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Opinion: Forget 'Games As Art' -- Try A New Approach
by Christian Nutt
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April 24, 2009
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[Gamasutra's Christian Nutt argues that the road to improving the cultural currency of games lies not in wishing you're making "art", but making small changes to improve products already in development.]
The "games as art" debate is tiring me out. At GDC, after a tiring week, I was at a post-show party. Standing in a circle of developers, the topic arose naturally, as it does.
I didn't catch the name of the guy who spoke up first, but I inwardly sighed as I realized that I was in for another completely naive discussion of the subject. There's nothing wrong with earnestness and naivete; it's just that there's something at least bordering on wrong with not harnessing this intellectual energy and actually turning it into something more meaningful.
Jim Preston, in his Gamasutra essay cheekily entitled "The Arty Party", made light of game developers' pretensions towards art. But he also made a really relevant point that doesn't quite seem to be penetrating:
"The problem with [the idea that there's an art establishment to aspire to] is that it isn't even remotely close to reflecting the state of art in 21st century America. To think that there is a single, generally agreed upon concept of art is to get it precisely backwards. Americans' attitude towards art is profoundly divided, disjointed and confused; and my message to gamers is to simply ignore the "is-it-art?" debate altogether."
Gamasutra columnist Ian Bogost -- explicitly agreeing with Preston -- took this discussion a step further earlier this year by pointing out that in fine art, there are movements and schools, and that's the context in which art can be defined in games; he proposed a school called Proceduralist.
Watch us wildly diverge from what developers generally seem to mean when they bring up the "games as art" thing. That's instructive. It illustrates that the creative impetus to create something worthwhile or more culturally relevant is actually a separate one from the simple concept of creating art -- as it should be.
Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are two of the most reliably cited games when the discussion of games as art looms -- at least when we're talking about games produced by large, professional development studios.
At this year's GDC when director Fumito Ueda was point-blank asked about that, he responded, "My team and I are making a game which is close to art -- that's what people say. Personally I don't think that way. We're making a game to entertain people. Sometimes my personality and my team's might be reflected on the game, and it might look like art, but it is a game to entertain people. That kind of feedback is welcome but it's not what I'm trying to achieve."
Inclusive, Exclusive
Before we abandon from the discussion of what's art and what is not art, it's worth looking at what some incredibly successful creators -- artists? -- have to say about the topic.
More Ueda, from a Guardian interview: "If I was not in the games industry, I would want to become a classical artist. Though I regard not only games but also anything that expresses something -- be it films, novels or manga -- as forms of art." While that seems to contradict what's quoted above, it's interesting to think about what the difference between "forms of art" and "art" is. I think that's kind of where the crux of the argument lies, in a way. It's about the intent of a creative endeavor, versus the outcome.
As Bogost pointed out in his Proceduralist piece, Dada artist "Marcel Duchamp made a urinal into art by putting it in a gallery rather than a restroom." If we put a copy of Postal 2 into a gallery, in other words, it becomes art. That may illustrate the meaninglessness of the question.
Observing the most successful living artist in the world, Damien Hirst, offers up a lot of really fascinating ways to look at this sort of debate through. First, of course, is the news that he is an immense commercializer of his own work.
Said Hirst, in an interview with the Guardian, "There is an attitude that you're not a real artist if you make money, if you're not starving in a garret with holes in your jeans. But me and Warhol and Picasso, we took on the commercial aspect of art. Goya, Rembrandt, Velasquez, all of those guys, they were all thinking about the commercial aspect of their work. It's art first though, money second. I've taken the risk that the art will outshine the money -- I think it will, I hope so."
He would know. He sold a diamond-encrusted skull for £50 million in 2007 -- then approximately $100 million in U.S. dollars. The title of the work is "For the Love of God" -- which may imply it's the pretentiousness of the title, rather than the crassness of the actual item or its inherent commercialization that defines something as art.
Columnist Germaine Greer writes about Hirst's spot paintings: "Hirst is quite frank about what he doesn't do. He doesn't paint his triumphantly vacuous spot paintings -- the best spot paintings by Damien Hirst are those painted by Rachel Howard. His undeniable genius consists in getting people to buy them. Damien Hirst is a brand, because the art form of the 21st century is marketing." These paintings were mass-produced in his studio by assistants. Few were painted by Hirst. Hundreds of them were sold to collectors.
