Video Games as Art…

[jackal27]

I think that it would be awesome if you guys read all this, but I'll highlight the main points just in case you don't.

This is something that's been on mind more and more as of late and I wanted to talk about this with you guys especially.

Are video games art?

I know that most of us (if not all of us) would answer yes. That's probably due to the fact that most of us are gamers, in fact, we love games enough to make our own! Which… If you think about it... If games are art... Makes us artists! Whee!

However, this isn't the only thing I want to discuss... Because the answer to my previous question is pretty straight forward.

See, I'm REALLY into art. I draw, paint, write, make music, short films, etc. etc. In fact, I was originally going to go to school to become a cartoonist. However, I don't just like to make art, because you can't really make it until you can truly appreciate other people's work in my opinion. I watch ALOT of movies, listen to ALOT of music, read ALOT of books, as well as go to art shows, museums, plays, etc. So I started thinking about games as art and how we've played alot of them for years and years... However... When I look at a game… I play it as any normal person would.. But do I perceive it as an aspiring artist would? For example… If you're a film student or an aspiring film maker, when you watch a movie, you look camera angles, how the story flows, how the characters are developed, you take a 4th dimensional look into the workings and making of the movie itself…

However… If we're aspiring game makers, shouldn't we do this with games as well? Shouldn't we be analyzing them in a different way than the rest of our fellow gamers do? I think that if we played games like this more, it would open up all sorts of possibilities and new ideas within the Eclipse Community and independent gaming as a whole.

Also, what parts of a game do you think of as art? I don't mean obvious things like music and graphics (which are indeed art), but I mean subtler, yet more important things like gameplay mechanics and core design. I mean, do you think of game play mechanics as art? How can they be utilized as such? As in, how can we convey a feeling, or arouse an emotion in how the player plays the game, and not just how they perceive it.

For example: Many people say that Final Fantasy 7 taught us that games could make us cry when Sephiroth kills Aerith (SPOILERZ!!1). However, I call SHENANIGANS on that, because actually, the scene of Sephiroth killing Aerith is a cinematic! You didn't directly PLAY or DO anything that made you sad. It was like watching a sad movie.

How do you convey an a feeling or make the player feel an emotion when the player has direct control over what they're doing? You could possibly take some of that control away without them knowing it (forcing them to do something), or you could leave the control to them and use the world around the player to affect them. We could change things about games that players usually take for granted like for example…

Why are your enemies evil? Why do you have to kill monsters? What does the character your playing as think of the things you make them do? Does the character you play as have a free will? What's up with having multiple lives anyway? Why don't game characters have to eat or go to the bathroom? What happens when game characters die? Why is there no remorse or sadness when you lose a life for the fallen character?

I just wanted to bring some of these things up for discussion and hopefully to see if you guys would consider some of these things for your games! I mean, in a sea of Naruto fan games and MMORPGs that draw everything from games before them (mine included), why aren't we, the people who have the power and the resources to confront these questions toying with some new ideas? Popular game developers are weighed down with the responsibility of making games that will sell well, not art. However, we're free of that burden. So yeah… I know this was long, but what do you think?

Also, as someone pointed out, I know this is harder to think about with MMOs, but I think there are certainly some things that could be done out there.