'Systems-As-Art' In Games

GameSetWatch has an interesting essay about the relationship between games and art. Matthew Wasteland discusses the difficulty in translating other artistic creations to video games, giving Moby Dick as an example. "If Melville had so much as allowed for any possibility at all where Captain Ahab 'wins,' no matter how remote, the work's message and its interpretation of the world completely changes. Instead of destiny and fate, we would now speak of probability and chance." He then goes on to examine whether the logic systems and rules that define a game can achieve the status of art. "Distancing the work from the 'entertainment' of popular games is fine, but even the most artsy, obscure and difficult works must connect with an audience somehow. I am not sure a system of rules by itself is the best method to achieve that. If rules are art, could not one just as easily publish a rulebook, and leave it at that?"

Comments

Rules are regularly a part of art

[Anonymous Coward]

There are rules when reading music, or reading poetry. You don't read a book backwards, or watch a movie from the middle.

Re:Rules are regularly a part of art

[Talgrath]

"High Art" is mostly bullshit; it's an attempt to say that something is greater than it is and has no clear definition. Art is art, there are various ways that art is expressed but ultimately they all serve to "explore the human condition", generally "high art" is used as an excuse for snobbery. In short, "high art" is a good way of saying "things are this way because I say so"; when Roger Ebert was given ample proof that video games are art, he hid behind the "high art" shield and those with any sense dismissed him as an idiot (which he is).

I'd say trying to isolate the rules of the game is a disservice to games as art; or art in general. If we take the "rules" away from various forms of poetry and just studied them, they're just rules governing structure in writing poetry; by the same token, if we just take the rules of a game away from it, they're just rules as to how the character interacts with the world. Instead of looking at the rules of an artform, we should instead look at the piece as a whole; as we do for any other form of art.

Re:Rules are regularly a part of art

[xappax]

If games are made out of rules, paintings are made out of brushstrokes. Nevertheless, an ordered list of brushstrokes isn't the same as a painting. And similarly, a rulebook isn't the same as a game.

Rules are simply the material used to build games, and in both a good game and a good painting, one stops thinking about the materials used and is captivated by the emergent properties of the whole work.

Play-balance is optional

[argent]

While I would say that there are very few games that have noticeable depth as literature, that doesn't mean that's inherent in the medium.

For that matter, very few movies have as much depth as novels, even novelizations of movies explore areas that the movie simply can't reach, and that doesn't mean movies aren't art. Not all games are "play balanced", and not all books are "Moby Dick".

And speaking of Moby Dick...

There are plenty of stories where the ending would be just as satisfying and meaningful if you got there by a different path, or even with a different character. Getting there can even give you an appreciation of the trials of the protagonist that you wouldn't gain if success or failure didn't depend on your decisions.

And play-balance doesn't mean giving Ahab a chance to live, there are plenty of games where it's impossible to "win" one side, and the "victory conditions" are based only on how well you lose. There are even games where the story is almost completely fixed, and all you can do is spend more or less time exploring the scenery.

Dance

[Mr_Blank]

Blah blah blah. Is this art. It is all in the eye of the beholder. The author goes on and on, but if you skip to the conclusion you will find

Citizen Kane is accessible and easy to like. It synthesized much of what was known about filmmaking up to that point into a coherent whole. It married technical innovations with a good story. It showed that a film could be high and low, art and spectacle, serious and entertaining all at once. A medium that can deliver all of that in one package is a great medium indeed.

By that definition, dance is art. Dance has highs and lows, can entertain, incorporate a story, and bring spectacle. If these little swans are art then so are these little morons. If we want to argue that the first is art then the same applies to the second, even though there is a pretty big quality difference.

For the players of games, each has their own Citizen Kane. Maybe it is Halo. Maybe it is Super Mario Brothers. Maybe it is WoW. The particular game does not matter - some people hate the movie Citizen Kane and no game is loved universally. The point is that games have highs and lows, can entertain, incorporate a story, and bring spectacle - just like every other medium considered to be 'art'.

Let's get past this dumb debate and move on to talking about the merits of the great games. AND! while we are doing that, let's avoid trying to compare games to other art forms directly. It would be insane to compare Citizen Kane, to the Mona Lisa, to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. That is part of the reason games are having trouble getting their art credits: Art is art and comparing it to other art only detracts from the appreciation of what is.