Art and Craft

I've written a couple of posts about whether or not videogames should be considered art. Today I'm going to talk about the kind of craftsmanship that goes into making a videogame.

Actually, I'm going to let this guy talk about the craftsmanship that goes into making a videogame:


For those of you who can't (or don't want to) watch the video, I'll summarize. He's talking about a Game called Fuel. He doesn't talk about the gameplay, or the story, or the art direction. He spends his time talking about the game world. Specifically, he talks about how they used technology to create a truly massive game world.

Even though he doesn't really enjoy the game, he loves the way they made the videogame. Since he's a programmer himself, he's able to appreciate the craftsmanship that went into making it.

His comments actually remind me of Roger Ebert's commentary on Citizen Cane. As you may know, Citizen Cane consistently tops the AFI's list of the top 100 films of all time. I've seen the movie, and I certainly wouldn't consider it the greatest movie ever made. Until I listened to Ebert's commentary, I never understood why the film was so highly regarded.

In his commentary, Ebert talks about all of the techniques that were used to make the film. Early on he said that Citizen Cane has nearly as many special effects shots as Star Wars. That remark surprised me, because I didn't think that a movie like Citizen Cane would need much in the way of special effects. Throughout the movie, he explained several of the more noteworthy special effects that were used to make the film look the way it does.

I wonder if Roger Ebert knew as much about video game development as he does about movie making, if that might affect his opinion that videogames can't be art. Strictly speaking, it shouldn't matter one way or the other. Just because something is challenging to make doesn't make it a work of art.

Still, we admire it when a high level of craftsmanship is used to create something beautiful. Once we know the work that goes into making anything, whether it's a videogame or a movie or anything else, we begin to appreciate it that much more.

Art, Life and Videogames

Awhile back I asked the question Are Videogames Art? In that post I talked about a few of the more common objections to the claim that videogames are art. Today I'll try to make the case that games can in fact be art.

Before we begin I need to clear something up. These days most videogames include stories, characters, dialog, 3-d models, animations, scenery, cut-scenes, etc. Any one of these things could potentially be considered art in its own right. That does not make the game itself a work of art. In order for a game to count as art, the gameplay itself must have some artistic merit.

So to begin, we need to consider the gameplay alone. What does a game look like when you take away the dialog, textures, cut-scenes and other art resources? What is it that makes a game a game?

I would aruge that what makes a game a game is the rules. Rules define the roles of any objects that are part of the game (whether those objects are physical objects, like dice or cards, or pieces of computer software). They also define the roles of the players; they control how the players interact with the game objects and how game objects interact with each other. These rules can be applied by the people playing the game, or by the computer. In either case, the rules define the game experience.

It may seem like I've painted myself into a corner here. How can anything as dry and uninteresting as a set of rules ever be considered a work of art? However, one does not play a game by reading the rules. One plays the game by putting those rules into action. It is in playing a game that we discover its artistic merit.

I would like to use Conway's Game of Life as an example. The game takes place on an infinite square grid. Each square can be either alive or dead. Each square interacts with its 8 neighbors (squares that are adjacent to it, either vertically, horizontally or diagonally). A live square stays alive if it has two or three live neighbors, otherwise it dies. Life appears in a dead square if it has three live neighbors, otherwise it stays dead.

The Game of Life is an interesting game. It is a zero player game. You just set the initial state (decide which squares are alive in the beginning) and the game plays itself.

The Game of Life is also a good test case. The rules are very simple, but the game is incredibly complex. It can be difficult to predict what will happen. Sometimes large, complex patterns die off within a few generations. At other times small, simple patterns, like the F Pentomino, expand and grow and change for more than a thousand generations.

Some patterns are stable. They either remain unchanged or they return to their original form after a few generations. Other patterns move as they change, allowing them to travel across the grid.

I might be reaching a little bit, but I would argue that the game of life qualifies as a work of art. The fact that such a simple set of rules allows for all of these possibilities is impressive. Watching the F Pentomino sprawl out over a thousand generations is quite beautiful.

Not only can the Game of Life be beautiful to watch, it also challenges us. It forces us to come to terms with the fact that we can't always know the end from the beginning, even under such simple conditions. Think about it: even with a small, simple, deterministic set of rules, predicting how a Game of Life will play out can be very hard. The fact that this simple game can be so surprising is a noteworthy achievement.

I don't think we'll see Conway's Game of Life running on computers in the Louvre anytime soon, but I think we can make the case that games deserve consideration as works of art. In the future I'll talk about how this argument applies to more traditional computer games.

In the meantime, please feel free to let me know what you think.

Edit: I realize this post is dense, and it might be hard to follow if you're not familiar with the game of life. If you want to actually see what I'm talking about, check out this video. It provides a good example of the kind of complexity the game is capable of.

Are Videogames Art?

Instead of doing my usual rant about God or religion or politics I'm going to write something fun and lighthearted. I hope you enjoy.

There's been a lot of conversation recently about whether or not videogames are, or can ever be, art. I happen to believe that videogames should be considered art, but I understand why some people disagree. Today I'm going to talk about some of the more common reasons why videogames aren't considered art.

1) It's interactive, so it can't be art.

This is one of the most basic objections. I like it because it cuts right to the underlying question: How do we define art? For some people, anything that requires interaction beyond just passive observation is, by definition, not art.

Of course, not all artists agree to this definition. A quick video search for "interactive art" on google turns up some interesting results. I don't know if they truly are "art" but they certainly are interesting.

I've seen a lot of people argue that it's obvious that games are art. Great games have well written stories, beautiful scenery, interesting characters, an engaging plot and beautiful animation. How can they not be art?

The answer usually has something to do with interactivity. Those qualities I mentioned above, writing, scenery, characters, they are nice, but they're not interactive.

Interactivity is what makes a game a game. Without interactivity that's designed to challenge the player, it isn't a game. If the interactivity doesn't have some artistic value, then the game isn't really art. It's an artistic movie that won't play correctly until the user presses the right button sequences.

So in order for games to be art, the interactivity has to heighten the artistic experience somehow.

2) I don't appreciate what's going on, so it's not art.

The fact that games are interactive is also the main reason why a lot of people, like Roger Ebert, will never accept that games can be art. In order to grok how games can be art, they have to play the darn things.

As I said above, it's not just that games are interactive, they're interactive in a way that's meant to challenge the player. Most games require a considerable amount of skill in order to be fully appreciated. Someone who's new to videogames can't just sit down and play, let's say, half-life and become immersed in the story. They're going to need a few hours to get used to using the wasd keys to move and the mouse to look around.

For this reason, it's hard for outsiders to get into games. They don't know how to interface with the medium, so they can't appreciate it.

This challenge is not unique to games, but it is more severe with videogames than with other mediums. Plays and movies require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief in order to be appreciated, but they don't require a whole new skill set.

3) Games and Art are two different things.

This is also related to the issue of interactivity. Part of the difficulty games face in being accepted as a legitimate medium is that they're trying to be two things at once.

Multiplayer games like Starcraft or Modern Warfare provide an opportunity for players to compete with one another to test their skills. They're similar to traditional games like chess or football. Most people don't consider chess to be a work of art, despite the fact that it is an elegantly simple game that is extremely challenging to master.

To make matters worse, we can't neatly sort games into those two categories. Starcraft and Modern Warfare both have single player portions that tell a story. They're trying to be "art" while at the same time still trying to be a "game".

These are the major reasons why videogames often aren't considered art. At some point in the future I'll write some more about why I think games can and should be considered art. In the meantime, can you think of any arguments I missed? Or maybe you just want to share your own opinion on whether or not games are art.