But is it art?
I recently got into a discussion on a mailing list over the question of whether a particular game was art or not.
So first, here’s the game, High Delivery, one of Ferry Halim’s games over at Orisinal.
OK, played it? All the way to the end? Good.
Breaking it down from a strict ludological sense, what we have here is a game of indirect control. You’re pushing an object around with a cursor; the cursor is pushing force outwards, and the closer to the fan, the greater the force exerted. A second level of indirection is added in that the object is actually a compound object in two parts: there’s the part you can push, and another part dangling dangling from it which swings a bit side to side.
Your objective to get the dangling part to collide with the objects that are moving from top to bottom of the screen. You have a fixed time limit in which to cause as many collisions as you can using the cursor’s indirect control.
From a strictly mechanical sense, this is not all that complicated. Perhaps its most notable feature is that it is so indirect — you can’t just use the cursor to capture the falling objects. In fact, you can’t even use the object you control to capture the objects. Instead, you operate at a twice-remove. In effect, from a strictly mechanical point of view, the game is about a lack of control.
The goal is captures; a pretty common goal. We can speak of a game being about capture instead of merely collision when a collision removes the token you collided with from the field. Pac-Man captures dots; chess pieces capture other chess pieces. In this case, you measure your success at indirect control based on how many tokens you capture in the time limit, despite your lack of control.
The game reinforces the fact that lack of control is a thematic premise via the simple fact that it is next to impossible to actually exert perfect control. Tokens appear at directly opposite ends of the playfield; without knowing the exact position in which they appear, it’s almost impossible to go fro one end of the playfield to the other in time to capture both tokens. A “perfect score” is thereby presented as something nigh-unattainable.
Now, that’s pretty much all the mechanics. Let’s talk about the dressing, the aesthetics. Like all of Halim’s games, the art is beautiful. So’s the music, actually. But to a degree, that’s ancillary. It’s not so much the actual visuals that make it compelling to me. It’s what I have called “the metaphor” in other posts here.
The metaphor is that you are sending a bouquet to heaven. You start earthbound, in an empty alley — pretty, old-fashioned and European — a place that feels, well, old. And it’s empty. You move up through the clouds in the sky, and your “finish line” is the pearly gates of Heaven. The tokens you collect are flowers, which as they are captured fill up a bouquet in a bottle — a crude sort of vase, the sort of vase you get because you can’t get a better one.
Your score is actually how many flowers you were able to deliver to someone who has died, someone who ought to be in that alley and isn’t anymore, someone who for whatever reason doesn’t get a real funeral bouquet. And suddenly, the lack of direct control you have resonates for me – it echoes the lack of control you feel when grieving. Of course you can never express it enough – not only can you not gather enough flowers mechanically, you can never gather enough flowers thematically.
To me, this is a great example of how the underlying meaning of mechanics (lack of control, impossibility of completing a task) can be reinforced and thematized by a well-chosen metaphor. This is a mechanic that games generally don’t go near. “Difficult controls” is seen as anathema to good gameplay usually (though some games, like Marble Blast Ultra and similar, are of course entirely driven by the challenge of mastering controls).
What’s more, the metaphor here is frankly audacious. Making a game about loss is highly unusual; evoking the feeling of frustration via gameplay and then reframing it as theme strikes me as a very neat trick to pull off. Had the controls been easy, direct control over the captures would actually have very much robbed the game of its ultimate meaning. Had it been a game of clicking on the flowers, or moving a basket at the bottom using the arrow keys, it would not have had the same meaning either. The marriage of mechanic and theme is dead-on.
Not all of the Orisinal games manage this; the one he recently posted for Christmas is charming, but lacks the subtle kick, the greater depth.
What do you think? Is it art? Many on the mailing list disagreed, but my bottom line was that High Delivery is a great marriage of mechanics to aesthetics, and a very simple package that conveys emotions that games rarely venture near – grief, melancholy, and, because the flowers are always received positively, even a sense of closure.
