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Pleasing as it might be to hear that there is a growing interest in video games within academia, Blow is relatively unconcerned about whether established academics are interested in video games or not, and much more concerned about how the next generation is being taught. "I think that most game design courses are crap," Blow says. "In fact, they are unethical, because as an institution you are telling young students with lots of potential to come and spend a lot of their time and money at your university, and implicit in this is the promise that you will take care of them and teach them good things, and implicit in that is the promise that you are competent to teach those things; but then these universities turn around and hire people who don't really know anything about games to teach the classes. It's really terrible."
"More and more game study programs are that way," Blow continues. "Universities are figuring out that lots of people want to take classes about making video games, so they are all in a hurry to hire. Do a web search for 'game design professor' and look at all the help-wanted ads. Extrapolate that across a few years; then keep in mind that almost all of these institutions are hiring people who are not at a reasonable level of competence. They are just scrambling to put people in there so that they can claim to have a game design program."
While Grefsrud praises the game design course he took at university, he shares Blow's concerns. "For every genuinely useful course that equips students with the practical, intellectual, and critical skills they need to create games, there is an ass-on-seats course that exists more because the university has computer labs that can now be used to establish yet another revenue stream, and not because the institution can offer genuine expertise."
And what of the future that this new generation of game designers will come to? EA COO Peter Moore recently proclaimed that "free-to-play is the future," and indeed, the likes of Crytek have already placed their eggs in the free-to-play basket. This development worries me. I ask Blow whether it's possible for a game that has to integrate the process of payment into its very design to be art.
"I believe that most free-to-play models shift the creator-player relationship into dangerous territory," explains Blow. "To make the kinds of games that I care about, it is important that we respect our players and treat them well and wish the best for them. Free-to-play models tend to gravitate toward extractionary relationships: we lure you into our trap and then don't let you out until you pay us this and pay us that, and we are designing everything with an eye toward getting you to click the 'yes I will pay you' button. The relationship becomes corrupted very quickly."
"I have an idea for a free-to-play game design that doesn't work this way, at least not so much," Blow continues. "Who knows if I will do it sometime, though."
In contrast, Grefsrud argues that "business models are not a factor in art." Perhaps he is right. In any case, the impact free-to-play will have on the artistic potential of the medium remains to be seen. Time will tell as far as that particular question is concerned. In the mean time, we might do well to give more consideration to that question raised by Dr. Tavinor: "Do we really know what a video games masterpiece looks like"?
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Games that fail commercially, in an artistic way, don't get sequels and that translates to unemployed game devs. Again, this begs the need for public or patron funded games that can focus on the artistic and educational power of interactive media without worrying about the bottom line and the specter of pink slips.
I'm not asking for game makers to give up on making money and instead produce inaccessible artsy games. I'm just asking that they consider some of the higher purposes that our medium can pursue: empathy, insight, earnestness, truth. More like The Wire than Honey Boo Boo. More like Braid than Slotomania.
I don't think we're really much opposed in our viewpoints. I'm guessing there's a lot that you wouldn't want to put into a game, even if it could be proven to increase sales. If those limits are the negative concerns, I'm just putting forth the positives: some artistic choices are worth sacrificing for.
If fast food is where the money is... do I try to make an even bigger Big Mac? Or do I scour the earth for new ingredients to cook something wonderful that no one has tasted before?
So yes while I may come across as a Dr. Frankenstein sometimes when I talk about manipulating physiology to improve revenues, I do have self-imposed constraints.
I remember playing System Shock 2, years after it came out, on the recommendation of a friend and literally feeling the need to look over my shoulder every now and then to make sure nothing was coming up behind me. I hadn't felt that before or since but that game made me feel and gave me a visceral response I would love to happen more often. That to me is art, to actually pull me in enough to have a physical response.
On the nearly the same level Planescape:Torment was collossaly engrossing with a deep tale I was able to explore, investigate, affect, and accept in that I don't recall ever having to rotely skim through text to get to the interesting bits. It was all interesting and I felt involved. It could be considered an interactive novel or perhaps even fine literature given the mass of text involved in the story, which I still think sets precedents.
