Art Games vs. Games as Art

[Nabeel Ansari]

Hey, so this has been on my mind a little while, I want people's opinions on it.

Ahem.

There's been this great big push in the last few years for video games to be recognized as an artform, a method of expression for the developers and a way for people to explore experiences and worlds to be emotionally affected instead of simply having entertainment value. I pose these inquiries:

• Are the emergence of "art games" (walking simulators, introspective/immersive experiences, experimental stories) what we actually mean and want when we say games are art? Are older, arcade-y games valueless by comparison?
• Or, should we be looking at game design itself as an art, complete with all of the facets (mechanics, reward, risk, choices, challenges, exit points, first order strategies, etc.)? Are "art games" valueless by comparison?
• Or, do both kinds have separate value?
• Or, games have to be both to have value?
• Or, neither? (Please leave. :P)

Use examples from games you've played to support why you think that way.

[Nabeel Ansari]

Here's my own opinion:

I personally feel like "art games" on their own are not actually assisting the bigger picture. They show that games can be art if done in very specific ways (that often ignore entertainment value or involved game design). Essentially these games have a central concept of simple interactivity and immersion in a world, like an experimental film you can walk around in. These are your Gone Homes, your Everybody's Gone to the Raptures. You're supposed to think, and feel, while you play, but mechanically considered, there isn't really anything to them (not a bad thing, I'm just telling how it is). These games are artistic. But they kind of leave everything else behind if we only look to them.

I think looking at game design itself as the artform has more substance to it. I think games like Undertale, games like Dark Souls, are extremely powerful examples of video games as an artform. Because these games are not just about the intellectual experience, and they are also not intellectual experiences with arcade gameplay thrown in. These are games where the game mechanics and play directly correspond to the expression and emotion the developers want to give the player. Within the confines of game design, the standards of "challenge, exit points, rewards, risks" etc. So the art isn't simply about what it means to make interesting things that now you can walk around in, but what it means when the developer(s) have this dialogue with the player, to manipulate how he feels through gameplay (considering very concrete things like how a player dies, or how hard it is for him to have agency and choices, or how the difficulty is designed), and how that gameplay affects and is affected by the narrative or central concept of the game itself.

Spoiler example, when you kill the illusory goddess in Anor Londo in Dark Souls, the entire area loses its sun and it becomes cast in permanent twilight, and your bonfire keeper turns against you. When you kill her, the bonfire is put out, not allowing you to teleport there, or rest there. Additionally, being killed in Anor Londo makes you spawn there (so you can die and lose everything and also have no safe place to fall back on), so basically the game fucks you ever. It's a permanent consequence that actually frustrates the player because it's an irreversible difficulty increase (a bit of an absurd, unprecedented one at this point in the game) for playing the game impulsively. It's not just a sad or "sucks" story, it makes you frustrated in real life because it's manipulating your ability to play the game. It also reduces the sense of elation and power you get after beating Ornstein and Smough. It changes how you feel about yourself, whether you're powerful or powerless. I think that's artistic, and that's the expression I personally look for when looking at games as art.

Maybe that's too heavy-handed, though, because if you look at it that way, that kind of makes art games not really have anything to them, since their game designs are fairly minimal. You have walking, you have a goal. That's... really it? If we talk about how the experience and/or narrative should be expressed through game design, aren't they actually kind of saying you can't really do that when your most popular ones are in fact what people would call "walking simulators"? Tales of Tales basically outright said this in their manifesto. They wanted to stop making "games" and wanted to start making interactive experiences. I think the line there is appropriate, because I don't think it is appropriate to remove the word "game" from its grounding in game theory.

For popular example, I think Journey fits as an art game, but is also genuinely a video game as art too. It's fun to play because the movement is satisfying and there's clear gameplay, even if it's simple. You fly (well, glide, slide) around, collect scarves and light symbols, clear the stages. But the collecting is actually meaningful, it's a show of your building up (literally in the Hero's Journey) which is then dismantled later when you find out that you can actually take damage and lose part of your scarf in the lower cave. It's not just narrative there, that's narrative expressed through gameplay. So in my eyes, Journey shows that games are art. It's a simple game, but it is good, and fun, and it's a particular artistic one to boot.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

Roger Ebert argued that video games themselves are not art because unlike literally everything else we refer to as "art", video games have rules and challenge - winners and losers. Anything we've traditionally called a "game" requires both of those things. Now that I've thought more about it, I agree with him. I would also agree with those who criticize or outright reject the "art game" label.

In a game, the rules do not arise out of creativity. They come about as a logical way to ensure that the game (challenge) in deciding who wins and loses remains fair. Ryu only being able to throw one fireball at a time isn't a creative choice - it's because the game wouldn't be fair without it. There are "games" in which you can't win or lose and therefore there is no true challenge. Thus, not a game.

None of the things you are describing, especially with Journey makes a game "art", in my opinion. Writing, acting, music, sound design, symbolism, visual art etc. all go into a video game, but they stand by themselves as "art". Strip all of that away and you're left with what the game really is - a logical set of rules regarding a challenge to decide who wins and who loses. If nothing is left, then it is not a game.

[Slimy]

1 hour ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

*snip*

If game mechanics weren't creative, there would only be 1 videogame genre.

You are assuming that the mechanics of a game cannot be artistic because they are "required" to be balanced. Why? (Ignoring the fact that not all games are balanced the same.) Can't designing a fun yet balanced mechanic or system in a game be artistic? I could be "creative," and arrange music made entirely out of white noise. Is that more artistic that arranging something most people would find pleasing to listen to?

[Servbot#36]

3 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Roger Ebert argued that video games themselves are not art because unlike literally everything else we refer to as "art", video games have rules and challenge - winners and losers. Anything we've traditionally called a "game" requires both of those things. Now that I've thought more about it, I agree with him. I would also agree with those who criticize or outright reject the "art game" label.

