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On Game Developers and Legitimacy
Gamasutra is running a feature by game developer Brian Green on how he and his colleagues are still striving for legitimacy and respect as part of a medium that's still commonly thought of by many as "for kids" and "potentially harmful to kids." He notes that while financial legitimacy is no longer in question, artistic and cultural legitimacy are taking more time. Green makes some interesting parallels to the early movie and comic book industries, and points out that moral outrage against comic books did significant damage to the medium's growth in the US.
"... in the United States there was a 'moral panic' about the corrupting influences of comic books on children, as there often is with many 'new' media. The government threatened to enact laws to censor comic books, for the good of the children. (Does that sound familiar to game developers?) The industry reacted by enacting their own regulations, the Comics Code Authority (CCA). The Comics Code Authority heavily restricted the content that comics could contain. For example, the words 'horror' and 'terror' were not allowed in the titles of comics. Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden."
Define art.
Your definition will either include videogames or exclude a good amount of things everybody considers art.
Art: Everything 'arty' except videogames? ;-)
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Watchmen is a great work, and many of the batman comics that I've read have told a story as well as many books I've read. Have I ever read a comic I consider to be as thought provoking and, well, good as the Count of Monte Cristo? No, of course not, but I've read a few that I would consider as good as Asher Lev, Pride and Prejudice or other critically acclaimed novels.
As for video games, I don't know whether they'll ever be considered art, and I do believe that your comment (though worded badly) is legitimate. In the end, these are games and should be treated with the same respect you'd treat a football game or soccer game. I'm hoping that the industry surprises me with something that tells a story so well that I'd consider it art, but I haven't found one yet.
A critically acclaimed video game turned movie will go a long way towards legitimacy.
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
We've had movies based on games, games based on comics, games based on movies and TV shows, movies based on TV shows, games based on books, and soundtracks for all of them (but comics of course). Everything has been intertwined for years. And only the most idiotic of individuals could possibly isolate any one of these media and consider them not to be works of art.
Chrono Trigger. Street Fighter II. Virtua Fighter. Starcraft. Metal Gear Solid. Art?
Games are some of highest forms of art in existence as they include:
- writing: storyline, plot twists, character history and back story
- visual art: graphics, design, characters, creatures, environments
- animated art: motion capture, cartoon animation
- special effects: rag doll physics, explosions, stop motion (Max Payne), complex lighting
- sound: sound effects, samples, ambient noise, environmental sounds, foley noise
- music: original and licensed music, Chrono Trigger has amazing original music, Grand Theft Auto has amazing licensed music
- acting: voice acting, including many AAA games having Hollywood level talent
Are games considered brilliant works of art? David? Mona Lisa? Sistine Chapel? Are they considered as exceptional art because of the difficulty of the work?
What about the difficulty in creating an original title such as Half Life? Or Starcraft? Or Chrono Trigger?
David wasn't the first statue, Mona Lisa not the first painting, Sistine Chapel not the first mural, Starcraft not the first RTS, Half Life not the first FPS, Chrono Trigger not the first RPG, but they are standouts, works of a art, and unique accomplishments. And much time, thought, and effort went into the making of all them.
Just look at the balance of Street Fighter II (which took fifteen years), or Starcraft (still being balanced every day in Korea and Blizzard HQ), or Virtua Fighter (Sega revises the arcade versions several times). Is there not an art of game balance?
Balancing Virtua Fighter, where you have a cast of 19 extremely different characters that fight in different ways, or Starcraft where three completely unique races competing on different maps with different starting locations. Is there not an art to balancing those games? If it was a science then each character would be the same, each race the same.
And level design. It's EXACTLY like set design but more imaginative as you aren't confined to real world physics. Cliff Blezinski designed some of the most amazing architecture I have ever seen. What buildings did he create? None. He made levels, amazing levels, in Unreal Tournament. Levels that are works of art. (UT1 also had an amazing soundtrack).
Directing an in game cut scene is exactly like directing a scene in a movie (except the actors don't talk back). Look at Final Fantasy X or Metal Gear Solid 4.
Creating a game soundtrack is the same as making one for a film or television show. Look at Grand Theft Auto, Chrono Trigger, Halo.
