Gamasutra’s Tom Newman has a piece on Why Games Are Not Art, or more accurately “why games should give art the finger”. I’ll admit, with my background in art history I get a little twitchy when articles like these crop up, but Tom’s thesis that games are better off without pathetically seeking the “art” stamp is altogether worth a thorough read. In the meantime, I get to be all kinds of fussy about points both critical and not very:
Marcel Duchamp quit the art world to play chess full time. He became obsessed to the point that it nearly ended his marriage (70 years before World of Warcraft). He became a chess master and represented France in many international tournaments, and went on to write a weekly newspaper column about chess. If he were around today, there is no doubt he would be working in the game industry.
[...]
Like Duchamp, many dada-ists also played chess, but more importantly they designed their own games. Coming from the philosophy that art, poetry, and music could be randomly generated, they designed many games that would end with a finished work of art. These games were used both at parties and as a way for established artists to collaborate, and ironically the rules of the games were strict, where as the rules for the art were nonexistant. This is the first parallell between academic art history and game design. Many of these game rules were published in a book called Surrealist Games (surrealism split from dada-ism due to a fight over politics between Andre Breton and Tristan Tzara, and (off-topic aside) Salvador Dali was not a real surrealist, at best he was the Wii Sports of the surrealists, and is considered to have borrowed his style from lesser known Yves Tanguy).
I’ll grant that Duchamp was an old timey geek, but do chess masters nowadays really transition into the video game industry? This strikes me as the sort of ego we see quite often in gaming, inviting austere others into our fold with a desperate kind of eagerness. After all, there are plenty of gaming types who prefer to avoid anything that whirs. At best, the argument here is that Duchamp was a chess-playing LARPer, which still requires a hop over to Halo champ. How the industry does mimic art is in the burden of intellectual thievery: Picasso stole from Braque, Dali stole from Tanguy, and Gates stole from…well, you get the idea, corruption breeds creativity.
These (snarky?) points aside, my real trouble with the piece is that I find it wholly disheartening. Newman’s premise is that video games, gamers, and industry folks in general should not aspire to the level of art, because art is effectively beneath video games. He likens the desire to be considered art to “a surgeon aspiring to be a nurse”, and states that “an architect is more than an artist”. Assertions of relative value like these are more than just feather-ruffling, though an engineering mind might have no trouble assigning points to respective callings. That aside, the idea of art as games’ drunk uncle casts my interest in games as art as, well, downright selfish.
Newman and I agree that the art world is not necessarily a beneficial association for video games (or anyone, really), and that “art” does not carry an inherent note of legitimacy. He therefore promotes a dissociation from the field and that games are already on their way to establishing themselves by their own virtue and merit.
This is valid, I think that games are gradually forging their own (occasionally narrow) niche. As an artist, I consider games to be some of the most beautiful creations our time has to offer. Admittedly, this view is of games as already, wholly, art. Video games carry with them a renewed desire to mimic the real world, the natural, and to do so beautifully. This desire, so fresh in gaming and so seemingly long dead in modern art where “beauty” is a point of contention rather than an aesthetic value, has the potential to revive art. It is an opportunity to bring a sense of aesthetic innocence to an overly introspective and jaded field.
Video games are a powerful medium, powerful enough to save art from its artists (and their masochistic introspection) because creating a good game is about more than the individual. There survives in video games what Duchamp struck an early blow to: the desire to render the world around us in a way that people will fundamentally enjoy. Newman is right, games don’t need art, but I firmly believe art needs games and so I will, selfishly, promote games as art with the hope of an ensuing renaissance.
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The Kingslayer said...
1Cat your blog on this topic says everything that I couldn’t but felt about the subject of games and art. Kudos. I feel that games are art, but not in the context that we would suppose art to be. You made a great point about how games look to mimic the real world. Look at the chase for superior graphics for example. Although graphics don’t make a game. It’s the whole and in that respect many games taken as a whole become beautiful art. I feel it’s perspective, and maybe they’re focus is on inspiration. I don’t know. I look forward to reading more of your blog. Great find…
04/13/09 4:16 PM | Comment Link
Grey said...
2Art is one thing, games are another. It really doesn’t matter if someone calls games art, whether it be traditional art or a newly imagined form of art. The fact is that games have been around for centuries, and the lack of perspective allows some people to make crazy proclamations about video games, as if they were somehow unique.
Furthermore, video games are not a medium. They are what exploitation is to the film medium. They are what pop is to music. Tailor made using certain mechanics and rigid formulae to serve an ultimately meaningless and shallow purpose. They are a product for mass consumption. If they aren’t fun or challenging, they fail. We all enjoy them, but let’s not pretend they’re at all relevant to art.
