Art game
Encyclopedia
An art game or arthouse game is a video game
that is designed in such a way as to emphasize art
or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or complexity in design. This concept extends to the realm of modified ("modded
") gaming when modifications have been made to existing non-art-games to produce graphic results intended to be viewed as an artistic display, as opposed to modifications intended to change game play scenarios or for storytelling. Modified games created for artistic purposes are sometimes referred to as "video game art."
s, non-game
s and art games) saw a rise in production. The contemporaneity of improvements in graphic capabilities with the increases in art game releases has led to some confusion regarding the difference between games with artistic imagery and art games. This difference has been described by Justin McElroy of Joystiq
as "the same [as that] between a sculpture
and a building
. Though a building/game can be aesthetically pleasing, an art game/sculpture is using its very structure to produce some kind of reaction." This same comparison has been used by Jenova Chen
in an interview discussing art games and the prominence of non-game
s to the artistic gamer
community.
Another key difference between art games and game art is that art games are artistic creations from the outset whereas game art pieces employ non-art games as the artistic medium. Thus the "game" portion of "game art" is merely the means to an artistic end.
movement of the 1960s and Marcel Duchamp
's art productions, procedurality has taken a central position in certain forms of art. By imposing strict rules in the interest of artistic creation (e.g. the production of an entire painting while the artist is cross-eyed), the concept of artwork has expanded to the point where video games can come into collision with it to form art games.
Pearce suggests that developing directly from more modern perspective in game design such as the New Games Movement, art games in their current form were presaged by the work of artists such as Frank Lantz (co-founder of the game studio area/code. Pieces such as Lantz' Pac Manhattan
, suggests Pearce, have become something like performance art pieces. Pearce identifies the earliest true art games as originating in the early 1980s with games such as Jaron Lanier
's Alien Garden
. Art games often are designed with a message such as the addition of female characters to a traditionally male-centric game or are designed to force the audience to re-examine a work with which they are familiar in a different light.
Most recently, a strong overlap has developed between art games and indie game
s. This meeting of the art game movement and the indie game movement is important according to Professor Pearce, insofar as it brings art games to more eyes and allows for greater potential to explore in indie games.
In May 2011, the United States National Endowment for the Arts
, in accepting grants for art projects for 2012, expanded the allowable projects to include "interactive games", furthering the recognization of video games as an art form. Similarly, the United States Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected speech like other forms of art in the 2011 decision for Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
) and the word "game" (for example, regarding the centrality of plot and the classification of nongames). The lines between video games and art become blurred when works fit the labels of both game
and interactive art
. An upcoming exhibit, "The Art of Video Games
", as the Smithsonian American Art Museum
in 2012, is designed to demonstrate the artistic nature of video games, including the impact of older works and the subsequence influence of video games on the creative culture.
Games which are not video games (such as basketball
) have also been given artistic consideration for the aesthetically pleasing forms that highly skilled players employ. The observation of gameplay without interaction
(such as watching someone play a game) can also be compared to art appreciation.
has participated in a series of controversial debates and published colloquies regarding whether or not video games may be fairly considered as art. In 2005, Ebert described video games as a non-artistic medium incomparable to the more established art forms:
In 2006, Ebert took part in a panel discussion at the Conference on World Affairs
entitled "An Epic Debate: Are Video Games an Art Form?" in which he stated that video games don't explore the meaning of being human as other art forms do. A year later, in response to comments from Clive Barker
on the panel discussion, Ebert further noted that video games present a malleability that would otherwise ruin other forms of art. As an example, Ebert posed the idea of a version of Romeo & Juliet that would allow for an optional happy ending. Such an option, according to Ebert, would weaken the artistic expression of the original work. In April 2010, Ebert published an essay, dissecting a presentation made by Kellee Santiago
of thatgamecompany
at the 2009 Technology Entertainment Design Conference
, where he again claimed that games can never be art, due to their rules and goal-based interactivity.
Ebert's essay was strongly criticized by the gaming community, including Santiago herself who believes that video games as artistic media are only at their infancy, similar to prehistoric cave paintings of the past. Ebert later amended his comments, conceding that games may indeed be art in a non-traditional sense, but lacked the patience or desire to try a game to prove to himself otherwise.
), argued in no uncertain terms that "games are not art" and that they are by and large "a waste of time." Central to Tale of Tales' distinction between games and art is the purposive nature of games as opposed to art: Whereas humans possess a biological need that is only satisfied by play
, argues Samyn, and as play has manifested itself in the form of game
s, games represent nothing more than a physiological necessity. Art, on the other hand, is not created out of a physical need but rather it represents a search for higher purposes. Thus the fact that a game acts to fulfill the physical needs of the player is sufficient, according to Samyn, to disqualify it as art.
