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- Blinky and Pac-man?
By Kaitlin Tremblay
Authors: Chris Melissinos and Patrick O’Rourk
e
Publisher: Welcome Books
ISBN: 159962110X
Year: 2012
“Personally, I think the best games are ones that build connections between people and in new ways, and thus make our lives more richly human than they were before even though we’re playing with a computer” (Dyson 137).
In Chris Melissinos and Patrick O’Rourke’s book The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect — the accompanying book to the Smithsonian exhibit of the same name on display starting in March 2012 – the authors offer a compelling read, intriguing to both the gaming nerd and pretentious art student in me, that reads like a warm meet-and-greet without being too casual or too stuffy.
Art historian Thierry de Duve posed the idea that “the contemporary aesthetic question is not ‘What is beautiful?’ but ‘What can be said to be art?’” and The Art of Video Games takes this issue on directly, offering an engaging argument for why video games should be viewed as art. The authors provide not only a comprehensive look at video games from the onset of the industry to the late 2000s, but include interviews from designers and developers as a through-line into the creative minds at play. The interviews are both entertaining and informative, giving us a sneak-peek into the the aesthetic ideas and decisions that inform the games we love, while at the same time legitimizing the argument that game makers play critical roles as artists. Interestingly, I found that these interviews defamiliarized the games they concern, letting me see them not simply as finished products but rather as pieces of art that had to be conceived, constructed, and created along the exact same process as films, painting, sculptures and other more accepted media. By rendering games as a process, this book reinforces that they are every bit as creatively produced as any other work.
Mid-way through the book, the interviews run the risk of becoming stale, but ultimately manage to avoid this issue by focusing on a common thread of agreement and dissent; the emergent strand in these opinions is the question of what is more crucial in video game development: story or technology. This tension forces the reader to engage in the question at hand, and contributes to a narrative dynamic of continual growth within video games as an artistic medium.
Jane Pickard touches most aptly on this tension with the creation of multiplayer games when she states that, ”In that particular case, I don’t know which drove what — whether someone said, ‘Look what we can do with this tech,’ or someone said, ‘We must have multiplayer.’ It’s probably a mix of both. So I think there exists a very good, healthy tension that hopefully supports and continues to evolve both sides.”
For me it seems as if the drive to see what can be developed through ever-increasing technology and the drive to tell unique stories is what enables video games to occupy a unique position as an artistic medium. The competing imperatives–what can we do with this technology/how can we further this technology and what can we tell with the technology at hand–propel video games forward.
It is this dynamic that enables the evolution of video games as a valid artistic medium to continue; everyone is looking forward to the “now what?” and the “what next?” of how video games will continue to revolutionize the way we conceive of them as a medium. If we already accept video games as art (and if you’re reading this, then chances are we’re all in agreement), then what The Art Of Video Games offers is a review of what art is, what it should accomplish, and how games fit into this. It seems from reading that Melissinos’ and O’Rourke’s argument is that art is anything that can achieve affect, that can create a meaningful and rewarding experience, be it personal, social or politcal.
One of the individuals interviewed, Warren Spector, explains it best when he states that, “I believe we can get people to think about their lives in new ways. We’re an entirely new medium, still trying to figure out what we can do and what we can’t, how we work and how we don’t. But in terms of cultural relevance, I think we’re good to go. I think we’ve done it.” The relevancy of video games is not under debate — whether we view them as art or just entertainment. What is crucial to understand about video games now is how they can inform the artistic, and ultimately social, world.
In addition to the interviews, Melissinos and O’Rourke also give their own perspective on the games showcased at the exhibit, offering a view of each game through a specific element and principle of design such as motion, perspective, colour, unity, etc. The Art of Video Games does not just tell us that video games are art, it proves it by looking at the way that changing technologies necessitate new aesthetic approaches. The authors provide an example of this in Square’s Einhänder . Einhänder is discussed as pushing the boundaries of the video game medium by re-imagining previous design concepts: “By layering simplified 3D models over 2D backgrounds, the visuals appeared to be more detailed that they actually were….became a breakout game that redefined the 2D side-scrolling shooter.”
This deft re-imagining of the medium’s possibilities through technology indicates that video games are not just simply about gameplay and entertainment, but that they are a malleable medium that can be manipulated to evoke different experiences. The authors suggest that it is this malleability that prohibits the stagnation of the medium.
A further example of this innovation is found in Thatgamecompany’s Flower ,which exhibits many of the same inspirations as those which inform landscape painting and pastoral poetry. In a landscape painting course I attended last summer, the teacher explained that landscape painting is about creating a mood through colour. With the gameplay of Flower , the player achieves the same sense of the picturesque through gameplay as through oil paintings, but with a more hands-on approach — evoking a mood by placing the player inside the landscape.
Described by Chen as “an interactive poem exploring the tension between urbanity and nature,” apparently “the goal of the game was to allow players weary after a long day of work, to bring nature into their home in a manner never before experienced.” What is underscored in this interview is that games are not just about entertainment, but about reconnecting with or experiencing oneself in a way that is uniquely possible only in video games. What Melissinos and O’Rourke drive home is that video games as an artistic medium require the interaction of design, game, and player, offering new collaborative possibilities for expression.
The authors run through a gamut of examples. The social impact of game is explored in Interplay’s Fallout , which the authors suggest “uses its fictionalized future setting to touch on political and social issues.” Similarly, they explore Mass Effect ‘s moral systems as “offer[ing] the player the opportunity to see his own sense of morality reflected in his in-game actions.” The assumption this book pursues is that games have an impact, and can teach us about ourselves in profound ways through gamplay, as well as in our ability to collaborate in the creation of the experience. What Melissinos and O’Rourke observe most strikingly is ultimately this interactive aesthetic creation.
There are some curious omissions, however. For instance, the authors analyze a number of games within the book, but somehow fail to account for both fighting games — such as any from the Street Fighter or Mortal Kombat series — and sports games. I don’t consider this to be an intentional oversight, but the absence of either of these genres of games does force the reader to consider why they are left by the wayside and how this either upholds or jars with the argument of video games as an artistic medium. Certainly, both genres are, in some ways, the most “game-like,” built on a competitive, head-to-head model; it seems as if the writers of this book focus more on single player, narrative experiences, and it is worth asking why that might be.
Finally, even if neither Melissinos’ and O’Rourke’s analyses of each game nor any of the interviews convince you of video games’ status as art, the full-page screen-shots will have any reader enthralled. Surely, that fact alone means that these images offer more than just in-the-spare-time entertainment value. They have the capacity to capture us, for an instant, and draw us into an experience that is more than simply wasting time — that is potentially transformative.
