Making Statements With Video Games

You may have heard about the recent controversy at the Leipzig Games Conference over a modification of Space Invaders in which the invaders are slowly demolishing the World Trade Center. The creator intended it as an artistic expression, but has since removed the game, saying, "it was never created to merely provoke controversy for controversy's sake." Kotaku took this occasion to ask whether "statements" can and should be made via video games, and how it affects the ongoing question of whether video games should be considered art. "The entire issue begs comparisons to Danny Ledonne's Super Colombine Massacre RPG!, an unsettling and involved title that tasks players on the most basic level with acting out the 1999 Littleton, Colorado school shooting in the role of killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold. Ledonne told the Washington Post that his intention with the title was never to glorify the tragedy, but to 'confront their actions and the consequences those actions had.' Like Stanley's Invaders!, Ledonne and his title stopped short of providing a direct interpretation - neither artist has been especially specific about 'what it means,' or in instructing players on how they should interpret their work or what 'message' should be taken away."

Comments

Oblig. Southpark

[halsver]

Too soon?

Re:Oblig. Southpark

[grantek]

South Park takes the proverbial piss out of this stuff pretty well. So does the Simpsons - the statue of David never came with an instruction manual directing people how to interpret it, but somehow people called it art instead of porn until the conservative extremists got some media bandwith to play with.

Re:Oblig. Southpark

[Ethanol-fueled]

Last night on Family Guy Peter Griffin shot his daughter at point-blank range with a handgun.

Across the universe a million Jedi padawan cried out in laughter and were quickly elated by having their first play of GTA4 and 2.45 percent of those were arrested for committing copycat crimes within the hour.

Elsewhere, some guy creates a bunch of pixellated blips which make other blips make noise. It is too "controversial" to be released into the wild.

Re:Oblig. Southpark

[OhioJoe]

What we geeks don't fully grasp is that no one, and I mean NO ONE, other than us even knows about this supposed "controvery". More people know about the death rate of Sudanese bisexuals than this.

there is no question

[Surt]

Video games are art. It is long settled. No one of consequence is disputing this.

Re:there is no question

[HappySmileMan]

From the summary:

Kotaku took this occasion to ask whether "statements" can and should be made via video games, and how it affects the ongoing question of whether video games should be considered art.

From parent:

Video games are art. It is long settled. No one of consequence is disputing this.

From the mod:

(Score:1, Offtopic)

This is why I love slashdot.

Re:there is no question

[n dot l]

Yes video games are art (see Braid). Yes, you can make artistic statements in video games. You can make all sorts of statements in games. No, all video games are not good art (the same applies to paintings, books, and movies). And no, you do not have any sort of right to a warm reception whatsoever for your work. Just like with paintings books and movies (fancy that). If your "statement" makes your game unfun or offensive then, well, suck it up, you broke your own shit. It's not our fault for "not understanding" your well-obfuscated intent.

That out of the way, I have to agree with the parent that it's stupid debating the whole "games as art" thing in the first place. We don't question whether movies are art when someone makes a film denying the Holocaust. What the hell is it with all these "controversies" we get lately (here, in blogs, in political discourse, in the MSM)? Are we really trying so hard to be "nuanced" that we have to dump illogical statements into every other sentence just to be interesting?

Although, this gives me another item for my list of "things to do if I suddenly become a god": have my prophet spout subtle logical fallacies and then laugh it up as the idiot humans get upset, and waste a bunch of time or do damage to themselves, and then finally figure it out and say, "hey, wait a minute, that doesn't even make sense!"

Re:there is no question

[kestasjk]

I'm going to make a bold prediction that somewhere in this discussion there will be a debate over the meaning of "art".

Re:there is no question

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Video games are art.

But should that art be censored?

The fact remains; most people associate video games with children and young people. While this remains the dominant view of the medium it will be subjected to a level of scrutiny and censorship unseen by any medium that has come before it. There are movies rated PG-13 that, as a game, would never be certified with anything less than an M or 18s rating. We've all played GTA. What, if anything, in the entire series compares with the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?