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High Delivery [via] Covers! [via] The Velvet Underground – The Norman Dolph Acetate “English sentences without overt grammatical subjects” Pitch ‘n putt with Joyce and Beckett [via] G.W. Bush operates heavy machinery, mayhem ensues
Joystiq directed me over to Raph Koster’s blog where he is linking a free flash game that he believes is “art.” I hope that you, like me, are not impressed by anyone who links to a game that they believe is “art” because I hope that you are able to find games that are “art” as quickly as I am. It
So, now I’m wondering: is it art? Raph Koster
talks about the renaissance of board games. Good games are mentioned. The Boylston Chess Club Weblog is covering the latest in Chess player news, this time alleged sexual assault by a rather well-known Chess player and teacher in Nashua. Raph Koster finds art in an interestingly themed video game, High Delivery. And a report from the Board Game Speed Dating night in the UK. Yehuda
High Delivery. Now, there’s no blood or guns, but play it to the end and the sentiment is very sweet — under the right conditions you may even shed a little tear. Raph Koster has a very New Yorker-style explanation on his website about the title. It’s not very often that we get to use a word like “subtle” to describe a game. Even other games given the “art” label like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are more “awe inspiring,” and there is nothing subtle about the
High Delivery. Now, there’s no blood or guns, but play it to the end and the sentiment is very sweet — under the right conditions you may even shed a little tear. Raph Koster has a very New Yorker-style explanation on his website about the title. It’s not very often that we get to use a word like “subtle” to describe a game. Even other games given the “art” label like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are more
High Delivery. Now, there’s no blood or guns, but play it to the end and the sentiment is very sweet — under the right conditions you may even shed a little tear. Raph Koster has a very New Yorker-style explanation on his website about the title. It’s not very often that we get to use a word like “subtle” to describe a game. Even other games given the “art” label like Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are more “awe inspiring,” and there is nothing subtle about the
12:46pm: Awe http://www.ferryhalim.com/orisinal/g3/high.htm Главный теоретик поясняет все очень четко.
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I think you are not giving the audio sufficient credit. Playing without the sound, I found the game more stressful, and less entertaining, although a little easier. The music really queues the emotion, for me.
I like the idea of metaphor for games like this. I think of Tetris as a replayable story about life in an existential universe; people resist the word story, but would probably be more open to it as a metaphor.
Art? For me, art is self defined by both artist and audience. I tend to concern myself more with quality than definition. I thought it was a good little game, and it made me happy. It would be something lovely to somehow give my friends at my funeral. If it isn’t art, what is it?
Does the artist’s intent matter?
I mean, example, some lovely sunset. If it were man-made we’d call it art, but without the intent – it “just happened” – not art. Couldn’t a game programmer make something, in which art “just happens”.
Does there have to be an audience, for a thing to be art? Sometimes I hide my art in the code.
Yup. I think it’s charming and lovely. I will save the URL to revisit it again sometime. “Art” for me.
I think it’s art, without a doubt. As the balloon continues to rise, it becomes less of a game when you begin to realize it’s going somewhere. You begin to wonder why this is happening–not just from a gameplay standpoint, but why a balloon floating in the clouds, collecting flowers while being propelled by a floating pinwheel? Then once the balloon reaches the end and disappears, that brings open even more questions.
When a game can engage someone like this, while leaving its meaning open to interpretation and abstraction, it’s art.
I tend to give art the benifit of the doubt, so I say yea, but I’m really happy to see more people adopting the term “metaphor” as a meta-metaphor for how games be be art, or at least art-like, depending your tastes.
After thinking about it a bit, it might be art in the sense a Hallmark card is art.
From my point of view – its art-like, not art. I’ll need it to explain with the metaphors. First, the term metaphor for certain elements of games work well, but there are more metaphors inside the game metaphor: heaven as a place above the clouds where the souls of dead people live, flowers as a metaphor for love and so on.
While the »game metaphors« work, the »literarily metaphors« are virtually flowered, misty-eyed, outdated or worn-out and well… hokey. If we would be around 1750 and this would be a romantic Goethe poem or something, it would be something else.
