Citizen Game

Chuck Palahniuk's 1996 Fight Club, which went on to become a popular film, is not only a best selling novel but a relevant deconstruction of the social emasculation of modern male culture. Radiohead's 1998 OK Computer which went on to award winning commercial success in the US and UK is also a unique and creative exploration of sound and atmosphere that has been recognized as one of the best albums of all time and compared to The Beatles. Meaningful and popular are not necessarily the antonyms often suggested by cynics of modern entertainment; it's just not the status quo. Nor should it be.

Outstanding creative works that are both popular and significant are, at this very moment, being produced; work imbued with meaning that stir the imagination while proving profitable still exist in all forms or artistic expression. All forms, that is, with the possible exception of video games, which is seen by many to not have produced a quintessential or meaningful work that transcends to some nebulous higher tier of quality.

It's become, I realize, something of a cliché to ask where is The Godfather, Romeo and Juliet or Citizen Kane of video games. It's the kind of whiny intellectualism that fails to simply be satisfied with the endless entertainment provided by our games, and is probably like wondering when roller coasters will become educational. Mostly, I'm like the average gamer and don't worry much anymore about when Half-Life will both involve the offing of headcrabs while driving me to deeper contemplative states on the human condition. I'm relatively content now to accept that Picard soliloquies to Data about being human will be far deeper explorations of metaphysical concepts than pretty much any video game.

Except Ken Levine in his comments in our Bioshock preview earlier this week, damn that man, has got me curious again with his talk of Objectivism and Ayn Rand. That's daring stuff to be talking about when trying to sell a video game. While he's certainly pragmatic about having to hide the philosophical stuff behind the "kick ass shooter", it's obviously on the man's mind. But, the more I think about it, the more I believe that, begging Levine's pardon, the reason we don't see video games with meaningful resonance, whatever that exactly means, is that for all practical purposes it can't be done.

There will never be a Citizen Kane, or Atlas Shrugged for that matter, of video gaming.

The mischaracterization of the tech entertainment industry as an under-sexed club of comic-book loving, man-boy nerds is as flawed as any stereotype. Looking around our own population here in this quiet corner we are a cross-section of society representing a variety of stages of life and sophistications. The industry, both its consumers and professionals, has amassed as talented and intelligent people in positions of power as film, publishing or television. So, there's simply no lack of creative or practical resources to have met the goal of creating a truly meaningful piece of art in game form, if such a beast is assumed to be possible.

There are smart people working hard to make exactly the games that are meant to have meaning, and time and again they seem thwarted not by lack of effort or talent, but apparently by the medium itself. If Ken Levine's Bioshock does not turn out to offer deep meditations on mankind as he seems to hope, I don't think the reason will be for lack of ability. The fault is not with the creator but the creation.

The structure of narrative in gaming itself is a big problem. So called meaningful works of art, particularly those like games that involve a story, usually measure progress not by an accumulation of accoutrements, be they weapons, powers, levels or stats, as games so often do. Growth in narrative can be married to loss, hopelessness and self-realization, where even the best games are about overcoming discreet goals to forward a story. It's not that video games couldn't do this as well. It's that we wouldn't want them to. Gamers, as a rule, don't like to have to lose in order to win, and this begins what could otherwise be a long discussion on why interactivity is less empathic than passivity.

It's counter-intuitive. One might expect that by investing a player into the part of the hero, the player would identify with that character and be more invested in the role. But my own highly unscientific and logically porous observation is that, instead, gamers become selfish about the character, infuse the game with their own frustrations that tend to make us mad rather than contemplative when disaster strikes. Loss and struggle are much easier to bear when we are passively sympathetic rather than actively involved. This is probably why people are a lot more likely to seek out meaning about the human condition by watching a fictional character experience true suffering rather than having to endure it ourselves.

