Expressive Gaming
Pretty much every reasonable person has
by now accepted that video games are an art form. I think it's fair
to say that anyone who doesn't accept video games as a form of
artistic expression has not really experienced what games are capable
of. The question of whether or not video games are art has been
decisively answered: yes, video games are art.
I'm not interested in arguing for the
fact that video games are a form of art; many other people have done
it quite convincingly. The designers of artful, powerful games have
made the most convincing argument of them all.
The question that is far more
interesting to me is this: can the process of playing
a game be considered an act of artistic expression? It is widely
accepted that creating a game is an artistic act, but games are by
their nature interactive. Players of games are in a different
category than people who listen to music or watch movies. They are
active participants in the game. Many musicians play the notes on a
page written by someone else, and are still deemed artists. Are
gamers more like the audience to a symphony, or are they more like
the musicians on stage? Gamers are not in complete control of the
artistic output the way that a game designer is, but their status as
active participants makes them far more important than just a simple
audience member.
The core of art is
the act of expression. A musician reading music off a page is deemed
an artist because, although they are not in control of the
composition, they are in control of the interpretation of that
composition. The decisions of a performing artist are artistically
important, and can have a substantial effect on what the final
product expresses. A gamer is not in control of the basic nature of
the game, but makes many decisions along the way that change what the
game expresses.
The act of playing
a game therefore has certain similarities to a musical performance.
Typically a gamer's performance is only for his or her own benefit,
but that doesn't necessarily make it less of a performance. Arguably,
the performance put on for one's own benefit is a truer form of
expression than an attempt to please an outside audience.
The idea of playing
a game as an expressive activity is somewhat unappreciated in
important ways. Audience self-expression is something that is unique
to games, something that other forms of popular media lack. Gamers
often leap to the defense of designers as masterful artists, and many
games are focused on things like telling a story, or having beautiful
explorable worlds. These are all ways in which designers create art
which is perceived by the player. The emphasis on the designer as
artist can minimize the importance of the player as artist.
One
game that respects the player's expressive role is Minecraft.
It is a deceptively simply game. You control a guy, and walk around
in a world of blocks. There are mountains made of hundreds of blocks,
trees made of dozens, oceans, everything is made of big blocks. These
blocks can be broken apart using the appropriate tools, and they
yield resources. These resources allow the player to lay out their
own blocks, reshaping the world in dramatic ways.
There
is no explicit point to Minecraft.
There are no points to score, no stars to collect, and there's no
boss to defeat. There are enemies, but they spawn randomly and are
simply obstacles and nuisances. Minecraft is
a game in which the players have to set their own goals. Some players
might want to forge the best weapons in the game, then go travel
across the empty wilderness. Other people might build great cities,
populated with the simple block people the game spawns in certain
areas. Other people create elaborate dungeons through which other
players may travel, simply for the pleasure of the challenge and the
accomplishment of completing a task.
The
game itself has artistic merit. Its blocky aesthetic is oddly
pleasing, and the design of the mechanics is elegant and beautiful in
its own right. More important, however, is the massive amount of
expression that goes into playing the game. Simply choosing a goal in
Minecraft is already
an act of expression. When someone decides to spend a hundred hours
building a perfect replica of the Capitol Building, they are saying,
“This is what I want to do. This is important to me.” That act is
an act of personal expression, the sort of act that is at the heart
of what it means to be artistic. The creations within the game also
have serious artistic merit. The blocks of the game may be cruder
than paint or stone, but the final impact of the finished work is
greater when the viewer knows that the player who made this did it
within the rules of the game, and the work is made greater for its
limitations.
Minecraft is
a very obvious case where the act of playing is expressive. Other
games, however, have more subtle forms of artistic expression
embedded in their gameplay. Many games now offer players a variety of
moral choices. Mass Effect
is a series of games in which players play as a space captain tasked
with saving the galaxy. They are offered many moments where they have
to make choices. Which crew member do they save, and which do they
let die? Is it acceptable to commit genocide to rid the galaxy of a
terrible threat? Can machines achieve true consciousness? The game
poses these questions, and asks the player to unravel them in
whatever way they choose. The designers were careful to create a
rich, detailed world, so the decisions have a great deal of context
to them, especially if the player is one prone to notice and remember
details. The questions go beyond mere thought experiments because
they often tie into specific characters you have come to know and
fight alongside. I think it is reasonable to say that the decisions
made by the player in Mass Effect amount
to acts of artistic expression on the part of the player. The player
is making judgments about what things they find important which
things they don't, and they are choosing which characters matter to
them the most. The presentation of the decisions is an artistic act
by the designer, but making the decisions is art from the hands of
the player.
The
art that comes from playing Mass Effect is
not one that requires a great deal of skill, not when compared with
playing a song or painting a picture. There is something to the idea
that the power of a work of art is made greater by the difficulties
the artist faced while creating it. However, Mass Effect
is notable in that it gives players the expressive potential of the
artist without demanding the intensive skill and practice normally
required to express oneself effectively. A player in Mass
Effect is not doing something
equivalent to singing a beautiful aria. That is, however, an unfair
comparison. A typical gamer is not ignoring intensive artistic
expression in favor of playing video games. A typical gamer is
replacing passive entertainment such as television with active,
expressive entertainment.
Another
way gamers can express themselves in games is by ignoring the stated
objective and inventing their own goal. This can be a sort of
rebellious act, turning the game into something far different than
the designers intended. For instance, my brother and I used to play a
game we referred to as “Jigglypuff Football,” which was our own
amusing take on the popular game Super
Smash Bros.
In Super Smash
Bros.,
the normal objective is to damage the opposing player and eventually
hit him so hard he would fly off the map, thus killing him and
depleting his stock of lives. The game is over when only one player
is left alive. However, we invented our own game within the game. We
put in a computer AI opponent (always playing the character
“Jigglypuff”), and each claimed one side of the map. Our
objective was to knock Jigglypuff off the other player's side of the
map. Each knockoff was a goal, and we would compete to score the most
goals in a given time period. The game was built to not care which
side someone fell off, and had no way of keeping track of our game.
Yet we played anyway, and had great fun. Our decision to ignore the
game's stated objective and play our own way was in a sense an
artistic decision. We became designers of our own game, making use of
the tools the designers had given us.There is a takeaway from all
this for game designers: Any game with clear rules and a certain
amount of gameplay leeway can become a fantastic platform for
everyday expressiveness.
Right
now, the gaming community is really into games that are basically
expressions of the designer. Popular and critically acclaimed titles
like Portal,
The Last of Us,
and Journey
are games in which the designer had a clear artistic vision, and
communicated it powerfully through an interactive medium. These games
are important, and have tremendous artistic value. I think that in
the future, however, people will truly grasp the artistic and
cultural importance of games designed to let the player be
expressive. Such games won't replace the designer oriented games, but
will be seen as just as important in the canon of artistic gaming.
Games focused on player expression, like Minecraft,
The Sims,
and Grand Theft
Auto
are doing very well right now, and will likely continue to do well in
the future. They are very fun to play because
they allow people to express themselves. I hope that over time
players, designers, and critics will see self-expression as a core
part of what makes games culturally valuable. Audience
self-expression something unique to games, and I think should help us
understand why video games deserve their own unique spot in the canon
of artistic media.
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