The most successful living artist is fundamentally concerned with commercializing his works; he creates broadly accessible and obvious products -- like paintings of colored dots, or the frankly banal diamond-encrusted skull -- and we're worrying about if we're producing "art"? It's probably time to let that word go; in 2009, it's more than reached its sell-by date.
This may be why Brian Green, in his essay, attacked from the direction of "legitimacy" than the concept of "art" -- a much more useful distinction.
Incredibly successful author Neil Gaiman isn't a big believer in there being much meaning in the fact that certain works are placed on pedestals and others in wire racks next to the checkout counter.
Writes Gaiman, "I've never been convinced that there's any meaningful division between high culture and pop culture -- I think there's good stuff out there, and there's stuff that's not much good, and that Sturgeon's Law applies to high culture and popular culture: 90% of it will be crap, which means that 10% of it will be amazing."
Of course, proponents of "games as art" will then point out that Neil Gaiman is a pop novelist. At which point I would ask if you the dialogue in your game is as good as the dialogue in Neil Gaiman's comics, and you'd accuse me of being a jerk and say "That's not the point!" and walk away from the discussion. So let's head that one off here -- it is the point.
Finally, What I'm Proposing
Now, if you're Jason Rohrer, or somebody working in a similar space, you can pretty much stop reading. Editorially, though, we tend to assume that most of the readers of Gamasutra work at studios, or at least, on essentially traditional video games. And that's who I'm addressing with this suggestion.
Rather than worrying that you can't turn your licensed kids' platformer or space marine murder simulator into art, think about what you can do to make its creative palate a little bit more expansive; to make its characters and dialogue a little less stupid; to make more concessions to an audience just a smidge wider than your marketing-decreed target.
A while ago I had the idea that making these small but potentially meaningful efforts on products already in the works will have a bigger impact than pining for an opportunity to make some grand gesture down the road somewhere. Fortunately, it didn't take me long to find a developer I knew well who'd already had practical experience doing just that.
But first, a cautionary tale: this isn't always going to be easy. Another developer friend was working on a triple-A game for a major publisher. (The game's canceled now, but he's too busy on his next triple-A game for another major publisher to answer an irritating journalist friend's instant messages, so I can't reveal his identity, the publisher, or the project.)
His (now canceled) game featured an average guy, searching for his wife after a major urban disaster, as its protagonist, alongside an average-looking woman in a supporting role. Word came back from marketing: make the guy beefier and more heroic; make the girl "Hollywood ugly" -- that is, a beautiful woman wearing glasses. The battle was essentially lost. If that happens to you, fight that, please. Do your best.
That said, Double Fine Productions gameplay programmer Anna Kipnis has had some success in this vein, and I think it's one of the most promising stories I've heard in a long while. Brutal Legend may well be tangibly enriched for her efforts, and that means more, in some ways, than another 10 minute art indie on the web.
"My basic point is that devs can have a tremendous impact on the game they're making -- and they shouldn't forget that," says Kipnis. When the game was first pitched internally at the studio, she was a bit worried that the "inclusive" Psychonauts was being supplanted by something with a more narrow appeal.
Working within that context -- the big, cartoony, violent and willfully stupid world of a metal roadie played by Jack Black -- it might seem pointless to make the effort to bring more perspectives to bear. But according to Kipnis, "you have to be very constructive about it, and suggest solutions. So I said that maybe it would be rad to include things that didn't violate the metal setting, but still did something interesting in terms of gender culture."
Like? "Ugly gals, important gal characters, smart gals, sinister gals... because that would be moving away from the stereotypical bikini-clad achetype of metal (and video games)."
"It's really hard to purposely make a game that's going to appeal to women," admits Kipnis, "and isn't a wise undertaking," she adds. But adding unexpectedly rounded characters into an unwelcoming context far from hurts the game.
