Blogs

2000 words | 5 minutes Introduction As digital technology has become more and more advanced, what virtual programs can provide to the mass market of consumers has been greatly enhanced. Video games, a form of entertaining computer program that was in constant expansion of both scale and variety over the past decades, have also become more capable of initiating a hybrid, interactive experience. This hybrid experience video games bring to the player can sometimes be so delicate, that it’s considered art by many people around the world. Being both an art student and a game designer, the researcher is always interested in investigating such a polarizing topic. However, in this essay, the focus is not on the artistic value of video games — which has been done by many others long before. Instead, the researcher will analyze the art of systems in video games. After field researching various genres of video games, the researcher aims to prove that interactivity in video games can be artistic, and can differentiate video games from any other forms of art. This essay’s main focus will be on making connections between video games, responsive systems, interactivity, and art. Video games and art To get through the connections between the four factors addressed above, I will first analyze the relationship between video games and traditional art forms. Despite being a well-discussed topic, it is still worth mentioning because it’s an essential part of my thesis statement. Just like how literature, music photography, and theater art are integrated into the art of filmmaking, video games can contain many different art forms. Thanks to the flexibility of digital media, almost every art form in existence can be merged into a video game. Universally speaking, most video games employ the same principles as traditional canvas arts: perspective, form, value, and more, to create a window into an imaginative world[1]. Depending on the media and genre, a video game can be composed with multiple forms of art, including the ones that are thought to only exist in real life. For example, in the platformer game Limbo, the story is delivered without the characters saying a line[2]. Although animated digitally, the scenes and gestures truly show the artists’ mastery of theater arts. Only combining several other art forms can certainly make a computer program artistic, but is not enough to make a new type of art. Take film making as an example again — movies were once considered a “series of photography” in its early stage[3], but later became an important art medium thanks to the technique of montage. Digital media, while able to joining all traditional art forms together, needs a unique core technique enough to define itself as an independent form of art. This means that the technique should be capable to give a non-art digital program artistic value without relying heavily on certain other art styles. From my understanding of game design and art, this core element is the design of interactive systems. Video games and interactivity Until this day, people still haven’t come to an agreement on what the first video game is. There are several candidates, including Tennis for Two[4], OXO[5], and Spacewar![6]. However, these programs all share a similarity: they are all interactive. At least one method of input is required to exist in the program since the very start of video game history. Unlike radios and TVs, instead of using the input to switch between multiple streams of content, video games respond to an input by directly changing the content itself, no matter if the change is displayed, broadcasted, or stored in the database. It was this kind of immediate and preservable feedback that made video games “interactive”. However, to make an interactive computer program into a video game, a designer also has to meet the other fundamental factors of game design: Goals, rules, problem-solving, entertainment, etc.[7] Just like a board game needs its rules to be executed when being played, a video game also needs the program to gather all the inputs and logically organize them to be playable. Therefore, in a video game, there are not only singular immediate interactions but also complex, systemic interactivity. Spacewar! OXO Tennis For Two Previous Next But what is complex and systemic interactivity? Complex systems are systems that do more than the sum of each part of them, and they are everywhere in our daily lives[8]. In fact, we rely on complex systems to live. We live under the laws of physics, the earth’s ecosystem, our nation’s constitution, and many more systems that give feedback to our actions. Our living quality is optimized by complex systems too, such as vehicles, artificial chemicals, electronics, and the main topic of this paper — video games. Viewing from the most fundamental aspect, most complex systems in a video game can be explained with programming languages and electronic routings, but they don’t represent systemic interactivity. The ones on the user’s end do, such as inventory, messaging, and battling. These systems are closer to people’s common sense, hence are easier to interact with. All of these systems are composed of individual objects’ properties and behaviors, as well as their relationships with other objects in the scene.[9] By observing these patterns, the player gets to understand the complex systems under the game’s surface, and ultimately develop their own tactics and strategies of playing.[10] Along the way, the player will also get familiar with the aesthetics and the narrations of the game. A summarization of development and playing process of a video game. However, these two elements are not as essential to a video game as interactivity. Input and output are an inseparable part of video games, while there are plenty of games out there that has other parts of them taken away. MUD games such as Zork[11] does not have any asset besides their logo, and vector multiplayer games such as Agar.io[12] contains minimal assets and no narration at all. A pioneer arcade game located in Brooklyn, New York called Line wobbler uses an LED