These days graphics seem to occupy 99% of development resources and as impressive as they can be I think they often fail to impress on the whole because they're not terribly engrossing. Other aspects and a cohesive overall aproach however I think can and do raise to the level of art and can affect you, whether that's what they were reaching for or it's simply a matter of an outstanding overall effort is immaterial. There are games you play just to play and wile away some hours, probably the majority of them, but there are some that compell you to play to see where they're going or just to experience them.
This is slightly off topic but, isn't "fiero" what holding the medium back as a mainstream form of entertainment and art? Because research continues to indicate a majority of hardcore and causal players are not motivated to play video and computer games by a desire to experience fiero. In fact, Chris Bateman found that players not motivated to play by a desire for challenge and failure will avoid games designed to create fiero. He confirmed this in the research used to build the DGD2 model:
http://onlyagame.typepad.com/Player%20Typology.digra2011.pdf
So what's the point of designers and developers pursuing a video game masterpiece if in all likelihood, the game will be unappealing and inaccessible to the majority of existing players, and to everyone in the potential audience? And if it's unappealing and inaccessible to the average person, could it be labeled as a masterpiece? As an outsider looking in, it seems like the theory that fiero is the primary motivation for playing games has become a sacred cow the development community refuses to sacrifice for the greater good. I think until they do, core and indie games will remain the exclusive playground of people who view play in radically different ways than the average person. The problem is if game developers can't convince the average person their work is a form of play, they'll never convince him or her their work is a form of art.
In the discourse here in these comments and in the broader press, I see a tension between ideas of "high" and "low art" that often goes unspoken. People often seem to talk about games as if they could be art, but haven't yet reached that point. Lately though, a lot of artists, writers and thinkers see the distinction between high and low as irrelevant. I'm of the opinion that a lot of these "dopamine delivery vehicles" should be considered "middle" art at least. In the meantime, I love the discourse around the issue. I don't mind all the talk and theorizing without an immediate product. Call it my critic's/theorist's bias, but I love to hear what people think even if they have nothing to show for it. One day, somebody will. Art never comes out when you want it. That's the nature of working outside business models.
I have heard opinions about games as art from many different people, but I have yet to see one person in the game industry actually talk to someone who studies ART. There are many credible sources who know way more about art than people who make statements like "business models are not a factor in art." and yet no one bothers to ask their opinions on games as an art form.
And why why why must games always exist in the pinnacle vacuum where they are the sole medium holding the reigns of interactivity? I'm sorry, games are NOT that unique! Instead of trying to isolate the medium from others try looking at the symmetry with other mediums. Jazz music is way more interactive than any video game I have ever played. Or how about *drum roll* interactive art! Yes I know it's amazing there is ART that is being created around the world, and has been since before video games, that is INTERACTIVE. There is a wealth of approaches to concepts such as agency.
The only thing holding games back is the insistence that it is a "special" medium that must be thought of and treated differently than any other medium. As with any other medium there are some unique challenges and restrictions. I would appreciate more talk on approaches to overcome these problems than floating in the sky words exalting one medium as superior to others.
Seriously, thinking about games in the ways these guys have presented is somewhat more useful than whatever the heck you are implying can be applied to games from the world of jazz...
Furthermore, I think you defeat your own point by suggesting this article didn't speak to "someone who studies ART".
I also study art (I have a degree in cultural studies), and although I don't have much experience making games, I think that you're final paragraph is off-base. No medium can be reduced to another medium. Art uses individualized expression. Reducing the principles of one medium to another medium (like video games to film) will never work as a basis on which to harness its potential. Honestly, who would say that making a good film depends on understanding the principles of painting? That's just silly. I also think you're wrong that the discourse so far is one of "superiority."
Take it from somebody who studies art.
He says he doesn't think games should tell a story or send a message when his last game was known for its story with a message (albeit an obscured message). That makes it hard to take his words seriously. I have read that most creative people are continually in a state of self-contradicting cognitive-dissonance where they continually believe two opposing principles at once, and that is actually a source of their creativity. It sounds exhausting, actually.
And what was that message? Because I'm sure Blow never said. His game's "story" goes a lot of different places, leaving us with ambiguity. You can like that or not, but it's certainly not a narrative puzzle with a neat solution. There's no "moral to the story" that the game drops on your lap, and that's all he was pushing against in the article.