Is there a higher level of censorship because the player is "committing the action's themselves!". No. That is only a rationalisation. The real reason is because Joe Public and John Politician think games are for "kids", and should have a level of "decency" befitting that role. Mention drugs or prostitution in a video game, hint at violence, or make even innocuous remarks about sexuality, or heaven forbid use even very mild "language" and you'll be rated akin to a James Bond title.

Ratchet and Clank as a series, has been continuously rated "Teen" by the ESRB. The ESRB, touted as a serious rating agency, is telling me with a straight face that Ratchet and Clank is unsuitable for 9-12 year olds? This is the status quo in the video game industry. In an environment like that, just how much risk do you think artists, or their patrons, will really be willing to take with their work?

Re:there is no question

[Your.Master]

That's a fun game.

Name one painting, song, sculpture, poem, or play that has the intellectual depth of a sophisticated and intellectual video game.

If you don't define "intellectual depth", then there's no way to ever argue the point with you. If you do define it, then you must define it specifically to exclude video games, and comic books, and trashy romantic comedy movies. Otherwise you will inevitably find a counterexample if you look hard enough & wait long enough (note also that paintings and literature have a far longer history than video games from which to produce classics).

It's legitimate to define a term to exclude these things, mind you. We normally define pursuits "appropriate for children" to exclude, for instance, fantasy rape pornography. That's fine. But it doesn't mean anything when you do that. If fantasy rape pornography isn't art, it's not because it's inappropriate for children.

Re:there is no question

[pcolaman]

I'm going to make a bold prediction that somewhere in this discussion there will be a debate over the meaning of the word "is."

Re:there is no question

[Das Modell]

Name one video game that has the intellectual depth of a fine art painting or literature.

No. Instead, why don't you explain how video games, as a medium, are incapable of being art?

Just like comic books and manga, video games occupy the same intellectual ground as pulp fiction novels and trash romantic comedy movies.

This is a ridiculous blanket statement. You might as well say all films are stupid trash and can never compare to literature.

There has never been nor will there ever be a video game that can compare with great art and literature like Rafael, Picasso, van Gogh, James Joyce, Yeats, or Shakespeare.

Impossible. Anything that can be done in literature, film, music and paintings can be done in video games.

Re:there is no question

[n dot l]

The Myst series: Some of the most fantastic and beautifully rendered worlds in any game. Themes of family bonds and betrayal. Ridiculously good music that while not as technically complex as a classical symphony can and does evoke strong emotion just the same, especially when paired with the strange loneliness of the worlds within those games.

Braid: Fantastic visual art. A deeply human story about a search for the unattainable, scattered throughout in bits of excellent prose. Puzzles that leave you with a sense of awe at the raw ingenuity of the thing.

God of War (I and II, haven't played the PSP one): Again, beautifully rendered worlds. Gameplay, imagery, and a story that explore brutality, insanity, anger, the thirst for revenge, all set within the framework of a quest for glorious redemption.

Yes, many games are just there for the raw entertainment value. But then again a lot of visual art is just advertising, and a lot of "literature" is just cheap supermarket trash (as you yourself have pointed out). How does that make entire medium non-art, while the existence of trashy fiction doesn't do the same to all novels, for instance?

And yes, many of the people that play games are in it just for the entertainment of shooting a few bad guys and bragging about their high score. I'd even go on to say that in those cases where a game is really art, most of its players will fail to take the time to appreciate, really appreciate what it is that they're looking at. But then again most of the people I saw at the Louvre were just there to take pictures that they could brag about to their friends (particularly the clusterfuck of idiots in front of the Mona Lisa), and I ended up being one of a very few people who moved through slowly, looking at everything, stopping occasionally to stare at something particularly striking.

The fact that you've never looked carefully at what makes up a video game (if you've looked at one at all, that is), and then sat back and taken it in as a whole doesn't even begin to mean that no game anywhere has ever had any significant artistic merit at all.