Sending flowers to the sky to a dead person with the feeling of the lack of control are for itself no art, thats why I personally don’t think that the game mechanics make it art, even though they support the picture very well.
A nice idea, done very well nonetheless.
It interests me that a concept that would probably be accepted in another medium isn’t considered art when it is made into a game.
Hypothetically speaking, an artist could choose to create a situation like this with real objects. A bottle could be hung from an ascending balloon, and flowers could rain down on it and stick to it. That music could also be played, if desired. I wouldn’t expect any huge argument against this being performance art.
It’s as if any old thing can sneak in under the radar when you’re working in an accepted medium, but everyone is being hyper-vigilant to make sure that no games are undeservedly considered art. Perhaps we need an Andres Segovia of the video game to legitimize the medium.
No matter what they say – games are art – well some games are art, some just craft.
I played it. After fourty four flowers I gave up, and watched it. There didn’t seem to be any point to it. There was a weird moment where I was playing the game without doing anything. I say its art.
Maybe we can assign different types of goal orientation to goals rooted in mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics respetively. Explicit tactical goals are rooted in mechanics, implicit strategic goals are rooted in dynamics, and induced personal goals are rooted in aesthetics. This is a game you can only like if you achieve aesthetic goals you’re invited to set for yourself. If you don’t think its art, its because you haven’t figured out how to win.
I met up with an old friend last night who I believe is up for an Emmy and a Peabody this year. His brother is a game designer at a certain studio in Boston. We had a brief conversation about whether games are art. He claimed that games are art and presented a compelling argument. I maintained my argument that games are not art, that games are something else entirely. I used my argument about interactivity. He just called games "interactive art". Sorry, art, but I must protest. Games are games, not art.
[…] Koster has a very New Yorker-style explanation on his website about the title. It’s not very often that we get to use a word like […]
Games can be art. In the bluntest sense, art is any sort of unnartual creation or artifice. Fine art, however, evokes a sense of beauty or extrodinary significance by using metaphor or a semiological language. So why can’t the elements of a game work together to create such a metaphor, to create art?
I’m still writing my treatise on why vying for acceptance of games into the in-crowd through art is detrimental to the recognition of games as something more profound, so I will not get into the details here. The bottom line is that art only participates in the communication cycle as data. Art is inherently meaningless. Humans create meaning and attach that meaning to things called art. That “sense of beauty” and that “extraordinary significance” are meanings you created! You simply associate objects and concepts with the meaning you create to serve as bookmarks in the story of your life. That’s part of how we cognize our environment, make sense of the world, and make our sense of the world our world.
Games are not art. Games are products of design. Games are games. That does not mean that games cannot be meaningful. Art does not own meaning. You do! We all do. The smooth, shiny stone that your lover gave to you after an amazing night on the beach is not recognized as art. It’s just a rock to everyone else. But it means something to you because you gave it that meaning. Games can be meaningful to some people the same way. I’m sure the games Raph has designed carry special meaning to him. Games are interactive. Art is not. Games are games. Art is art. There is no wisdom in moving for the acceptance and recognition of games as something different.
Art.
Everyone has their own ideas about what art is and what games are. Things like canvas and wooden picture frames are inexorably linked to what most people think of as art. If you put something in a picture frame, people will assume it is art, no matter what it is. In the same way, when you have computer graphics, music, a mouse cursor and a loading screen, people assume that what they are seeing is a game. And games are usually not art. So any attempt at communication, at true art, is lost on the player, who is too busy collecting flower powerups, indirectly controling his bottle avatar, and watching the heavenly ending cinematic. To be truely considered art, video games have to stop looking and feeling like video games.
Yes it is. Not perhaps a work of art for the ages but art nevertheless.
More importantly please keep up this kind of thoughtful criticism, it is needed at this time more than the work itself.
The more I hear the “are games art?” discussion the more I think that it just sort of misses the point. Or at least, creates an argument where one isn’t that useful. I mean, what’s “art”? This is a question of definition and not of existing meaning. Is that game very cool, does it create an interesting mood, can you interpret various meanings for it. Yes, yes, and yes. Does that make it art? Does it really matter? Ultimately, “art” is just a label and the merits of this game stand with or without it.