Duchamp and the Dada movement? Embarrassing blemishes on the past century. It’s something we should forget. No, creating art isn’t ‘easy,’ and understanding it is much harder than physics or calculus. It’s about humans, their relationships and the individual. Modern day people get swept up in commercialised society. They’re told what to think and how best to act normal. Some people are actually taught that “commercial viability out-legitimizes artistic integrity any day of the week.” How does that not ring alarm bells in everyone? Dadaism is a diversion, whereas actual art is the one that allows expression and sets you free.
Look, I’m not talking about the warped views and analyses applied to art by some theorists and schools. Art isn’t about metaphors or meaningful composition or quality narrative. Duchamp and the Dadaists thought it was and ended up rebelling against nothing.
I’m talking about works that speak about the complexity of a person and of life and of nature. Something honest that may not involve reality, but does feature real emotion. Spirituality, even. Henry James’ The Golden Bowl, Joyce’s Ulysses, John Cassavetes’ A Woman Under the Influence, Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and the masterworks of Beethoven and of Mozart.
It pains me to see those works robbed of their majesty by comments like “anything can be art” or “high art is pretentious and we should work to disassociate ourselves from it.” Art is the most normal thing. It’s the one closest to us and the one that helps us understand ourselves and our world better than by using any psychological survey or text-book. It’s inviting, not elitist. How in the world do games fit into this?
04/13/09 5:51 PM | Comment Link
Guest said...
3“Art is the most normal thing. It’s the one closest to us and the one that helps us understand ourselves and our world better than by using any psychological survey or text-book.”
Better than cheap american psychological surveys? yes. better than Psychoanalysis? Not even equal.
04/14/09 6:53 PM | Comment Link
Grey said...
4That’s just silly. It’s true that love is caused by chemical reactions in the brain. (That’s more in the field of neuroscience, though, isn’t it?) Maybe you can analyse each individual to see how their preferences align with their partner. Perhaps you can try to isolate their feelings and “solve” the problems in their relationship. Make them “normal.” What does this mechanical approach tell you? It’s all horribly bloated and impersonal.
Watch a film by Cassavetes and tell me what psychoanalysis can say about the unpredictable, constantly shifting motions his actors go through. What does it have to say about the simplest actions that can’t be aligned with any general emotion or conflict? Why does it matter whether they’re a product of the conscious or unconscious mind? What, really, can it tell you about the pauses and the silences between actions and words? You can’t predict human nature in any way that’s meaningful to the *individual*, and psychoanalysis tries to do this. When would you ever hear a psychoanalyst tell you that a man is a man because of, not in spite of, the burdens he has borne like Frank Capra does?
I never studied Freud or his successors, and that may be evident, but I understand that psychoanalysis associates aggressive and sexual desires and involves semiotics. That’s laughable for something that purports to understand human nature.
I’d wager that someone would be able to see more of themselves when viewing vulnerable humans in films than by reading up on Freudian theories (and I mean theory in the non-scientific sense). Art is more recognisable and relays things in more human terms. Of course, with art, they’d have to work at a solution or an understanding. So yes, art and psychoanalysis are not equal at all.
04/14/09 9:44 PM | Comment Link
Guest said...
5That is actually silly. I get an impression you’re someone from XIX century.
I don’t remember psychoanalysis trying to isolate feelings or making a person “normal” in the way you’re implying.. on the contrary in fact.
“I never studied Freud or his successors, and that may be evident,”
Indeed. Your whole knowledge of it is that it’s about sex and/or vilolence and that it’s original creator was Freud. That’s like saying art is just drawing or composing a song.
“Why does it matter whether they’re a product of the conscious or unconscious mind? ”
That’s just an insult to all psychoanalysts and Albert Hoffman. Way to go.
I hope your Cassavetes will someday help mentally ill persons, instead of being a high emotional way of expressing yourself.
04/15/09 4:42 AM | Comment Link
Grey said...
6“Your whole knowledge of it is that it’s about sex and/or vilolence”
No, I said it associates the two. Along with the comment on it delving into semiotics, I was pointing out how ridiculous it was. And it is.
“and that it’s original creator was Freud.”
The original creator *was* Freud. It developed past the primitive ideas belonging to him and his colleagues, if you can call that development.
“That’s just an insult to all psychoanalysts”
Identifying where an impulse comes from does not help most people understand it.
Cassavetes actually did make a film that helped the mentally ill (not in the narrow way you mean it, I’m assuming) called A Child is Waiting. Unfortunately, the final cut was stripped of its meaning by a Hollywood producer.
Most importantly, art helps us deal with everyday life instead of targeting abnormalities and chasing geese. Will art benefit one specific person more? Probably. It treats people like individuals, not text book cases. It’s a shame you can’t see it, but maybe you will some day.