In a game, the rules do not arise out of creativity. They come about as a logical way to ensure that the game (challenge) in deciding who wins and loses remains fair. Ryu only being able to throw one fireball at a time isn't a creative choice - it's because the game wouldn't be fair without it. There are "games" in which you can't win or lose and therefore there is no true challenge. Thus, not a game.

None of the things you are describing, especially with Journey makes a game "art", in my opinion. Writing, acting, music, sound design, symbolism, visual art etc. all go into a video game, but they stand by themselves as "art". Strip all of that away and you're left with what the game really is - a logical set of rules regarding a challenge to decide who wins and who loses. If nothing is left, then it is not a game.

I dunno, I'm not sure we can consider the actual "game" part of a game to be born entirely out of logic. If it were really a science like that, wouldn't there be objectively optimal mechanics then? There would be no need for different kinds of games if logic was all you needed. We'd just be working toward the one perfect game. But to use your own example, if Street Fighter's mechanics are just a matter of logic, why are none of them truly balanced? If it was just a matter of fair or unfair, there shouldn't be much trouble. But fair and unfair and fun and unfun aren't objective, so there can't be a purely logical way of creating them. Besides, there's more to a game than just its mechanics; the concept of any game, like a fighter or an adventure game, had to involve at least some creativity to come up with.

The way I see it, the rules are in place to make the people playing the game have fun. And fun isn't quantifiable or objective, it's just something that's felt. So there must be more that goes into it than just logic. If something that's made to evoke emotions or thought is art, why can't something that's made to evoke fun be?

 

Anyway I don't think either are valueless. At the end of the day, what you get out of a game is the experience of playing it. How much it values fun and gameplay (which I consider equal as far as artiness is concerned) versus things like symbolism and emotion doesn't make it more or less of a piece of art, just different. But honestly I think there's not much point in trying to assert games as art or not. If the point of art is to be experienced, and your experience is limited to you and you alone, other people's aren't really important.

Personally I think it's cool when the emotional aspects are really connected with the game aspects; I really liked that in Undertale. It's now among my favorite games of all time. But if other people prefer the gameplay to be minimal, just a medium to see all the other artistic stuff, no one can tell them they're wrong.

[Jakos]

I would say that videogames are an art by themselves. I'll try to explain my point of view:

I see videogames as a balance of all the known arts, like architecture (level desing, building design), music (soundtracks), paintings (all the texture the game has or sprites in case of 2D games), sculptures (all the models a video game uses), literature (the story of the game), engineering (the mechanics behind it) and for some people, the math, the logic behind it could be like some kind of art (you need imagination to program all those games too). I may be missing (for sure) some other familes.

That balance is the true art in the videogames, as some of them may be more balanced toward music (Guitar hero, Vib-Ribbon), literature (Broken Sword, Dear Esther), engineering (Portal, Antichamber), etc... but usually is a mix between all those.

And like all the art there's also quality wich determines if it's good or not.

[lazygecko]

I think one of the root problems here is how overly stringest people are with "games" as a term and the criterias derived from it and applied to the medium, like rules and win/lose states. It's very evident these days that the medium has outgrown these definitions. But the original language we use to define the medium as a whole persists. And that's okay.

It's pretty much the same as comic books. Now, this is partly conjecture on my part, but I'm pretty sure comics as a term have their roots in the humorous serial strips (and prior to that, satirical cartoon illustrations) you could find in newspapers. Yet today we still use this term to define the entire medium (unless you're so insecure you insist on refering to them as graphic novels), even if there isn't anything inherently humorous about it.

Other than that, I find the term art to be so inherently arbitrary that discussions over what is and isn't art is pretty pointless. Art is something that exists purely in our heads as an abstract interpretation. A painting is just a canvas with a bunch of colored liquid thrown at it. It requires a brain capable of some semblance of abstract thinking and ability to discern patterns to derive any meaning from it. The same applies to games and all the components they are made of.

A person like Rogert Ebert doesn't really have the necessary insight and commitment to make any relevant statement about games as art, and I am fairly sure he admitted as much later on. Yet so many still get so hung up over seeking validation from from people like that. Frankly I find the inferiority complex on display from gaming culture as a whole to be pretty pathetic and embarrasing. And ultimately I find it to be regressive thinking as people with that kind of mindset also tend to be the ones obsessed with having games mimic high-brow Hollywood films just to get a proverbial pat on the back, rather than being interested in exploring and experimenting with what fundamentally sets the medium apart as an artform.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

8 hours ago, Slimy said:

If game mechanics weren't creative, there would only be 1 videogame genre.

You are assuming that the mechanics of a game cannot be artistic because they are "required" to be balanced. Why? (Ignoring the fact that not all games are balanced the same.) Can't designing a fun yet balanced mechanic or system in a game be artistic? I could be "creative," and arrange music made entirely out of white noise. Is that more artistic that arranging something most people would find pleasing to listen to?

Just because mechanics are "different' doesn't necessarily mean it's because of art. To the bold text - Well, that's what I'm asking you to prove. 

Yes, a game does have to be fair. You're example of re-arranging white noise is different because you can still make something we'd refer to as "music". No rules or challenge required. Name me a game without rules.

5 hours ago, Servbot#36 said:

I dunno, I'm not sure we can consider the actual "game" part of a game to be born entirely out of logic. If it were really a science like that, wouldn't there be objectively optimal mechanics then? There would be no need for different kinds of games if logic was all you needed. We'd just be working toward the one perfect game. But to use your own example, if Street Fighter's mechanics are just a matter of logic, why are none of them truly balanced? If it was just a matter of fair or unfair, there shouldn't be much trouble. But fair and unfair and fun and unfun aren't objective, so there can't be a purely logical way of creating them. Besides, there's more to a game than just its mechanics; the concept of any game, like a fighter or an adventure game, had to involve at least some creativity to come up with

Like I said in response to Slimy in a more abstract way, "Because humans make mistakes" is not the same as "rules are creative." This is demonstrable as fact in the case of Street Fighter since Capcom has released literal "balance updates". If the rules were creative choices and not something that keeps the game fair, they wouldn't fix the rules. 

