Rambly Thoughts: Video Games as Art
Jul. 12th, 2012 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
queenluaI recently got into an interesting e-mail discussion about games as an art form with a friend, and this entry is a result of that discussion. I know a lot's been said on the subject before, but I'm hoping at least I have a bit of something new to contribute (even though my thoughts are still a bit scattered and sparse).
So let's start with this: I don't think there's an exemplary example of a video game that I would (a) count as a piece of art, and (b) effectively utilizes the tools of its medium.
Or at least, I don't think there's a great example of this yet. Think of early cinema: it took early filmmakers a long time to realize, wait, we're doing this all with cameras now, so we should stop acting like this is just a play. Nowadays, movies are really distinct from plays; there are things filmmakers do in movies that wouldn't be possible in plays, and vice versa. But movies are older than games by a fair margin.
I think games are still suffering from that—game designers are taking their storytelling/art cues from cinema and novels and whatever, but they haven't quite figured out what it is that makes their medium unique.
The two types of games.
Narrative-as-window-dressing. This category includes the Final Fantasy games, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, and so on. In these games, the story's generally told via cutscenes, and what happens in those cutscenes has little effect on the gameplay itself. The story told in those cutscenes can be really engaging and powerful (hi hello do you want to hear about the FFX fangirling spree I went on last night), but that story doesn't feel very integrated with the gameplay. It's taking all its storytelling cues from cinema and novels, rather than taking advantage of the merits of the medium (i.e. interactivity). I mean, consider how plenty of folks will watch the "movie" version of a game (a copypasta of all the game's cutscenes) rather than bother actually playing the game—that tells you that the "game" part of the game is not very important to the narrative.
Gameplay-as-page-turning. This includes the Choice of Games games, Digital: A Love Story, Radical Dreamers... These games are essentially audiovisual choose-your-own-adventure books. I think these are undoubtedly art, and undoubtedly interactive, but I don't quite count them as "games" since the gameplay is essentially equivalent to turning a page in many cases.
Integrating story and gameplay.
The question, then, is: how do you integrate story seamlessly with gameplay? How do you turn the player's interactions with the game into something that's integral to the story itself? This is a really hard problem. I'm not sure of the answer. With certain types of gameplay, I'm not sure if it's possible at all—I'm not sure, for example, how you could integrate a first-person shooter's twitchy-hit-everything-that-moves gameplay into a story.
I think puzzle-based gameplay holds the most promise, if executed well. The best example I know of this is maybe make some change, a very short (~15 minutes) little web-browser based game that packs a surprising punch. I very much recommend playing it, though I'll try to discuss it without spoilers here.
The point is, when you do solve the main "puzzle" in that game, it's not just "oh I pushed this crate into this hole and now I get to proceed to the next room." The puzzle is linked with the game's storyline, such that solving the puzzle means you're solving something about the narrative itself.
When I think about it, reminds me a bit of the feeling of finally coming up with a good math proof—you've been thinking really hard about a bunch of vaguely related concepts, trying to figure out some clever way to combine them, and when you finally arrive at a solution, you gain not only a solution, but also a deeper understanding of how those things connect. And seeing as lots of math folk draw comparisons between math and art, it seems to me that working through a (well-designed) puzzle in a game may be a bit similar. (amielleon, you should feel free to comment if I'm totally talking out my ass here; my math experience is enthusiastic but amateurish.)
What I'd like to see more of in games (i.e., what I perceive as some of the distinct advantages of video games as a medium).
Uncomfortable moments. I like the idea of using games to force people to make uncomfortable choices, or to put people in uncomfortable positions. For example, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn does this.
In the beginning, the game's a pretty straightforward yay-let's-liberate-our-oppressed-country narrative. The Begnion occupiers are pretty clearly bad dudes, and though Daein's racist tendencies are mentioned in passing, our heroes are all shiny good people, so it's not really an issue.
But then part three hits, and now Daein seems much less shiny. You're forced to fight for decidedly less-shiny reasons, and Daein's race issues can no longer be ignored:
Then the clencher comes when Ike et al. come to personally take you out—you've played as them before, so you have an intimate knowledge of just how OP they are, and you get this gut oh fuck shit just got real feeling. It's an impressive bit of storytelling.
And games are really well-suited for that sort of discomfort—because when you're playing a game, to some extent you own your actions, in a way that feels very different than reading about those actions, or watching a movie, or whatever.
