Are Video Games Art?

The debate over whether video games are art has extended beyond the classroom into the mainstream, with such greats as Robert Ebert and Stephen Spielburg weighing in their opinions on the matter. So I'll throw my own into the ring and see how it stacks up.

First off all, we're just going to gloss over the question of what is art. That's a conversation which has gone on for thousands of years and which I don't want to weigh in on. Yet. I'm just going to assume that if you're here with me, we can agree on some basics like the fact that there is art, and it's something separate from mere entertainment. I'm also going to assume you read my post from yesterday. If not, then click on yesterday and you can go read it. This will help in the coming discussion.

So then, let's crack some knuckles and begin.

Can video games be art? I'm going to go ahead and say yes, and here's why. Similar to architecture which also faced an uphill battle to obtain legitimacy as art, video games have certain rules they must follow (they must be playable), they serve a multitude of functions, and people create them. I think we can all agree on that. And if someone is creating them, if they are considering rules while creating them, and so long as the game lives up to the number one rule, then we can call it art, I should think.

But here's where it gets tricky. What do we need to consider in legitimizing the artistic nature of a video game?

Do we focus only on plot? If that's the case, then it seems like all the video games I mentioned yesterday which don't feature heavy plots or any at all don't fit our artistic category. Nor would modern games which seek to emulate those games. But if you look at current discussions you'll often see the old greats included in people's list of artistic video games.

In which case is it innovative game play that makes them art? Well if that's the case aren't we looking at games more as something akin to a building? Something which might be visually appealing but which also must conform to certain functional ideals as well? If that is the case then do we look at a game like Bioshock Infinite which is simply repeating the old gameplay elements of its predecesors and negate its artistic integrity because it's not trying to think outside of the box? What about the RPG genre which tends to focus on plot over gameplay innovation? And does that mean games which are not utilizing the technology of the times are simply not art?

Speaking of art what about the visuals? Visuals have been an integral part of not only gameplay, but also storytelling in games. Do we negate the pretty visuals of newer games in favor of older styles which serve a specific purpose? Or celebrate the newer visuals and downplay any game which does not appeal to our visual senses? Can I possibly say visual a few more times?!

The problem with video games as art is that they are a combination of mediums, a problem shared by film as well. Speaking of film, this guy right here is a friend of mine and editing is his game so if you are interested in seeing some interesting film work, go check him out. Shameless friend plug. Anyways, back to my point. Film contains visuals, music, editing, and I'm sure a lot of other things that I don't know about because I haven't studied film. It's easy when we just talk about writing as words, art as pictures, and music as sounds, but when we start combining things where do we draw the line? Do all of the things need to be great or can a soundtrack carry a movie. Or a game?

All interesting questions. Without exploring them let me just try to define how I view video games as art. And that is the same way I define anything as art. Does it move me?

One of the interesting emotions that video games can draw from us is frustration. Modern games like Dark Souls, or the good old games like classic Mario or Pac Man, or...the list goes on and on, but they were challenging, something that goes hand in hand with so called high art. Meanwhile we have games which visually push the limits and can downright be described as beautiful. Skyrim and Fallout are two examples which come to mind, due to the sheer immensity of the landscapes they present.

There are games which create such engrossing atmospheres that we become transfixed. Shadows of the Colossus gets thrown around a lot as a video game which is art and it deserves the claim. Shadows presents a bleak world which tells its story with all of two cut scenes, and which challenges in game play as well. Survival Horror games do a better job of being scary then most horror movies, and often contain complex stories which play out alongside the descension into almost literal madness. And as I mentioned yesterday, the plots of some of the RPG's out there rival novels in their complexity. Just another element to be considered.

As is my way with these posts, I could go on and on, but what I'm essentially getting at is that there are no easy answers for what makes video games art because there is too much at work to narrow down any one thing. Which makes the ultimate decision about whether video games are art or not up to the only person who it should matter to.

You.

Plot in Video Games

In following my theme from yesterday, I'm going to address my audience. You may wonder why I haven't been writing towards one specific audience and the answer is

This question comes to us from Madeupburg Oregon. “Dear David, what are your opinions on video games? I think your book is awesome and if it were up to me I'd give you a million billion dollars. Sincerely S.B. Conscious.”

Well S.B. all flattery aside, it is an excellent question.

Plot in video games is something I've thought a lot about. If we go back to the beginning of the video game era, we notice that a lot of plot was implied through the gameplay, or non-existent. After all, what plot can we attribute to Pong excepting that time Jim smashed Elroy's head through the television after the great Pong debacle of 1984. But if we look at games like Missle Command (whose designer had nightmares about the implied plot of the game, the slow annihilation of all life), Space Invaders (an ever increasing invasion which cannot be stemmed) or even the original Super Mario Bros. (A plumber always one step behind his foe as he tries to rescue a princess) the plots here are all implied. We rarely see them acted out on screen, allowing us to develop the narrative for ourselves.