The "more to the game" part you guys keep talking about, are all arbitrary.

Dark Souls:

The Art: The story, the music, the sound, the voices, the characters, etc. In essence, the assets that are applied to the game mechanics. What the assets are, are ultimately arbitrary.

The Game: "Make it to the end and defeat final boss". Countless games have this same goal. You "win" when you make it to the final bonfire (checkpoint) and beat the last enemy. You "lose" when you die and are sent back to the last checkpoint. When you "lose" all of your souls are gone and the enemies are reset. The enemies are reset because the game would be far too easy if the enemies stayed dead - you would inevitably beat the game simply by repeatedly trying. 

2 hours ago, lazygecko said:

A person like Rogert Ebert doesn't really have the necessary insight and commitment to make any relevant statement about games as art, and I am fairly sure he admitted as much later on.

Not to my knowledge. In fact, on his official website, he even sat down with a woman who was convinced she could prove him wrong by showing him games like Flower and I think Heavy Rain and stuff. All she wound up doing was proving his points by example.

That's why I came to agree with him. Because the more people try to argue and prove him wrong, the more you realize he's right.

2 hours ago, lazygecko said:

It's very evident these days that the medium has outgrown these definitions.

I would say it's evident that interactive software has outgrown the need to be a game.

[Nabeel Ansari]

I understand where you're coming from, Angel, but I thought I made the distinction between game mechanics that are born out of a desire to make the game function and game mechanics that are intertwined with the game's narrative. I don't think you can separate these things so easily.

Dark Souls isn't just a good game because it's hard. Dark Souls is a good game because of how its difficulty is related to its story, as well as how literally playing the game manipulates your feelings as a player (frustration, helplessness, etc.). Dark Souls is not a normal power fantasy, like every other action RPG. Dark Souls manipulates the feelings of power because of very high risk high reward gameplay. Not only that, but hard bosses earlier become normal mobs later on (for instance, the Capra Demon is a bitch early on... but later, you fight several of them at once). They're not with debuffed stats, you're just smarter, and mechanically more apt. It's strongly in line with the game's idea that you are growing stronger as you hack through the undead. And the narrative of the game manipulates that with the ending, where despite all of the power the game made you feel through its well-designed difficulty, you still are ultimately incapable of making a difference.

Would you still assert these things are born out of entirely logical, objective systematic design? I think there's way more to it than that. I know previously you don't think the Dark Souls story is that good, but I'd like to have faith that you just need it explained in the right perspective. I'd say they aren't just logical, because the Anor Londo example I used seems to prove that game mechanics can serve more purposes than being mechanical fun. Again, I see these mechanics and designs as a dialogue between the developer and the player, much as regular people in everyday life see their hardships as a dialogue between themselves and a higher power.

Also the fact that you reduce Dark Souls to such a simple game design makes me feel that even in the logical realm you haven't really done a lot of analysis of it. The game design, non-artistically, systematically, etc. is a lot more complex than you make it out to be. You need to have a more discerning eye.

[YoshiBlade]

I'm excited to dip my toe in this one! I feel like SotC, **spoilers-ahead** is a prime example of the malleability of a game as both "Art"and "Game" the game is the smooth controls, logical human ergonomics while play i.e the Grip meter, dashing, while at the same time the art could be the strange sympathy you feels when slaying a Colossus, which IMO was confirmed by the fact the Colossi weren't an active threat to the world...you stole the ancient sword, you broken into the forbidden area, you entered their domain and killed them for selfish reasons(?)  all of which only become apparent after you played or experienced the story, skewing the narrative. You were evil(?)...You were manipulated. You played the game or possibly the game played you, as it did to the Wanderer and what did you sacrifice? A true Greek Tragedy, which is being confirmed by the fact they share some strong commonalities both have explicit Prologues, both have the Hero making unreasonable sacrifices, forfeiture of his/her humanity.

[Servbot#36]

3 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Like I said in response to Slimy in a more abstract way, "Because humans make mistakes" is not the same as "rules are creative." This is demonstrable as fact in the case of Street Fighter since Capcom has released literal "balance updates". If the rules were creative choices and not something that keeps the game fair, they wouldn't fix the rules. 

The "more to the game" part you guys keep talking about, are all arbitrary.

 

Perhaps that was a bad example. I'll leave the debate over whether balance is really objective for another day. My main point was that the end output of all these rules is fun. They're trying to be fair, yes, but the fairness is only there because unfairness tends to detract from enjoyment. Fairness isn't fun on its own; I could think of a million games that are undeniably "fair" or "challenging", but that in itself doesn't mean anyone would want to play them. Unless you want to say that creating fun is a science or that the mechanics really have nothing to do with how fun it is, the rules have to be more than logic alone.

Even working under the assumption that there actually is a true balance and Capcom is just repeatedly trying (and failing) to achieve it, the rules had to come from somewhere. You can't take nothing, add logic, and get a game. Even if we ignore the creativity found in the concept of a guy shooting fire out of his hands, the fact that Ryu can throw a projectile in the first place took some creativity just to come up with, no matter how simple it sounds now. And if all the mechanics aspire to is fairness, why even have more than one character? You can't get more fair than a mirror match. Every character's moveset is an attempt to make a new playstyle that's in some way unique and interesting. And that takes creativity. Otherwise there would be no point to adding them since it just complicates balancing to near impossible levels.