Gamers were surprised by this controversial stance due to the frequency of prior third-party characterizations of Tale of Tales' productions as "art games," however Tale of Tales clarified that the games they were making simply expanded the conception of games. The characterization of their games as "art games," noted Samyn, was merely a byproduct of the imaginative stagnation and lack of progressivism in the video game industry. While Tale of Tales acknowledged that old media featuring one-way communication was not enough, and that two-way communication via computers offers the way forward for art, the studio argued that such communication today is being held hostage by the video game industry. To enable and foment this futuristic two-way art, suggests Tale of Tales, the concept of "the game" must be eviscerated by games that do not fit within the current paradigm and then "life must be breathed into the carcass" through the creation of artworks Samyn and Harvey refer to as "not games."
In 2011, Samyn further refined his argument that games are not art by emphasizing the fact that games are systematic and rule-based. Samyn identified an industry emphasis on gameplay mechanics as directly responsible for the marginalization of artistic narrative in games and he described modern video games as little more than digital sport. Pointing to systemic problems, Samyn criticized the current model whereby the putative artist must work through a large and highly efficient development team who may not share the artist's vision. To create art using the medium of the video game Samyn suggests that the artistic message must precede the means of its expression in the guidance of gameplay mechanics, the development of "fun
ness" or economic considerations must cease to guide the work's creation, and the development process must embrace a model wherein a single artist-author's vision gains central primacy.
Computer and video games
A video game is an electronic game that involves human interaction with a user interface to generate visual feedback on a video device. The word video in video game traditionally referred to a raster display device, but following popularization of the term "video game", it now implies any type of...
that is designed in such a way as to emphasize art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or complexity in design. This concept extends to the realm of modified ("modded
Mod (computer gaming)
Mod or modification is a term generally applied to personal computer games , especially first-person shooters, role-playing games and real-time strategy games. Mods are made by the general public or a developer, and can be entirely new games in themselves, but mods are not standalone software and...
") gaming when modifications have been made to existing non-art-games to produce graphic results intended to be viewed as an artistic display, as opposed to modifications intended to change game play scenarios or for storytelling. Modified games created for artistic purposes are sometimes referred to as "video game art."
Art game versus game art
As video games became increasingly common as a form of media throughout the 2000s, video games that deemphasized the game portion of the medium (such as serious gameSerious game
A serious game is a game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The "serious" adjective is generally prepended to refer to products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion,...
s, non-game
Non-game
Non-games define a class of software that lies on the border between video games, toys and applications. The original term non-game game was coined by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. The main difference between non-games and traditional video games is the apparent lack of goals, objectives and...
s and art games) saw a rise in production. The contemporaneity of improvements in graphic capabilities with the increases in art game releases has led to some confusion regarding the difference between games with artistic imagery and art games. This difference has been described by Justin McElroy of Joystiq
Joystiq
Joystiq is a video gaming blog founded in June 2004 that has since become one of the most successful sites within the Weblogs, Inc. family of weblogs. It is the centerpiece of WIN's own network of video gaming blogs, which also includes a blog dealing specifically with the popular MMORPG World of...
as "the same [as that] between a sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and a building
Building
In architecture, construction, engineering, real estate development and technology the word building may refer to one of the following:...
. Though a building/game can be aesthetically pleasing, an art game/sculpture is using its very structure to produce some kind of reaction." This same comparison has been used by Jenova Chen
Jenova Chen
Xinghan Chen , known as Jenova Chen, is the designer of the award-winning games Cloud, Flow, and Flower, and is co-founder of Thatgamecompany. Chen is from Shanghai, where he earned a bachelors degree in computer science and a minor in digital art and design...
in an interview discussing art games and the prominence of non-game
Non-game
Non-games define a class of software that lies on the border between video games, toys and applications. The original term non-game game was coined by Nintendo president Satoru Iwata. The main difference between non-games and traditional video games is the apparent lack of goals, objectives and...
s to the artistic gamer
Gamer
Historically, the term "gamer" usually referred to someone who played role-playing games and wargames. Since they became very popular, the term has included players of video games...
community.
Another key difference between art games and game art is that art games are artistic creations from the outset whereas game art pieces employ non-art games as the artistic medium. Thus the "game" portion of "game art" is merely the means to an artistic end.
History of art games
At the 2010 Art History of Games conference in Atlanta, Georgia, professor Celia Pearce described the emergence of art games as a collision between the worlds of art and video games. Professor Pearce noted that since the FluxusFluxus
Fluxus—a name taken from a Latin word meaning "to flow"—is an international network of artists, composers and designers noted for blending different artistic media and disciplines in the 1960s. They have been active in Neo-Dada noise music and visual art as well as literature, urban planning,...
movement of the 1960s and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...