So, when people talk about trying to move these common notions of artistic meaning onto gaming it feels artificial. Meaningful art takes many forms, and there's no question that from a perspective of pure aesthetics gaming has achieved numerous successes. Just not the same kinds as cinema, literature or music. When we ask where is the Citizen Kane of gaming, we are not asking about quality of product, but we seem to be asking when gaming will teach us something larger about our society, our philosophy, our mortality and ourselves.

In some ways, we already have that. Maybe it's just that we don't like what we see, don't care for the meaning of the dystopian futures we keep crafting to shoot aliens in, don't like the image in the mirror that violent video games show us, don't want to see that Civilization itself is bound up in the war, deceit and greed exemplified by the game of the same name. What we seem to really want is something that is both profound but more importantly affirming, the Picard nonsense about the value of humanity for humanity's sake. And, when our books and movies describe the failures of the human condition our refuge is in the passivity and inevitability of the narrative. Video gaming makes it personal. What gaming does that books, movies, music and no other form of art can is steal the certainty of fate. It puts free will back in our own hands, and like life itself sets us goals that we either achieve or fail.

If books and movies are a glimpse into broad statements about other people, video games are a mirror.

And, that has value too. Either way, I've stopped looking for Citizen Game, and while I look forward to Levine's Bioshock and its brave attempt to explore Objectivism, mostly I'm just in it for the kick ass shooter. What I've learned about myself is that I don't ride the rollercoaster for deep meditations on life.

Comments

Excellently written. Never have we had a game, that I can think of, where reflection and contemplation on what we have achieved in the game has resulted in our own self awareness of ourselves and/or our society. Perhaps there is a message within the game to show us a possible error in the ways of human kind but because we are often knee deep in that message we don't see it as such. Instead it's just a necessary plot driven force that allows us to play in a fictional environment and have fun. One could easily argue that in the game series Fallout that it's sending us a message of just how bad off the earth would be after a nuclear holocaust. However do we suddenly feel the need to go out and stamp the pavement with signs made of wood and cardboard proclaiming the downfall of society due to nuclear weapons and war? Not to my knowledge has any game motivated us the player to extend a message to others in society and share the wealth of knowledge it has bestowed upon us. It simply tells us a story at the best and usually not even that. In books and movies we watch the characters on screen or in the story go through their lives with some experience. Or in other non-fiction books we read upon history and the telling of events through another person's experiences and research. Narrative, informational and neither requires our personal intervention to drive it's telling. Even the most ingenious of video games, telling some epic story that would stir the heart of any passive reader, requires our personal interaction to drive the story forward. The same goes for Roleplaying games in book format through table top. We are absolutely driven to be involved in the story as characters within the game and we do feel emotionally invested into our characters however does a game like Twilight 2000 make us realize the errors of World War III? No more than Fallout the video game would. Perhaps the simple fact that we are involved in the story telling process is the limiting factor in the genre of video games and table top alike. We do not see the forest for the trees in a sense. We can not see the bigger picture because the bigger picture is never put into perspective for we are but a single character within the story which in turn is only a part of the big picture.

Perhaps a summary or long wrap up at the end of a video game, showing the outcomes of all our interaction and action within the game might better give us that grand scope we need and give us the time for reflection on our actions. Perhaps then a message might be given that actually hits home. Though I have not seen it and until I have I won't know if it would work or not.

Excellent article! Cheers.

I'm sorry, Elysium, but I can't help think of the Kids in the Hall 'Citizen Kane' sketch.

Good read, though.

Elysium wrote:

But my own highly unscientific and logically porous observation is that, instead, gamers become selfish about the character, infuse the game with their own frustrations that tend to make us mad rather than contemplative when disaster strikes.

I agree. Take Ico, for example: it takes a deliberately frustrating and much-hated escort mission mechanic and works it into an incredibly powerful examination of deeper themes (helplessness, companionship, sacrifice, etc). Yet that escort mission setup stops plenty of gamers in their tracks.