Also, yeah it kind of is arbitrary. Where you draw the lines is ultimately up to you. You can say the "game" part of the game is nothing more than the zeroes and ones and everything else is extra fluff on top of it, but in the same way someone could say the Mona Lisa is just a lot of lines on some canvas. If you break anything down as far as it goes it won't ever seem very impressive. You have to look at it a little more holistically for it to look like art. Even if the mechanics were just trivially creative, wouldn't you say they add quite a bit to the feeling like a karate master while playing the game? Perhaps Street Fighter isn't the best example of that but you understand the point.

[Nabeel Ansari]

9 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

That's why I came to agree with him. Because the more people try to argue and prove him wrong, the more you realize he's right.

Yeah, a film critic who doesn't design games is clearly right about making large universal statements about the nature of game design.

 

Okay, so let me say this: even if you feel these concepts don't apply to "art", would you agree that some games create meaningful narrative experiences through the meticulous design of their mechanics? It doesn't have to make them art, but if you don't agree with this, I feel you're missing the ability to ascertain a difference between a game designed for entertainment value (positive emotions from winning, negative emotions from losing) and a game designed to manipulate how a player feels/thinks (frustration, empowerment, regret, gripping reality) and having the game's story have a 1-to-1 correlation with those mechanics. The latter is the true nature of game theory and you are saying that isn't art, right? Or do you not believe the latter is a real thing (i.e. game theory is a hoax) and the former is what every game is?

Again, the appearance of enemies in Journey is purely a game mechanic thing. But when you play Journey, it is clear, at least to me, this creates an emotional reaction in the player (even if it's surprise). It's a game mechanic that changes how you understand the world around you. Your outlook on your journey (harhar) permanently changes the first time you take damage. Or did you not feel or think any of these things, and simply take it as a new game mechanic that changed how you mechanically went about it?

 

And yes, well, that's arbitrary, but so is the entirety of art. The 12-tone system is arbitrary. In fact, the 12-tone system sacrifices harmony with natural vibration through very messy fractional exponents, so if anything it's the opposite of a "true" or "real" system. There's nothing special about it, it just caught on and that's music.  The intentionality fallacy describes looking for meaning in intentional creation of something. Just because a person did or did not intentionally pump artistic meaning or something doesn't mean that it doesn't or does have any artistic meaning. Artistic meaning comes from people's interpretations of something. So saying it's arbitrary is self-evident; the thread is arbitrary, that's the point of the discussion, finding the differences in peoples' arbitrary points of view.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

5 hours ago, Neblix said:

Yeah, a film critic who doesn't design games is clearly right about making large universal statements about the nature of game design.

The man was a writer by profession and primarily known for critical analysis of what was and (arguably) still is, the most popular narrative medium and was open to having his opinion swayed on video games. I think that in a discussion of what "art" means and is, his opinion counts for something. Especially when you're talking about games as a narrative medium. 

I can see where you're coming from in all this and you said there is a distinction between mechanics for function and mechanics for narrative, but I don't feel they're as separate as you suggest. While I've played both Dark Souls and Journey, though not in their entirety, what you're describing about them to me seems like a case of either mechanics that inspired narrative or narrative that inspired mechanics. In either case, if these events emotionally effect the player, I see that as a credit to the writers and artists. Would Journey have had the same emotional impact on you if the narrative and other assets applied to the mechanics were different? You said that taking damage changes your perception of the world around you - what if that world wasn't a very compelling one?

Here is an example that I feel perfectly illustrates my view on this whole thing:

I'm a fan of the Fire Emblem series and the games are noted for their "perma-death" mechanic. Especially in Awakening, it really sucked when I lost a character I had grown to like. The characters are all unique and you really get a sense of who they are, how they speak, what their hobbies are, quirks etc. It seems like a friend died when you lose someone who has been with you for a long time. The mechanic supports the narrative and vice versa, but the fact remains the mechanic primarily adds an extra layer of challenge and risk to the game. The characters could have been boring and little more than faceless recruits I didn't care about. If that were the case, the mechanic could remain and serve its purpose all the same. If the mechanics (the game) were truly art, I feel that on its own it would elicit emotional responses from players. Feelings you get from simple victory and defeat don't count in my opinion, because naturally humans like to win instead of lose.

I'm unswayed in agreeing that games themselves aren't art, but narrative, sonic and visual elements that are present in games are. At the end of the day though, it doesn't really matter to me whether games are art or not. I think this whole discussion that's been going on since the 80s is more about gamers and developers seeking unnecessary validation from the film industry. Games have already eclipsed movies in sales and are a mainstream hobby enjoyed by millions - that should be validation enough. 

 

[lazygecko]

17 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

I would say it's evident that interactive software has outgrown the need to be a game.

Trying to artificially impose a distinction at this point is just superfluous. The evolution of language simply doesn't work that way and it always goes for the path of least resistance. Things like Gone Home are a game just as much as The Walking Dead is a comic.

[Nabeel Ansari]

6 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

The man was a writer by profession and primarily known for critical analysis of what was and (arguably) still is, the most popular narrative medium and was open to having his opinion swayed on video games. I think that in a discussion of what "art" means and is, his opinion counts for something. Especially when you're talking about games as a narrative medium. 

I can see where you're coming from in all this and you said there is a distinction between mechanics for function and mechanics for narrative, but I don't feel they're as separate as you suggest. While I've played both Dark Souls and Journey, though not in their entirety, what you're describing about them to me seems like a case of either mechanics that inspired narrative or narrative that inspired mechanics. In either case, if these events emotionally effect the player, I see that as a credit to the writers and artists. Would Journey have had the same emotional impact on you if the narrative and other assets applied to the mechanics were different? You said that taking damage changes your perception of the world around you - what if that world wasn't a very compelling one?

I think the point is to me that without these game mechanics present, the game is narratively weaker.

Every storytelling medium has its own methods of execution, it's own things that make it what it is. We see weak examples of people using mediums improperly when we see things like weak adaptations (book turned movie, manga turned anime, movie turned game, TV turned game, etc.). I think what makes video games a storytelling medium of its own is these how these mechanical things strengthen what the narrative is. I'm saying a good narrative can't exist in a game without the game mechanics being designed to project its core ideas or thoughts onto the player through game design.

