Week 11: Game

Missing

In Missing, it took me a little while to realise that you can’t actually achieve anything, that the whole point of the game is to wander around in an aimless, ultimately futile search for your missing son. But when I did realise… *sadface*. How did the gameplay achieve this? I guess because of the simple lack of gameplay. The tediousness and ultimately useless actions of printing out fliers, sticking them up, or having the same dead-end conversations with all the towns people were both really interesting gameplay mechanics intended to do nothing. And that’s the thing – there wasn’t really anything that I could do, and that helplessness was perhaps exactly what the designer wanted me to feel.

Home

As for Home, the slow depression just sort of creeps in as the old man’s existence becomes less and less… interesting? I’m not quite sure that’s the right word. I thought the worst had come when the final moments of gameplay (or lack thereof) came around, when the antidepressants weren’t letting me enjoy conversation, the feeding tube had taken away the fun of eating, and the sedatives refused to let me sleep. All I could do was sit there waiting for my bladder to empty itself, not even being able to go to the toilet because that’s the last thing I just did. The kicker came when the game decided to throw in a nice little taste of dementia. I’m not quite sure what the point of the game was, aside maybe to make me wish I never grow old enough to be in such a state. But if the game’s purpose was to stir emotions, it did, quite powerfully.

Emotions and Art

So its clear that, for me at least, games can definitely evoke some sort of emotion. As Roger Ebert’s article suggests, it’s all really about the personal definition you use to define what art is or is not. Now, since I agree with the definition he quotes from Wikipedia:

“Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions.”

With this definition, games are, for me at least, then almost certainly forms of art. I’d go so far as to say that I respond a lot better to video games than the most modern of artworks (I felt a lot more from playing the above games and games like Braid than I do looking at the sort of super-modern-minimalist-contempary-arty-stuff-that-is-only-a-blue-dot-on-a-blank-canvas). That might make me some sort of uncultured-swine, but I prefer to believe that I simply was brought up being instructed that this is what great art is, rather than being allowed to decide for myself – instilling me with a simple distaste for most modern artwork.

However, I should point out that I almost certainly don’t think that this doesn’t make them art. Roger’s point about the semantics of definition when it comes to art is one of the few things in his article I agree with. But the key focus of his article seems to be that he doesn’t like/doesn’t agree with/find interesting/isn’t compelled by modern video games, and that this for some reason certainly doesn’t make them art.

His arguments against Braid, for example, I find almost offensive. He suggests, along with admitting that he has never even bothered to play the game, that because in Chess you can’t take back a move, then therefore any game where you can is clearly not a game. He childishly belittles the story and seems to conclude that because he doesn’t like/agree with the idea of the game nor can he see himself being influenced by it, that the game is simply not art. I probably can’t very eloquently express why I think so, but to be honest he just seems arrogant and stupid for the majority of the article.

I’m fairly sure that (just like how I don’t appreciate modern art), many great artists in the past were not heralded as geniuses in their time, as many people didn’t like/agree with/find interesting/weren’t compelled by their artwork. The narrow-mindedness of some people certainly didn’t make them any less great.

Video games can never be art