Working within the context of Brutal Legend rather than trying to change it to something it's not, and working to improve an existing core gamer concept with richer, more complicated characters seems like a lot more practical of road towards improving the medium than most suggestions I've heard. As Kipnis says about Brutal Legend, "I wanted to feel proud of the risks we took with it. I think in order to make progress, you need to catch yourself when you're making 'safe' decisions."
Brutal Legend is -- forgive me, Tim -- unlikely to be the kind of game that proponents of "games as art" look to as an obvious example of one that stretches the medium. But we've just revealed that it's developed in the kind of culture that allows for this subtle growth, the question -- what can developers can do to make games more relevant? -- changes entirely. Do what you can.
In the comments for the article Making Games Art: Designers' Manifesto, the most recent feature article Gamasutra has run on "games as art", Eric Carr had something interesting to say: "I think we want to call games art to give meaning to them. We want them to have more substance and we're finding that too many people consider them to be just games without finding any deeper meaning. It is noble to want that to change. We want people to understand exactly what it is we do and why. But, why must it be art or not? What true difference does it make? If we make great things that people can experience and enjoy -- isn't that really the point?"
Yes. That's the point. Now instead of talking about it, let's find the approach that actually works.
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I think this contradicts the central point of this article--the continuing conversation we're having about what makes games art is the natural first step in developing schools of thought about games as art. The fact that not everyone agrees is no reason to stop having the conversation, however.
Games have existed for thousands of years and aren't considered art. Chess will never be considered art, as it, like any other game, is a set of rules that must be adhered to, gives the player some choices, and that's about it. The choices don't have much meaning to them.
I've always thought that ultimately, art and games are two very different experiences that can't be compared. In many ways, art is a passive experience where there is no decision making as there are no choices to be made. But it is engaging in another sense, as it causes a person to reflect on it. Games are an engaging experience because choices have to be made and actions must be taken, but it is quite passive in the sense that there is little reflection on the meaning of decisions made or the meaning of the game experience.
At the risk of thinking out loud and rambling I'll end it here. I have to say though, despite this topic being discussed many times over, I enjoyed this article and thought it brought some fresh points that I was not aware of.
"I think we want to call games art to give meaning to them. We want them to have more substance..."
We also want games to be art so we can justify them as a pass-time to people who aren't into games, using something familiar ('art') to convey a nice, neat box into which games can fit. The word 'art' also gives games something to aspire to be, when they should be quite comfortable being themselves.
Again, what if games are something other than art. Not 'interactive entertainment' but... something... something that can co-exist with 'art' as a worthy aspiration. Maybe someone with good knowledge of Latin root words can figure something out...
Personally, I think things are progressing quite nicely as far as 'games with more substance' are concerned. We can't expect every game to be some kind of 'masterpiece' after all, but with examples (such as Shadow of the Colossus et al) already out there to aspire to, developers can start thinking about how they can try to slowly transform their creative endeavours (as pointed out in the article) over the course of the next 5, 10 or even 20 years.
'It' won't happen overnight in a AAA sense, but the indie underground will start filtering their ideas through as they grow, and their views become more sought after by larger companies.
- David Sirlin
Christian, I liked your point about trying in little ways to improve a game, it is a battle worth fighting but it does result in becoming a "troublemaker" :)
ames_Are_Art.php
Consider a place like Disneyland - do people consider it "art"? Not really...certainly "creative", but the reality is that Disneyland is essentially a collection of interactive artworks (in my view), which each tell a unique story or provide a unique experience. Sadly, I think the interactivity component, or more so the notion of being a participant in the art, tends to take away people's perceptions of that experience as art, going back again to the idea that typical art is supposed to be static and revered.
Obviously there are many more dimensions to this issue, but I agree with Christian's premise that we need to stop worrying about games being "art", because that answer is obvious. I do believe as has been said here, that producing more and more games with substantive, atypical content will help the broader public understand that this medium isn't just about interactivity, but also about expression. Some recent games have helped break through that perception a bit, but we have a long way to go.
I actually wrote an essay on it on my website (http://www.mcdonaldsoftware.com/GamesAsGames.html) that addresses the cultural value of traditional games and why video games should seek that path if they want more legitimacy. In short, though, the key point is from the first paragraph: People have chosen the wrong things to compare video games to.
