '...'ing. In a way, this is similar to interactive fiction. Check out Adam Cadre's IF for instance, which makes extensive use of using an immediate connection as a player to shape perspective. Photopia is an excellent example. It's a game with virtually no real gameplay, but it tells a story in a way no book or movie could. I think video games in general have this same potential. This potential is around storytelling and communicating ideas and emotions in a different, direct way than anything else - through experience rather than empathy or capturing a single moment. Whether it's art or not is irrelevant, though personally, I'd say that the quality and ability to communicate ideas and emotions is probably pretty important in the definition of art.
Bear in mind that Shakespeare was not writing solely for a sophisticated, intellectual elite. He's rightly remembered as one of the crowning glories of human cultural achievement, but when he sat down to write his plays, a large part of his thought was given to how the material would play in front of the half-drunk crowd in the pit in the Globe.
Shakespeare's genius was to create superlative works of art which still appealed to the mass market. He blended in cheap puns and sight gags along with his sophisticated plots and deep philosophical allegories, and made it all work perfectly. That's something we've yet to see in games - we have the occasional Planescape: Torment, but when we do it's never a hit - but then, we rarely enough see it anywhere else. Shakespeare is the kind of thing that happens once a century or so, and gaming's only been around for thirty years.
Real Daleks don't climb stairs - they level the building.
You can extend this argument to classical music BTW:
The bad musicians and composers from Bach's and Beethoven's time are long forgotten, and what remains is the work of the geniuses.
Likewise, every kind of art should be judged by its finest contributions. There will always be incompetents but they do not define the value of the genre.
C - the footgun of programming languages
Just ask yourself these questions.
1) Does grandma read comics?
2) Does grandma play the Wii?
I'm going to argue that video games are not art, and may never be. But this is not a criticism of video games. The fact that I do not see games as "high art" is not to look down upon games. For example, I consider chess one of the finest achievements of human kind, something of cultural and political significance, and the worthwhile past time of some of the greatest minds that have ever lived. Maybe a goal of seeing video games as high art is not a good standard to judge them by.
Games can be important, of interest to all people, and held in respect. Their "artistic" role however is generally to act as an inspiration for, or a metaphor within, a work of art. You'll be able to find references to chess in every art form humankind has ever devised. A game of chess could be animated, delivered in 3D with incredible graphics and audio, with chess pieces designed by a world class sculptor moving on a board designed by a reknowned architect, against a backdrop painted by a famous artist, to a soundtrack written by a talented composer, orchestrated by a genius and performed by a philharmonic orchestra. You could devise some sophisticated plot that is reflected in the almost infinite variety of moves the game allows.
And yet, most would still call it a game rather than a work of art. All the "art" mentioned is simply window dressing for the game itself. The chess pieces may be sculpture, but are not part of the game of chess as such.
So what would video games need to achieve recognition as a serious art form? I don't think we'll know until we've reached the point they've earned that status. Then we'll look back with hindsight and go, "This is what it means for a games to become high art". But I'll take a stab at how we'll know we've reached that point. Once lead game designers start to achieve general recognition for their games and their meaning, just as everyone's heard of Shakespeare, Dickens and Hitchcock (insert locally relevant artists here...) then video games will have achieved the same status as "art".
Once they have, we'll be able to look back to now and consider where it all started. But currently, it may just be that even examples of great art direction (I liked the atmosphere of Thief, personally) is really just great interior decoration for a game. Current technology does not allow for the finesse of expression of actors in a film, or oil paints on a canvas, after all, and rarely do you feel the game has been designed to tackle complex dramatic themes - most plots and scripts are fairly cliched, frankly. This could all change however as technology advances and designers / directors are freed up to work on the art rather than the mechanics of their creations.
Your magnum opus gets obsoleted every other year by the latest video card technology. Unlike video games, a work of music or literature can be created by one or a few dedicated artists, and stays timeless. In contrast, a sophisticated video game requires large teams of people and a large budget, and seems really lame 10 years later.
An artist can work as a waiter during the day and write his great novel at night. When he is done with the novel, after a few years, he can take a couple more years to be recognized and get published.
Now, suppose I worked in IT support during the day and worked on my great computer program at night. Even if I were able to finish anything worthwhile in a year on my home PC (fat chance!), it would be obsolete before I could get anybody to buy it.
Videogames could be the cultural equivalent of a ghetto filled with thugs, whores, crack dealers, derelict housing, corrupt cops, stray bullets, overflowing sewers, the homeless, broken glass, and gun-toting radioactive giant sewer rats and I'd still be happy as long as games are fun and stimulating.
:)
I'll leave determining what and what isn't art to the professional intellectual masturbaters
Okay, fine then. Nippon Ichi software is Shakespeare. No sane man can contest this. Nin nin, dood. Go Prism Rangers!