Creating the 3D models for characters in game is the same as carving a statue. The characters in Virtua Fighter 5R are extraordinary when you see them moving on an HDTV monitor at the arcade.
Writing a script or character for a game is the same as writing one for a book or comic. Solid Snake & Niko Bellic have fuller lives and stories than some of the longest running television characters.
Animating a character and his or her in game moves is the same as animating a character for an animated or 3D movie. The animations for Virtua Fighter 5R are just as impressive or better than Toy Story or Wall-E. VF5R moves at a blazing 60fps and the animations are fluid and jaw dropping.
Cinema is art, music is art, television is art, painting or photography is art, writing is art, and so are games.
translation:
your parents didn't have to worry about parenting. after all, why should they take an interest in what their child is reading?
there are still plenty of G-rated and completely tame comics that cater to children (like the funny pages in the newspaper). but i guess all comic books need be censored in order to meet the approval of lazy parents. god forbid comic book creators are given the creative freedom to write/draw what they want--including material that adult audiences can connect with.
i suppose if people like you had it your way there'd be no movies beyond PG-13, and all books/media/art would be insipid and uncontroversial--all so you can shelter your child in a Disney-ified world where everything is made for kids.
"The most virtuous are those who content themselves with being virtuous without seeking to appear so."
Plato
My parents didn't have to worry about what comics I bicycled up to the corner convenience store to buy.
"Internet censorship is a good thing! My parents don't have to worry about what websites I'm visiting!"
"TV censorship is a good thing! My parents don't have to worry about what I'm watching!"
Maybe your parents should have worried about what you were buying? Maybe, as parents, that's their job? I certainly see it as part of my job to watch over what my daughters are seeing.
The problem with gaming being seen solely as the preserve of kids, is that I, a 41 year old, am restricted to content that's been approved for 18 and under. As a game developer as well as a player, I get that from both sides. I can't work on a game with a plot that's too involved, or the kiddies won't get it. I can't show too much emotion between two NPCs, or someone might think it's sexual tension and ban the game.
The lack of respect for games puts us in a vicious circle where we can't do anything that would let us confront the player, and at the same time, we're not given respect because we never do confront the player.
Why not just make ESRB ratings enforcible by law to the same degree as alcohol sale and consumption?
Um, because alcohol abuse causes intoxication and addiction, and games don't?
I work in the "Games Industry", so I'll throw in my two cents.
Part of our problem is that the high profile titles are still stuck in what I'll call the Sitcom and Movie Of The Week phase. We have lots of heavily promoted titles that, to an outside observer, are only midly different (my mother would not be able to tell the difference between L4D and Fallout 3, just as I can't tell the difference between Fraiser and The King of Queens), and the production and release of these titles is largely driven by profitibility.
There are smatterings of "art" games, and it is my belief that these games are the ones that will bring legitimacy to the industry, although it's going to be an uphill battle. Let me take this sentence apart, because I want to clarify what I mean and why I'm making this argument.
A game like Emily Short's "Galatea", which is a text based game (ostensibly "Interactive Fiction"), is art, if solely for the beauty of the prose and the exploratory nature of the interaction. There are a vast array of possible conversations that the player can have with the title character, and these are mature, adult conversations, with depth and emotion fitting of any high quality published novel. But barely anyone knows about this game outside of the IF and Academic community.
Another game is Johnathan Blow's "Braid", which I began playing for the third (fourth?) time again last night. Not only is it beautiful, fun, polished, and unique, but the time-manipulation gameplay ties in with the plot in an almost magical fashion. Who, or what, is The Princess, and how exactly does she fit into the timespace continuum? Even after I put down the controller, I find myself thinking about the story far more than the button mashing or the puzzles.
But these two games also reveal part of the challenge, in that a game in the purest sense, as James Earnest (of Cheapass Games) used to attempt to impress upon me often, doesn't care about plot or story or pretty graphics. A game is about rules and play and fun, and that's it. So intertwining the game play aspect with the story aspect is the real challenge for legitimacy, because it's through story and narrative that people develop an emotional connection to the content, but it's via interaction that they experience this narrative.