We defend whether games are art, or not art pretty much purely to defend their relevance. I play games.. a lot, so of course they must be art..right? Who would waste their time on nonsensical, non art, irrelevant mumbo jumbo..right?.........(me, lately I've en playing NHL 3on3 like it was goin out of style. If it was crack, I'd of overdosed long ago. But is it art... who cares!).
Games are an experience. We need to become more focused, and learn together how to make these experiences intensely memorable and relevant.
Here is the point, we are wasting time talking about weather a game is art or not...who cares really... I don't anymore.
Let's talk about how to make games a better experience, an incredible experience!. As developers learn together, grow together, and for the love of God, if you are designing a character with big ass titties (AKA Chesticles) at least button up her shirt. If I have to look at one more gigantic cartoon boobie in this industry I'm gonna go crazy!
If we make great things that people can experience and enjoy -- isn't that really the point?"
Yes, I'd say that is really the point of art
Bad jokes aside, art to me is very broad. Any form of expression is a form of art. And all of this arguing back and forth of what is art and what is not is ridiculous.
Like I've said in response to blog that was written in response to your opinion piece, if a game has beauty and depth in something other than gameplay, the gamer will notice. If they don't notice, then does it really matter whether the game was bad art or not art at all?
Just look at the article's two examples for proof. An "ugly" protagonist is something that could potentially turn off customers before they even really know what the game is about. Your friend was picking the wrong fight when he argued against changing the character's appearance. If the really thought that it was important to the game he should have found another way to express the same idea, IE through dialogue or game play. After all, even art-house films typically have a fairly attractive cast. Compare that to Anna Kipnis' example, in which she made a change that would never alienate the game's core audience. No one is going to say "no, that female character is too well developed. Make her into more of a bimbo in order to widen the game's appeal".
Incidentally, worker bees can use the same technique to insert art into their projects. Maybe you'll never get to make you own Citizen Kane, but that doesn't mean you can't turn that mindless fighter your team is working on into the Kill Bill of our medium.
> No one is going to say "no, that female character is too well developed. Make her into more of a bimbo in order to widen the game's appeal".
I'm sorry to disappoint you, but that's exactly what I was told on two unrelated occasions.
I think that's part of why a lot of people prefer to insist on talking big ("games are art! let's do something meaningful!") rather than taking the path the author is proposing. If you convince your management to make an "art game" (not that you will, but assume you did), it means you've convinced them to let you take a lot of liberties. The struggle for details in a traditional project is an uphill battle, because you're fighting someone's notion of yet another space marine mass murder fantasy. They do want bimbos in those. Introducing a better developed character, or giving the story a twist a'la Gaiman's "Sandman", requires the kind of sensitivity fans of space marine mass murders just don't have, and your boss (or his boss, or his boss' boss) will be one of them more often than not.
It's a bit like fast food vs. fancy cuisine. What is proposed here is to spice a hamburger up, but that would just ruin the hamburger to many. "Hands off the hamburger!", they'll say. I guess the best you can count on under this principle is to offer your audience some bigos. Bigos is really a kind of fast food, like pizza or kebab, but it's obscure enough for most people to think it's something new and unique. What most studios are in fact doing, is prepare a hamburger, but one that is really big and made from fresh ingredients (i.e. their bimbos don't look exactly like Lara Croft).
The discussion on whether or not games are art can be silly and pretentious when it's being taken too seriously, but I don't think there are many people who take it literally. I mean, there aren't many people who want to put games in museums or art galleries, right? I think most people are actually expressing their yearning for a certain trait of art. This trait can be summarised as "affecting the audience in a way the audience didn't ask for". In order to achieve it, you can't just keep recreating your favourite themes, because doing so equals saying "I, as an author and a representative of people who are similar to me, ask that this piece give us more of [insert your favourite theme here]". In order to give the audience something they didn't expect, you need to first create something you didn't ask for yourself (this also applies to cases where you're creating a piece about something you've been fascinated with for many years, because you never ask for your fascinations - they just come and go).
