In the pursuit of Art

ID:98019
 
Jul 4 2010, 7:30 am (Edited on Jul 4 2010, 10:09 am)
Keywords: design, motivation

Art Is

What is art? Don't even bother trying to universally define it, it is a word that has come to mean just about anything you can imagine. However, in the travels of my inner Internet nomad yesterday, my own personal definition coalesced in my head, trailed off my fingers, and onto a comment thread somewhere:
"Art is the betterment of thought through the invention of the truly novel."
It's a nice definition in that it explains not only the what of art but the why of it: truly novel things are needed to challenge our conventional thinking, lest the lack of stimuli cause us to fall into a rut of the same old ideas, and the artist emerges as an inventor dedicated to this task.

It also settles quite definitively what I find right or wrong with particular instances of art: when it is not very novel, it has little or no value to the human mind as stimuli, it's bad at being art.

There was once a point where I considered art a trivial waste of time. That is no longer the case: if exposure to an artist's invention, novel new stimuli, brings about a change of mind that leads to new practical inventions, then the artist is an essential component of human progress.

Art and Games

Famous film critic Roger Ebert wrote that games cannot be art, though he later recanted on the grounds that he is hardly an authority as to what a game really is. I would say that he was simply off target in an important regard: as pertains to art, games are merely a medium.

What unique artistic property do games bring as a medium? It is not that they convey an experience - all art does this. Nor is it unique that games can tell a story - books and film do this as well. The unique thing about games is that you play them.

Playing games props up an additional dimension in that you can feel closer to an experience and a story, true, but the important thing to consider as games being a medium of art is each individual game must offer a unique play experience to be novel. How they play is the foremost way in which games differentiate from each-other.

Games which are clones are not particularly good at being art because they have lost too much of their novelty. Without a unique play experience from a game they have already played, the players' minds are not introduced to the most important kind of new stimuli a game can bring, it is not advanced significantly.

It's little wonder that many players say they hate clones. It's little wonder that gaming as a medium seems significantly lessened now that imitation seems to be the rule.

Art, Games, and Me

These things are what my previous games have come to resemble thus far: Real time strategy games with their point and click interfaces. Role-playing games with their cursor navigation. Persistent accumulation of levels and gear for the sake of more accumulation. I thought I was doing people a favor by sticking to tried-and-true mechanics, but I just couldn't bring myself to finish them.

Now, I've come to understand why. I've been there before, I've even seen them combined, it's old hat. In drawing inspiration from games of the past, I ended up creating something that was too similar to them. I've accidentally been creating clones. When my muse realizes this, it recognizes bad art, it leaves me, my motivation dies. I was wondering where it went, now I know.

Then the solution is simple, is it not? Abandon the idea of the tried-and-true interface. Try something new. Make it novel. Make it change the way people think. Teaching an overgrown calculator to be "fun" is easy in comparison to my chosen task.
Jul 4 2010, 9:02 am
"I've been there before, I've even seen them combined, it's old hat. In drawing inspiration from games of the past, I ended up creating something that was too similar to them. I've accidentally been creating clones. When my muse realizes this, it recognizes bad art, it leaves me, my motivation dies."


I've fallen victim to this as well. It's why I tend to focus on board games and arcade action. The more abstract the mechanics, the more possibilities there seem to be.

Frankly, I think there's a lack of game design in the industry period. Most seem to focus on padding old designs with audio/graphical improvements, level design changes and stories. It usually bores the crap out of me.
Jul 4 2010, 9:28 am
Well, I have to say that I'm happy I've come to this realization. I've now a better idea why I'm here than I ever did. It used to really bother me when I shoehorned in an old tried-and-true mechanic, such as hit points, and I didn't know why, but now I do.
Jul 11 2010, 7:33 am
The human brain likes small jumps from what it knows to something new. Going off into the fringe is mostly risky with unlikely rewards. Of course, I would never discourage anyone from doing that unless it was my business partner. :)

ts
Jul 11 2010, 11:41 am
@Tsfreaks: While examining a market can be beneficial, failing to create new markets means death in the long run. Between the mainstream's shooter/racer-with-a-minor-twist and the independent scene's tower-defense/platformer-with-a-minor-twist, I often find myself left with little to play.

If you're not exploring mechanics, you're not exploring games. I'm happy when a medium gains access to a wider audience, but it's frustrating when that medium starts to cater to those who lack the previously-required urge to learn. It grows stale and plastic with fart jokes created for the lowest common denominator. It should be helping people rise.
Jul 11 2010, 12:29 pm
ACWraith wrote:
@Tsfreaks: While examining a market can be beneficial, failing to create new markets means death in the long run. Between the mainstream's shooter/racer-with-a-minor-twist and the independent scene's tower-defense/platformer-with-a-minor-twist, I often find myself left with little to play.

Your preaching to the choir here. There are millions of games and yet, I sit here twiddling my thumbs in frustration. I haven't touched my 360 in a nearly a year. I find myself playing Counter-Strike and TF2... *sigh*... still.

If you're not exploring mechanics, you're not exploring games.

I think success of a design is largely based on user expectations. If you make a game based on a well known genre and then provide a totally new human interface design (Example: Changing the way RTS units are selected), people can quickly get frustrated because well formed contracts in their brain are being broken.

On the flip side, with all new experiences where there is no existing genre or clone, you can get away with a lot more but your in the high risk with unlikely reward zone due to hit or miss.

I'm happy when a medium gains access to a wider audience, but it's frustrating when that medium starts to cater to those who lack the previously-required urge to learn.

Learn... I don't look for games that I want to learn. I look for new experiences. If I learn as part of the experience, that's fine. But it must be experience first and all else last. In other words, I'm looking for "Art" as Geldonyetich has put it.

Farmville. It's success is certainly not the quality or uniqueness of the game but more about the quality of human interaction. However, the people who were "herded" to Farmville were not looking for "Art" but did find it. Most of those people are non-gamers and to them, it's all new experiences. To us, it's mostly garbage or... yesterdays art.

The whole industry has banked on easily entertaining the "inexperienced" gamer vs the ever growing challenges of entertaining the experienced gamer.

I'm all for disrupting mainstream although I constantly wage my own war of "Art vs Profit". :|

ts

Jul 11 2010, 1:43 pm
@Tsfreaks: New experiences involve learning by definition. Unfortunately, the experiences most games seem to offer involve the same old interactions with a questionably integrated story. They teach about characters and plots rather than anything unique to the medium. As someone who enjoys games, I rage against interactive experiences. ;)