I am not a gamer. But I’ve always liked video games and watching people play them. I’ve also been following, with interest, the long-running discussion/disagreement about whether video games are, or can ever be, art.
The general art-or-not discussion misses the point that what makes games great is the performance aspect. It’s not about how the game looks, how the game plays, or even what story the game tells. It’s about how the game makes the players behave and think.
Chainworld is a great example of this. It managed to influence behavior without even having to be played and the whole story about what happened after it was let loose on the world is too bizarre to have been made up. I don’t want or need to play it, just watching what happened to those who did is enough.
Race Warriors is another example. Playing it makes us aware of the role-play required to play any video game. That the role play in this game is uncomfortable forces the gamer to confront unexpected things about himself—especially since the gameplay will* be more or less uncomfortable depending on which race war combination you get.
*It shouldn’t but it will.
Similarly, Gone From an Age: A Fitting proposes to make the gamers aware of the roleplay and contortions women* put themselves through for public acceptance and approval.
*In particular.
In all these cases, what we end up with is unexpected interactive performance art. Which means that where we’ve been looking at whether not the games are art, we really need to start thinking about whether the performance of the gamer is art.
Video games belong in a museum because both games and museums are intended to be safe places to be mentally stimulated in ways which we aren’t usually stimulated. Especially if the stimulation involves complicated emotions which go beyond mere “liking” of an object.
I now know why I enjoy watching people play video games. It’s the same impulse which causes me to watch other museum goers. I enjoy watching the interaction and transformation which the gamers undergo—especially since many of them only do this when playing games. People reveal unexpected sides of themselves when gaming just like they open themselves up to new things when viewing art.
The best games take people on a journey into behaviors or emotions they weren’t expecting. You shouldn’t be playing a game just to finish it now. Otherwise, what’s the point of playing it again? A good game should elicit a different performance from you each time you play it in the same way that great art reveals more each time you experience it.
Yes, most video games are kitsch. But then so is most art—or what passes as art. That doesn’t mean they all are or all have to be.
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So, is this your version of Sturgeon’s law?
90% of art is kitsch? It’s indeed a possibility. Kitsch and crap are orthogonal axes though.
Ah, one of my big pet peeves… people who deny games can be art.
I point them to Minecraft, where all you really do is express creativity.
People who deny anything can be art are… short sighted.
The video game discussion though almost always boils down to issues about craft or storytelling and evaluates the game-as-art issue as if the game were a movie or a book. Which it isn’t.
The more the discussion goes into “what did this game make me do” the better the off we’ll be.
I actually think it goes beyond that. A game can stand as art without necessarily involving the viewer, or making them jump through novel hoops. Some games work quite well as books, or as movies, and then there’s also the type of software that eschews explicit gamification for an interactive but non goal/rule-oriented experience. You still ‘play’ with it… but don’t ‘win’.
The line between procedural interactive art and games is a fine one, and IMO the strongest argument for games themselves being art.