Have you played Bioshock? It's a commentary on Objectivism and the fault of pride, a whole city of people ruled by visionaries who felled the society with their hubris, leaving the normal folk who came in hopes of a better life either dead or insane, pleading to God to forgive their sins. You can also shoot lightning from your hands and set people on fire by snapping your fingers, and you get to kill evil mutants and killer robots with grenade launchers, electric shotgun rounds and napalm flamethrowers. Seriously, it's an impressive game.
[insert witty quote here]
I've only read a couple of Shakespeare's plays (Macbeth and R&J). While the archaic language made a couple of the jokes require an explanation, the plots themselves weren't exactly mind bending. There have been a fair few videogames with excellent complex/dynamic plots and subtle references - Deus Ex is a big one, if you've never played it then go give it a shot (unfortunately my dad deleted my save by mistake, and since I'd been playing through on 'Realistic' mode, where basically one shot kills you, I didn't have the will to start all over again, partially because I have a good memory and get bored easily when replaying games.. partially because it took me hours of loading up save points just to complete some of the more difficult scenarios). Half-life has a pretty good plot, and was hailed as one of the most revolutionary games of its time for the storytelling and gameplay, as well as spawning hundreds of excellent mods - both some very good single player expansions and extremely playable multiplayer mods (Counter-Strike! The Opera! 'The Ship', which I never actually played but sounded also like it could be the kind of thing that you'd enjoy). Video games are often much more complex than books because their outcome doesn't have to follow a set path - especially if it is a multiplayer game. And while subtlety is usually out when it comes to pleasing todays gamers, that's not to say that it doesn't occasionally show up. The MGS series and its stealth'em'up clones involved some good puzzle solving skills, though I tend to find the 3rd person view isn't to my liking. Anyway, while I agree that they are two completely different mediums, I wouldn't say that either is superior. Both have their place, and both can be as in depth or as shallow as you choose to make them.
;)
As another thing I just remembered.. try out a decent MUD sometime. A MUD (Multi User Dungeon) is a multiplayer text based RPG, a few of them aspire to be roleplay oriented (as opposed to combat oriented), and have some nice prose in their world descriptions that make the game world feel like a living book.
As far as the premise of this article goes.. what a load of crap. People have always played games. Humans enjoying leisure time not a fad. Games have opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for our leisure time, and their scope keeps widening (look no further than the Wii for example, though then look at Grand Theft Auto IV and be amazed at the way a whole city has been modelled and the amount of different activities you can do, from just driving around admiring the view, to playing pool, delivering pizzas, yada yada..). But meh.. if you want to close your eyes to the possibilities here then go ahead, keep to your linear little books, keep letting someone else do your thinking for you
which is totally what she said
Video games are definitely NOT going the way of the comic book. I agree with many posts in this thread that like any medium, vgs can be high or low brow. But I see the future of video games as taking us towards living in alternate worlds. We might visit these worlds for education, for discussion, for sex, for sport, for distraction, etc..... Consider 2nd life and eve online and other mmorgs. Are they art? Not *fine* art. Are they low brow? Like real life, these mmorgs contain players that are just there to pass the time, and others who are there for deeper pursuits. In that way, i think the analogy with film is limited. Film can be high or low brow, but it is passive. It can lead to interesting discussion, but generally not with the film maker. Video games, more and more, are simulated realities. The more future technology allows full immersion (touch, smell, taste) in video games the more they will be like life and less like film. Presumably these same technologies will push into film as well, making film immersive but still passive.
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You've made a very good point here: videogames have only been around for 30 years wheras other art forms have been around for much much longer.
How old is the oldest song you have on your MP3 player right now? I'm willing to bet it's not caveman music. The oldest book most people read these days is the bible, which they're not reading because it's good literature. Aside from charlie chaplain, I've heard of very few silent movies that have withstood the test of time. The oldest paintings that are in museums for their artistic quality (as opposed to anthropological significance) are still a good thousand years younger than the idea of painting.
In all art forms, the early stuff is rarely any good when looking back. There are no classics really from the infancy of any art form. In all those cases above, there was a period while the art form was developing from a concept into a refined art. Silent movies may have had a lot of effort put into them, but until you could add sound the form wasn't mature. There were literary devices and basic concepts to work out beffore literature could be worth remembering. Much the same, videogaming is still evolving at a fundamental technical level. It's premature to judge it right now as an art form. Of course it's going to be lacking, it's like judging a teenager and saying he's never going to amount to anything as an adult.
If anything you have to admit that videogames have developed exponentially faster than other art forms and is still going. The gap between caveman painings and Renoir is appreciable, but the difference between pong and half life 2 is pretty staggering.
Of course, that's a technological development, and you could make the argument that it's more computer development tying in visual art. The real heart of videogaming, what makes it a unique art form is the conceptual level. The gaming experience. Tools for that can't simply be co-opted from other art forms as easily. You could make it a lot like a movie, with cutscenes, but that's a cheap trick. Concepts like FPS and platforming are still developing. We've seen some amazing concepts introduced recently, may of which are far more fndamental than the differences between cavemen beating on drums and mozart. It's way too early to judge videogaming.