I mentioned in my previous post that players can spend a long time with character (especially if they have a brand associated with them), and what continues to amaze me is how often fans of video games express their affection for these fictional creations viewing cosplaying (dress-up).
That goes the same for the daily tributes video games put out, whether it be 8-bit demakes of new classics or real-life interpretations of classic characters, video games inspire a lot of creative juices to come bubbling out of gamers.
The game industry has in turn picked up on this. While journalism has just innovated "citizen journalism" in the last few years, one thing that sets the arts apart is their ability to inspire as well as provide a venue for others an opportunity to create. Video games have long been in favor of what is now called 'Game 2.0'.
Game 2.0 is the idea of giving players the tools to build their own levels, programming their own Artificial Intelligent, and tell their own stories. The limitless space of the Internet meeting these new design tools combined with the need to provide daily content gives video game journalist an unprecedented ability to champion their readers and the arts in general. As more arts organizations take their content and their coverage of their favorite artists online, they could learn about how to see a site brand that creates a more populist form of art.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Where are Video games now?
Surveying the landscape of video games as they currently stand, there are some great examples of how video games can be evocative, deconstructive, or offer politically complex scenarios.
One of the most popular games of 200 was Bioshock, a first-person shooter (FPS) called Bioshock, deconstructed the ideas of Ayn Rand. Player's traversed an underwater Art-Deco Dystopia, after Rand's patented objectivism, free-market philosophy had gone too far. It combined the superhero sensibilities of many FPS with a valid critique (if a bit late, dumping on Ayn Rand has been a fun liberal past time for years).
Popular games have for years now have gotten many gamers to admit to crying, as well as many other emotion that people feel when they grow attached to their favorite fictional characters. The similarities to people attachment to television is understandable. If people play a forty hour role playing game, that is forty hours with one character, more than some beloved television shows entire run encompasses.
And games that put the user in control of some ecological, political, or cultural disaster are often popping up.
But all these examples beg a question: To what degree is the medium of video games being taken advantage of? If we are to believe comic book legend Alan Moore, why wouldn't you want to work to innovate the medium you work with? All the examples provided above fit into previous genres established at least twenty years ago.
And while games have shown themselves capable of being self reflective of gamer trends, no real new genres have been invented. Devices like the Nintendo Wii and DS, as well as Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal, offer wholly new ways to control the video game. Freed from buttons, video games should be at a place of innovation. Instead, the Wii has been flooded by brand products with slapped on controls for their new device.
Game reviewers across the board rarely mention how the controller influences the game, and yet it is a unique relationship only video games have (besides volume control on televisions, I suppose). For a brief period, when the Wii first came out, the games were judged on those terms. But the dissonance from not letting go of the past and embracing a new design completely was met with poor reviews, and video game critiques have returned content analysis and reviews based on what qualifies as good game mechanics within the genre.
One of the most popular games of 200 was Bioshock, a first-person shooter (FPS) called Bioshock, deconstructed the ideas of Ayn Rand. Player's traversed an underwater Art-Deco Dystopia, after Rand's patented objectivism, free-market philosophy had gone too far. It combined the superhero sensibilities of many FPS with a valid critique (if a bit late, dumping on Ayn Rand has been a fun liberal past time for years).
Popular games have for years now have gotten many gamers to admit to crying, as well as many other emotion that people feel when they grow attached to their favorite fictional characters. The similarities to people attachment to television is understandable. If people play a forty hour role playing game, that is forty hours with one character, more than some beloved television shows entire run encompasses.
And games that put the user in control of some ecological, political, or cultural disaster are often popping up.
But all these examples beg a question: To what degree is the medium of video games being taken advantage of? If we are to believe comic book legend Alan Moore, why wouldn't you want to work to innovate the medium you work with? All the examples provided above fit into previous genres established at least twenty years ago.
And while games have shown themselves capable of being self reflective of gamer trends, no real new genres have been invented. Devices like the Nintendo Wii and DS, as well as Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal, offer wholly new ways to control the video game. Freed from buttons, video games should be at a place of innovation. Instead, the Wii has been flooded by brand products with slapped on controls for their new device.
Game reviewers across the board rarely mention how the controller influences the game, and yet it is a unique relationship only video games have (besides volume control on televisions, I suppose). For a brief period, when the Wii first came out, the games were judged on those terms. But the dissonance from not letting go of the past and embracing a new design completely was met with poor reviews, and video game critiques have returned content analysis and reviews based on what qualifies as good game mechanics within the genre.
The video game industry
To begin dissecting the idea of an entire medium to determine its place as a culturally-significant art is pretty difficult. But the business of video games and the journalism surrounding them are a good place to start, as these two are deeply linked and in other artistic medium it is a very real concern where they cross.
The mainstream portion of video games is a pretty bleak landscape from my perspective. Part of the reason I don't play video games as much is that 99% of video games seem to be brand-centric, relying on nostalgia or name recognition. Take a look at this week's top game sales. It is basically all sequels and games bundled with the Wii. Though one might argue that with the advent of flash gaming making game development cheap and easy, the business aspect driving game sales can't simply be brand. Why would gamer's go for a $60 game when they can play a ton online for free? There must be better quality games for that price, no?
Well, from my experience, the business of video games prevents them from telling truly innovative, interactive experiences. It is their name: Video games are games, they are meant to be fun. Any other emotion or message aside from that is secondary.
Because of that, basically every release from mainstream publishers of video games have simply reinvented the wheel in the last 30+ years of the industry. Some attempts have been made to truly innovate on an interactive level, but by far, the chart-toppers are familiar play-experiences re-skinned to convince the audience they are experiencing something new.
