Video Games as Art
The concept of “Video Games as Art” has been a hotly contested topic, with its origins coming into the mainstream only within the last decade. Many see gaming as nothing more than the puerile pursuit of young boys and bloodthirsty, mal-adjusted teenagers, and have been quickly dismissive of the “Games as art” belief. Roger Ebert himself wrote that he believes games could never be as artistically worthy as literature or cinema. Many others, myself included, beg to differ, and can attest that there are moments within video games that have struck us with such sadness, passion, or joy that no other word but art could possibly describe what we had been playing.
To be fair, the definition of “art” is a bit…murky, and depending who you ask could mean any number of things. And to be even MORE fair, there are an exceeding number of games out there which are most certainly NOT art… at least from my opinion. For every “Shadow of the Colossus” that gets released we get dozens upon dozens of forgettable first-person shooters. But the point of this article, as I fumble to get back on topic, is to display a couple of games, in no particular order, that I feel are unequivocally “art.” These are solely choices of my own opinion, and if you disagree with my opinions, or are absolutely horrified that I missed your favourite piece of gaming art, feel free to call me a moron.
1) Flower (PS3)
The concept behind Flower is simplicity itself: you are the petal of a flower, caught in the wind. Move the PS3 controller to shift your direction, hit the X button for the wind to propel you forward… and that’s it. No timers, no special moves, and only the barest of objectives to guide you. Your petal glides through this breathtaking landscape, touching flowers to open them, and as you open more flowers the landscape slowly changes around you, from a dullish grey to vibrantly beautiful, while calm, soothing music plays in the background.
Yet despite the seemingly nonexistent gameplay there is something enthralling about Flower. Bringing colour to dark and pallid fields gave me an incredible satisfaction, and anyone who witnesses Flower seems to have this same experience; my girlfriend, who is afraid of even holding a video game controller, got into Flower within seconds and loved it.
There’s even some semblance of a story to be had within the Flower universe, and although the plot is ambiguous it grabs your attention and compels you to continue. I’m not sure, but I’m pretty certain that by the end of the game I had saved the world through the power of nature. Or something.
2) Chrono Trigger (Snes)
The Super Nintendo’s swan song and the collaborative effort of Square and Enix (before they became one RPG super-conglomerate) created the greatest RPG from the greatest RPG generation; Chrono Trigger is hands down one of the best role-playing games ever made, and possibly one of the best games period. Everything about Chrono Trigger screams aesthetic beauty. The graphics, though dated by modern standards, are some of the best from the sprite era. Characters are colourful and expressive, monsters look…monstrous, bosses are unique and cool, and magic is all explody; it looks, in summation, amazing.
This is also the first video game where I was absolutely moved by the soundtrack. Don’t lie, if you’ve played this game you know Frog’s theme music off by heart, and were completely sucked in by the ominous tones of Magus’ Castle. In fact, I have the complete soundtrack on my iPhone, an honour that few other games have been given.
What takes this game and makes it art, however, is its story. Though Chrono Trigger’s overarching storyline is exceptional, especially considering it follows a traditional, almost archetypal “time-travelling” story concept, it was the singular moments within the story which managed to affect me most. Screw Sephiroth killing Aeris, I’ve never been more hit by a character’s death in an RPG than when Crono sacrifices himself and dies to save his teammates. True, you can bring him back to life later, but I didn’t know that at the time.
I feel like this may be the most debatable of my choices, but it’s one of the first games I thought of when contemplating this article. It look’s beautiful, its music moved me, and I held back tears the first time I watched Crono die. If that isn’t art than nothing is.
3) Jet Set Radio Future (Xbox)
A sequel to the Dreamcast’s stellar “Jet Grind Radio,” a game which I unfortunately never played, JSRF was the first game I ever played that I thought was truly “hip.” Made by now defunct Sega development team “Smilebit,” JSRF is one of the coolest games I’ve ever played. With its superb use of cel-shaded graphics, crazy Japan-ified hip-hop sound track (check out some of its songs on youtube if you haven’t heard any before, and I promise you won’t be disappointed), and an awesome “1984” meets “The Warriors” storyline involving rival graffiti artist gangs fighting both each other as well as the corrupt Tokyo police. The characters are as crazy and Japanese as you’d hope them to be, with individuals such as DJ Professor K, a personal hero of mine, inhabiting this game of cultural warfare.