Elysium wrote:

And, that has value too. Either way, I've stopped looking for Citizen Game, and while I look forward to Levine's Bioshock and its brave attempt to explore Objectivism, mostly I'm just in it for the kick ass shooter. What I've learned about myself is that I don't ride the rollercoaster for deep meditations on life.

Same here. But games don't always have to be rollercoasters, do they? I like a turn on the ferris wheel now and then.

Great article, Ely, and great points.

How often does one reflect life while living it?

But I wouldn't go as far as saying games aren't empathic, it's just another kind of. Like kilroy said, maybe an epilogue which presents the world and how you affected it could work.

I need to think about this a bit more, but I disagree with you on your unscientific point that gamers don't like to lose before they win. If the loss is storywise, and thus separated from the game and the player's involvement, the player will keep on going. But I need to reflect a bit more on this.

Thanks for the brain food, the zombie horde will thank you when the invasion commences

Why do we have to have a game that is a direct corrolation to Citizen Kane, or whatever other movie? I can't really compare any classic paintings to classic movies. I can't really compare many classic albums to classic movies.

Gaming is its own medium, and its own industry. Games can stand on their own merits without having to compare them to movies all the time.

I believe they do stand on their own, but not with the same merits as other media. The emotions felt (if any) are more direct instead of reflective, because it's interactive and not passive. On the other hand, stories are not interactive, so games with stories create an interesting and unique blend of interaction and distance. This hasn't been explored enough imo, and still has tons of potential. To say it's impossible to get gamers to confront themselves with loss is a step too far, but again: I'm thinking as I write and this brain food has yet to be digested fully. Hopefully the result of that isn't in line with that metaphore

In any case, no-one ever attacked the independence of games as a medium or its merits. It's merits just don't lie with contemplative storytelling.

Says Ely

Interesting.

However, you have to consider that it took movies a long time to reach this point. Cinema was, arguably, invented by Lumière in 1895. Citizen Kane debuted in 1941. So it took cinema 46 years to reach a point where it was challenging people's notions of the human condition.

I don't think we can even begin to count games as being able to generate this same sort of impact until very recently as their past visual quality creates a dissonance with any type of challenging or serious material. Could Combat on the Atari 2600 some how have said something about the brutality of war in the way Full Metal Jacket did?

In spite of gamers' "gameplay matters most" mantra, visual quality is extremely important. It is the dominant sensory input for most of us. Cinema is a visual medium. Games are as well, just one in which the gamer has a modicum of control or input. Before we can have games make us ask ourselves difficult questions, games need to be able to make us "suspend disbelief" for a sustained period of time and believe in the characters that are portrayed. Well, it's difficult to believe in characters when they're not even human. It also wouldn't hurt if the characters weren't always some sort of space marine and they weren't always fighting some deadly horde race bent on wiping out civilization.

I think gaming is just now beginning to reach a level of graphical quality where upon the average person can look at games and suspend their disbelief long enough to have the game tell them a meaningful story. (Side example: Pixar, Dreamworks, etc. have all shown that people can empathize with CGI. Hell, people have been empathizing with Disney cartoons and anime for even longer. But people could look at them and recognize them as human, and they were well written and had interesting stories.) I think it is possible for games to eventually challenge us intellectually and philosophically, but we are perhaps still a bit aways from that day.

P.S.

The only game that has ever even begun to make me think in any significant way was Deus Ex. The over all storyline, the characters, the gameplay and settings, the many books lying around... All of it taken together made me question my motivations as I went through the game and how I decided to play it.

However, you have to consider that it took movies a long time to reach this point. Cinema was, arguably, invented by Lumière in 1895. Citizen Kane debuted in 1941. So it took cinema 46 years to reach a point where it was challenging people'snotions of the human condition.