My final point of this brings in video game journalism. A blog such as Kotaku.com or product review site like Gamespot.com might be able to focus on a breadth of different games, from mainstream to indie to a few populist games. But the problem is they are reviewed as play experience, based on standards of fun rather than artistic merit. At this point, indie games are still turning tricks to get the attention of these blogs, offering creative pricing models and packaging them together on online distributors.
My question is this: How does this divide of coverage affect the artistic nature of video games as art? If indie developers are pushing their critically-lauded games in creative payment schemes, how will they ever make money and build the resources to bring their unique perspective to a larger audience? And how does the video game journalist community impact this by who they choose to review?
The mainstream portion of video games is a pretty bleak landscape from my perspective. Part of the reason I don't play video games as much is that 99% of video games seem to be brand-centric, relying on nostalgia or name recognition. Take a look at this week's top game sales. It is basically all sequels and games bundled with the Wii. Though one might argue that with the advent of flash gaming making game development cheap and easy, the business aspect driving game sales can't simply be brand. Why would gamer's go for a $60 game when they can play a ton online for free? There must be better quality games for that price, no?
Well, from my experience, the business of video games prevents them from telling truly innovative, interactive experiences. It is their name: Video games are games, they are meant to be fun. Any other emotion or message aside from that is secondary.
Because of that, basically every release from mainstream publishers of video games have simply reinvented the wheel in the last 30+ years of the industry. Some attempts have been made to truly innovate on an interactive level, but by far, the chart-toppers are familiar play-experiences re-skinned to convince the audience they are experiencing something new.
My final point of this brings in video game journalism. A blog such as Kotaku.com or product review site like Gamespot.com might be able to focus on a breadth of different games, from mainstream to indie to a few populist games. But the problem is they are reviewed as play experience, based on standards of fun rather than artistic merit. At this point, indie games are still turning tricks to get the attention of these blogs, offering creative pricing models and packaging them together on online distributors.
My question is this: How does this divide of coverage affect the artistic nature of video games as art? If indie developers are pushing their critically-lauded games in creative payment schemes, how will they ever make money and build the resources to bring their unique perspective to a larger audience? And how does the video game journalist community impact this by who they choose to review?
Are Video Games Art?
This is the central question of this blog, as well as for world's game critics, journalists, producers and developers. These people have built their careers around the biggest entertainment business out there. But the casual relationship between art and entertainment continues to blur thanks to online distribution, filesharing, dying models of journalism, and other factors that have pushed the world into a severely liminal information age. So the most obvious question, when asking if video games should be considered part of 'the arts' after so much has already been declared art, is 'why not'?
And that is why I am starting this blog. My earliest memories are of watching my older brother play video games. I remember the insane rituals my twin brother and I invented to grant my brother success in his quest to slay Ganon. Whether it was standing on our heads in deadly silence or singing the repetitive, inspirational chants, video games have always been an interactive affair for those with and without the controller), grand adventures played out without leaving the living room.
But I have fallen away from video games. Leaving high school, I was convinced to give programming a try, to work my way into the industry. But I quickly became discourage when I realized that a) I hate programming, and b) my goal of creating video games that were "art" (ah, the pretentiousness of my youth) was deeply flawed.
I don't doubt that video games can be a platform to present breathtaking aethetics, or tackle complex issues, or deconstruct major political ideologies, or be used in altruistic ways.
What I doubt is that video games are anywhere near being their own medium. If video games are going to be accepted into the canon of 'the arts', the medium cannot just be a patchwork of other medium. The term 'interactive art' gets thrown around a lot, but I challenge what exactly have video games offered that truly relies on that interactive component?
This blog will look at video games as art through this lens, seeking to deconstruct where the industry is at now and how it can move forward. My definition of art is simple: Anything that can invoke an emotion as well as discussion and description of it is art (A view I got from film, once itself considered to be less than art in its infancy). I will show those that maybe turn their noses up at video games that they are culturally relevant at many different levels. But unlike other video game art blogs, I will challenge how the medium has attempted to evolve itself. Central to that is what makes video games an artistic medium different from (and not just a patchwork of) film, writing, music, and dance.
And that is why I am starting this blog. My earliest memories are of watching my older brother play video games. I remember the insane rituals my twin brother and I invented to grant my brother success in his quest to slay Ganon. Whether it was standing on our heads in deadly silence or singing the repetitive, inspirational chants, video games have always been an interactive affair for those with and without the controller), grand adventures played out without leaving the living room.
But I have fallen away from video games. Leaving high school, I was convinced to give programming a try, to work my way into the industry. But I quickly became discourage when I realized that a) I hate programming, and b) my goal of creating video games that were "art" (ah, the pretentiousness of my youth) was deeply flawed.
I don't doubt that video games can be a platform to present breathtaking aethetics, or tackle complex issues, or deconstruct major political ideologies, or be used in altruistic ways.
What I doubt is that video games are anywhere near being their own medium. If video games are going to be accepted into the canon of 'the arts', the medium cannot just be a patchwork of other medium. The term 'interactive art' gets thrown around a lot, but I challenge what exactly have video games offered that truly relies on that interactive component?
This blog will look at video games as art through this lens, seeking to deconstruct where the industry is at now and how it can move forward. My definition of art is simple: Anything that can invoke an emotion as well as discussion and description of it is art (A view I got from film, once itself considered to be less than art in its infancy). I will show those that maybe turn their noses up at video games that they are culturally relevant at many different levels. But unlike other video game art blogs, I will challenge how the medium has attempted to evolve itself. Central to that is what makes video games an artistic medium different from (and not just a patchwork of) film, writing, music, and dance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)