It is interesting to note there though that these older games weredesigned to be tests of skill. They required you to memorize level designs, judge distances and speeds, and pushed you to the limits to pass levels. They weren't designed with plot in mind, they were designed to be challenging, and for many of them, to consume quarter after precious quarter.

As games drifted away from an arcade format, we begin to see larger plots unfurl within games, though in many of these games the plots still aren't directly narrated and spelled out. Looking at a game like Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (just to use as an example) there is no dialogue to clarify any of the events unfolding, and beyond the connection of one boss leading the heroes through a series of challenges as they try to defeat him, there is no larger narrative.

During this time we begin to see RPG's that truly work with plot as opposed to challenges which utilize a simplistic plot to justify themselves. RPG's, with their repetitive gameplay (and I don't mean that in a bad way, just as a statement) require something more than the increasing difficulty of monsters and aquiring of goods to make them fun. They need something worth fighting for. The Legend of Zelda, Phantasy Star, and Final Fantasy all stand as examples of games which began pushing plot forward in video games and changing them from increasingly challenging tests of skill, into a slow progression through a story.

Fast forward for the sake of time, and we can begin discussing games today.

The big budget games of our time has abandoned the older style of being a series of challenges in favor of either multiplayer or story. I'll discuss Indie games in a moment, and there are exceptions to this rule such as Dark Souls but the majority fall into these two catagories. There will be challenging game play, but what set the old tests of skill games apart was that there was a game over screen if you failed and we are seeing the disappearance of the game over screen. So then, what do modern games have to offer us.

Games which exist as platforms for multiplayer generally have plots which don't do anything new. Call of Duty, Halo, Modern Warfare, etc. do have single player story lines, but they usually advance as an escalation towards a final goal to cripple or destroy an enemy. Or they just...fail (I'm looking at you Halo 2.) But these games have acknowledged something that the games of old also lived by. The plot wasn't important. The gameplay was.

On the opposite spectrum, we have the big name single players games (Bioshock, Dishonored, Skyrim, etc.) These games generally feature rich stories, which serve to draw players through them, as opposed to being something to be accomplished for accomplishments sake. This is also the case for modern RPG's which sometimes feature plots that span years, the rise and fall of civilizations, or take you through time itself. These are the games which draw intense emotions from their players and which you can't help but talk about around the proverbial water cooler.

These aspects of game plot should come as no surprise, but it's the indie games in particular which I want to end my discussion on game plot. A surprising twist to modern indie games is their combination of plot atop gameplay which used to exist within the challenge game design of old. The games I'm particularly thinking of here are games like Braid, the modern Mario games, or BattleBlock theater. These are games which use cutscenes to advance plot despite having gameplay which one would not think would contribute to plot. Essentially you have a story being told between checkpoints.

Now this isn't too surprising a development. The big plot games from above also use cutscenes (whether they are literal cut scenes or simply dialogue which plays out) to advance the plot, but they are designed with story in mind. The use of cutscenes in games which once did not utilize plot is an acknowledgement of the power of plot to advance a game! Not only that but we are seeing experimentation in story telling itself!

Let me show you an example from  That is all of the cut scenes, none of the game play. But this introduction and the ensuing cut scenes are, let's be honest, hilarious. It creates a story of witty proportions and what's interesting is that it wasn't necessary. It would have been enough to design a game with interesting game play and release but they went the extra yard and it pays off.

I could go on about plot but I feel like I've gotten my point across. Plot or story in games is no longer an anomoly which serves specific genres, it is a tool being utilized by games big and small for specific purposes. Sometimes the story is complimentary, a necessary inclusion before launching players into a larger multiplayer experience. Other times it is the predominant driving force of a game. But whether it is the first thought or the last, a good plot can add another dimension to games and raise them above the old mindset of time sinks. They become works of art.

So what are some of your favorite plots? Any games which you felt tried to hard or just missed the mark? As always, feel free to start a discussion. Or not. The choice is yours.

Chapter 6

You may have noticed my absence last week, or perhaps you just assumed me to be one of those untrustworthy writer types who posts when he chooses. Well that second part would be true, but rather than posting last week I decided to do some living. And by living I mean gaming, which can be one and the same. I did have a blog post for Friday, but I won't up missing it so it will be up tomorrow. As an apology, however, here is chapter 6, as well as a warning.

These chapters I'm posting are not the end all beat all chapters. They are drafts, which is why there is the occasional typo, inconsistency, or otherwise obvious mistake. This is not intentional, but it's also not unintentional. Part of this journey is in seeing how this book goes from start to finish. There will be days I'm just going to show you bits of old drafts (I found the very first draft the other day which will be a treat sometime soon.) But if you see a typo and think "That lazy bastard, he'll never work in this town again," I'd just like to remind you that A. It's a draft, and B. I'm not getting paid to work in this town in the first place.

