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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.)
Every male in my high school played starcraft, no matter what social group they came from. The same could be said for halo. Gaming should be thought of as a medium or a category, like comics are a subcategory of literature, and RPGs are a subcategory of card/board games. I don't see the popularity of Halo or of Guitar Hero-type games fading.
Wait wait wait...you get a bunch of friends together and play (mostly) older games....and yet you don't play multiplayer Goldeneye, Masters of Orion, or Diablo? A curse upon your house...
Living With a Nerd
I can't remember it myself, but in the good ol' days movies were a seen as disreputable form of entertainment only indulged in by youngsters with nothing better to do.
If video games see a similar development, maybe in 50 years or so they will be seen as wholesome entertainment for the whole family?
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
Remember, it's not art unless it takes eight or more years of expensive (and exclusive) education to enjoy it.
Everything else is just "folk art". But we just call it "art" to make the simpletons feel better. They aren't good enough to begin to understand Art.
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.
Last year Roger Ebert responded to Clive Barker's comments on Ebert not considering video games art:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070721/COMMENTARY/70721001
There are some good thoughts in there even though Ebert is definitely in "Get off my lawn" territory.
I love the Half-Life series. I think there's a lot of wit and intelligence and creativity there that you don't see in a lot of other games. But every time I sit down to play a new episode I inevitably think: "It's just a First Person Shooter." Portal gets even higher marks for creativity. The way they develop the GLaDOS character and the use of plot twists and the out-of-left-field use of music is brilliant. But is it art?
I guess I tend to think of video games being "artful" rather than "art".
More than just entertainment for the whole family, video games can become a great teaching tool. Imagine learning about history in an RPG, witnessing historical events first hand. I still remember Oregon Trail. I wonder why more educational games haven't been released? Textbooks are huge business, why not textbook games?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
... 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.
Full disclosure: I worked heavily on the production of Bioshock's voiceover, so I have a bit of an opinion on this topic.
:)
My own take is that gaming is a very broad medium - possibly even beyond film. We see in the film industry a single medium containing both Requiem For A Dream and Dumb and Dumberer. Miller's Crossing and Sister Act 2: Back In The Habit.
Games (not "entertainment software", games, damnit) cover a similar spectrum, even if the high-brow fare is a bit thin on the ground right now. Such was the case for film when that industry was gaming's current age.
At this point in time much of the gaming industry occupies the same functional niche as pornography - people go home after an exhausting day at work, have a beer, demolish noobs on Team Fortress 2 to relax, and then go to bed. But the existence of pornography in film does not prevent that medium from providing works of real intellectual and artistic substance. Neither does gaming as pornography - both literally and metaphorically - hinder the development of deeper experiences.
I think if anything gaming provides the potential for experiences of greater power than film because we can develop both narrative-driven and sandbox experiences for our audience. We've seen the promise of the latter in GTA*, Oblivion, and I believe we'll see more of it in Spore. We've witnessed an outstanding achievement in the former named Call of Duty 4 - and my hat is off to Infinity Ward for such an amazing work. Beyond the singleplayer, massively multiplayer games can also provide a great range of experiences - from Ultima Online's open-ended fantasy simulation to Planetside's extremely structured gameplay.
We will get gaming to the level where it can be taken seriously as a work of art. We are getting it to that level. Right this moment. Your patience, please.
*I am a Take 2 employee, blah blah blah the opinions expressed here do not reflect the views of my employer etc. etc. ad nauseum.
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
The lack of weighty subjects ceased being a problem in the video game industry many years ago, when Tomb Raider's Lara Croft gave us not one but two weighty subjects to consider.
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
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.
Video games may be a hell of a lot easier to learn than literature appreciation, or even basic literacy, but I do have one question about that...
So?
My son is so incredibly happy that he's picking up reading skills that the Nintendo and my wife's computer are almost growing dusty from lack of use while he spends his time reading dinosaur books, and Calvin & Hobbes. True, hardly great literature, but the fact is just because something's easier to do doesn't mean it's going to win outright.
Then again, maybe the issue isn't the kids... let's face it, movies with substance, with a message, with depth and meaning don't tend to make a lot of money, and thus either don't get made, or only get shown on select screens for two weeks, and then fade into obscurity. Transformers made HOW much money?
I like to place meaningful quotes in my sig, so people will know that I know what meaningful quotes are.
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. You raise a good point. This isn't a question of comics vs. rpg's vs. video games, this is about entertainment dollars and what people spend them on, period. All of the above are just avenues of entertainment.