Experiencing "the other." This is stretching a bit, but...
Back when I was doing play-by-post RPGs, once of the earliest things I discovered was how hard it was for me to hate my own characters. I was like, eleven when I started playing on these games, and I'd decide I was going to make a total asshat jerk villain or whatever—but inevitably, as I got more skilled in writing characters, I found myself sympathizing with and understanding all my characters, jerkasses included. By the act of adopting that role, and forcing myself to think the way that character thought, I gained a deep understanding of why they did what they did.
Sometimes I'd still think they were a despicable person. But at least I understood why they were that way.
Now, play-by-post RPGs are rather different from video games. It's much closer to writing a story than it is playing a game. But, I do think that something similar could be achieved with games.
There's usually a lot of to-do about maximizing player choice in games. Games like Skyrim love to boast about how customizable your character is, how many different roles they can take on, how many different places they can go, and so on. But I think by constraining a player's choices in very specific ways, some interesting new experience could come about. Such constraints could force a player to experience a role they're not used to, put themselves in a position that they're unfamiliar with.
The hard thing to do with this, though, is making the gameplay more about understanding/empathizing with your PC's position, rather than encouraging the player to try and cut corners or figure out clever ways to overcome that position. There was this game that came out a while ago, Spent—it was well-intentioned, though preachy. The idea was, you're put in the role of someone trying to take care of a family while earning minimum wage, which is really hard to do in the game (just like it is in real life)—but the discussion thread I saw about the game had a lot of people gloating "oh, well, I managed to do it," and saying things like "well clearly this game doesn't actually represent the plight of poor people because what are the odds that you would have a car wreck and a major illness and a work injury all in the same month." The game was encouraging you to think with your head and outsmart it, but what you really needed for that game to be successful was to somehow force the players to feel/empathize with their PC's position. In this case, the game-y mechanics actively worked against the message it was trying to convey.
So let's start with this: I don't think there's an exemplary example of a video game that I would (a) count as a piece of art, and (b) effectively utilizes the tools of its medium.
Or at least, I don't think there's a great example of this yet. Think of early cinema: it took early filmmakers a long time to realize, wait, we're doing this all with cameras now, so we should stop acting like this is just a play. Nowadays, movies are really distinct from plays; there are things filmmakers do in movies that wouldn't be possible in plays, and vice versa. But movies are older than games by a fair margin.
I think games are still suffering from that—game designers are taking their storytelling/art cues from cinema and novels and whatever, but they haven't quite figured out what it is that makes their medium unique.
The two types of games.
Narrative-as-window-dressing. This category includes the Final Fantasy games, Assassin's Creed, Metal Gear Solid, and so on. In these games, the story's generally told via cutscenes, and what happens in those cutscenes has little effect on the gameplay itself. The story told in those cutscenes can be really engaging and powerful (hi hello do you want to hear about the FFX fangirling spree I went on last night), but that story doesn't feel very integrated with the gameplay. It's taking all its storytelling cues from cinema and novels, rather than taking advantage of the merits of the medium (i.e. interactivity). I mean, consider how plenty of folks will watch the "movie" version of a game (a copypasta of all the game's cutscenes) rather than bother actually playing the game—that tells you that the "game" part of the game is not very important to the narrative.
Gameplay-as-page-turning. This includes the Choice of Games games, Digital: A Love Story, Radical Dreamers... These games are essentially audiovisual choose-your-own-adventure books. I think these are undoubtedly art, and undoubtedly interactive, but I don't quite count them as "games" since the gameplay is essentially equivalent to turning a page in many cases.
Integrating story and gameplay.
The question, then, is: how do you integrate story seamlessly with gameplay? How do you turn the player's interactions with the game into something that's integral to the story itself? This is a really hard problem. I'm not sure of the answer. With certain types of gameplay, I'm not sure if it's possible at all—I'm not sure, for example, how you could integrate a first-person shooter's twitchy-hit-everything-that-moves gameplay into a story.
I think puzzle-based gameplay holds the most promise, if executed well. The best example I know of this is maybe make some change, a very short (~15 minutes) little web-browser based game that packs a surprising punch. I very much recommend playing it, though I'll try to discuss it without spoilers here.
