Classy Mechanics

I recently read Roger Ebert’s rebuttal of a TED talk given by Kellee Santiago and found myself thinking that while he did a fair job of countering the points that Ms. Santiago made in her speech he didn’t make a convincing argument against the possibility of videogames being art. In addition I felt that his bandying with the definition of art was counterproductive since trying to define art is like trying to define a colour: it can only be done in relative terms. Before I throw my two cents onto the ever growing pile I must point out that unlike Ms. Santiago I am not a big fan of Roger Ebert, I am a member of what he would consider the unwashed masses of cinema goers and we have very different views on what constitutes a good movie or even a piece of art.

To my mind one of the unifying characteristics of art is that art evokes an emotional response from the person who is experiencing it, that is not to say that anything which evokes an emotional response from someone is art (otherwise we’re calling bullies artists) instead art implies a certain amount of creativity and perspective in that art is something which generally must be created with the intent of revealing something unusual or magnificent. Fight Club is a good example of a film which both moved me and changed the way that I saw the world, obviously the book required a great amount of creativity and it certainly imposed a new perspective on my life and the world around me. The same can be said of the music of Ludovico Einaudi and some of the better works on DeviantArt.

But what about videogames? I thought that in Kellee’s talk she did herself a disservice with her own examples, certainly Flower is a wonderful example of the unique form of interaction that games can have with the players, an interaction usually denied to purveyors of other forms of art. Flower is also a wonderful example in that it is a creative title and that it invokes an emotional response from the player and provides us with a new and interesting perspective on the life of a flower, it may not be correct, it may not be the perfect expression of life as a potted plant but who is to say that a still life of a flower is art and this majesty of floral expression is not? However I would like to respectfully submit some games of my own choosing for candidacy as art.

Interactive, immersive, creative non-art

Art

A particular example I had in mind of a traditional game which is also art is Mirror’s Edge, an unfortunately unsuccessful game that was at times gloriously creative, impactful and emotive and which was immensely enjoyable to play. The game was primarily emotion that the game evoked was a feeling of freedom and release: the ability to run around to my heart’s content as well as the exploration abilities afforded to me by the free running system provoked a wonderful emotional response from me, similar to the feeling from a particularly good piece of cheerful music. I would also claim that the game was a good example of creative work because it was (and still is) such a unique title, it pushed the boundaries of what games could accomplish and for better or worse it succeeded in establishing itself as something new, unusual and, in my opinion, better.

Most importantly though, Mirror’s Edge changed how I perceived my own environment not just while I was playing the game but long after I had finished it. The game left a lasting impression on my consciousness, and the feeling of freedom that I described earlier persisted even when I was not playing the game; it’s no coincidence that I went on more runs than usual once I had completed the story, and even on my walk to campus I found myself noticing all sorts of nooks and crannies which I could exploit if I were as limber as Faith, the main character of Mirror’s Edge. This is a perfect demonstration of just how much more impact a video game carries when compared with traditional art such as films or music which are much less immersive and therefore unable to connect with their audience on the same level as a game, a fact which I believe is integral to the case for videogames-as-art.

As anyone who has played a game by Bioware will tell you, videogames have an amazing ability to draw the audience into their world by the use of well fleshed characters and detailed environments which provide a solid foundation upon which it’s possible to construct a much more believable setting than it is in other forms of art.

In conclusion I argue that videogames can in certain cases be considered art when they provoke feelings and change the way we view our world in the same way that a great piece of sculpture is not art because it is beautiful but because it evokes a response from its audience in the way that only art can do. Ebert has said that his notion of art is that “it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist’s soul, or vision.” The experience of playing a game is that of inhabiting a different person, with different abilities who interacts with their world in ways that are sometimes radically different to our own lives, clearly then, a game alters our own experience of nature by giving us an alternate world to temporarily explore and exist in. I would certainly call that art.

As for why the gaming community is so hung up on the art issue, my explanation is that because certain games are such powerful experiences for the gamers who play them these games become very important to those people, and when people such as Roger Ebert say “Video games can never be art” the gaming community perceieves this as a very serious slight on both the medium and audience. The fact of the matter is that Ebert doesn’t play videogames, so when he says that videogames are not art it should be treated with the same gravitas as when American football commentators would say that soccer is a sissy sport: none at all.