Re:there is no question

[Fluffeh]

We've all played GTA. What, if anything, in the entire series compares with the opening scene of Saving Private Ryan?

Well, there is a significant difference you see. Sure the opening scene of Private Ryan is gruesome and vivid. Yet the message behind it is the pointlessness and futility of the whole thing. Most violence in GTA is trivial in comparison but instills that VIOLENCE HAS REWARDS. That is a very significant difference.

Re:there is no question

[Psychochild]

Great, let's take Shakespeare. From the moment he set pen to page, he was considered an artistic genius, right?

Not quite. As other people pointed out, playwriting during Shakespeare's time was what second-rate writers did to pass the time. Real artists wrote poetry or essays, not common entertainment for the masses. It was only years later that anyone started to appreciate Shakespeare as anything more than the equivalent of today's TV.

There's also the problem that interactive entertainment, such as games, are more limited in audience. Just as Opera isn't for everyone, games aren't going to be grasped by everyone. People that aren't used to the medium (read: older people who didn't grow up with the medium) are going to have a much harder time understand it and why it has the potential for art.

So, we need some time before we can state this case unequivocally in one way or the other. Being a game developer and not interested in just producing mass entertainment, I'll politely disagree with you for now. ;)

Have fun,

Re:there is no question

[Psychochild]

Art can influence people, but it's rare that it induces people to a particular action unless they suffer from specific conditions. A painting I like to use as an example in this case is Goya's Tres de Mayo . This image shows more blood than you'll see in a typical computer game screenshot. Yet, I learned about this painting in my Spanish classes in school.

Take a look at the painting. Does it fill you with emotion? It does for me. Even if you don't know the history behind the image, the image quite obviously shows a lot of anguish and fear and death. It's not a comfortable painting to look at for a long time, for most people. But, does it induce you to an action? Do you want to support Napoleon's invasion of Spain? Shoot some Spanish rebels? Wear a bright white shirt to your own execution? Probably not.

If you're worried that the interactive nature of games is more harmful than other media, go ahead and read the majority of the peer-reviewed studies out there. For most people, this is not an issue.

meh

[thermian]

Ever since I discovered the joy of hunting down and killing innocent civilian transports in Elite I've been looking for ways to be a completely evil bugger in the games I play.

I'm not alone either, people like to do that sort of thing. Why else would you be able to sit on top of buildings taking out hookers with a sniper rifle in a car driving game? There is of course a big difference between doing that in a game and doing it in real life, but quite obviously it is something people find amusing, at least in a fantasy sense.

I can't say I'd like replaying real world modern atrocities, but I know from accounts of elderly relatives just how bloody and horrific the second world war was (in unfortunately graphic detail, given how young I was when I listened to the stories), yet we happily recreate that in game after game.

recreation of nasty events is going to happen, there's no way to avoid it, and good luck trying to set a time limit on how much time must pass before an event becomes a suitable topic for a game.

You can troll with them = you can make statements

[philspear]

It's unfortunate that the examples were all statements of "Lookit me! I'm an insensitive asshole!" But the answer is yes, they can express that.

The real question is if games can make statements that aren't

-I want money
-I want attention
-I hate (insert group of people here)
-I'm a jerk

The answer is yes, but we haven't been able to do it very sophisticated like yet.

One GOOD exmaple I'm thinking of is the guy who made "the emo game" You can find his works here
http://www.emogame.com/

Emo game 1 basically is making fun of emo music. A worthy goal. One of the sequels is an extremely not-subtle condemnation of conservatives, republicans, Bush, Paris hilton, the anti-stem cell movement, and shooting various other fishes in barrels. They're free and sometimes funny. Again, not subtle. Try them. A lot of the message relies on you playing through not very good gaming portions and then coming to a word document with the message inserted. It doesn't flow seamlessly with the game.

There are also games that are clearly environmental, and they range from bludgeoning you over the head with it to so subtle that you could miss it.

