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Are Video Games Art?
By: Kai Drayton-YeeDate: 6/27/17 - 8:50am
Essay: Understanding Video Games as a Medium
Game(s): Call of Duty:Black Ops (Treyarch, Raven Software, n-Space),
Monument Valley (ustwo games limited)
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We hear the word ‘art’ all the time. Toddlers use it to describe scribbles with crayon, Baristas use it to describe little foam hearts drawn in your morning latte, and entire industries like museums, film, music and many more take billions of dollars, capitalizing on this idea of ‘art’. The question was posed ‘Are Video Games Art?’ and my immediate question in return was, What is art exactly? How can I say what something is (or isn’t) if I do not understand the definition itself? So I did some research.
Roger Ebert, the famous film critic states that Great Art is a process where an artist creates something that “....improves or alters nature”. He explains how this process is shaped by the artist’s vision. I think that important to distinguish the difference between Ebert’s view of Great (uppercase A) Art in almost a philosophical sense and art in the sense of engagement and passion, as I believe they are two separate pastimes. Kellee Santiago co-founder of ThatGameCompany states in her Tedx rebuttal to Ebert that “...art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions”. I think that both of these definitions are not incorrect, as nature already appeals to the senses or emotions as both beautiful and familiar. However, I think that Santiago’s definition is definitely incomplete. Using her definition of art I could state that the viral video “Pen-Pineapple-Apple-Pen” is art (or any other viral video for that matter). It definitely was attention grabbing, and deliberately evokes very strong, almost reflexive emotion every time I hear the dorky intro music. However, I would not consider PPAP “Great Art” in the same way that Ebert talks about Cormac McCarthy’s The Road or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel.
I think it is important to recognize the depth of the emotion/thought provoked by a piece. A lot of media these days can be categorized as click-bait or shallow sensationalism. All industries are affected by the pressure of commercialization to be “popular” and it pushes many of these (lowercase a) art forms to be very similar in their presentation in order to appeal to a “common sense” of entertainment/understanding. Game developer veteran, Brian Moriarty explains in his 2011 GDC talk how due to the way that the game industry is commercialized, it is next to impossible for games to get away from the expectation for games to present consistent, reflexive or even ‘shallow’ emotions. He cites Call of Duty:Black Ops in its replayability. People replay the storyline over and over and over again to gain the satisfaction of killing the same guys again and again. I agree with Moriarty in the sense that CoD as a whole isn’t Great Art, due to the fact that it resembles more of the “popular” vision of what art is supposed to be, the Kitsch, or the emotional click-bait of the gaming industry. But that does not mean that all video games fall into this category.
A game that I think falls into a category that resembles Great Art is Monument Valley. Mechanics wise it is a 3d puzzle game where the player solves movement puzzles using the terrain of the level. It is possible for someone to play through this game just to solve these puzzles and not recognize the same aspects of Art that I see, but not all Art is viewed as such by everyone. Monument Valley resembles art due to the overall emotional impact it has on me as I play through the levels. While I did enjoy the mental challenges of the puzzle mechanics, I found myself carefully reading through text during cutscenes, looking closely at the characters and environment, and pondering the emotional concepts that the game as a whole evoked. As the character searched this complex but lonely world, I not only wanted to understand the storyline to know what came next, but also in order to experience the emotions of the main character as she wanders and evolves throughout the levels. The actual amount of time it would take me to solved an individual level (mechanically) would probably only be about 45-120 seconds, but each level ached to be explored and experienced, and I spend a good 5-6 minutes on each level, sometimes taking a few minutes to just stare and experience the feel of each level. During these times, I wasn’t looking at the puzzles critically in order to solve them, I wasn’t asking “what happens next?” in the story, I was just experiencing a moment where the game let me sit and ponder the game as a whole.
I’m not going to make the sweeping statement that “all games are Art” in the same way that Ebert would never state that “all film is Art”. Games are a medium, there are commercial, un Artistic, or click-bait games, and then there are games that evoke thought and rise to the level of Great Art. Everyone experiences emotion a little differently. Games that I see as Art are sometimes overlooked by other gamers, and I’m sure I’ve definitely failed to see the Art in games that others enjoy. But, when we look at games as a whole, most gamers can comfortably state that it is possible for games to deeply move or inspire them. If we refine Santiago’s definition of Art to be “... the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that evokes powerful emotions/sensations”, then I will state that there are video games that are Art, but not all video games reach that level.
--Sources:
Roger Ebert: Why Videogames Can Never Be Art:
http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art
Kellee Santiago: Video Games Are Art, What’s Next (Rebuttal- Ebert)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GjKCnPQlSw
Brian Moriarty: An Apology for Roger Ebert (Defense- Ebert)
http://www.ludix.com/moriarty/apology.html
Wikipedia: Defining Kitsch (Clarification- Moriarty)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsch_movement
(Not Just an) Everyday Shooter
By: Kai Drayton-Yee
Date: 2/27/17 - 7:37pm
Essay: How Audio Affects Gameplay
Game(s): Everyday Shooter (Mak)
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Jonathan Mak’s Everyday Shooter won the first place prize for design and innovation and excellence in audio at the 2007 Independent Games Festival Awards. His sizeable reputation as both an artist and a game designer become apparent as soon as one hits the play button. From the beginning, it is blatantly obvious how much thought Mak has put into the design of his game. To the untrained eye (and ear!), the game play runs almost unnoticably smooth, and the game engages the player and keeps them engaged with its shifting guitar music, and bright colors. The very deliberate way that Mak incorporated his guitar music into Everyday Shooter excites players, and makes them curious to try new things.
Surprisingly, Mak’s choice in music stayed clear and simplistic throughout all of his levels rather than changing with each level. Mak’s deliberate use of only guitar sounds kept the background uncluttered and original. He uses guitar riffs as the background music which, is notable due to the electric guitar not usually being an instrument that plays without accompaniment. The repetitive riffs are quite the change in pace from the expected fast multi-part rythm-based background music that other games of this nature tend to have. This stark difference makes Everyday Shooter stand out musically. Another interesting fact was that Mak himself did the soundtrack. He channeled his interest and skills as a guitarist into his game. It begs the question, did Mak create the game to highlight his guitar skills, or were his guitar skills just used as a platform in which to enhance his game idea?
The basic gameplay of Everyday Shooter is (as referenced in the title) a shooter/bullet-hell style game. This particular genre is generally not hard to figure out in the early levels (literally shoot EVERYTHING), but definitely can ramp-up difficulty wise as the levels progress. While we know that the background stayed simple and intriguing, The most unique musical aspect of Everyday Shooter is the sound effects. Every time an enemy is hit, a synth-guitar sound is played. In theory this might get lost in the guitar-riff-background-music, but in practice, it does something entirely different. In most of these shooter games, players are used to hearing the obvious correlation between enemy deaths and shooter sounds. Everyday Shooter does not fall into this stereotype. Instead, the synth sounds of the enemies being hit becomes a subconscious type of feedback. This type of feedback might not be obvious (or even noticed at all) for the first little while of gameplay. The player kills enemies, and their brain makes a subconscious connection between the extra note played in the guitar riff.
Instead of the sound effect fading into the background like expected, the player slowly notices the change in the pattern of the guitar riff every time they hit an enemy. This actually brings the background music to the players attention, subtly highlighting the unique auditory choices that Mak made in the guitar-riff themed music. Everyday Shooter uses each portion of its audio to accentuate the others. Mak’s Everyday Shooter won its awards not just for making elegant, yet simple music choices, but for its successful attempt in creating a unique sound that integrates the gameplay and the audio together to create a single cohesive piece.