First We Take Manhattan…

A couple weeks ago, The New Yorker ran a piece about Fumito Ueda, and his games Ico, and Shadow of the Colossus. It’s a good piece, and one that I am extremely happy to see running in such a prestigious publication with an audience broader than the audience for most writing-about-games.

The piece quotes me in support of its loose thesis that ‘games can be art’. While certainly flattering, and while this is a thesis I support, there is not a small amount of irony that arises from the piece running more or less in parallel to my last post which questions whether or not games should be art.

I should clarify one thing about the specific quote, which is pulled from Tom Bissell’s book Extra Lives. I said,

"Finding a way to make the mechanics of play our expression as creators and as artists—to me that’s the only question that matters."

The quote is accurate; that’s what I said. But then, as now, my own thinking on the subject of ‘how games mean’ was evolving (and has been evolving for some time). What I should have said back then was,

"Finding a way to make the dynamics of play our expression as creators and as artists—to me that’s the only question that matters."

Furthermore, the way I would prefer to express that idea today would be to say,

"Finding a way to make the dynamics of play support the creative expression of players—to me that’s the only question that matters."

Anyway, putting aside the subtleties related to where meaning in games can reside or where I personally think it ought to reside, the fact that articles like this are appearing with increasing regularity in mainstream publications is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it gives game developers an opportunity to gain some much needed traction toward building credibility and artistic legitimacy in the eyes of a real audience of billions instead of a pathetically small audience of tens of millions. It’s a curse because I still supect that most of the people intrigued by such an article and inspired to take a closer look at games will be largely disappointed once they gtet beyond a very small handful of games, such as those of Ueda and a few others.

As we see more and more articles like this, and as we draw the attention of a real mass market, I worry that the limited depth and breadth of our work (at least our most visible work) cannot sustain and nourish the attention we receive from that mainstream. I suspect that, in the long term, that may be a bigger problem than not receiveing this kind of attention at all.

Comments

[Mcdjoel]

I definitely have the same worry that games lack the depth and breadth to hold the mainstream's attention for very long. But as Warren Spector has previously noted, it's simply a waiting game before we, the generation who grew up on video games, become the so-called mainstream. That's not to say that we shouldn't make deeper, more meaningful games--it's just that I believe time's arrow is on our side.

[Robert]

As an art form or entertainment medium still in its formative years we shouldn't be too harsh on ourselves at this stage. In conjunction with the market expanding into the mainstream the body of work will increase and with that hopefully a few more gems will start to appear.

Games such as Limbo and Portal although different could be considered equally thought provoking and inspiring. Are there any other titles you feel get close to Icos and SOTC artisitic merit?

Here’s hoping there are a few more Team Icos forming as we speak.

[Andy Durdin]

Taking the final form of your statement, I think it’s worth pointing out that the dynamics of Shadow of the Colossus in particular leave very little room for creative expression by the player. ICO arguably allows slightly more. Both games, of course, have plenty of room for the technical expression of skill by the player, but they are primarily vessels for the creative expression of Ueda.

I feel that technical expression is much closer to the core of what games are than the player’s creative expression. Being dynamic systems of rules, mastery of those rules is naturally important. There can, of course, be significant overlap: games whose rules enclose a sufficiently broad possibility space lend themselves more readily to player expression, for example in games that have a large tactical component, or ones that enable player creation within the game.

[Jonas]

Also we are assuming that there actually is such a substantial portion of non-gaming mainstreamers who would be intrigued enough to plow through say ico, colossus, okami, and flower, and wanting for more be disenchanted and embittered by the dominance of military-realistic on-rails fps and licensed sports titles. Just ticking off those four titles is a 100+ hours project. Of course, sad gamers like us will do that in just a month. But as adults that also requires our very conscious effort to make gaming an essential, prioritized activity. Is there really such an investment-ready crowd out there, wielding agendas with big blanks marked "new massively engaging activity here!", and if so how have they completely missed out on games until The New Yorker started writing about them?

[Bjohnblazkowicz]

""Finding a way to make the dynamics of play our expression as creators and as artists—to me that’s the only question that matters."

Furthermore, the way I would prefer to express that idea today would be to say,

"Finding a way to make the dynamics of play support the creative expression of players—to me that’s the only question that matters."
"

With all due respect, I have to say that this is the sin of many born dead games -although from a pure financial point of view many of these failures become so-called successes. Please forget about the multiculturalism of intelligence, or multigence. Trying to please the public, to substitute the artistic creation, the way you see things, the world, and the way your educated conscience transforms all these, instead subduing the public to the creation, forgetting that perfection excludes diversity, is the worst that could happen in this kind of activity -and I don't say "business" for a good reason.
Masses are stupid. You cannot serve Shakespeare to ordinary 10 old kids, they will hate it. People asked about Far Cry 2 " Life itself is will to power? Whadda heck is this?" Of course that they did not like it.
I don't know how desperate your needs are to make money, but I think that because in gaming industry do not exist a strong criticism and powerful references like we have in the movie industry, because this you have to chose which way you go: making games for the sake of art, or trying to please all those lamers who want all games to be variants of their preferred game.