's art productions, procedurality has taken a central position in certain forms of art. By imposing strict rules in the interest of artistic creation (e.g. the production of an entire painting while the artist is cross-eyed), the concept of artwork has expanded to the point where video games can come into collision with it to form art games.
Pearce suggests that developing directly from more modern perspective in game design such as the New Games Movement, art games in their current form were presaged by the work of artists such as Frank Lantz (co-founder of the game studio area/code. Pieces such as Lantz' Pac Manhattan
Pac-Manhattan
Pac-Manhattan is a real-life version of Pac-Man created in 2004 and covered by the New York Times that year. It was invented by graduate students at the Interactive Telecommunications Program in the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University...
, suggests Pearce, have become something like performance art pieces. Pearce identifies the earliest true art games as originating in the early 1980s with games such as Jaron Lanier
Jaron Lanier
Jaron Zepel Lanier is an American computer scientist, best known for popularizing the term virtual reality .A pioneer in the field of VR, Lanier and Thomas G. Zimmerman left Atari in 1985 to found VPL Research, Inc., the first company to sell VR goggles and gloves...
's Alien Garden
Alien Garden
Alien Garden was one of the first non-game "software toys" released. It was designed in 1982 by Bernie DeKoven and programmed by virtual reality pioneer, Jaron Lanier, and it was designed with an emphasis on the need for experimentation....
. Art games often are designed with a message such as the addition of female characters to a traditionally male-centric game or are designed to force the audience to re-examine a work with which they are familiar in a different light.
Most recently, a strong overlap has developed between art games and indie game
Indie game
Independent video game development is the process of creating video games without the financial support of a video game publisher. While large firms can create independent games, they are usually designed by an individual or a small team of as many as ten people, depending on the complexity of the...
s. This meeting of the art game movement and the indie game movement is important according to Professor Pearce, insofar as it brings art games to more eyes and allows for greater potential to explore in indie games.
In May 2011, the United States National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...
, in accepting grants for art projects for 2012, expanded the allowable projects to include "interactive games", furthering the recognization of video games as an art form. Similarly, the United States Supreme Court ruled that video games were protected speech like other forms of art in the 2011 decision for Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association.
Controversy
The characterization of games as works of art has been controversial. While critics have never denied that games may contain artistic elements in their traditional forms such as graphic art, music, and story, several notable figures have advanced the position that games are not artworks, and may never be capable of being called art. Further fueling the debate are the difficulties involved in defining the word "art" (as for instance in analyzing static versus interactive artInteractive art
Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...
) and the word "game" (for example, regarding the centrality of plot and the classification of nongames). The lines between video games and art become blurred when works fit the labels of both game
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
and interactive art
Interactive art
Interactive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...
. An upcoming exhibit, "The Art of Video Games
The Art of Video Games
The Art of Video Games is an upcoming exhibition to be displayed at the Smithsonian American Art Museum from March 16, 2012 through September 30, 2012. The exhibition is designed to highlight the evolution of art within the video game medium over its forty-year history...
", as the Smithsonian American Art Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
The Smithsonian American Art Museum is a museum in Washington, D.C. with an extensive collection of American art.Part of the Smithsonian Institution, the museum has a broad variety of American art that covers all regions and art movements found in the United States...
in 2012, is designed to demonstrate the artistic nature of video games, including the impact of older works and the subsequence influence of video games on the creative culture.
Games which are not video games (such as basketball
Basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams of five players try to score points by throwing or "shooting" a ball through the top of a basketball hoop while following a set of rules...
) have also been given artistic consideration for the aesthetically pleasing forms that highly skilled players employ. The observation of gameplay without interaction
Zero-player game
A zero-player game is a game that has no sentient players.In computer games, the term refers to programs that use artificial intelligence rather than human players....
(such as watching someone play a game) can also be compared to art appreciation.
Roger Ebert on video games as art
Noted film critic Roger EbertRoger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
has participated in a series of controversial debates and published colloquies regarding whether or not video games may be fairly considered as art. In 2005, Ebert described video games as a non-artistic medium incomparable to the more established art forms:
In 2006, Ebert took part in a panel discussion at the Conference on World Affairs
Conference on World Affairs
The Conference on World Affairs is hosted annually, around the second week of April, at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Colorado.-History:...
entitled "An Epic Debate: Are Video Games an Art Form?" in which he stated that video games don't explore the meaning of being human as other art forms do. A year later, in response to comments from Clive Barker
Clive Barker
Clive Barker is an English author, film director and visual artist best known for his work in both fantasy and horror fiction. Barker came to prominence in the mid-1980s with a series of short stories which established him as a leading young horror writer...
on the panel discussion, Ebert further noted that video games present a malleability that would otherwise ruin other forms of art. As an example, Ebert posed the idea of a version of Romeo & Juliet that would allow for an optional happy ending. Such an option, according to Ebert, would weaken the artistic expression of the original work. In April 2010, Ebert published an essay, dissecting a presentation made by Kellee Santiago
Kellee Santiago
Kellee Santiago is a video game designer and producer, and the co-founder and president of Thatgamecompany. Santiago was born in Caracas, Venezuela and was raised in Richmond, Virginia, where she played video games from a young age and was encouraged by her software engineer father to experiment...
of thatgamecompany
Thatgamecompany
Thatgamecompany, stylized as thatgamecompany, is an American independent video game developer co-founded by University of Southern California students Kellee Santiago and Jenova Chen. The studio is currently a second-party developer for Sony Computer Entertainment, and is under contract to create...
at the 2009 Technology Entertainment Design Conference
TED (conference)
TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....
