From what I understand, this very interactivity is sort of controversial in the whole "what is art?" scene.
Traditional definitions of art have focused a lot on authorial intent—i.e. what makes something art is the fact that an artist sat down at some point and deliberately created it, with an intended experience for the viewer—but interactive stuff flips that definition on its head. If the viewer can participate in the art, what's the difference between them and the artist? what if they do something the creator didn't intend? can they have a "wrong" experience? and so on.
This isn't as big of a problem with, say, improv jazz music or improv theater—in these sorts of things, the artist will take a "prompt" of some sort, and create art from that, but beyond the prompt there's not much audience interaction. But when you've got a video game, there's a lot more interaction.
...but then that whole postmodernism thing happens, and you get stuff like John Cage's 4:33, where the point is that he isn't doing anything; all of the art comes out of like, the crowd's fidgeting and coughs and whatnot.
So the "art is based on intent and non-interactivity" is a comfortable argument, a traditional argument, and one that probably worked pretty well when people were focusing on novels and symphonies and whatever. But I don't think it works so well in shiny-21st-century-land, with all these weird John Cage-y things floating around.
The more interesting question I think is: could an art-game feature an idea of "winning," in a traditional sense? Is an experience where you're focused on optimizing the strength of your position, amassing strength, besting opponents, etc. compatible with an "art" experience? (And if so, are there board games that also fit the definition of "art"?)
Interactive fiction doesn't have to face that problem so directly—because, even if the game has multiple endings, oftentimes (though not always!) the focus is more on the totality of the experience—i.e. the gamer keeps going out of a desire to see "what happens next," or what the consequences of choice X might be, or whatever, rather than "yay I got the best ending!"
But a puzzle game, a twitchy-hit-everything-moves-game, or a strategy game faces a pretty legitimate question here.
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Traditional definitions of art have focused a lot on authorial intent—i.e. what makes something art is the fact that an artist sat down at some point and deliberately created it, with an intended experience for the viewer—but interactive stuff flips that definition on its head. If the viewer can participate in the art, what's the difference between them and the artist? what if they do something the creator didn't intend? can they have a "wrong" experience? and so on.
This isn't as big of a problem with, say, improv jazz music or improv theater—in these sorts of things, the artist will take a "prompt" of some sort, and create art from that, but beyond the prompt there's not much audience interaction. But when you've got a video game, there's a lot more interaction.
...but then that whole postmodernism thing happens, and you get stuff like John Cage's 4:33, where the point is that he isn't doing anything; all of the art comes out of like, the crowd's fidgeting and coughs and whatnot.
So the "art is based on intent and non-interactivity" is a comfortable argument, a traditional argument, and one that probably worked pretty well when people were focusing on novels and symphonies and whatever. But I don't think it works so well in shiny-21st-century-land, with all these weird John Cage-y things floating around.
The more interesting question I think is: could an art-game feature an idea of "winning," in a traditional sense? Is an experience where you're focused on optimizing the strength of your position, amassing strength, besting opponents, etc. compatible with an "art" experience? (And if so, are there board games that also fit the definition of "art"?)
Interactive fiction doesn't have to face that problem so directly—because, even if the game has multiple endings, oftentimes (though not always!) the focus is more on the totality of the experience—i.e. the gamer keeps going out of a desire to see "what happens next," or what the consequences of choice X might be, or whatever, rather than "yay I got the best ending!"
But a puzzle game, a twitchy-hit-everything-moves-game, or a strategy game faces a pretty legitimate question here.