Everything about this game just screams “Contemporary Art” to me. You fight club-toting cops by covering them in spray paint while in the background a man raps about the meaning of love. Beautiful. But what really pushes Jet Set Radio Future over from “purdy lookin’ moving picture” to an art form in my book is the thematic message at the core of this game’s narrative. Though it may seem hokey, it’s “Fight The Man with Art” and emphasis on the young being the future of culture and society truly spoke out at me. It’ll make you want to make the world a more beautiful place, any way you can. Now, I need to go and download this game’s soundtrack before I forget.
4) Bioshock (Xbox 360/PS3/PC)
I was going to start this paragraph off with a “Would you kindly?” reference but that shit’s been done to death now, so I’m just going to say that everything about this game is amazing and thought-provoking. Combine dystopian themes with a heavy dose of Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and you’re basically picking up what Bioshock is throwing down, and yet there’s still so much more going on. I knew this game was art when I had read no less than three massive articles discussing the “hidden meanings” behind Bioshock’s story, from it’s purported “anti-feminist” message to the argument that the game’s “anti-randian” themes are trying to compel players to overthrow contemporary capitalist beliefs. The moment I realized that some philosophy major at a liberal arts college was almost certainly writing his thesis on Bioshock was the moment I understood; if pretentious jerks are telling you that “you don’t REALLY understand something’s meaning” than it’s officially a work of art.
Seriously though, this game became a work of art in my mind the moment you finally come face to face with Andrew Ryan, and realize that you weren’t playing Bioshock so much as Bioshock was playing YOU. It was leading you along the whole while, and not simply in the way video games guide you from entrance to exit. It pulls back the curtain and announces that “Everything you’ve accomplished you did solely because we wanted you to,” and then promptly leaves you to pick up the pieces of your psyche. It brought me to the realization of whether I’m really controlling a game, or if it’s rather controlling me, guiding and nudging me forward, which I found vaguely disturbing. Bioshock is art not because of its setting, its music, or its graphics, which are all stunning, but from the simple fact that it BROKE MY MIND.
5) No More Heroes (Wii)
Though it may seem strange, this is the game that inspired me to write this article in the first place. This game is the very definition of “low art.” It’s rife with shit jokes (you save your game by going to the bathroom), juvenile sexual innuendo, and over-the-top violence. Game maker Goichi Suda (known as Suda51) even admitted that main character Travis Touchdown was based largely around Jackass icon Johnny Knoxville.
How then could I consider this game art? Well, first of all, its got style crammed into its every orifice. Every character and boss has their own “shtick,” from the old woman with an impossibly large gun to a man who looks like he desperately wishes to be a Mega Man villain, to a crooning cowboy armed with golden revolvers and daughter issues. It’s a “Who’s Who” of social dysfunction throughout the entire cast. The combat’s also beautiful, albeit in its own blood-drenched visceral way. Anyone else remember watching TV as a child and jumping up and down in hyperactive glee as Goku from Dragon Ball Z would beat the hell out of crazy costumed aliens? No More Heroes taps into this same pleasure zone. Watching Travis swing his beam sabre (which he, of course, purchased off of an online auction) into masked opponents while their limbs come off in an almost comedic arterial spray is a disturbing kind of gorgeous.
The game even plays off its own conventions. The characters are well aware they’re in a video game, and will repeatedly admit as much. After sitting through insane and inconsequential plot twist after plot twist Travis will exclaim that the player must be “totally confused by now.” The plot is a total parody of itself; it rewrites itself, ignores past events, and basically makes things up as it goes along. Case in point, the supposed last boss, who you never meet until the conflict itself, will admit to you he’s your father, only to be randomly killed by another character, who is your half-sister that you’ve also never met prior, and hence kill. The plot was designed to be incomprehensible, it seems, because there really isn’t one. You’re an anime otaku with a light saber set out to kill the world’s weirdest assholes. Everything else is fluff.
No More Heroes shouldn’t be art from any sort of classical sense, but its style and story create something incomprehensibly beautiful and fulfilling. Suda51 is the Andy Warhol or Quentin Tarantino of his medium; his work is so contemporary, so completely out of left field, that it’ll surely be inspiring future generations into breaking new ground in the genre of video games.
This is only a small selection of possible games which could be considered works of art, and I know there are dozens I’m likely forgetting altogether. These were just the first few which came to mind. I want your opinion on this topic now; tell me if you think games can be art, and if so which ones you’d consider to be art forms?