I think there are a handful of approaches that are starting to tie interaction and dynamic narrative together. Fallout 3 (which I haven't played, admittedly) and Fable 2 are probably good examples, although they're perhaps the modern day "Die Hard" equivalents: yes, romance drives the plot, but it's really about guns and explosions. Cultural legitimacy, when playing a certain video games becomes the mass-populace in-thing to do because there is a positive (or at least thoughtful and broadly appealing) common experience to be had, this is probably at least another decade off. I think we need to see more Braids and Galateas, and better Fables that are less about sword slashing and more about our inner conflicts as human beings, before we get there. I think we need development teams who are more artists and storytellers than algorithmic optomizers, and I think we need to make games that take more risks and fail not simply because the framerate was poor or the textures were blocky, but because they tried to teach us something about what it means to be human and just wound up being weird.
Those are the mistakes we need to make in the industry, so that we can learn from them. Only when we understand how to merge interaction with introspection will video games be legitimate forms of art and entertainment.
I work kind of in this area as a researcher, so maybe I have a rosy-glass view, but the arguments seem a bit dated to me. Sure, in say 1999 this was a problem, and not that many people took games seriously. But in 2009? Yeah, people still like to kvetch ("games are rarely taken seriously blah blah and we aim to change that" is a standard opening move if you're writing a paper), and maybe the average person on the street doesn't, but there are plenty of inroads:
There are journals and academic conferences on games, in both the humanities and computer science.
MIT Press has an entire division of books about videogames. I'm currently reading one about the Atari 2600, which, yes, even covers its role as a cultural and artistic platform.
There are initiatives and companies to use games for "serious" purposes. The U.S. Army in particular takes them seriously and funds development.
Braid sold over $1m, despite being a kind of weird arty game made by a single guy. You can even get an MFA doing fine-arts stuff related to games.
Heck, Gamasutra itself frequently publishes about games as art, and it's semi-high-profile (at least to the extent that getting linked at Slashdot once a week counts as semi-high-profile).
I mean yeah, I'll agree that far more people respect, say, film than respect games. But it's not as if this is some novel argument and nobody has ever thought about taking games seriously before. Also, to some extent, it's the fault of people not making more interesting games: Hollywood may be crap, but there are a lot more innovative indie films out there than innovative indie games.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
...you need to push things along. It has taken a long time for comic books to be accepted as an capital "A" Art form, almost 2 generations (or three depending on how we date things). I don't see a good reason why games will be accepted more quickly. There is the general reason of "cultural change happens faster now", but that comment is usually unaccompanied by argument or data so I take it with a grain of salt. We are 30-40 years into the history of video games and ~25 years into their entrance into the mainstream. I have no idea what arc they will take, but I can almost guarantee that it will travel through acceptance as an art form at some point. Will they be subject to an independent resistance against big studio control (a la the movie business in the late 50s to 1970s?) Will they await some major change in creation overhead before artists move into the genre? Are we too far in late capitalism for that to happen? No one knows.
But I can tell you one thing. Most of these game designers aren't helping. Sure, Ted Sturgeon can tell us that 90% of everything is bunk, but we really are reaching into the crapper for most of the content here. There are some wonderful games out there. There is some deep work going on in the business, both in writing and in the design of a game experience. But most of these guys are pushing out undifferentiated games with middleware populated by Mary Sues and John Does. The studios (just like movie studios) don't care and honestly neither do the fans (in most cases). Where a game is a rare combination of artful, AAA, and well promoted, it will make bank. When it is two of the three or (worst), only artful, it will usually sit unloved. Like I said, this is not a problem unique to the gaming industry. For every truly wonderful film out there we have a dozen Dane Cook rom-coms that make you despair for humanity. But simply making that comparison leaves us with an incomplete picture. Those movies that we consider artful and important all took risks. They all represented serious investments of time, blood and money from their creators. They came about (at least in the case of Hollywood) from bitter fights and internecine warfare. Some of the works we think of today as powerful and compelling were almost eliminated (or mutilated) by studios interested in formulaic crap. And for every Kubrick or (young) Lucas or Scott there were hundreds of equally talented souls who just didn't make it. Who said the wrong thing to the wrong guy. Who pushed too hard or didn't push hard enough. Who said "fuck it" and decided to make Disney movies for the rest of their career. Game designers have to be willing to take those risks--the studios aren't going to do it themselves.