I thought this was generally the accepted interpretation of the story, somewhat confirmed by interviews that Jonathan Blow gave.
http://www.rllmukforum.com/index.php?/topic/190136-the-story-of-br aid/
Yes, it can be ambiguous in its message, but it is a vehicle for story.
928/?single_page=true), is that there are many interpretations, and Blow has not pushed any one.
> "Braid, savvy players suddenly realize, is an allegory of the development of the atomic bomb. And that interpretation seems to be only the beginning... Not that Blow would ever actually say outright what Braid is about. Every time he’s been asked, he’s given a version of the same reply, which is that the answer is in the game, if only you’re willing to look."
Further, in saying that he's contradicting himself (since his game had an ambiguous message), you're ignoring the second half of his quote in the original article:
> "I don't really conceptualize games as trying to tell a story or send a message," Blow tells me. "At least, not if the kind of message you are talking about is one that can be stated: 'The moral of the story is, always look before you leap,' or whatever."
I haven't read the article (yet), but why should Braid even have a single "message" or "true interpretation"?
I'm not really taking sides or defending anything, but every piece of art (well, and lets assume that Braid is work or art) has different meanings, or interpretations for the one who's experiencing it. I mean take for instance any poem. You can interpret them in so many ways, by just analyzing grammar or by vocabulary, and analyzing the emotions that they incite in the reader.
I think the most important aspect that any truly artistic game has it's ability to resonate with the one who's playing it (just as in any other form of art), different aspects of the game might have different meanings to different people, and I guess that what makes it art.
What is even more fascinating is that as tech evolves, and VR becomes reality, even more of these gateway to the senses open up to game design.
Game design IMHO is an art form, for that there is no doubt. Games can indeed make one feel emotions, think differently, learn, create, even build an alternate feeling of a time and/or place even going so far as to create virtual worlds.
As game making technology becomes more widespread into the masses, I can hardly wait to see what some aspiring artist come up with.
I believe "art" to be very subjective, so from that perspective, I don't think the ultimate goal should be a universal masterpiece. I seriously doubt it's even possible to make a game that speaks to every single person who plays it. (In fact, I doubt there exists a work in any medium that speaks to everyone without exception. But because games rely even more on a personal experience, I think games are at a much bigger disadvantage in this regard. I think this is part of what Ebert was getting at.)
I think the more effective games have always targeted the particular audience that would most appreciate them. But doing something like that is probably much too risky for the bigger budget titles that need to sell millions of copies to break even.
Although it's definitely true that games have different strengths than other media, let's not be too hasty to suggest that games are radically different, in an absolute sense, from those other media. It's equally true of nearly ANY artistic form that eliciting introspection, rather than proscribing a particular interpretation, makes for a stronger work. People have never liked having a moral shoved down their throats, and good art has always appreciated that - you can go all the way back to the Iliad and see how many unanswered questions there are. Games are just a form that has certain inherent advantages to negotiating that fact.
I agree. I didn't mean to suggest that games are radically different - there are certainly many lessons we can learn from books and film that apply to games. But I think the key is in being careful about which lessons we apply and how we apply them.
I've seen a handful of "art" games that do beat the player over the head with a moral. I feel like some of their developers tried applying lessons from other media, but something must have gotten lost in translation.
Noun
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture.
Works produced by such skill and imagination.
Games are products, expressions or applications of human creative skill and imagination.
Games are art.
The end.
Read critiques to any great novel, and you'll see that many critics read them in quite different ways. Those that "beat you over the head with a moral" are usually considered the bad ones (pending any other qualities that may outweigh that "flaw"). James Joyce in particular took pride in the assumption that his work posed a significant challenge to the player... ehrm, reader.
Such events are not uncommon. You can reproduce them. They trickle through and form a new zeitgeist. Creators do it all the time. "Genius cult" would only mean you are obsessed by the ambition to give it at first hand.
What has that to do with story and stuff? Nothing. The debate is not helping at all. But I guess that is the jist of the article anyway.
Could the playing of a sport also be art?
Or indeed, as you say, the act of playing a game..
Interesting questions..