So enjoy Chapterella 6. I certainly do.

Knowing Thine Audience

Earlier I posted about how an author had a responsibility to their audience, but I failed to clarify something when I wrote that article. Mainly, who is the audience?

Well today, audience, I'm here to answer that very question.

An audience is an interesting thing. It is not only the people you mean to write for, but it is also the people you accidentally do. Sometimes the audience you please is the first, and sometimes it is the second. Or sometimes it's neither. But who should we be worried about when we're creating something for an audience? The bigger crowd or the small?

Before I answer that question, I'll ask one of my own. Should I write differently for one audience or another?

Yes yes yes yes yes yes yes.

This is why it is so important to identify the audience that you are creating for. Because who you are creating your content for will dictate what you create!` Some of the art purists will disagree and claim that an artist should create art, but I'm going to be completely upfront and call bullshit on that. But note, as per usual, there is a catch. An artist should not let the will of the larger audience dictate what they've created for a select audience. I'll get more into that towards the end.

If I know I'm writing for a different audience I will absolutely want to write for them, and that's not just placating. Unless your goal is to placate in which case...it is. But you can write to an audience without selling yourself out. You can speak to a specific group without only trying to speak to them. And this will help your audience enjoy what you're doing more than if you just trap them into seeing your work which was meant for someone else!

Writing for a specific audience is like talking to a friend. You talk to each of your friends differently because you know different things about them and you want to convey different things to them. To use my own writing as an example, the audience for Hypothetically Speaking is different in my mind than the audience for my poetry. Which is not to say that I don't want them to be appreciated by the other audience, but if I lose some people between one or the other, that's to be expected. They're not the same.

But then how do I write to a different audience without losing myself? Even if my novel is for a different audience than my poetry, they don't sound so different that they're not still me, right?

Language. Language is key. How you say things is one of the best ways to show what type of an audience you want to address. When I'm serious in my novel, I still do it in a joking voice, because I'm addressing an audience that wants a joke. When I want to make light of something in my poetry, however, I don't crack a joke, I just make a point and if the audience decides it's funny that's up to them. But I'm not addressing them in a manner to draw a laugh from them.

And there's your second key. What are you trying to get from your audience? This is another way I can use my comedic stylings as an example. It's oft been said that the the best comedy is such that if you weren't laughing you'd be crying. And that is a perfect example of catering to an audience. If your work caters to an audience that wants comedy don't tell your jokes such that they cry. If your audience wants to cry, don't make the pain of a character funny.

Is that making sense? Since I assume my audience is the intelligent type I'm going to assume yes. So one last point to make up for not posting yesterday.

Is it all right to offend your not audience? Back to comedy here, you often get an interesting phenomenon with comedy, which is that someone doesn't get the joke. Not only do they not get the joke, they get offended by the joke. Do they have the right to? Do you as an author have to work to not offend people who are not your audience?

If you know me well you should know my answer is hell no. If someone is not the target audience, who are they to get offended by it. But this gets into a problem with art that I have no addressed yet, which is that society as a whole often seeks to set itself up to trump the smaller audience. To quickly bring back the point I mentioned earlier, not selling yourself to the larger societal audience, doing so is bad because it leads to the sort of bland art that populates our movie theaters and the eight p.m. slots of the television. Let alone books... But I'll discuss more about these things tomorrow. For today, I think I've said enough.

Five Side Effects of Walking

Humans are a walking species. It's unavoidable. Unless we have lost the ability to walk form point A. to point B. we're going to have to walk to get there. But walking is about more than just closing the shortest difference. Here's some of my favorite side effects of walking.

1: Thinking

Walking may have contributed the most to my development as a thinker. For me it began in high school and has continued ever since. But what is it about walking that makes it so great for focusing your thoughts? Why not just sit and think?

When the limbs are moving the brain is working. It's coordinating to ensure we don't fall, it's breathing to ensure we don't get tired, and it's observing to ensure we don't run into things. But all of this work doesn't take a lot of physical effort and it doesn't take a lot of mental effort to keep it going. So this affords a walker a lot of time to just zone, so to speak. And when we zone, it's hard not to think.

This is sort of the opposite of meditation where the goal is to clear the brain. Here, the movement gets the brain working and is especially effective if done without music. You just find yourself going from topic to topic and if something sticks, well, you've got plenty of time to sort it out. But maybe you'd prefer not to think. Well in that case, walking is also great for...

2: Meditation

One of the principle techniques of meditation is the focusing on your breath. Walking provides the opportunity to focus on more than just breathing to clear ones minds of thoughts. There is also the movement of the arms, the lifting of feet from the ground, and the course one follows. All of these combined together offer an all encompassing physical movement to put our focus into in order to clear the mind.