But this is straying too far off topic. I’ll just reiterate that simple entertainment has no place in art and that one should be cautious when dismissing it.
04/15/09 2:44 PM | Comment Link
Guest said...
7….
“I was pointing out how ridiculous it was. And it is.”
It never was ridiculous, Freud did in fact get a bit carried away at times, but it was more than a century ago, when this approach to studying human psyche was just born.
“The original creator *was* Freud. It developed past the primitive ideas belonging to him and his colleagues, if you can call that development.”
Yes he was, and what? Today’s (and tomorrow’s) computers are Von Neumann’s machines, does that make them as primitive? Besides, who are you? A man of art or a psychiatrist? Yes, for your information it did develop a lot.
you do realize art and people’s psyche are connected to the world they were (and are) living in? to religion and society? do you think we would have the same artists and musicians if Christianity wouldn’t be the Europe’s religion, but say, Satanism would be?.. Art is sublime. and say, XVII century art is more sublime than today’s art. It’s not Freud’s fault that human’s psyche isn’t as “beautiful” as you wish it to be.
“Identifying where an impulse comes from does not help most people understand it.”
“Most”? if we’d base our studies on what “most” of the society understand we would still use ancient methods of pain management instead of novocaine.
The discovery of LSD made a huge impact on understanding human psyche, and on society as well. Further proving original Freud’s theories.
“It treats people like individuals, not text book cases.”
It scares me to think what would become of medicine if people thought like this.. We are not quite capable of understanding psyche like we do body, but some day we’ll be, no doubt about it. and psychoanalysis is the tool to achieve this. not sublime emotional messages that is art.
“Most importantly, art helps us deal with everyday life instead of targeting abnormalities and chasing geese.
It’s a shame you can’t see it, but maybe you will some day.”
.. You make it seem as if our society is the only possible one. and I do “see” it, it “helped” 200 years ago, not quite “succesfully” in fact. What you call “abnormalities” are they key to your everyday’s life..
and yes this is indeed off-topic.. You’ve made a good point about games and art, completely agreed. But don’t pretend art is so ultimate and can compete with true studying of psyche.
04/15/09 4:15 PM | Comment Link
Sam said...
8This shouldn’t be about competing, but Grey is right when he says art is the most normal thing. At our very core as human beings, we are creators. We want to be felt and understood, and art is the most natural way to accomplish this. The human race has survived perfectly fine until now, without the need for psychoanalytic study. Psychoanalysis may be “helpful” in ways, but art is needed. It has existed forever. The world without art would be a boring monotonous hell. The only reason someone would deny this is if they feel the need to justify their life choices. Just because you aren’t an artist, or you’re not any good at it, it doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge its importance.
I think Budda said it best when he said, “all suffering is a direct result of failure to understand the true nature of oneself” – and he is absolutely right. Psychoanalysis may be able to apply “bandaid fixes” to mental illness, through medication and whatnot, but if a person’s soul is dishonest then there is no hope for true emotional freedom. Trying to “fix emotions” is silly anyway. Some of the greatest minds of all time have been influenced by mental illness.
On a side note, this conversation reminds me of Ghost in the Shell 2. The future as represented in this film is deprived of emotions. But still, humans have an urge to find meaning in life. Without emotions, the only thing left is reason. They spend their time analysing the human psyche, looking for answers. A realisation occurs; the solution to life is not in the mind (psychoanalysis) but in the soul – an infinitely complex and intangible energy. There is no way you can explain how music makes us feel the way we do – it’s an indefinable energy. It connects people and makes us feel human and whole. That is far more important to mental health than anything.
04/16/09 5:47 AM | Comment Link
Guest said...
9” The human race has survived perfectly fine until now, without the need for psychoanalytic study. Psychoanalysis may be “helpful” in ways, but art is needed. It has existed forever. The world without art would be a boring monotonous hell. The only reason someone would deny this is if they feel the need to justify their life choices. Just because you aren’t an artist, or you’re not any good at it, it doesn’t mean you can’t acknowledge its importance. ”
I find your last two sentences there rather ironic..
Anyway.
Perfectly fine, aside from two world wars to begin with.
For the record, I never said art is “not needed”, nor did I say anything about my choices and what’s most important to me. however I do anyway believe it doesn’t play as huge role for people as it did say, in the times of Edgar A.Poe.
“There is no way you can explain how music makes us feel the way we do – it’s an indefinable energy. ”
Sure you can, just because it is not explained on the level that all people can grasp doesn’t mean it’s impossible. It will be.
“if a person’s soul is dishonest then there is no hope for true emotional freedom. ”
You ‘re entitled to your views on this, but I find it a bit humorous these days some people still divide psyche into mind and soul. Psychoanalysis studies psyche, not “mind”. Don’t mix it with psychology.
