This will probably end up sounding like rubbish but here goes: If games are to be art, they would more likely be art in the way that ballet or some of dancing could be art. Ballet has an aesthetic quality for the observers in the audience, but the true expression of the art is within the dancer and their expression of the emotion of the music and story through their body (at least as far as I can tell from not knowing all that much about ballet). The art is therefore not as much in the choreography or the music but in its expression. Two people can perform the same piece and the one is art and the other just someone going through the motions.
Currently video games have very fixed forms of game-play expression, mostly to avoid horrible software bugs. Should game play ever expand beyond timing jumps and aligning cursors with heads, I think a time could come where you are watching someone play something and in that moment view the game-play as art. For some indie or puzzle games this may already be true. A possible example that comes to mind for me is that Evo tournament where Daigo blocks that super combo from Chun-Li and then counters to win. Although it sounds ridiculous, it is beautiful in a way and may be interpreted as an expression of art, I believe it is part of the reason it has stuck with the gaming community.
@murse2008: In your example you're looking at the person playing to be the artist. I always considered the person making the game to be the artist. Interesting way of looking at it for sure but I think it's the difference between a professional StarCraft player and a game developer. I think the root of my view is the developer sitting down with a set of tools and arranging the resources in a certain way to allow the player to achieve some sort of feeling within some confined space of interaction. I guess in its most basic sense a puzzle game. I liked a game developer to a writer or musician in which the end product is the art in and of itself to be enjoyed. Your view is more like a composer writing as well as orchestrating the music.
@Claude said:
I just looked at my Citizen Kane's video game list. I don't like it now. I need to rethink it.
I'm glad I made someone's day a little less easy :D.
Why not a combination of all that? A game that combines story and gameplay so elegantly and perfectly that other games following try to surpass it?
I don't know if I removed it my editing passthrough but I remember at least writing down something to that effect. Ideally that would be the best of both worlds but my quandary began when I thought "well video games are as much gameplay as anything else, why is it that we only think of story based games when we discuss the CK of video games?" Being exclusionary of gameplay masterpieces which likely happened earlier than stories were that developed in games seemed odd to me.
I like the where your going with this, i cant help but feel some have - and will miss the point.
There's a whole art in itself to creating gameplay. It's evident one way or another in all the classic and critically acclaimed games, but it's always the most subtle and overlooked facet of the product.
Hm? What gameplay masterpieces? I can't really think of any. I'd bring up what I think is the earliest example of a game as art, but I'm not sure it would count due to the fact that it has some type of narrative.
Why not a combination of all that? A game that combines story and gameplay so elegantly and perfectly that other games following try to surpass it?
That's what is the only thing the Citizen Kane of video games can be. When Citizen Kane is brought up, it can only mean a game that uses all the tools and techniques of creating a videogame to intertwine the story and gameplay, just as Citizen Kane used all the tools and techniques of film making to intertwine the pictures and plot. Anything less is a misuses of the comparison.
Why not a combination of all that? A game that combines story and gameplay so elegantly and perfectly that other games following try to surpass it?
That's what is the only thing the Citizen Kane of video games can be. When Citizen Kane is brought up, it can only mean a game that uses all the tools and techniques of creating a videogame to intertwine the story and gameplay, just as Citizen Kane used all the tools and techniques of film making to intertwine the pictures and plot. Anything less is a misuses of the comparison.
Hmm. It seems to me like when people are clamoring for their CK of games, they're doing so out of a want to find the game that they can point to and say "look at our medium, look at how artistic it is". I don't know if it's someone making the best possible game that can be made.
@Video_Game_King said:
@Tuffgong: Hm? What gameplay masterpieces? I can't really think of any. I'd bring up what I think is the earliest example of a game as art, but I'm not sure it would count due to the fact that it has some type of narrative.
Not saying you have to agree with me on this but you have to see where I'm coming from when I say Tetris is one. A game who on its mechanics alone captured the attention of millions of people for at least that number of hours. This was a game that also managed to break any sort of preconception of video game and was enjoyed by a variety of audiences way back in the 80s when it was released. There's also the elegant simplicity of a Super Mario Bros. to consider. Again not saying those are my definitive answers but I think good arguments could be made in support of it.
@Rowr said:
I like the where your going with this, i cant help but feel some have - and will miss the point.
There's a whole art in itself to creating gameplay. It's evident one way or another in all the classic and critically acclaimed games, but it's always the most subtle and overlooked facet of the product.
Why not a combination of all that? A game that combines story and gameplay so elegantly and perfectly that other games following try to surpass it?
That's what is the only thing the Citizen Kane of video games can be. When Citizen Kane is brought up, it can only mean a game that uses all the tools and techniques of creating a videogame to intertwine the story and gameplay, just as Citizen Kane used all the tools and techniques of film making to intertwine the pictures and plot. Anything less is a misuses of the comparison.
Hmm. It seems to me like when people are clamoring for their CK of games, they're doing so out of a want to find the game that they can point to and say "look at our medium, look at how artistic it is". I don't know if it's someone making the best possible game that can be made.
Which is why I say that it's a misuse of the comparison. When you talk about Citizen Kane, pretty much about the only thing you can be talking about is the cinematography. Citizen Kane virtually created the concept of cinematography as an art form and a narrative tool. It's not just what is being shot, but how it's being shot. The Citizen Kane of videogames would have to, by definition, meld gameplay and storytelling into a single form of expression. If that's not what you are talking about, then you need to pick a different movie.
@SoldierG654342: You make valid arguments and I agree with your assessment. However I feel like you're getting hung up on the specificity of using Citizen Kane as a comparison. I didn't invent the comparison nor do I condone it. However my basis for the term is its systematic usage by others. The entirety of my post is based on the assumption, which I explain, that we use CK as an example of a something justifying a medium's creative merit. Under that assumption, which in my experience is the majority of the comparison's use, then I question the exclusion of gameplay only as an alternative interpretation of the CK of video games.
We are using the "CK of video games" to justify video games as art essentially, but we simply copy and paste our expectations of what CK represents to film over to video games. Is there a disparity specifically using Citizen Kane? Absolutely. But the point is that we are not considering the broad range of what the CK of video games could include.
@Tuffgong: Fair enough. My getting hung on the terms just goes to a deeper issue I have with the imprecise use of language. But that's neither here not there.
I think the majority of people who make the "Citizen Kane of videogames" argument (and lets be honest, most people in general) have not actually seen or studied the movie in question and therefore are operating on incorrect assumption about the meaning of what they are saying. Because they misunderstanding why Citizen Kane is such an important film, they end up ignoring important aspect of games in making their arguments. You can't exalt plot at the expense of gameplay because then you are left with essentially a movie.
@SoldierG654342: As someone who has not seen the film I only know how others have used it but the recent write-up on screened gave me enough information to know at least somewhat better. I totally understand your argument and likewise agree. What I find strange is that despite all the "games as art" champions out there, they seem to just be transposing their vision of what makes film artistic onto video games. The lack of "this game should be the CK because it do so through gameplay" is shocking to me.
The lack of "this game should be the CK because it do so through gameplay" is shocking to me.
That's just a defense mechanism create by years of the medium being marginalized and ridiculed. People choose to focus on thing like plot and character because they are the things least associated with a child's toy. They are also the things that are the easiest to debate with aficionados of other mediums like film and literature.
21 Comments