Well, Citizen Kane is merely the cliche example, cinema had already reached impressive successes before Kane, for example 1927's Metropolis or the works of Chaplin. And gaming isn't terribly young - roughly 30 now - so the arguments of gaming's infancy hold increasingly less water. However, like I said I wouldn't hold my breath for the big achingly meaningful work in gaming, and I agree with those who say we don't necessarily need an analogue to films or books.

Cinema is a visual medium. Games are as well, just one in which the gamer has a modicum of control or input. Before we can have games make us ask ourselves difficult questions, games need to be able to make us "suspend disbelief" for a sustained period of time and believe in the characters that are portrayed. Well, it's difficult to believe in characters when they're not even human

My first inclination is to say that literature destroys this perspective, except that I think because games attempt to enter the visual medium, they have to be judged by the images they portray. Literature gets away with this simply because they leave images to the mind of the consumer entirely, but, of course, they still must draw compelling descriptions of the world. I might even argue that some of the most compelling games on an interpretive level were the Infocom text-adventures from back in the day. By not having images, focussing on story-telling, they were able to achieve things that modern video games cannot because of the need to portray a flawed visual representation of the story.

My point is that I see where you're coming from.

Here's the thing. I can agree with almost all the points you use to make your argument, and yet I viscerally disagree with the conclusion.

The very idea of a "Citizen Kane of games" is just as misguided, annoying, and frustrating as the "Lester Bangs" thing (with all due respect for Klosterman, I give him props for stirring the pot).

We no more need or should expect or should want a CK of games any more than 1950's rock pioneers sat around wondering where the Euripides of that form was, laying out the realism that would become modern blues. Arguing that the medium itself is somehow incapable of producing meaningful or impactful work is just -- gah!

The broader question is why do we care? Is it that we long for an art form we all love to have societal value and meaning? Too late. LONG since happened. And our seminal works will be no more similar to CK than CK was to Pachelbel's Canon in D or the architecture of Florence. The comparisons are meaningless but for their impact.

The value in games as a societal force is not in their depth so much as it is in their breadth. Games bring in a wide, diverse audience, and one that will become increasingly so. This creates -- like prime time TV -- an opportunity to deepen any dialogue across far more of society than CK did or does. What percentage of US citizens between the ages of 15 and 45 do you think have SEEN CK? It was a dismal box office failure on release, ruined Welles career for the rest of his life, and ranks almost 2000 down in Amazon sales.

Does this make it a bad movie? No. Does it mean it's not influential? No. But it does mean as a point of cultural relevance for today's influencable audience, it's largely an irrelevant piece of the past.

Sorry if this sounds combative or defensive -- well, i guess it is. It's just that I think games *are* having the kinds of influence you're talking about here, and whether they achieve some lofty level of allusion by tossing red ryder sleds on bonfires is the kind of argument that just ends up pissing me off.

I also think that CK was a heavy handed send-up of Hearst that in context has the subtlety of a Michael Moore film, so feel free to just dismiss me out of hand. I'll go back to my cave now.

Well written, meaningful, and impactful piece Elysium.

Ok, let's pack away Citizen Kane. I use it because it's the cliche, and it's admittedly not a strong cliche. But, for what you have in passion, Rabbit, I think you lack in example. The question is pretty basic. By whatever terms you choose to define it, show me a seminal work (or one that approaches cultural relevance) in the 30 years of gaming as an art form.

I accept that the popularity of gaming itself has cultural relevance, but that has little to do with the works of gaming. That's like saying bungie jumping is culturally relevant, which perhaps it is, but it doesn't give the act any meaning. It _is_ possible to compare arts on one aspect, to say that, say, Grapes of Wrath or Saving Private Ryan or Abbey Road or Starrey Night - whether they were immediately successful - have clear meaning and importance and states of art. If one is to look for it, what examples do we have that _anything_ similar is even possible in video games?

My argument is two-fold. 1) I don't think the medium makes the effort possible, and 2) that's fine.

and whether they achieve some lofty level of allusion by tossing red ryder sleds on bonfires is the kind of argument that just ends up pissing me off.