Surprise, surprise, striving for legitimacy and respect involves...striving for legitimacy and respect. You don't get to be respected as an "artiste" until you make some games that can seriously be considered artful. Meridian 59 is pretty god-damn good. But most people don't have games like that under their belt.
Werewolves, vampires, zombies, and similar creatures of the night were forbidden.
For example, from the wiki article on the Comics Code Authority:
Marvel skirted the zombie restriction in the mid-1970s by calling the apparently deceased, mind-controlled followers of various Haitian super-villains "zuvembies". This practice carried over to Marvel's super-hero line. In the Avengers comic, when the reanimated super-hero Wonder Man returned from the dead, he was also referred to as a "zuvembie".
Hackneyed androgenous anime figures with an emo lead wielding oversized weapons doing physics defying acrobatics in some stock fantasy world on a quest to save the world is art???
Oh and a game engine where the 'role playing'element consists of walking towards the next blinking dot on your map and pressing the dialog button??
At least its not your tolkien-esque elves orcs and dwarves.
MGS series I guess you have a partial case but FF series...
and yes I was a huge FF fan as a kid, remember playing through FF3 as a kid, FF4, FF5, FF7, but seriously could not give two ----s about any further sequels.
Its art with the same level of artistic depth as a Macross episode.
Kids - like everyone else - were watching television. Men were reading paperback books.
Mickey Spillane. "My Gun Is Quick"
Comic book sales were in a steep downward spiral and crime and horror looked like a quick - cheap - way to recapture an older audience.
The immediate problem was that distribution was routed through the same news outlets as everything else.
In the drug store with Scrooge McDuck and the cigar store with the bondage themed True Detective magazine.
The hard core stuff sold under the table. It could be - and often was - a very sleazy business.
The larger problem was that the newspaper comic strip was still in its prime.
Caniff. Al Capp. Chester Gould. Walt Kelly. Charles Schulz ---.
Both veterans and newcomers producing really, really, good stuff in every genre
--- and when they fought their own battles against censorship, they came into the fight with much better ammunition.
A few general comments here.
First, this article is intended for professional game developers. I wrote another article on this topic for game players and enthusiasts at RPG Vault: http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/807/807409p1.html Read that article if you want to see why legitimacy is important to everyone, and why attempts to restrict the content of games hurts more than just game developers.
The question isn't really if games are Art (with a capital A), but if they're seen as legitimate. The biggest example to show that games are not necessarily considered legitimate is in the numerous laws enacted to restrict the sales of games to "protect the children". Most of these politicians railing against video games are the same ones that would never think about trying to regulate books or even movies. Politicians will speak out against games because there is enough sentiment that games aren't really legitimate that the politician can score easy points. Thankfully, at least in the U.S., the courts have defended games in terms of free speech against various legislative attacks.
Personally, I think games are an incredibly powerful medium. I think that in the future we'll be able to develop games that have the same impact and meaning as classic movies and books; of course, we still have a very long way to go. On the other hand, we may not get that opportunity if we're hobbled by people who scream the battlecry "save the children!"
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
I thought V for Vendetta perfectly captured the descent into totalitarianism of a modern society. It didn't capture a particular decade, but I think it did a great job of being a 1984 for post-1984. It doesn't yet seem dated, though I'm sure it will in 100 years, as almost nothing is truly timeless. If anything, the ubiquitous surveilance in London makes it more relevent today.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
1. As opposed to what other art medium?
A crucifix in a jar of piss is considered art. A TV displaying static in an empty room is considered art. Or I've personally seen such works of art in a private collection as 4 pieces of A4 paper, 2 crumpled and 2 folded, then straightened out and framed. That was art. I've seen a sculpture apparently representing "death" which was really a steel sheet monolyth. No, seriously, it was a big rectangular box of steel sheet. That was it.
Or probably the best example here was a modern painting I've seen, which looked _exactly_ like a tetris game when you just lost. No seriously, it was essentially a square grid with 1 to 4 adjacent squares filled with one of 5 or 6 colours or so. Except I recon one of the rows should have been eliminated before because it was full. I wonder if it was an error of the artist or that was some thought-provoking part about the unfairness of life.
If _that_ is art, why isn't Tetris art? It can produce the same kind of an image. Why is it art if it's displayed in some snob's collection on canvas, but not when it's on the screen?
