I May Not Know Much About Games, but I Know What I Like
September 24th, 2008
I want to take a little detour today and talk about something unrelated to my game development.
For years now I’ve been thinking about the debate over games as art. The topic is one of great contention within the industry. For every gamer that screams that Final Fantasy VII (or whatever version) changed their life, there’s another arguing that games can never be considered art. Even Roger Ebert (my absolute favourite movie reviewer) got in on the debate last year. I disagreed with a lot of his points, but I also agreed with some.
For myself, I keep coming down on different sides of the fence. Every time I sit down to write an essay on why games are, or are not, art, I end up convincing myself of the other.
The trouble is, I think we might be thinking about this all wrong. I watched the video posted online this morning of the opening 14 minutes of Little Big Planet. This “game” looks to defy our very notion of what we consider a game to be. The developers have been talking about how, yes, there is a game you can play in there. But you can also animate your own characters, that you have created, and even make them emote. You can create music, or tell stories with it. But is the game art?
But you see, I think that’s the wrong question to ask. I’m starting to wonder if maybe the games themselves aren’t art, but the result of a player interacting with the game might be. If this is the case, the game itself merely becomes the medium through which the art is created. It becomes the artist’s brush and canvas, through which the player is able to create art. If Little Big Planet delivers what it claims it will, it could become an entire creative medium through which people might create films, graphic novels, music, and yes, even games. So is it the game that’s art, or the result of playing with it that has the potential to be art?
I don’t know. I don’t have the answers; mostly just questions.
Owen