The above essentially amounts to searching for NewStuff(R). Not new as in "I've never seen a two-headed giraffe before", but new as in "I've never felt like this before". Once you start searching, you can just as well go all the way, that is: create something completely new, rather than evolve the old stuff, as long as it's not so different that nobody can understand it. The main difference between the "games are art" camp and the proposed "expand the pallette" approach is whether to sell NewStuff as a 10% or 50% solution. Hirst is right in that even an artist is truly succesful only when they manage to affect as many people as possible. Might as well get rich in the process.
The problem is, there aren't enough people who would be willing to take on a search for NewStuff in the first place.
I think in the search for creative, fresh approaches to video games, developers, publishers, and the audience have to be open to these fresh new ideas. That's the hard part, because people really are not open.
Our ultimate goal when coming up with new ideas for games, and anything, should be to convince the pessimists into liking something they thought they surely would not like.
There is not much I love more than being surprised into liking something and its incredibly rewarding to be the one presenting a new idea and convincing the doubtful party that your unique different approach to something is indeed good.
This idea of surprising someone into liking something should be an inspirational goal for any artist, designer, etc. It is for me.
honestly I don't want to lower games to the realm of experimental artistic crap. Toilets, rotten food, preserved sharks, mountains of plastic cubes and stuff is apprently art. The problem is that its also junk.
video games arn't left overs from a flea market glued togather with some overly expensive glue. Games have a purpose; they are functional (mostly), marketable (usualy), acessible (generaly). 'famous' art is an excess; and some how it has something to do with culture or something.
Games may have artistic elements that should serve gameplay or story. Games may evoke emotions like some stories or pictures. Yet games are interactive and have the ability to be 'random' or fluid; they do things that go beyond the traditional realm of art. Games are also made by teams of people using multiple disiplines of computer science, computer art, and game design. Games are mass marketed on TV, websites, and magazines. There are people who reveiw games though all of these avenues as well. While there are art critcs and art circles they have a much smaller audience. I can experience games much more readily than I can expereince art.
Games and art look similar to the casual observer and the casual observer probably asked the question first. I honestly think that when you start to look deeper into what games are and how they are made, it seems to me that they arnt really art; games sometimes do the same things as art and can do much more.
Let's face it, art is complex. Learning about different artistic schools of theory and thought takes time and interest. Justifying yourself as an artist and your work as art takes a lot of convincing. I wouldn't expect the average pot maker to even want to put their pots in place where the only purpose was criticism. It's an exposure of oneself that most would not be willing to do and would seem senseless to even conjure the thought of it.
Some could argue a utilitarian aspect of the betterment of society, others may argue a view of the superiority of the artist's integrity, and even others will argue for the nihilism of it all. There are many divergent views, more than one could imagine. So keep imagining, and eventually your view will be original enough that you'll want to bring it to the critics. And eventually, if they are lucky, they'll bring it to the public.
As Bogost pointed out in his Proceduralist piece, Dada artist "Marcel Duchamp made a urinal into art by putting it in a gallery rather than a restroom."
That's an absurd statement. You do not "make" something into art by the mere act of putting it into a gallery.
Art is an agreed-upon standard that is generated by an immense network of social and cultural influences, some of which will always be in conflict with one another, hence the old saying "art is in the eye of the beholder." If I were to behold a toilet in a gallery, I wouldn't say, "Ah, that's art." I'd say, "What moron put a toilet in an art gallery?"
That subjectivity is what makes the discussion so difficult. There are many people who refuse to allow any commercially-created product to be admitted into the category of "art" as though the mere act of being created for mass consumption in order to make money negated any chance to be art. This overlooks the historical reality that some of the most highly regarded pieces of art, such as the Sistine Chapel, were commissioned works.
We run into confusion, I think, because we operate in the same sort of audio-visual medium that is now the dominant form of storytelling (tv, movies), some of which can honestly aspire to be art. But we aren't the same thing and it isn't useful to make a direct comparisons.
Unless we can find a standard for what is considered "art" within our own realm of interactive entertainment, there won't be an argument that can be settled because noone will be able to define what that means for a videogame vs. what that means for a movie, painting, a novel, a symphony, a sculpture or a toilet.