I’m not sure where that quotation came from, but I think it’s fair to say we both disagree with it.

If games are to be more than mediums for art, they’ll have to rely on gameplay.

Not to belabor the point, but if games are to be considered an art form, they’ll have to rely on both storytelling and gameplay, because both contribute equally to the communication between game and player — and the communication is the basis of ‘art’. Games, as perhaps you are implying, haven’t figured out how to do gameplay in a way that serves to convey the art of the stories they are telling. But they also haven’t figured out that they need to be based on a plot and impact (eg, script) that is beautiful, emotional, or insightful.

@Chris–

Thanks for checking it out, glad you liked it. I hadn’t seen your blog before, so I added it to my feed list. Looking forward to reading some of your stuff.

I do agree that we need more thoughtful criticism of games in terms of their qualities and impact. In fact, there was a discussion of this topic not too long ago. Over on Play This Thing, Greg Costikyan wrote a piece back in February on the notable absence of game criticism and how badly we need it. This was followed up by a response from Emily Short about game criticism in the world of interactive fiction, where it does seem to exist at some level.

And I would agree with you as well that the language and perspective for this type of criticism is not yet well understood. Scorpia put it nicely in a post over on her blog back in March: “So yes, I would say that games are relevant. Perhaps not in quite the same way as a book or movie. But then, games are a unique form, and need to be appraised from a new perspective.”

We’ll get there, someday.

I linked here from the Blogs of the Round Table. I was surprised to find your refreshingly eloquent analytical approach to storytelling.

(apologies for my rather fragmented thoughts here – I wrote this rather quickly)

One of the questions that has been nagging at me, especially in the light of your ideas, are the ‘expressive qualities’ that games have. Just as a guitar, a violin, and a piano have different expressive means – that for instance there is no tremolo or bend on the piano – they often give rise to different expressive qualities.

In borrowing from so many mediums, games seem to have the potential for so many expressive qualities, yet seem to fail at least in the storied medium. Any artist knows that playing off one expressive quality against another is a disastrous bid – “stories vs. gameplay” is much like saying “A major vs. B minor” because the differences only matter in terms of what the artist is trying to express.

One of the themes of my blog has been trying to find the artful in what most consider the artless. Part of that is to avoid the rather nihilistic and cynical view that games are not art and can never be art (I don’t think you espouse this view, however) – but rather art has always been implicit in games. In that sense, critiquing games in terms of their artful or expressive qualities becomes extremely important because it is those criticisms that begin to define what matters in game-art. Part of the reason you and many others (including myself) have difficulty in identifying important artistic elements in video games is that we still lack a language to understand them in.

That’s all to say – I enjoyed the article. I’m going to try writing something for the Round Table discussion, and possibly chime-in on the debate in a more structured way.

“Games continue to rely on impacts that are too simple, shallow, and trivial”
True, both for gameplay and script. Less so for visuals and audio.

We’re not really disagreeing entirely; I just think you’re taking too narrow a perspective. Your implication, if I understand correctly, is that we (as a society) already know how to create stories that are beautiful and powerful, and all games need to do is figure out how to present those stories (via gameplay) to reach the status of an art form.

Sure, but that does not negate the importance of the ‘script’ (or, as I say, the plot and impact) to the evaluation of the overall work as a piece of art. I find it hard to believe that a game that has impressively effective gameplay but a plot and impact that are shallow and unmoving will be recognized as art. This is why I believe “games need to rely on both storytelling and gameplay.”

The fact of the matter is that games haven’t figured out how to do good ‘script’. They continue to rely on impacts that are too simple, shallow, and trivial. Games just won’t be considered art until they do that part right. I don’t care how fantastic the gameplay is. They need to utilize both.

I freely admit that I’m not sure, and that’s part of the problem. A lot of people doing the whole ‘Games cannot be art!’ schtick do so by intentionally defining games as ‘not art’, and therefore if you make anything they consider art, they will declare it ‘not game’, because games are not art. Makes it hard to argue with.

Or, to avoid the abstract, if you take away the lives limitation from an arena shooter, does it stop being a game, by your definition?

I wasn’t so much trying to do MY definition as trying to guess what the consensus would be. I have been to art exhibits that contain trippy interactive light/music toys. Clearly some number of people consider this ‘art’. I have played many things that are similarly trippy and marketed as games. Clearly some number of people consider this ‘game’.

The only reason I can see that people can even begin to suggest that games are not art is that they are intentionally self-defining it that way, and therefore instinctively rejecting the trippy experience as soon as it crosses the threshold to be considered a game in their opinion.

My argument above is that art stems from the communication that takes place between artist (game) and audience (player). With respect to games, this communication is comprised of both storytelling and gameplay. This is why I believe games need to refine and rely on both in order to achieve an art form.

“Trippy light etc experiences become games when you tack on a lose condition”
Most misunderstandings like these arise from not having clear cut definitions. What is your definition of a game?
Or, to avoid the abstract, if you take away the lives limitation from an arena shooter, does it stop being a game, by your definition?

I think that’s pretty much always the case when anyone talks about Games As Art. Usually the person making the statement knows very little about games, and is only considering a few games – or worse, their FAVORITE games – and arguing about whether those games are or are not art.

Which says very little about the concept of games as a whole.

There are some ‘trippy’ games where light, color, and music are tightly interwoven and changing in reaction to each other and to the player’s actions, and some of these games are only distinguishable from interactive multimedia art exhibits in museums in that they have a ‘lose’ condition that makes you start over, rather than simply playing with your toy endlessly.

There are quirky vision games – try The Neverhood, or Woodruff and the Schnibble of Azimuth, that present strange worlds and allow the player to interact with those worlds… the indescribable experiences are as much part of the art as the puzzles and storylines are.

There is interactive fiction, there are visual novels, there are RPGs, there are a whole heck of a lot of games out there and many axes of difference to fly out on! Using one game – even if it’s Bioshock or Portal – as an example of games being or not being art is a complete failure, but it’s what most people do…

For some reason, that reminded me of The Commonplace Book Project, an effort to create interactive adventures based on H.P. Lovecraft’s unfinished ideas. Not totally relevant, but perhaps worth mentioning.

I would, however, say that games need to rely on both gameplay and storytelling, not one preferentially.