Jalal “JJ” Hajeer
Instructor: Greg Bryant
November 28, 2012
Video Games as an Art Form
The subject of games as art has been much debated in the
last couple of years. It is not unusual for new mediums to be accused of lacking
artistic merit by those outside, and even some inside, the medium. Other
mediums, such as film and literature, have had their merit as ‘art’ questioned
at one point or another. Indeed these discussions should take place for any
medium to grow and understand itself as a whole, but I believe just saying,
“This will never be art or have the potential to be art” is something we all
should avoid when discussing new budding mediums.
Games as
art, however, is not the main subject of this paper as both my friend Chris and
I believe games are indeed art. Where we differ in opinion is whether games are
their own art form or the sum of other art forms.
In my
opinion, games use interaction as well as visual and other traditional methods
of story-telling to elicit emotions and provide unique experiences that one
would not get from visual or text alone. I believe that games provide these experiences
and emotions in a way that sets them apart from related mediums to the point
where games become their own art forms rather than extensions of the other
existing forms of art.
Chris,
however, believes that games are not works of art by themselves but rather are
extensions of the other forms of art. The example he uses to describe his
opinion is that games are more akin to movies just as choose-your-own-adventure
novels are akin to books.
In
response I asked if movies themselves were not but pre-record theater-plays and
then stated that I believe that games combine artistic elements in such a way
that a game forms an experience that is not present in the other mediums alone.
The example I then used was of tabletop Role-Played Games (RPGs) which one
could assert are a mixture of writing with acting and some math sprinkled in.
This mixture brings out a unique experience that is not available from those
mediums separately.
To counterpoint
this, Chris brought up that film expands upon theater, presents story telling possibilities
that are not possible with theater because of the limits of environments in
theater and provides the ability to control what the viewer perceives. To refute
my example of tabletop RPGs, he asserted that there are
choose-your-own-adventure books that are set up to mimic the table top
experience but with a lesser degree of control to the player/reader.
Getting
back to the point he had made earlier about games being more akin to movies,
I stated that I could see games
like Metal Gear that use cut-scenes as the main progression of their stories
being akin to movies, but a game that uses other ways of creating a story such
as the play itself and the game's environment differs greatly from movies. In
addition, some games do not necessarily have a story, but they can still bring
out emotions in a player without using a narrative plot.
To
refute my point, Chris stated that those games would be more like silent film
or independent films in that there may not be a straight forward narrative, but
rather these films relies upon ambiguity, where the overall experience is left
to the interpretation of the viewer.
By the
end of our discussion, I still believed that games are indeed their own art
form but came out of the discussion with plenty of ideas to think about on the
topic. Truly I do not believe that the argument on whether games are art or not
is the discussion people should be having anymore. Instead the new question is
whether or not games are an art form all to themselves or a medley of other
works of art.
Cited
Chris Mrkvika, Skype Chat. November 25, 2012
