Game Art and Art
Games
Ramiro Corbetta
Games/Art analyzed this week: Average Shoveler, Listen, Misplaced Reliquary, Sissyfight 2000, Toywar, Cracking the Maze
In a first attempt to analyze the connection between games and art, I came upon a few games Mark Tribe recommended to me. There seems to be two extremely different sides of what www.rhizome.org chose to call Art Games. On one side are games that are enjoyable, at least to some degree, and still manage to “say” something that matters. On the other side are projects that borrow heavily from game aesthetics, technology and culture, but are most definitely not games.
At this point, one must attempt to define the word “game.” I could never accept a single definition, since for every attempt to define games one can find a very clear example of something that is a game but does not fit within the boundaries set by this definition. Games definitely have to be interactive, and they have to aim to be fun. While the idea of an end-goal as a pre-requisite for games is made null by a game like Sim City, it seems like some kind of progression, even if without an end-goal, is necessary in games.
Taking these guidelines into account, I found it hard to look at Average Shoveler, Listen and Misplace Reliquary as games. Average Shoveler uses old school game graphics and beautiful music to create a great aesthetic experience, and there is some interactivity to it, but it seems like much more of an interactive exploration art piece than a game. The player can look at these areas, but she cannot affect the world in any way. Listen, likewise, gives the player the same feeling of “you can look, but you cannot touch.” In these pieces, the player experiences certain situations that are pushed on her by the artist, but she cannot, in any meaningful way, affect the game world. Misplaced Reliquary, which is as interactive as a book in which you get to turn the pages by pressing a button, doesn’t even make one question its validity as a game.
Ultimately, these three pieces commissioned by Rhizome were interesting evaluations of our game culture and what can be done through game systems. These art pieces can be called Game Art, but not Art Games.
Toywar
and Sissyfight 2000 were, on the other hand, examples
of wonderful a blend between games and art.
In the enlightening article “Video Games and Online Worlds as Art” (http://www.gignews.com/raph1.htm), Raph Koster, Chief Creative
Officer of Sony Online, says, “Mere
entertainment becomes art when the communicative element in the work is either
novel or exceptionally well done.” His
argument is that, while most games don’t have anything interesting to say, some
games do manage to, or at least attempt to communicate something interesting to
the player. While Sissyfight
2000 manages to present a message to the player through entertaining gameplay, Toywar created a fun, multiplayer game that actually made a
huge positive change on society. In
these two instances of games meeting art one will find clear examples of Art
Games.
Zanni,
Carlos. Average Shoveler
(http://www.zanni.org/average.htm)
Carter, Kabir. Listen (http://rhizome.org/commissions/listen.rhiz)
Catanese, Paul. Misplaced
Reliquary (http://www.paulcatanese.com/misplaced/)
gameLab. Sissyfight 2000 (http://www.sissyfight.com/)
etoy. TOYWAR (http://toywar.etoy.com/)
Schleiner, Anne-Marie (curator). Cracking
the Maze (http://switch.sjsu.edu/CrackingtheMaze/)
Koster, Raph. “Video Games and Online Worlds as
Art” (http://www.gignews.com/raph1.htm)