It can sound odd to suggest meditation when there are so many distractions around when walking, but keep in mind what I said above. The brain is able to do a lot of the minute calculations which keep us from running into things and falling over without our focusing on them. Walking meditation is not only surprisingly effective, but also a great workout which leads me to my next point.

3: Health

Need to read a book? Why not do it while walking? Need to pick something up from the corner store? Why not take a quick walk there? Need some exercise but don't feel like doing strenuous work? Why not...well you get the idea.

Walking is a truly effective form of exercise because it's low impact and easy to sustain over a long term. Now note that I'm not claiming walking is the way to lose forty pounds in forty days. It's not an end all exercise and it can't replace the benefits of a good diet. But walking does contribute to overall health. After all, we did evolve to do it, so why should it surprise us that it might just be good for us to walk?

It's at this point I should clarify, when I start throwing in suggestions to do more than one thing at once, that all of these walking tips should not be put into play when there is a lot of busy traffic around. Sometimes you need to pay attention. But if you are in a safe location then walking also is a great way to...

4: Enjoy Your Music

If you don't have a song that makes you uncontrollably bob your head then you might just need some new music. But if you do, then would you be surprised to learn that there is also music out there that it is almost impossible to avoid moving your body to?

Walking is movement with rhythm. If you're the type who enjoys a good head bobbing than it can be truly enjoyable to listen to music that you find yourself throwing some dancing into. Getting into a song while walking connects you to the music in a way that just laying and listening can't do. It can make your music more enjoyable and you might just notice some aspects of a song you had never noticed. Which leads to my last point...

5: Discovering New Places

Lastly, walking is a great way to discover places around where you live. And not just because you'll find yourself going to more places the more you walk. When we're driving we can sometimes be more focused on the goal than getting there. We learn a way and then we follow it until the world interferes and forces us to find an alternative. Or we get horribly lost...

But with walking, you can find shortcuts you would never try with driving. And with these shortcuts come new places. Fields you never knew existed, shops you never would have thought of visiting but which you duck in to see because you're on foot. You might even find alternative routes which shorten your normal travels.

So that's my brief discussion on walking, which as you can see is not just for travelling anymore. It is my recommendation that you test them immediately if you doubt the power of walking, and if you're not completely satisfied your money will be returned in full.

An update

Rather than an update you get Chapterella 5. Which I feel is better anyways. Enjoy.

Work Ethic

This is a topic that some people who know me probably won't believe I would choose to write about. And as much as I'm going to try to not turn this into a "do as I say, not as I do" discussion, that is part of being a teacher. Trying to prevent the mistakes you made. So enough explanations. Let's get started.

If I have not mentioned before, Hypothetically Speaking has been a work in progress for over five years. As of writing, I am editing through for the third time and I don't think it will be the last edit because each edit not only sees corrections but it sees additions or replacements. And those require further editing later to see if they fit with the previous material.

But that's not five years of continuous work. I don't want to mislead you. In fact, there have been long stints where the story has sat. I've rewritten it at least three times, and by rewrite I mean completely changed everything. The only thing that has remained consistent has been that I've worked on it. No matter how bad it failed in the past, I didn't let it fail.

And now it's 'finished.' In a sense. But that means the work has just begun.

I'm not just writing this to discuss my own writing process, I want to get into something deeper. While I was letting Hypothetically Speaking stew, I didn't sit and do nothing. I was writing other things. Poetry, most of which sits in a folder on my computer because I hesitate to send it places. Short stories which went through first drafts and stalled. Though I've written a lot since I started writing, most of it is unfinished and unseen.

What's the purpose behind telling you all of this besides just trying to state that I work hard as a writer?

It's the ethic of it

Now that I'm in an editing phase I haven't stopped writing new things. I've begun writing a second novel, a YA fantasy adventure series partly because of a challenge, and partly because the idea has been in my head and it needs to get out. Yes it's based on the Britannians that I have posted, but it's different. And more importantly I'm working on it.

Which is the ultimate message I want to get across. In a roundabout fashion.

I worked on Hypothetically Speaking for five years, but I wrote the first of the editing drafts in the month of January. I'm halfway through my third edit by mid April and expect to be in a state to publish by May unless something pushes me to act faster. And the thing that's changed since January that wasn't present in the previous five years was just sitting down and doing it. All of it. Not false starts and half ways and second guessing. I just did it.

Because here's the thing with work. Working hard doesn't mean a thing if you don't finish. Just as working hard doesn't mean a thing if you don't get a quality product. I've gotten through the first and I'm working on the second, but I hope you've seen what I meant to get through this writing. I'm a little distracted by the world this week, as I discussed earlier.

All I'm trying to say is that talent without effort is worthless. And that's a modification of a Charles Bukowski quote so don't go attributing that to me.