Games are interactive. Art is not.
There were plenty of interactive pieces at this: http://010101.sfmoma.org/start.html
But hey, what do they know? They’re only the SF MOMA.
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The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art can call their exhibitions what they please. The problem with the language of art is that the language of art is often myopic, unaware of the world beyond art. Those "plenty of interactive pieces" are not art. They are games. As computer and alternate reality games further enter the public consciousness, perhaps I will not be the only person to think as I do about this subject. Or maybe I’m just crazy. After all, what do I know about art? I’ve only been a musician for twelve years, a graphic designer for ten, and a college art student for a year.
Art. Like someone said above, you can basically do nothing and still enjoy it.
If you can have a heated argument over whether it’s art or not, which in turn can probably be interpreted as a performance, I’d call it art. 🙂
Very beautiful, I must force myself to find the time to play through all the Orisinal pieces.
I agree with most of your post, though I have to say I didn’t see the game nearly as “deeply” as you did. Perhaps I’m just shallow and/or a bit dense 🙂
One nit:
>In effect, from a strictly mechanical point of view, the game is about a lack of control.
I disagree here. The twice-removed nature of the controls make them *hard*, but like other such titles (MBU was a great example, btw), I have the sense as a player that given time I could master them. You clearly HAVE control, the control is just difficult.
A better way to convey a lack of control, if that’s what the designer was after, would have been to add elements that were, well, out of the players control. A random gust of wind now and again which robbed you of flowers (like the random occurences in life that rob us unexpectedly of a loved one) might have been enough to do the trick.
An interesting element which you didn’t mention was that, at least for the dense folks like me, it wasn’t clear you were heading to the pearly gates until they appeared. At that point, a little wave of guilt washes over you – “if I’d known, I’d have tried harder and gathered more”.
As a thought exercise; I also wonder if the game would have more or less impact if the end had been accompanied by a dedication at the end? “In loving memory of my aunt bertie”. Hmmm…
I think the label “art” does matter. I would like to see more kinds of games. One way to make this happen is to encourage artistic games as they can help grow the market for other genres.
Right now one of the reasons Games are being regulated but books are not (even though any child can buy a book from a local bookstore that is much more offensive than a game) is because books can point to Chekov, Wordsworth or Beckett, we cannot. As I have mentioned elsewhere games have been extremely important to societies in the past (Senet for example) and they can be so again.
Just to get really pretentious for a moment, I think every form of expression has a duty not just to please the maximum number of people (entertainment) but also to build civilisation (art). I think we game makers have so far done less at the second duty as we could. Any games like this no matter how sentimental are a tiny step in the right direction in my view.
According to our holy wikigrail, this piece of work would meet the requirements : it is a human production that stimulates human senses and mind. Note that the amount of stimulation one can experience may vary.
I would add that, as cinema and theatre, computer interactive productions are in fact more like composite arts (without the acting, costumes, etc., the script is not theatre but a kind of litterature).
This statement leads us to the very core nature of art and its role in human societies. A piece of art put a mirror in front of us. This mirror is crafted to reflects an aspect of our life and tries to make us adhere to it. It is done by triggering a positive emotional response in its audience.
Thus, in short, the role of a piece of art is to set the cultural boundaries of a human society.
Does ‘High delivery’, as a human production, set the cultural boudaries of a human society by triggering a positive emotional response in
its audience ? Definitely.
Yeah, I’d say art, and don’t discount the emotional atmosphere the music brings– that melancholy undertone is as important to the overall feel of the piece as the washed-out colors.
And as Kim Pallister points out, the object and the final destination aren’t immediately obvious. I first thought that the idea was to _avoid_ the flowers, so they wouldn’t weigh down the bottle and slow or reverse its travel upward. And when I got there and realized my mistake, there was that same pang of guilt– if I’d realized what I was supposed to be doing, I would have tried harder.