Bioshock I'm told has some moral questions for you to ponder. As I haven't played it yet I can't comment on that. I suspect though it's largely using movie techniques between game sequences.

Videogames as statements are clearly in their infancy, so it's to be expected that the examples we have are fairly crude. Props to the emogame guy for being a pioneer of sorts though, and of course for making a statement with his soapbox. But it definitely is possible and with time they'll develop mechanisms to make it actually part of the game as opposed to gaming between statements.

Re:Anybody capable of programming a game...

[WK2]

Statements and expressions are requirements in most programmings languages.

Re:Anybody capable of programming a game...

[CaptainPatent]

...should on no account be allowed to make "statements".

printf(%s, "Why no... whoops"); //well if we can't make a statement, we should just leave a comment instead.

two comments.

[Toonol]

The quick answer is, of course. Like any other form of creative endeavor, videogames can and should be used to explore themes and illustrate principles, artistically.

The second point, though, is that I don't like these two games being held up as examples of video-game art. Both the mentioned games seem to me a bit like the crucifix dipped in urine; it's making a crass, simplistic, unsubtle, and probably unintended statement. Artists seem to feel that they are free to make ridiculous and shoddily-executed statements, purely for shock, and that nobody should criticise them for it. It's 'art'.

Play Planescape:Torment to find a game rich with true art, that says something about humanity. The aforementioned two games are art, in the same sense hanging condoms from a Christmas tree painted red is.

Video games are not art

[incognito84]

I remember reading an article written by Hideo Kojima (of MGS fame) about whether he thought video games were art, and he said no.

He essentially said that he didn't believe video games were art as they offered an open ended experience where players can immerse themselves in order to form unique experiences.

As a whole, that's just what they are: packaged, bought and sold "worlds" or "realities" for us to play in, which can contain all sorts and varieties of artistic elements, but yet as a whole can not be considered art. A player's experience rewound and played forward as a non-interactive product of the player's volition (like a film) can be art, but the act of playing a video game is not by itself art.

This is not to subtract from the idea of video games as I'm an avid video gamer myself. Video games provide us with experiences we could not or would not replicate in real life, and our interaction with these games creates an individually tailored experience which can be chalked full of artistic things, yet not artistic as a whole because it is what you make of it.

Is riding the subway to work art? No. Is seeing a painting on the wall art? The painting itself is, yes, but not the act of seeing it or your choice to go and see it. Is listening to music art? Not the act of listening, but the music itself is art... and you see my point.

Video games offer us a passage to artistic things, but are wholly not art in themselves.

Hope that made sense.

Just like a book

[atmtarzy]

I don't really see much of an argument against considering video games as art. The longer ones, with stories and what-not are very similar to written books. Both have different methods of engaging the player or reader, but both do provide a fully-fledged story, complete with morals, themes, and a message that can change a player's or reader's opinion on a matter. The shorter games, like in the mentioned Space Invaders controversy, are very similar to paintings. There isn't much of a story to them, but they still are fully capable of affecting a player or viewer.

In general, I'd say that something is art if it's capable of affecting its 'experiencer' in some sort of opinion- or emotially-related way. The fact that 2+2 is 4 isn't art (written on paper, it might be, but not the simple fact itself), while little aliens blowing up the WTC is.

Why are we talking about a stupid "controversy"?

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

This seems to be less about whether video games can be art, and more about the dimwitted reactionary troglodytes who seem to think that their emotional reactions, so long as they are strong enough, should dictate what other people get to see, say, and do.

This vice is not a new one(The Romans were bitching about the decadence of Greek art not long after they became familiar with it), nor is it confined to whining about games(as the previous anecdote suggests), nor is it confined to any particular political persuasion(Fascists attacked "decadent" art, Communists attacked "bourgeois" art, religious fundamentalists attack pretty much anything that doesn't bow and scrape to their wretched little gods, hardline bleeding-hearts attack art that threatens "the children" which is one of their few areas of agreement with the fundies.) Video games are the target of choice because, unlike other media which have a long and respectable history to (partially) shield them from attack, it is still common "knowledge" that video games are just homicide simulators for pimply geeks.