, where he again claimed that games can never be art, due to their rules and goal-based interactivity.
Ebert's essay was strongly criticized by the gaming community, including Santiago herself who believes that video games as artistic media are only at their infancy, similar to prehistoric cave paintings of the past. Ebert later amended his comments, conceding that games may indeed be art in a non-traditional sense, but lacked the patience or desire to try a game to prove to himself otherwise.
Other notable critics
At the 2010 Art History of Games conference, Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey (founding members of indie studio Tale of TalesTale of Tales (developer)
Tale of Tales BVBA is a Belgian developer of art games and screensavers founded in 2002 by Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn , who had been working together in the creation of Web sites and electronic art as Entropy8Zuper! since 1999...
), argued in no uncertain terms that "games are not art" and that they are by and large "a waste of time." Central to Tale of Tales' distinction between games and art is the purposive nature of games as opposed to art: Whereas humans possess a biological need that is only satisfied by play
Play (activity)
Play is a term employed in ethology and psychology to describe to a range of voluntary, intrinsically motivated activities normally associated with pleasure and enjoyment...
, argues Samyn, and as play has manifested itself in the form of game
Game
A game is structured playing, usually undertaken for enjoyment and sometimes used as an educational tool. Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more often an expression of aesthetic or ideological elements...
s, games represent nothing more than a physiological necessity. Art, on the other hand, is not created out of a physical need but rather it represents a search for higher purposes. Thus the fact that a game acts to fulfill the physical needs of the player is sufficient, according to Samyn, to disqualify it as art.
Gamers were surprised by this controversial stance due to the frequency of prior third-party characterizations of Tale of Tales' productions as "art games," however Tale of Tales clarified that the games they were making simply expanded the conception of games. The characterization of their games as "art games," noted Samyn, was merely a byproduct of the imaginative stagnation and lack of progressivism in the video game industry. While Tale of Tales acknowledged that old media featuring one-way communication was not enough, and that two-way communication via computers offers the way forward for art, the studio argued that such communication today is being held hostage by the video game industry. To enable and foment this futuristic two-way art, suggests Tale of Tales, the concept of "the game" must be eviscerated by games that do not fit within the current paradigm and then "life must be breathed into the carcass" through the creation of artworks Samyn and Harvey refer to as "not games."
In 2011, Samyn further refined his argument that games are not art by emphasizing the fact that games are systematic and rule-based. Samyn identified an industry emphasis on gameplay mechanics as directly responsible for the marginalization of artistic narrative in games and he described modern video games as little more than digital sport. Pointing to systemic problems, Samyn criticized the current model whereby the putative artist must work through a large and highly efficient development team who may not share the artist's vision. To create art using the medium of the video game Samyn suggests that the artistic message must precede the means of its expression in the guidance of gameplay mechanics, the development of "fun
Fun
Fun is the enjoyment of pleasure and, according to Johan Huizinga, "an absolutely primary category of life, familiar to everybody at a glance right down to the animal level." Fun may be encountered in many human activities during work, social functions, recreation and play, and even seemingly...
ness" or economic considerations must cease to guide the work's creation, and the development process must embrace a model wherein a single artist-author's vision gains central primacy.
See also
- MachinimaMachinimaMachinima is the use of real-time 3D computer graphics rendering engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation...
, the use of games for storytelling. - Video game art
- Interactive artInteractive artInteractive art is a form of installation-based art that involves the spectator in a way that allows the art to achieve its purpose. Some installations achieve this by letting the observer or visitor "walk" in, on, and around them; Some others ask the artist to become part of the artwork.Works of...
- Electronic Language International FestivalElectronic Language International FestivalFILE - Electronic Language International Festival is a New media art festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre and it has also participated in others events around the world...
- Playing ColumbinePlaying ColumbinePlaying Columbine is a 2008 American documentary film produced and edited by Danny Ledonne, an American independent filmmaker. The film follows the video game Super Columbine Massacre RPG! in which players experience the Columbine High School massacre through the eyes of the killers, Eric Harris...
, a film that explores the concept of video games as art and the role they play in modern society.