Here's an opposite side example: Assassin's Creed. Assassin's Creed, going along the values I'm describing, is narratively pretty weaksauce. Not because of poor character work, or predictable plot elements, or anything; Assassin's Creed's narrative weakness comes way earlier than any of that. It comes when you are told you are playing a stealthy, discreet servant of the greater justice and yet the game allows and even rewards open combat and killing hundreds and hundreds of random guards while you run around cities. It breaks immersion. I can't take the narrative seriously if I see the character (that I am controlling) is clearly not who the game says it is. This is an example of narrative <-> mechanical disconnect, and to me, dismantles the idea that simply inserting a good story into a game with fun arcade-y gameplay makes the game's story (and the game itself) good, because it's a game where you fight things, make choices, feel consequences, etc. (A side note, I think Ezio's story is pretty good at parts, namely the exploratory mystery ones where he's trying to find the meaning of life by religiously looking to Altair and making you hunt down relics and experience his memories. That was pretty gold.)

Mechanics serve the narrative in games, and make their execution stronger (and to me, valid at all). Much like in film, where camera work and prop design serves the narrative (if you don't know what the hell I'm babbling about, watch this). Or in books, where clever language and description serve the narrative. Without them, the narrative execution in the game would be ultimately weaker, an instance of the game simply telling you what the story is rather than it showing you through... how games do. And how games do, different from other medius, is doing this through player agency, choices, consequences, rewards, risks, and such. I think that's a unique aspect of storytelling that no other medium has been able to tap into (because no other medium is interactive).

Yes, I also do think that these means games have to tell very different kinds of stories in order to be "proper" by these values I propose. I don't think you can simply write any old good story and put it into the game. It can't tell the same kinds of stories movies can. To me, that's why Dark Souls' story is so good. It is a completely non-traditional method of telling a story that simply wouldn't make a lick of coherent sense in any other medium, and yet in the game it works perfectly, because you fight things, because it empowers you as the agent, because you face gameplay consequences for your actions. To use Anor Londo again, it doesn't just go dark, and "man that sucks" in the narrative; it kills your main bonfire, and forces you to fight the bonfire keeper because she believed the Goddess was real. The game simply treats her as an enemy with a lifebar. A mechanical expression in order to convey what's going on in the story. And you feel kinda gross when you kill her (if that's what you're role playing), because it was your fault this happened, and it was your choice to go on and kill her (a bonfire keeper, one of the most altruistic people in the Dark Souls world). It gives you a real tangible reason to feel bad about what happened.

Dark Souls makes the story about you, much like Journey makes the story about you, much like Shadow of the Colossus makes the story about you. I don't think a game story can be called good if it doesn't make the story about you. If it tries to tell the story of a regular character like in a movie, it just doesn't have the same magic to me (that's why I have never been impressed with anything that happens in Final Fantasy for example). Because player agency seems like a huge untapped realm in making your audience the character of the story.

Finally to respond to your last question, I defer to something someone already said in this thread. You need to look at these things holistically, just like we look at any other art holistically. Yes, if Journey's world wasn't compelling, the mechanic wouldn't have been compelling. But I turn this around; if the mechanic wasn't compelling, the world wouldn't have been either. They work together. What you're saying seems like splitting hairs.

 

As an aside, to me it's not about validation, it's about constructive analysis. Like I said, can toss the word "art" aside if you want, my points are more about how games can do, how they can do better, and how they have done worse, regardless of if you attach some word to it. I have these reactions to games, I see people around me having them too. I'm compelled to think there is "more to it" because it is having an observable effect.

[DennalMan]

Haha, Neblix just kind of posted some of the things I typed in this post.... Well I'm postin' it anyway!!

I think games are absolutely an art form.  It sounds like we all agree that games can generate experiences and emotions as powerful as (or more powerful than) any other art form.  Perhaps the debate in this thread thus far is simply about the definition of the word "art"?  I'm currently making an indie game, and I naturally think about the game as art, and myself as an artist - I'm creating an experience.  But for the rest of this post I'll try to avoid using the word "art", and instead just talk about facts.

There's something very apparent about some of my favourite games and also the game I'm currently making: the whole is much more powerful than the sum of its parts.

Take System Shock 2, a brilliant survival horror FPS action-RPG from 1999, often praised for its immersive sound design and story.  It was one of my favourite and most unique gaming experiences, conjuring a type of fear that I haven't really felt in a game since, a fear that meshes perfectly with both the story and gameplay.  But if you look at each element of the game individually, not one element on its own really generates any fear at all.  Sure it has great writing, music, voice acting and sound effects, but nobody's going to get very scared by just reading the script, or by listening to the soundtrack on its own, or listening to the voice clips or sound effects by themselves.  The visuals are not fear-inducing on their own either, it just looks like the interior of a ship (and an extremely pixelated and low-poly one at that).  Ah and of course the gameplay.  As Angel might point out: take away the sounds, the music, the visuals, the writing and the story, and what are you left with?  An unremarkable Quake clone with RPG elements and a bunch of backtracking.  You can even save or load at any place at any time, and the penalty for dying isn't even that severe, should you choose to not load a saved-state.

So, how did they combine all these not-very-scary things to create such an intense experience?  Sorry for using *that word* again, but if that's not "artistry", I don't know what is.  Think of all the modern games that try to be as scary as SS2, with scarier visuals, scarier music (much of SS2's soundtrack is upbeat electronic loops), scarier penalty for losing - needless to say, many horror games don't result in an experience as scary and emotional and immersive as System Shock 2.  SS2's environment/architecture isn't remarkable because it's a beautiful piece of art on its own, it's remarkable because it serves the function of the game perfectly - it looks like a believable, lived-in vessel - it's there to immerse the player in the world and the story of the game, and it does a fantastic job.