The only "controversy" here consists of people who think that their right to never have their feelings hurt is more important than anybody else's right to speak whining, as they always do. Pathetic.

Re:You can make whatever statements you want.

[Anonymous Coward]

FYI a Fatwa is just a generic religious ruling by a Sharia judge, it's not a death threat. However a Fatwa to kill someone is a ruling to kill someone, but you need the "to kill someone" bit for it mean what you're implying.

ps. Sharia Courts are bullshit: "In instances of rape some interpretations of Sharia law require for an allegation to be validated, victims must have four witnesses to the crime or else the victims risk being charged with fornication or adultery making a rejected allegation a potential death sentence for the victim. In Yemen Sharia law required compensation to be paid to the husband in the case of a 10 year old child bride who requested a divorce after rape and abuse (the age of sexual consent under Sharia law is 9)"

Re:You can troll with them = you can make statemen

[philspear]

It never fails to suprise me that emo fans actually get upset and defensive when you insult emo. Or, if you don't claim to be an emo fan, it never fails to suprise me when people object to mocking of emo. This time I was expecting more whining over the republican bashing.

It's a worthy goal to make fun of emo music because 1. its funny 2. Emo, like many other things worthy of parody, is a little ridiculous when you get down to it 3. Emo fans need to grow a thicker skin. I'm praising the game because making fun of emo is not an asshole thing to do, in other words. And if you had read the author's website, you'll note that he is actually a fan of emo music.

Anyway, chill out. Why get your undies in a knot over it?

Meaning is subjective.

[grahamd0]

Like Stanley's Invaders!, Ledonne and his title stopped short of providing a direct interpretation - neither artist has been especially specific about 'what it means,' or in instructing players on how they should interpret their work or what 'message' should be taken away.

Nor should they. The meaning of art is subjective.

Any good artist is far too emotionally connected to their work to objectively critique it. Explaining the meaning of their work is simply being pretentious. Who are they to tell us how to feel?

Art

[BeardedClone]

Art refers a range of human creations, and expressions that are appealing to other people. I believe when we include music and literature, we should automatically include games because they include both elements. Games also include visual arts and sculptures (3D). We can sit here and discuss aesthetics all day, or agree that it's something better left to the philosophers. Ars est celare artem.

That's just wrong

[clarkkent09]

a modification of Space Invaders in which the invaders are slowly demolishing the World Trade Center

I can see why people were upset. That's not how it happened!!! A mod of MS Flight Simulator, now that would be more realistic.

But he said "World Trade Center"!!!

[Joce640k]

Everybody knows that the FBI appears if you say "World Trade Center" three times in front of a mirror.

Uhmm

[Anonymous Coward]

Can we moderate -1, Psychotic?

Histrionic Americans, or humans?

[macraig]

Are all you humans this histrionic and emotionally narcissistic, or is it only the subclass of the species that lives in the United States? If it's the latter, what is it about your food supply or environment that makes you deserving of one of Bill Engvall's signs? Perhaps you should stop fluoridating your water?

"Emotionally narcissistic" is the best term I can conceive to describe the irrational stupidity of people who would overreact to iconoclastic art... or games.

Also in the news!

[Drakonik]

Our expert analysts determine whether paintings, novels, or sculptures can be used to make political or social commentary. Details at 11.

Seriously though. What the FUCK? Yes, some video games are simply money-makers (Madden 1998-2XXX, anyone?), but others are used to really say something. There's one game called "Harpooned" that is a satire protesting Japanese "research" on whales. A video game is simply a digital canvas. Instead of crushed rocks and plants, we paint with pixels and code. If a video game isn't a piece of art in its own right, then nothing created by anyone is.

Anyone who thinks that ANY medium is not proper for expressing ideas and beliefs is simply trying to restrict your ability to express YOUR ideas.