So, yeah– it’s a subtly tricky game and definitely art. Not great, immortal art, but small and thoughtful, and there’s nothing wrong with that.
I guess I’m not quite so literal when it comes to defining art. If you look up the definition of art on dictionary.com, the first definition will be something extra ordinary (to paraphrase). But others definitions suggest anything that involves skilled workman ship can be defined as art.
I definitely fall more towards the latter definition. If the game is created, it’s art. Everything mentioned above is aesthetic and subjective. What makes it art to Raph and not art another is based purely upon the subjective nature of each person.
Each person decides if they like it or not. If the the visuals, the gameplay, the audio does it for them. But to decide it’s not art because the game doesn’t work for you, in one way or another, doesn’t seem very logical to me.
I’ve only been a musician for twelve years, a graphic designer for ten
Well, then is music art? Are graphics art? Because you can see/hear those in the game respectively without interacting with it at all (short of hitting the start button which is no different then pressing play on an audio recording). It’s not a particularly engaging piece of art if that’s what you choose to do, but the question isn’t whether it’s good art or not, it’s whether it’s art at all.
Art.
That said, the entire conversation feels like masturbation to me.
It’s fun to get philosophical, but at the end of the day art is subjective and there’s no way to convince everyone that some external thing is art. The decision lies in the eye of the beholder. I’d rather see busy minds discover art in their own lens and then strike out to create more art as they see it. Better than trying to convince others that it can/is/should be art.
Well, Grim, would you describe the incidents at Abu-Ghraib as “abuse” and “mistreatment” or as “torture”? The sentiment is the same. We should recognize art as art, games as games, and music as music, instead of collectively devaluing these objects of meaning and the experiences they influence by commingling these separate and unique concepts under a generic and vague umbrella term for everything that inspires people to think.
So the question becomes, who defines those lines? You? Me? Some governing body? The point being, that because it’s subjective, those lines are defined differently be different people.
Which is exactly why getting hung up on one word/label can be a waste of time.
History. Glancing through art history, most art is representational art, or noninteractive models of perceptions of reality.
To us, everything is inherently subjective as what we call reality is what we individually perceive as reality. Perceptions of the world differ from one person to the next. What you see, hear, feel, smell, and taste is what you get, but what others see, hear, feel, smell, and taste is not the same. Language is a component of human interaction. We use language to communicate meaning to other people in order to make sense of the world together. Using language that accurately and effectively conveys meaning is hardly a waste of time. The real problem is using language in a way that persuades people to our particular point of view, a task made difficult by the variability of language and meaning.
In Generating Buy-In: Mastering the Language of Leadership, author Mark Walton writes, "We ‘think’ in stories. Stories, filled with pictures—images of life—are literally the language, the currency of our minds." I think he has a point. That’s why I say history defines those lines because history is filled with stories that we can retrospectively analyze to discover the appropriate meaning to attach to the word "art". On the other hand, I don’t think we need to define "art" in order to define "game".
Thanks, I know what language is. The word “art”, in this context, doesn’t accurately and effectively convey meaning. Because it’s too subjective. Because we don’t know what the other person means when they say it. Some words such as the word “5” are very easily shared as a concept to others. Some things such as “love” or “justice” or “art” are obviously far more subjective in we lack a common understanding of what they entail.
So what we end up doing is we talk about other things. The things I think are artful and the things you think are artful. Things that we both do share a good understanding of. We use words like “mood” and “theme” and “analogy” and “music” and many other things that DO convey something accurately and meaningful.
And then, when we’re done, if we agree on all the details, it hardly matters if we put the label “art” on it or not. If two people love each other, for example, does it really matter if they don’t ever call it love? Is the label art somehow imbuing something onto objects that wasn’t there before? And if it isn’t, doesn’t what is really there matter far more than the label?
the thing that got me was discovering that the song was “children of beslan”. at that moment i understood the meaning of the game, and found myself sitting here in tears.
yeah, it’s art. the gameplay is a way to engage one in the meditation on this meaning. powerful stuff packed into a little bit of flash.
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