Super Metroid is another of my favourites, but actually each of its individual pieces (graphics, music, sounds, gameplay) completely kicks ass.  And much like System Shock 2, it combines these elements to create its often-praised atmosphere, which happens to fit very nicely with the gameplay (exploration, danger, mystery, being lost, finding secrets, etc.)  But I want to talk about a different game: Metroid Zero Mission.  In "Zero Mission", The atmosphere and aesthetics are cartoonish, almost light-hearted - it has almost none of the dark, creepy, scary qualities of Super Metroid, the original NES Metroid and Gameboy's Metroid II.  But Zero Mission is one of my favourite games, *solely* because of the gameplay.  This game was designed specifically for speedruns, low-item runs, 100% item speedruns - and they did a damn good job.  All the other "art forms" in the game are lacking - music, sounds, graphics - indeed they don't always mesh with the gameplay that well IMO.  But damn the gameplay is just so good, and the emotions caused solely by the gameplay are more than just "fun" and "victory" and "defeat".  Sure, my first playthrough maybe wasn't that amazing, but I found that game fun as hell to master, not unlike Super Metroid.

As if that wasn't enough rambling, the game I'm working on, like Super Metroid, has 2 separate aspects that will (hopefully) make it stand out: An intense emotional experience on the first playthrough, and gameplay that's fun and exciting to master on the bajillionth playthrough.  I want to talk about the first playthrough, and the experience and emotion it'll (hopefully) create, and again how the individual parts I'm combining are much more powerful in combination.  If I look at each part of the game individually... (graphics and sound-effects don't contribute to the emotion in this case, so I'm just going to talk about Music and Gameplay....)  The gameplay itself might generate the emotion "fun", and the music itself might generate the emotion "this song kicks ass!".  But combined..... the game creates an emotion very very different than the emotion of the song alone, or of the gameplay alone, and hopefully it is a much stronger emotion.  I dunno, it's tough for me to talk about it because nobody here has played the game, but in playing my own game I've felt the emotion that I'm trying to create, and it's very intense, and I hope that other people will feel it too, and I'm excited to share this piece of art.  But I didn't make the game's music - in fact the music was not made for the game at all.  (To be honest, parts of the gameplay were inspired by the music, which is partially why the music and gameplay work so well together to create something powerful and new.)  But the gameplay is definitely an essential part to the emotion - I highly doubt that watching someone play will ever generate the emotional response; only the player will feel it.  And it's not just because there *is* gameplay.... it's also due to the nature of the gameplay, and how challenging (or not challenging) it is, and how fair or unfair.  Introducing unfairness on purpose to enhance the emotion.....  I dunno, I just thought all that stuff was very very relevant to the conversation in this thread.  But I think I've rambled on long enough for now

Oh yeah, one more thing.  You know what else can generate experiences and emotions as powerful as any other art form?  Sports.  Sports are "games".  Are they art?  Is someone who designs a sport an artist?  What about esports?

Neblix, you use the term "Game Theory", do you mean like "Film Theory", but for games?  I think Wikipedia calls it "Game studies".  Game Theory is a branch of mathematics

 

[Nabeel Ansari]

I do mean game theory, it does play a part when talking about balance, fairness, etc. mechanical things. It could be misappropriation I guess, I should clarify then that by game "design" i mean "mechanical" design, not aesthetic.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

8 hours ago, lazygecko said:

Trying to artificially impose a distinction at this point is just superfluous. The evolution of language simply doesn't work that way and it always goes for the path of least resistance. Things like Gone Home are a game just as much as The Walking Dead is a comic.

I vehemently disagree with this. Evolution of language happens organically and so far as I'm aware, gamers are currently the only people actively arguing that interactive computer software in which you only experience a story rather than win or lose at it still counts as a game. I'm not convinced the noun "game" has evolved anything beyond what it has always meant. If Gone Home is as much a game to you as walking dead is a comic, which no one would argue Walking Dead is indeed a comic, then I'd say you're definition of a game is far too liberal.

The distinction is not artificial - it is obvious because people are debating whether it should be a distinction at all. "Interactive software" as I call it, already exists in places like museums. "Virtual tours", and the like. It's interactive, you can control it, it tells you a story or gives you some sort of information, possibly stimulates you emotionally, but you cannot win or lose at it. I've never heard someone argue that such software is a "game", but people do argue that Gone Home, Beyond Two Souls and Journey are despite the fact that all the same details are true of them.

[Nabeel Ansari]

What definition of game do you use that requires the player to win or lose? I've never heard of a requirement like that. A basic requirement of a game is a goal and rules.

Beside that, you haven't actually addressed why "winning or losing" something means it's not art. In fact, most popular art/story has winners and losers (heroes and villains), and 1-dimensional ones at that. More complex thematic stuff have losers in the form of the portion of the audience who doesn't agree with its message, or the portion that is misrepresented or otherwise oppressed by it. If the argument here is that "no one loses" if something is truly art, that's incredibly naive. You're kind of cherry picking when you apply this reductionist attitude towards games but nothing else.

You're also assuming that game balance is objective or linear (1-dimensional spectrum, can only get worse or better). I can assure you that with many years of playing eSport games, this couldn't be further from the truth. Game balance is an incredibly complex system, and through tipping in various stat dimensions you can create many different dominant styles of gameplay (as evidenced by the fact that League of Legends creates entirely new game modes just by messing with the numbers and seeing what happens). That's incredibly creative, and has nothing to do with determinism (except of course when you find something you like and seek to refine it, but the same is said for music production, which has a degree of determinism given assumptions of modern culture).

[AngelCityOutlaw]

27 minutes ago, Neblix said:

What definition of game do you use that requires the player to win or lose? I've never heard of a requirement like that. A basic requirement of a game is a goal and rules.