It is quite humorous as well you’re saying this, because that’s exactly what psychoanalytical studies ‘re trying to do. Help people be “honest” with their psyche (“soul”).
“Trying to “fix emotions” is silly anyway. Some of the greatest minds of all time have been influenced by mental illness.”
Once again, psychoanalysis doesn’t “fix” “emotions” in the way some people ‘re implying. And besides, you make it seem as if these great minds were mentally ill not in spite of the society they ‘re living in..
04/16/09 9:22 AM | Comment Link
Sam said...
10“I find your last two sentences there rather ironic…”
And how’s that? You don’t agree that life without art would be one that is so much more boring? I think you are missing my point. I was merely backing what Grey had said – that art is the best way for people to understand ourselves and the world. You can try and explain to people how war is bad by explaining the processes behind people’s emotions and reasoning, but it would be futile when you can show them an anti-war film and it immediately hits home a message so strong and clear. You even agreed that most people would understand art better. “Most” is better than a small minority. Art IS the most normal thing, and it will always remain the easiest (most human) way for us to make sense of this world. I’m not saying psychoanalysis is useless – it has its uses for sure. But I don’t think those two world wars would have been prevented if we had (somehow) completely understood the human psyche either.
You seem like the type of person who believes we live, we die, and our body is left to rot and that’s it. Mediums are a load of bull, right? You can keep believing that everything that is real can be measured, but there is something magical – en energy – that you can’t measure. THIS is where your soul belongs. Soul is not psyche; it resides in a place not in the physical world. You can laugh at my reasoning if you want, but I hope one day you will experience something incredibly magical and see that this world is so much more vast, mysterious and immeasurable than you thought was possible. You cannot explain to someone (*an individual*) how to be closer to their soul; it must be discovered by oneself.
04/16/09 9:03 PM | Comment Link
Guest said...
11” And how’s that? You don’t agree that life without art would be one that is so much more boring? ”
No. I do agree with that to an extent. I took your remark personally, and was trying to remind you that this whole conversation started when Grey ‘s compared art to psychology. so I found ironic how you’ve said that when “just because you aren’t good at psychoanalysis or know nothing about it doesn’t mean it’s not important”.
Anyway..
” You seem like the type of person who believes we live, we die, and our body is left to rot and that’s it. ”
You have no idea how mistaken you’re.
” You can keep believing that everything that is real can be measured, but there is something magical – en energy – that you can’t measure. THIS is where your soul belongs. Soul is not psyche; it resides in a place not in the physical world. You can laugh at my reasoning if you want, but I hope one day you will experience something incredibly magical and see that this world is so much more vast, mysterious and immeasurable than you thought was possible. ”
….. This is ridiculous. What I find humorous is that I somewhat think the same way as you, but I’m just aware of the progress people ‘ve made with psychoanalysis and etc. Psyche resides in the physical world?? Where on earth did that come from? I’ve said we’ll be able to explain our psyche someday in a way most people understand, like we were able to do with body. Point is, we’ll be able to explain psychic part of the man like we explained his physical part.. Mind, soul – that’s all inside a vast psychic world – PSYCHE. I’m in fact aware of your “magical” experiences and the such, I did experience that things.. Look, it all depends on the person – what his psychic impulses are, what he makes of them.. He might be a priest, an artist or a programmer (they all require psychic (“spiritual”) work.
” You cannot explain to someone (*an individual*) how to be closer to their soul; it must be discovered by oneself. ”
I never argued with this.
A person does indeed have to discover that by himself, albeit psychoanalysyis can help him.
04/17/09 4:45 AM | Comment Link
Guest said...
12Oh, and I would also like to add to my comment about this:
” it all depends on the person – what his psychic impulses are, what he makes of them.. He might be a priest, an artist or a programmer (they all require psychic (”spiritual”) work. ”
that I wouldn’t add mathematicians or physicists to that. while a mathematician does use his psyche (intellect), that’s actually not the same.
04/17/09 7:14 AM | Comment Link
Sam said...
13I really don’t want to drag this out any further, but let me say this. I do agree with some of the stuff you’ve said. We may have similar views, and yes I am familiar with some of the advances made in this area of study, but I can’t bring myself to believe complete understanding of the human psyche is possible. As I have mentioned, much of it is immeasurable and ever changing. How do you analyse the spirit of a deceased person (which you believe does exist if I am right to believe)?
In a nutshell, this is my view on the subject: art is helpful in discovering and nourishing one’s soul, psychoanalysis is helpful in pointing out the already existing flaws and limitations in thinking. I think this is what Grey was trying to say, too.
04/17/09 8:22 AM | Comment Link