If a Game Wants to be Art, Then It's Got to Feel Organic...

And no, I don't mean without pesticides...

Games as a whole have not become an art form... yet.  And no, to get there does not mean that every game has to be filled with stories of deliberate ambiguity, or messages hidden within excessive layers of over-interpretation.

However, I would like to make a blanket statement. Video games as a medium will have the potential to elevate themselves into the category of "art," along with films and novels, the day that they finally realize that all the aspects of a game (graphics, sound, gameplay, story, etc) have to feel organic. What this means is that all of those aspects have to exist seamlessly with the other elements of the game in service to a unified purpose.

A great example of this NOT happening would be in games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4. In GTA4, unlike it's past iterations, we were meant to understand that Niko Bellic was a sympathetic anti-hero who had a moral dilemma when committing murder, even if he had to do it to survive. That might sound like an interesting premise for a story, but it ran head-on into a paradoxical gameplay mechanic where after every cutscene, should your heart desire as the gamer, you could make Niko essentially commit mass genocide on a city street by blowing up, shooting, and beating to death, hundreds of civilians. Sure, we've all had our fun moments doing this in a GTA, but it doesn't fit with the character design Dan Houser and his team were going for in Niko.

I want gaming to elevate to that level of art, and there have certainly been many games in the past that have done this to incredible levels.  Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are two great examples. Games like Bioshock and the original Deus Ex have also done this extremely well, just to name a few, in which the gameplay and first person perspective lend themselves to the overall meaning and point the game itself.



One of the finest examples of gaming elevating itself to an art form.

In Bioshock, you had singular objectives that you completed because, well, the game required you to. Atlas said "would you kindly save my family," and "would you kindly kill Andrew Ryan," and, as the player, you followed orders because, just like the protagonist, that's what you were programmed to do. Bioshock made the player very self-aware of a linear video game, because after all, when you play a linear game, are you ever NOT going to do what the game tells you?

Deus Ex used the first person perspective in the opposite way of Bioshock, in that it was all about perception and choice. Every newspaper article you "decided" to read, every email account you hacked that revealed what was being said behind your back, all served to allow the player the feeling that which side you ultimately took in the grand conspiracy of the story depended on your own initiative in seeking out knowledge. If you never took the time to learn the history of the world in Deus Ex, then your character simply followed orders as he was intended. But if you found yourself suspicious, and confirmed those suspicions for yourself by taking a few minutes to read the notes on your boss' desk, you suddenly realized you were a pawn being guided to selfish ends.

Shadow of the Colossus proved that you could invert the very expectations of the game, where the protagonist would interact with a very believable, beautiful landscape, with creatures you would have to destroy in order to suceed in something you perceived to be righteous, only to find yourself progressively questioning your actions as the game went on.  Ultimately, you realized that the actions you were taking to save the girl you loved were of a selfish nature, destroying your own soul in the process, making the antagonist and protagonist the very same character.  Simply put, the cost to save one life that was already lost was to sacrifice many others, including your own.


An example of a game's story masquerading as art, but without the gameplay to back it up.

There's other games that provide examples of elevation to art, I'm just not going to name them all. My point is that it's been done well in the past. The technology keeps improving, so there's no reason why the core of gaming has to remain stagnant, or even rescind backwards.

Here's to hoping the golden era of gaming is right around the corner... in the meantime, Fallout 3, GTA4, and MGS4 aren't how we're going to get there.

What are some other games you feel fall into the category of "art?"  Please post your choices.

Read more at

And no, I don't mean without pesticides...

Games as a whole have not become an art form... yet.  And no, to get there does not mean that every game has to be filled with stories of deliberate ambiguity, or messages hidden within excessive layers of over-interpretation.

However, I would like to make a blanket statement. Video games as a medium will have the potential to elevate themselves into the category of "art," along with films and novels, the day that they finally realize that all the aspects of a game (graphics, sound, gameplay, story, etc) have to feel organic. What this means is that all of those aspects have to exist seamlessly with the other elements of the game in service to a unified purpose.

A great example of this NOT happening would be in games like Grand Theft Auto IV and Metal Gear Solid 4. In GTA4, unlike it's past iterations, we were meant to understand that Niko Bellic was a sympathetic anti-hero who had a moral dilemma when committing murder, even if he had to do it to survive. That might sound like an interesting premise for a story, but it ran head-on into a paradoxical gameplay mechanic where after every cutscene, should your heart desire as the gamer, you could make Niko essentially commit mass genocide on a city street by blowing up, shooting, and beating to death, hundreds of civilians. Sure, we've all had our fun moments doing this in a GTA, but it doesn't fit with the character design Dan Houser and his team were going for in Niko.

I want gaming to elevate to that level of art, and there have certainly been many games in the past that have done this to incredible levels.  Shadow of the Colossus and Ico are two great examples. Games like Bioshock and the original Deus Ex have also done this extremely well, just to name a few, in which the gameplay and first person perspective lend themselves to the overall meaning and point the game itself.



One of the finest examples of gaming elevating itself to an art form.

In Bioshock, you had singular objectives that you completed because, well, the game required you to. Atlas said "would you kindly save my family," and "would you kindly kill Andrew Ryan," and, as the player, you followed orders because, just like the protagonist, that's what you were programmed to do. Bioshock made the player very self-aware of a linear video game, because after all, when you play a linear game, are you ever NOT going to do what the game tells you?

Deus Ex used the first person perspective in the opposite way of Bioshock, in that it was all about perception and choice. Every newspaper article you "decided" to read, every email account you hacked that revealed what was being said behind your back, all served to allow the player the feeling that which side you ultimately took in the grand conspiracy of the story depended on your own initiative in seeking out knowledge. If you never took the time to learn the history of the world in Deus Ex, then your character simply followed orders as he was intended. But if you found yourself suspicious, and confirmed those suspicions for yourself by taking a few minutes to read the notes on your boss' desk, you suddenly realized you were a pawn being guided to selfish ends.

Shadow of the Colossus proved that you could invert the very expectations of the game, where the protagonist would interact with a very believable, beautiful landscape, with creatures you would have to destroy in order to suceed in something you perceived to be righteous, only to find yourself progressively questioning your actions as the game went on.  Ultimately, you realized that the actions you were taking to save the girl you loved were of a selfish nature, destroying your own soul in the process, making the antagonist and protagonist the very same character.  Simply put, the cost to save one life that was already lost was to sacrifice many others, including your own.


An example of a game's story masquerading as art, but without the gameplay to back it up.

There's other games that provide examples of elevation to art, I'm just not going to name them all. My point is that it's been done well in the past. The technology keeps improving, so there's no reason why the core of gaming has to remain stagnant, or even rescind backwards.

Here's to hoping the golden era of gaming is right around the corner... in the meantime, Fallout 3, GTA4, and MGS4 aren't how we're going to get there.

What are some other games you feel fall into the category of "art?"  Please post your choices.

Read more at

...I swear I've seen the exact same thing before.

"

Interesting. Other games that could fit into the 'art' category are Electroplankton, Katamari Damacy, Okami, Flow and Eden.

I think that because video games enable their audience to interact directly with the 'art' form, the medium offers an interesting twist to the traditional concept of art, where 'art' is under total authorial control. I guess my point is that video games have the potential to elevate themselves into the category of art and, in doing so, elevate or develop the concept of art itself.

"

As I've said, your applying a standard to the concept of art that doesn't exist, and only applying the label to something that you find exceptional is unreasonable.

locking this, continue here...