Because anything I can possibly think of that has been considered a game before and even when video games became a thing have had that requirement. Even here you're saying a requirement is a "goal". If you fail to achieve the goal in the game, have you not lost? If you do achieve the goal, have you not won?

In things like Until Dawn, Heavy Rain etc. the choices you make and whether you do the quicktime events or not is entirely inconsequential. You will reach the goal as long as you continue to at least participate where required.

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Beside that, you haven't actually addressed why "winning or losing" something means it's not art. In fact, most popular art/story has winners and losers (heroes and villains), and 1-dimensional ones at that. More complex thematic stuff have losers in the form of the portion of the audience who doesn't agree with its message, or the portion that is misrepresented or otherwise oppressed by it. If the argument here is that "no one loses" if something is truly art, that's incredibly naive. You're kind of cherry picking when you apply this reductionist attitude towards games but nothing else.

This is not what I mean. You can't "win" at playing/making music, or painting, drawing, acting or anything like that - you just do it. You might say that there are contests for these things and that's true, but that is a subjective means of deciding who did one of these things exceptionally well rather than objectively determining a victor. You can however "win" and "lose" or "draw" at playing a game in a completely objective manner.

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You're also assuming that game balance is objective or linear (1-dimensional spectrum, can only get worse or better). I can assure you that with many years of playing eSport games, this couldn't be further from the truth. Game balance is an incredibly complex system, and through tipping in various stat dimensions you can create many different dominant styles of gameplay (as evidenced by the fact that League of Legends creates entirely new game modes just by messing with the numbers and seeing what happens). That's incredibly creative, and has nothing to do with determinism (except of course when you find something you like and seek to refine it, but the same is said for music production, which has a degree of determinism given assumptions of modern culture).

Sure, you can mess with the stats and create new play styles but you'll find anything taken seriously by esports still remains fair and logical as possible. Saying, "this character is going to be a support character, so you have to play them like this..." and then adjusting their stats so they're a bit squishy in health, maybe faster moving and deal less damage in attacks but have higher mana stats and better spells isn't really "creative" as I see it, it's the logical way to make the character's numbers fit the role you want them to play. 

League of Legends was born of a Warcraft III mod that became its own distinct game as I recall. I'd be interested to read sometime about how exactly it was built. Did it start with the modder creatively inventing rules and mechanics, or is it more likely they had a concept for a game in mind and carefully examined how mechanics of Warcraft could be re-balanced and changed to suit the concept? I suspect the latter is the case and I'd again say the creativity there is in the concept of the game, not the mechanics of it.

[Servbot#36]

13 hours ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Here is an example that I feel perfectly illustrates my view on this whole thing:

I'm a fan of the Fire Emblem series and the games are noted for their "perma-death" mechanic. Especially in Awakening, it really sucked when I lost a character I had grown to like. The characters are all unique and you really get a sense of who they are, how they speak, what their hobbies are, quirks etc. It seems like a friend died when you lose someone who has been with you for a long time. The mechanic supports the narrative and vice versa, but the fact remains the mechanic primarily adds an extra layer of challenge and risk to the game. The characters could have been boring and little more than faceless recruits I didn't care about. If that were the case, the mechanic could remain and serve its purpose all the same. If the mechanics (the game) were truly art, I feel that on its own it would elicit emotional responses from players. Feelings you get from simple victory and defeat don't count in my opinion, because naturally humans like to win instead of lose.

I'm unswayed in agreeing that games themselves aren't art, but narrative, sonic and visual elements that are present in games are. At the end of the day though, it doesn't really matter to me whether games are art or not. I think this whole discussion that's been going on since the 80s is more about gamers and developers seeking unnecessary validation from the film industry. Games have already eclipsed movies in sales and are a mainstream hobby enjoyed by millions - that should be validation enough. 

 

If anything I would argue that example works against your point. Again, ignoring what I said earlier about rules and mechanics existing for more than just fairness and challenge (which you never responded to by the way), this is a clear case of them adding something unique to the whole. The mechanics could serve the challenge purpose without the story, but the assumption you're still making here is that that's all they're doing. In this case, the perma-death is combining with the characters and story to create a sense of responsibility for the characters you've already come to like and care about. It's your fault if they die and that creates some feelings of guilt and regret if they actually do. That's something that, without the "game" aspect, couldn't happen. If it's evoking emotions and creating a unique personal experience in a way that couldn't be done the same way in another medium without the mechanics, how is it not an art form?

And I'll reiterate that earlier point, the mechanics strive to be fair and challenging, but those are just a means to an end. They're trying to evoke something, usually enjoyment but sometimes other emotions/impressions. Fairness and challenge don't evoke anything on their own, they're there because it's hard to have fun when something's too easy or unfair. You can easily have a fair, challenging game that's no fun at all, but it's very difficult to make an enjoyable game without fairness or challenge. And in the case of "art games" where something other than simple enjoyment is the primary goal, fairness and challenge aren't always necessary anymore. But if the interactivity contributes anything at all, they're still games.

[MindWanderer]

I'm going to take a fairly radical position here: Movies are not art.  Bear with me for a moment.

Movies are the combination of many discrete forms of art, arranged to make a composite whole.  Script-writing, acting, score, art direction, visual effects, editing, sound, stunts, etc.

By that same logic, of course games are also not art.  They too are a combination of many elements, including graphics, score, writing, etc. (though there's no single artistic element that a game must have), but there are also many technical aspects as well: programming, game balance, etc.  Movies also have some technical elements, of course, especially in the digital age, but not as much as games.

Now, you could consider the assembly of all the discrete elements to be itself a work of art.  This is the director's job; if you consider a movie director to be an artist, there's a claim to be made that "a movie" is itself a work of art.  But by that same logic, I don't see why a game wouldn't be.  A game's director has to artistically combine many if not all of the same elements that comprise a movie, while meeting the technical constraints of making it a functional and fun gameplay experience.