2. The general idea (or excuse) of art these days is that it's supposed to be "thought provoking" instead of anything else. (In fact, last I've heard about it at an arts college calling someone else's work "pretty" instead of "thought provoking" is the most grievous insult you can throw and not be sued for it. But use it only if you want to make an enemy.)
So then why aren't, say, the story arcs of City Of Heroes art? I know several did get me thinking about morality, or about doing what you think is right and discovering that you've been manipulated, and a few other things.
And I'm not even saying that City Of Heroes is the only game like that. Most games can provoke _some_ thought. E.g., KOTOR 2 did a good job of being pretty morally complex, and had more than a couple of situations worth thinking about. E.g., The Witcher got pretty philosophical at times, and it made a good point that sometimes there are no right sides to pick. E.g., Black And White, much as I otherwise thoroughly despised that game, did get me thinking a bit about divinity and such. Etc.
Heck, I once even wrote an essay about Chucky Egg as a metaphor for the struggle of the common worker against the oppressive corporate chickens. Ok, it was a big joke, but it did provoke that kind of thought at least. So even a simplistic one-screen platformer can technically be thought-provoking.
And again, if a crucifix in a jar of piss or a crumpled sheet of paper can use the "thought provoking" excuse, then virtually any game can. If you're the kind that's inclined to think of the deeper meanings and possible metaphors of that jar, I see no reason why you couldn't do the same about a Mario kart game. (See the XKCD strip where she gets all philosophical about choosing to not cross the finishing line. Ok, just to make him lose, but still, that's some thought provoked.)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Hackneyed androgenous anime figures with an emo lead wielding oversized weapons doing physics defying acrobatics in some stock fantasy world on a quest to save the world is art???
I'm curious as to how any typical game could NOT be 'art'. No matter how shitty it is.
Music is, and games have music. Creative architecture is, and game worlds are composed of this. Sculptures are, and models are just another digital variant of that. There's (shitty) acting. There's animation and motion capture. There's the creative composition of all of these elements, another artform in itself. Even if I hated it as a game, I've never played one that had no artistic qualities.
IMHO, Deus Ex is an all-around better game. It has flaws, to be sure, but I think that SS2 had more. Deus Ex also brings a lot to the table that SS2 doesn't even try to--and that's not really a failing of SS2, but I think that it makes Deus Ex a deeper and more substantial game.
Both are superb, though, and both are easily in my personal top-10 list of games.
Oh, and I forgot about the Thief series. Completing the third one... man, the whole thing felt so epic for a game series with such a small focus, if that makes any sense.
Hm, some more on games as art:
I read quite a bit, and not just shitty genre fiction (though I read my fair share of that too)--I'm very much enjoying working through the huge body of "canonical" literature. I watch movies, including some that make critic's lists. IMO, games hold up very well to those two forms of media as a method of artistic expression, and some of my most moving experiences with fiction have been in games. Depending on what kind of experience you're looking for, they may even be a better method for conveying your message.
Saving Private Ryan impressed with its gritty opening scene that famously gave the audience a glimpse of hell, but I doubt any movie could have given me as much insight--however slight it may be--in to the concept of shell-shock as the first Russian level of CoD did.
The feelings evoked by traveling through the worlds of Morrowind and (to a lesser extent) Oblivion were occasionally very similar to those I've felt appreciating real landscapes and natural beauty, and their rich histories and in-game lore rival that of all but the best fantasy literature. Chrono Trigger/Cross, a couple of the Final Fantasies, Arcanum, a couple of the Suikoden games, Planescape: Torment, Darklands--ALL better than the average fantasy/sci-fi novel.
No book or movie has come close to being as terrifying as a number of the games I've played. IMO, games are the clear master of several types of horror, some of which overlap with those attempted in film and books.
Half Life 2's coast section had a lonely atmosphere of a quality that can only be seen in some of the best movies.
Fallout I/II and similar games where you have to make moral choices can tell you things about yourself that you might not discover in a book or movie; for instance, I've found that I can't bring myself to do a "bad" play-through my first time in a game.
One of the only good parts of Fallout 3--and it was a damn good one--was the bit with Harold, which is among the most heart-wrenching experiences I've ever had with any form of fiction, bar none, and the interactive form it took was integral to that experience.