The point is, when you do solve the main "puzzle" in that game, it's not just "oh I pushed this crate into this hole and now I get to proceed to the next room." The puzzle is linked with the game's storyline, such that solving the puzzle means you're solving something about the narrative itself.
When I think about it, reminds me a bit of the feeling of finally coming up with a good math proof—you've been thinking really hard about a bunch of vaguely related concepts, trying to figure out some clever way to combine them, and when you finally arrive at a solution, you gain not only a solution, but also a deeper understanding of how those things connect. And seeing as lots of math folk draw comparisons between math and art, it seems to me that working through a (well-designed) puzzle in a game may be a bit similar. (
amielleon, you should feel free to comment if I'm totally talking out my ass here; my math experience is enthusiastic but amateurish.)What I'd like to see more of in games (i.e., what I perceive as some of the distinct advantages of video games as a medium).
Uncomfortable moments. I like the idea of using games to force people to make uncomfortable choices, or to put people in uncomfortable positions. For example, Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn does this.
In the beginning, the game's a pretty straightforward yay-let's-liberate-our-oppressed-country narrative. The Begnion occupiers are pretty clearly bad dudes, and though Daein's racist tendencies are mentioned in passing, our heroes are all shiny good people, so it's not really an issue.
But then part three hits, and now Daein seems much less shiny. You're forced to fight for decidedly less-shiny reasons, and Daein's race issues can no longer be ignored:
Micaiah: Well, with a few exceptions, the soldiers are excited about hunting down the laguz... They've been promised a large bounty for each one they kill. It's certainly raised morale....and damn do you ever feel what Micaiah's feeling. Maybe I was just hyperinvolved in the game, but during the part 3 Dawn Brigade battles, I felt legitimately uncomfortable—I was not okay with slaughtering half of the Laguz Alliance's forces or slaughtering Sanaki's troops, but like Micaiah, it wasn't like I had much of a choice
Sothe: Listen to yourself! Laguz hunting?! That's just great. We've gone from being freedom fighters to bigots in the blink of an eye. I can't believe you'd go along with such a murderous plan. How do you feel about this, Micaiah? Tell me the truth.
Micaiah: ...I don't want to fight.
Then the clencher comes when Ike et al. come to personally take you out—you've played as them before, so you have an intimate knowledge of just how OP they are, and you get this gut oh fuck shit just got real feeling. It's an impressive bit of storytelling.
And games are really well-suited for that sort of discomfort—because when you're playing a game, to some extent you own your actions, in a way that feels very different than reading about those actions, or watching a movie, or whatever.
Experiencing "the other." This is stretching a bit, but...
Back when I was doing play-by-post RPGs, once of the earliest things I discovered was how hard it was for me to hate my own characters. I was like, eleven when I started playing on these games, and I'd decide I was going to make a total asshat jerk villain or whatever—but inevitably, as I got more skilled in writing characters, I found myself sympathizing with and understanding all my characters, jerkasses included. By the act of adopting that role, and forcing myself to think the way that character thought, I gained a deep understanding of why they did what they did.
Sometimes I'd still think they were a despicable person. But at least I understood why they were that way.
Now, play-by-post RPGs are rather different from video games. It's much closer to writing a story than it is playing a game. But, I do think that something similar could be achieved with games.
There's usually a lot of to-do about maximizing player choice in games. Games like Skyrim love to boast about how customizable your character is, how many different roles they can take on, how many different places they can go, and so on. But I think by constraining a player's choices in very specific ways, some interesting new experience could come about. Such constraints could force a player to experience a role they're not used to, put themselves in a position that they're unfamiliar with.
The hard thing to do with this, though, is making the gameplay more about understanding/empathizing with your PC's position, rather than encouraging the player to try and cut corners or figure out clever ways to overcome that position. There was this game that came out a while ago, Spent—it was well-intentioned, though preachy. The idea was, you're put in the role of someone trying to take care of a family while earning minimum wage, which is really hard to do in the game (just like it is in real life)—but the discussion thread I saw about the game had a lot of people gloating "oh, well, I managed to do it," and saying things like "well clearly this game doesn't actually represent the plight of poor people because what are the odds that you would have a car wreck and a major illness and a work injury all in the same month." The game was encouraging you to think with your head and outsmart it, but what you really needed for that game to be successful was to somehow force the players to feel/empathize with their PC's position. In this case, the game-y mechanics actively worked against the message it was trying to convey.