[Nabeel Ansari]

30 minutes ago, MindWanderer said:

I'm going to take a fairly radical position here: Movies are not art.  Bear with me for a moment.

Movies are the combination of many discrete forms of art, arranged to make a composite whole.  Script-writing, acting, score, art direction, visual effects, editing, sound, stunts, etc.

By that same logic, of course games are also not art.  They too are a combination of many elements, including graphics, score, writing, etc. (though there's no single artistic element that a game must have), but there are also many technical aspects as well: programming, game balance, etc.  Movies also have some technical elements, of course, especially in the digital age, but not as much as games.

Now, you could consider the assembly of all the discrete elements to be itself a work of art.  This is the director's job; if you consider a movie director to be an artist, there's a claim to be made that "a movie" is itself a work of art.  But by that same logic, I don't see why a game wouldn't be.  A game's director has to artistically combine many if not all of the same elements that comprise a movie, while meeting the technical constraints of making it a functional and fun gameplay experience.

To me, this entire post is a prime example of not seeing a forest for its very densely packed acres of trees.

Assembling different pieces of art isn't what makes a movie good. What makes a movie good is how extremely coincident (they all serve the same purpose and convey the same ideas) and collaboratively harmonious those pieces are. As I said earlier, if you take a good story, and slap it into a good gameplay system, you will not always get a good total game out of it. In fact, if that's actually what you did, it might be a pretty bad game.

[AngelCityOutlaw]

3 hours ago, Servbot#36 said:

If anything I would argue that example works against your point. Again, ignoring what I said earlier about rules and mechanics existing for more than just fairness and challenge (which you never responded to by the way), this is a clear case of them adding something unique to the whole. The mechanics could serve the challenge purpose without the story, but the assumption you're still making here is that that's all they're doing. In this case, the perma-death is combining with the characters and story to create a sense of responsibility for the characters you've already come to like and care about. It's your fault if they die and that creates some feelings of guilt and regret if they actually do. That's something that, without the "game" aspect, couldn't happen. If it's evoking emotions and creating a unique personal experience in a way that couldn't be done the same way in another medium without the mechanics, how is it not an art form?

And I'll reiterate that earlier point, the mechanics strive to be fair and challenging, but those are just a means to an end. They're trying to evoke something, usually enjoyment but sometimes other emotions/impressions. Fairness and challenge don't evoke anything on their own, they're there because it's hard to have fun when something's too easy or unfair. You can easily have a fair, challenging game that's no fun at all, but it's very difficult to make an enjoyable game without fairness or challenge. And in the case of "art games" where something other than simple enjoyment is the primary goal, fairness and challenge aren't always necessary anymore. But if the interactivity contributes anything at all, they're still games.

I'm saying that any of the examples of game mechanics I've seen so far which are being touted as more than "just mechanics for function" do not actually appear that way at all. Everything that is being described as a mechanic that creates emotional impact is not a result of the mechanic, but the narrative or whatever else applied to it. Just because the game might not have a particular effect on you if that mechanic weren't present, doesn't favor the argument of "games are art" when the other assets that make up the game and are applied to the mechanic are actually what creates the emotional impact or narrative itself. It's a package deal.

An emotional response is also not enough to justify something as "art". Eating a bowl of chili makes me feel happy. Would you then say the act of eating chili is an art because it elicits an emotional response?

2 hours ago, MindWanderer said:

I'm going to take a fairly radical position here: Movies are not art.  Bear with me for a moment.

Movies are the combination of many discrete forms of art, arranged to make a composite whole.  Script-writing, acting, score, art direction, visual effects, editing, sound, stunts, etc.

By that same logic, of course games are also not art.  They too are a combination of many elements, including graphics, score, writing, etc. (though there's no single artistic element that a game must have), but there are also many technical aspects as well: programming, game balance, etc.  Movies also have some technical elements, of course, especially in the digital age, but not as much as games.

Now, you could consider the assembly of all the discrete elements to be itself a work of art.  This is the director's job; if you consider a movie director to be an artist, there's a claim to be made that "a movie" is itself a work of art.  But by that same logic, I don't see why a game wouldn't be.  A game's director has to artistically combine many if not all of the same elements that comprise a movie, while meeting the technical constraints of making it a functional and fun gameplay experience.

Allow me to cite the second half of Ebert's argument.

In art, like music, dance, books and movies, outside of creating them you are simply an observer. You watch a movie, dance, concert; You read a book, comic, or short story, you look at a painting or sculpture and you listen to music. You must always "play" a game and be a direct participant in the events. So I would agree that movies are indeed art.

[MindWanderer]

2 minutes ago, AngelCityOutlaw said:

Allow me to cite the second half of Ebert's argument.

In art, like music, dance, books and movies, outside of creating them you are simply an observer. You watch a movie, dance, concert; You read a book, comic, or short story, you look at a painting or sculpture and you listen to music. You must always "play" a game and be a direct participant in the events. So I would agree that movies are indeed art.

So media which includes participatory elements is not art?  Improvisational theater in which the audience suggests elements to be included are not art?  The Rocky Horror Picture Show is not art?

I'm guessing you'd say that yes, those are art, because the "observer" isn't a core participant in the events, they only get to control certain elements or add minor embellishments.  To which I would argue that this is true of video games as well; even in the games which allow the greatest amount of player agency, the story is substantially railroaded.  Some events might unfold in a couple of different ways, there might be a couple of different endings, and you might choose to do things in different orders or omit some sidequests, but the bulk of the game remains the same.  The player can't even really fail, since dying or meeting other fail conditions just causes you to reload.  The only exceptions are games which have essentially no narrative at all--an open world without quests, like, say, Proteus (which most people would call an "art game").

Besides, I can't think of any reason participation has anything to do with the definition of art.