Now American comics, the print kind sold in stores, they petty much suck. Heroes in spandex, boring plots, recycled everything, yuck. But if you take a look at the manga section in bookstores, it's off the charts. There are plenty of young people reading comics, even girls! But it's manga they're going for. Since the American comics aren't developing a new audience, they have to enhance the value for older readers to keep them coming back, like the tobacco companies spiking the nicotine in ciggies. And that means more masturbatory aid females, more fan service, more pandering, just to keep the books moving. It doesn't help that rising prices have pushed comics out of the casual purchase territory for today's teens.
As for pencil and paper RPG's, the demographic is there, same as always, even bigger than before! But they're playing the games on computers now. Video games are poaching those dollars.
There are so many more companies competing for dollars compared to when I was a kid and compared to the previous decades before my time, it's even crazier. DVD's, video games, CD's, MMORPG's, cars, ipods, laptops, computers, not to mention books, comics, etc, too many things to split the entertainment dollar amongst.
Now if they want to talk about video games getting ghettoized, just look at the Wii. Old folks play it. Over the holidays, my sister brought her Wii along and the whole family enjoyed it. It's the first video game system my mom's liked since the Odyssey from the early 80's. Nintendo proved the market is there, companies just have to get inventive about serving it. Same goes for the comics. No self-respecting geek gamer wanted a Wii but it looks like the market is bigger than that. No self-respecting comic publisher would want to trade spandex heroes for yaoi but the girls are buying it up in droves. There are ways to make money, they just might not be the way the industry leaders want to make it.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.
At the same time though lots of people under 30 love the latest summer blockbuster based on some superhero. So weekly/monthly comics may not be popular but comic book characters in latex suits sure. There is more merchandising than ever before and a lot of it sells pretty well - I saw a kid throwing a tantrum over some batman toy in a Walgreens. I've also seen a lot of people under 30 read graphic novels (Neil Gaiman's Sandman a couple of years ago, Sin City, after that, and funnily enough Watchmen these days which has been out for ages)- weekly or monthly comics not so much but the comics industry is by no means dead.
Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.
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?
And, let's not forget much of the newer comics today are distributed in digital form. Just look at MegaTokyo, Penny Arcade, User Friendly, XKCD... The list goes on and on.
systemd is not an init system. It's a GNU replacement.
Odd - since quite young children seem to enjoy being told stories (which sounds like "developing an appreciation for literature" to me).
So, perhaps the translation is "The videogame industry has yet to fully develop a parasitic industry of critics who 'appreciate' video games by writing pretentious deconstructions of them".
Currently, so-called "reviews" of video games are just descriptions of what the game entails, whether the gameplay is compelling and the quality of the technical execution. Anybody who has "developed an appreciation for literature" knows that proper reviews are smug little essays designed to impress upon the reader the reviewer's extreme wit and cleverness while scrupulously avoiding saying anything informative about the actual work under review, but citing myriad other obscure works in the clear expectation that any worthy reader will be familliar with them all.
Once the videogame industry has evolved such critics, all that remains is to ensure that all 5th graders are forced to write 1000 word reports on the influence of the depiction of dwarves in "Colossal Cave" on the works of Scott Adams then videogames will be accepted into the pantheon of true art.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
Actually, the biggest reason I know for the aging-out of comic books is that they refuse to start and stop the stories in any rational place. Why should I spend the money to buy an Amazing Spider-Man #1 (I've enjoyed the films and '90s animated series.) or whatever and read the "complete" story that I need to pick up and understand the latest issue when Sluggy Freelance (a webcomic that causes comparable confusion if you drop in on the middle of a story) offers free access to the archives going back to the first strip? Or when mangas actually have stories that start and stop, allowing me to read one book (or one cycle of books) and be done with it?
That's why comic books are dying: nobody wants something with so much unknown backstory.
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
- infinite spin (explained),
- spin triples (explained), and
- a randomizer that lets you play forever (explained part 1 and part 2).
It's a good thing that there are still fan games that let the player screw back.I think the problem with American comics is that they just don't know when to end them. Ok, so you've got a character that's really popular like a Batman. Well crap, it would be best if you just rotated writers every few years and let them tell stories with beginnings, middles, and ends. When they try to keep the same thing going on for 50 years, you end up with continuity problems that make the dogma of the early Christian church look coherent. With something like Archie Comics, people accept that they're in a perpetual time warp where everyone is a teenager in an idealized 1950's world even though modern appliances appear. But when you're talking about a long-running American comic, everything goes to stupid-ville.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
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.