Games As Art
I don’t care how many of you disagree with me, I am absolutely convinced that games are going to become the next art form just as soon as they get over the stigma that things like plays, novels and movies initially had. All it’s going to take is someone that is the gaming equivalent of Orson Welles to make the gaming equivalent of Citizen Kane and we’re good to go.
If you stop and think about it, it really is a logical progression. All arts strive in some way to engage the senses, and as technology has advanced, those art forms got increasingly closer and closer to simulating life. For the longest time, movies were the ultimate expression of this, because they mixed image, sound and movement with narrative. Games do all this as well, but also bring the element of interactivity, something that no other current art form can achieve. Hell, they’re already generating the kind of controversy normally associated with works of art, and that’s because people have to acknowledge the fact that games do in fact, exert influence. Something that can be said of all art. What people are coming to realize is just how engaging that influence can be, since it takes the notion of vicarious living to a degree no art could previously reach.
I think this will probably happen in my lifetime. I’m pretty sure that a console for the home that can produce graphics indistinguishable from real life is, at most, three generations away. Or, to put it simply, Playstation 6 will have graphics as good as the CG effects of movies today, and that’s an extremely conservative estimate. I wouldn’t be surprised in the least if they managed to pull it off with PS4, or Xbox 720, or whatever the next generation will be after the imminent arrival of the new gear in the coming months. When this happens, when “The Great Race” is over and photorealistic graphics are achievable to the point that no one marvels at what a big deal it is, you’re going to see the same thing happen in games as what happened in film. Someone is going to see that nascent technology and find more potential in it than creating just another shooter or RPG, and they’re going to create some amazing thing with such a simple, profound idea behind it that we’re all going to wonder what the hell took people so long to come up with something so elegant. And then you’ll get the real circus as the critics start howling, and the people claim that in some deep and meaningful way, this “game” made a difference in their lives. Games already do that now to some degree with emotional storylines in some of the better RPGs, or simply influencing someone’s decision to pursue game development as a career, but gaming still needs that “breakthrough,” that game that is accessible enough in the way movies are, that everyone that plays it gets lost in it, and then gets sucker-punched with an interactive experience/story that strikes them to their emotional core.
When that happens, and when that lightning strikes twice, then three times, then four, then an avalanche…
That’s when everyone will have to admit that games just became the 10th art.
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I actually think that the acceptance of Games is more a matter of the people who have never played them to fade away into irrelevance. The media at this point is still filled with people who have never so much touched a joystick or played a game of anything beyond computer solitaire. To them games are still kid’s stuff, even though the kids who have spent their entire lives playing them are now in their thirties. As these people retire, you will find that the “games are for children” attitude will go the way of the dodo. Heck, the New York Times has even started devoting a section of their paper to games, which is a good indication that this tide is turning sooner rather than later.
I think the thing I find most annoying about the controversy stirred up by Hot Coffee is how all of the people denouncing San Andreas do so with the assumption that 10 year olds are the only people playing the game, when the average age of a gamer (in North America at least) is 30. This kind of ignorance has nothing to do with the medium’s graphical capabilites, since it has carried over from the days of Pong all the way to today, but it is rather an easy way for the boomer generation to ignore the fact that they have ceased to be culturally relevent.
I find it funny, though, that you left off another oft-maligned medium, television. The popular consensus remains that TV is for idiots and should be ignored by all intelligent people, even though there are many recent programs that have illustrated how transformative and magical TV can become when done properly. This attitude has nothing to do with the actual quality of the medium (it’s funny how a person who never watches television is able to get away with criticizing it, while a person who never reads books is clearly a moron if they question the value of reading) but rather the fact that claiming it allows a person to feel a degree of superiority. And even in the case of cinema, people more often put it down for its obvious trash at the expense of its enormous treasures. That’s why–in the end–I think that the quality of the actual games will have very little to do with their being accepted as art by mainstream culture.
Anyway, art–like beauty–is in the eye of the beholder.
Actually, to me TV and Film are eseentially the same thing. It’s only the length and occasional standards requirements that change. Band of Brothers, for example, is was TV at it’s best and could never have been a movie due to its enormous scope. And Battlestar Galactica is quickly becoming the best Science Fiction I have EVER seen in my life, filmed or televised. [Mental note to self, in future, make sure to denote that TV/Film approximate same artform in my mind]
You realize then, that if video games become a legit art form, then you will ebgin to see a lot of ‘conceptual’ games. And moreseo, a lot of annoying art critics. Sometimes it seems almost better to be thought of as shallow and vacuous.
and hey, how come i now have to type in some crazy letter thing below before i can comment?
Oh, that. Yeah. I figured I’d turn on the Blogger spam filter, since this blog has been hit with Spam. Now at least if someone wants to spam me, they’ll have to be at the keyboard to do it…