Analyzing 'Art Games': An Introduction

  

Touches the heart, huh?

I am not, by any means of the word, an emotional person.  If anything, I feel a sort of pervasive numbness whenever something bad happens to me.  Looking at paintings, watching movies, reading books—none of these experiences have ever brought me close to crying.  Imagine my surprise, then, when I found myself tearing up after playing The Company of Myself.



Perhaps the most overlooked development in browser gaming has been the rise of 'art games.' Defining this type of game is difficult; indeed, some of these so-called games barely possess any gameplay at all.  The creator of ALZ flipped between referencing his work as a game and a film, ultimately deciding on "an experimental short film in ever-so-slightly interactive of a format."  On the opposite end of the spectrum lies Endeavor: this challenging platformer requires the player to devote the better part of an hour to learning precise timing in order to master complex jumps and long wall-climbing sequences.

Before I delve into my views on what constitutes an art game, I first need to address the hordes of people who believe video games do not qualify as art. To these individuals, I ask: are you experienced with the medium?  It doesn't matter if you frequent the Guggenheim and wrote your thesis on The Grapes of Wrath—if you don't play video games, you have no idea what you are talking about.  The vast majority of games, like movies, are not art. Another World War II shooter with no plot except 'kill the Nazis'?  Not art. Grand Theft Auto XVI: Beat the Prostitutes? Not art (also not an actual game, but you get my point). 

How did he get to where he is today? No idea.

Shigeru Miyamoto, the man behind many of Nintendo's famous characters, once stated "What we have created is not art but a product...I always tell staff to call Nintendo games products, not art."  I respect this opinion because Miyamoto, as the head of major video game corporation, knows what he's doing.  In fact, I agree with him—I can't think of a single Nintendo product I would call art.  Mario Galaxy is graphically beautiful, but as a whole it feels like a cute, touching story.  Literature like Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov and The Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is not cute.








To expand on Miyamoto's remarks, he was talking about the commercialization of games.  However, I find a couple of flaws in his logic.  First of all, more money is spent on blockbuster films than on AAA titles.  Why does Beyond Two Souls not count as art if Titanic does?  Both garnered massive profits, and that's because both oriented themselves around the goal of making a profit. Titantic was highly sensationalized and Beyond Two Souls implemented a car chase or some other exciting scene after each sad memory involving Jodie and her non-biological mother.  Secondly, not all games strive for profit: many indie developers intentionally release their work for free.  These are not 'free-to-play' games with micro-transactions, or games hosted with ads on a website, but rather entirely free experiences. Take, for instance, Serena.

Sure, I could have chosen a screenshot that revealed something about the game.  But this was easier.

Now that I've covered that unfortunate business, let's return to the concept of an art game.  As previously discussed, an art game is a browser game intended to elicit strong emotion.  If you're interested in some examples, visit Newgrounds' art game collection.

To demonstrate the guidelines for an art game, I will be using bigger titles. While some of them may qualify as art, they do not fit into the smaller subsection of an 'art game' (as the term 'art game' only refers to browser games).  Without further ado, here are my three rules for an art game:

1. The gameplay connects to the story.

The difference between Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite lies in how the gameplay connects to the story.  Plasmids are the reason behind Rapture's eventual collapse, but Vigors are just bottles that grant incredible powers. In Bioshock, the player respawns infinitely because his DNA is captured within the glass containers littered throughout the city.  In Bioshock Infinite, the player respawns because permadeath would have been an awful design choice. Worst of all, the violence in Bioshock Infinite transforms the game's protagonist into a mindless killer.  Violence in the first game is a means of survival—in the second, Booker at times seems more gun than human. 

One of these games was absolutely fantastic, and one of them was good but not great.  Brainy Gamer wrote an excellent post on why Bioshock Infinite's story clashes with its stereotypical gameplay.  Not all art games succeed in connecting their gameplay with their story, but the best ones do.  This mechanic is unique to video games, thus serving as one of the medium's majors contribution to art.

2.  There is a meaningful story.

Duke Nukem: the pinnacle of character creation.

Some of you are probably thinking that Duke Nukem Forever has a violent story and equally violent gameplay.  Well...you're not wrong.  But if Duke Nukem represents the most emotionally visceral story-telling in the games industry, then we have a serious problem on our hands.

Braid is frequently referenced for the way its major mechanic of altering time connects to the game's plot. Would the gaming community be as interested in this game if the plot were about killing brainless aliens? No—we love it because it is about the pain of failed relationships. Ultimately, while the gameplay's adherence to the story is what separates game art from other artistic practices like sculpture, the story simply needs to be there. Without a powerful story (whether that story is simple, complex, vague, subtle, or blatant), a game cannot be art.








3. Music and art matter, but are not key.

I'm well aware these are two very different things, but I categorized them together because both serve the same purpose: they are the outside of the game.  While an image or a song is art in of itself, neither ultimately possesses the ability to transform a game into art.

Borderlands 2 is, by nearly all accounts, a beautiful game: the art style is innovative and bright, and the enemies are interesting and wonderfully animated. Yet I would not consider Borderlands 2 art in any deep or profound sense of the word.  Certainly, it is pretty to look at; but I am hardly visited with emotion when I shoot through dozens and dozens of Bonerfarts. Likewise, Bramble Blast from Donkey Kong Country 2 remains my all-time favorite video game track to this day.  But the game's plot of rescuing DK is only a small cut above the plot of predecessor's story of rescuing a collection of bananas.

A game can be beautifully rendered, or have a beautiful soundtrack, without being beautiful as a whole.  To demonstrate, I've included the Youtube video of Bramble Blast. 

4.  The game must cause emotion.

No one feels the same thing when they play through a game, and in many instances no one feels much of anything.  A chuckle, perhaps, or frustration during a difficult level.  Art games do more than that: they bring you to tears and they cause you to question your sanity.


In this series, I'll be exploring what makes an art game—with the knowledge, of course, that my opinions do not constitute a strict set of rules—as well as how each of these games impacted me.  Check in next week for my thoughts on The Company of Myself.  (I promise not to be so heady and academic!)

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