I agree. My point is that it's not coming, so stop looking for it.

Great Piece.
The key problem here lies in two areas:
A) The requirement that games be profitable means that games will never be able to reach a meaningful artistic level until the medium itself has penetrated into a market that will be able to appreciate it and make the game profitable.
B) The interactive nature of games require that it be fun and that we gather enjoyment out of it. Almost invariably, the films that "teach us something larger about our society, our philosophy, our mortality and ourselves" make us feel sad, disturbed, hopeless, or some similar powerful emotion that doesn't translate well to the gaming experience. We see movies like Schindlers List, The Piano, and even Fight club knowing that for 2 hours, we are going to be subjected to intense emotions that might not make us feel good, but will make us think. Would we even want to be subjected to similar emotions, but in an interactive experience stretched over 10-40 hours? We "play" video games, that verb doesn't lend itself to the kind of experience you're looking for.

Honestly, I think we will get to a point where "games" will be able to provide us with depth and meaning and convey important themes, but they won't be traditional games in the sense that they will be an interactive experience, but they won't be marketed as games and the "gameplay" will be unfamiliar. Perhaps something along the lines of the Facade game recently linked on the forums could provide us with this kind of experience (albeit with a much better text recognition system, but I digress), but that's nowhere close to a "Game".

All I know is that when this moment comes, it most certainly will NOT involve Quick Timer Events.

I think we care because we'd like to see games that have a more profound impact not on society at large, but on our own individual conciousness. We want to be able to say to people that games are "serious" or "adult" and be able to point to examples of works that are more than just surface level fun. The problem is that in the context of the medium, there is no way to describe what such a game would be, so we lean instead on insufficient analogs and metphors (film, literature, etc). But you can't really compare games to books or games to movies, and nor should you.

What you can say, observationally, is that no one has yet made a game that *does* have the same kind of emotional or intellectual impact on the individual as the greatest artisitic works in other media. At least I don't think so. Games attempt to use devices from those media (visuals, narrative, etc) to work towards that kind of impact, but there are mechanical (no good writers, really) and structural (gameplay and narrative don't really mix) reasons why this doesn't end up working out. I personally can't think of more than a single in-game narrative that is even as good as most children's books.

So, I agree with Rabbit's points about CK (I saw the movie, it's not that great), but I think I am in more agreement with the main conclusions of the original piece. Games have unquestionably had a significant mass cultural impact... but they haven't really made one that makes you think a lot past the final boss.

I have ruminated a bit about this in the past... the comparison to the Infocom games makes it necessary for me to shamelessly post a link to my own stuff here: http://tleaves.com/?p=612

Well were does SCMRPG fit into all this discussion? What ever your opinion, it certainly shows that "gaming" is capable of taking on very extreme issues. If you haven't played it, I beg you that you do. I couldn't think straight for about a week after I finished it and found it quite uncomfortable but interesting.

Why don't people mention comics/graphic novels as works of art either? Maus has won a special award from Pulizter and the likes of From Hell are difficult and satisfying read. I personally think people are still unable to accept that games are other then "light-weight" and "fun" and the same with comics. I found it interesting that during your podcast you and the others felt guilt when you played games at certain times. Why is it OK to do anything else other than play a few games at that time or even read a comic? Do gamers fell judged by other people now as we reach well into our 30's and our 40's?

I have a theory. When we have grey hair old men and women talk about games in loving tones and are buying them, then we shall see our classics. We've had glimpses in System Shock1/2, HL1/2, Planetscape and others but until the audience is big enough we won't see thought provoking games in the mainstream for a while yet. Also when your that age you just can't handle twitch based games like FPS and RTS so narrative based will be your staple diet with a few MMO's thrown in. Or maybe the other way around.

Oh and I do intend to play a lot of games when I'm 65+ and drawing my pension. WoW3 maybe. Paladin or something easy like that:)

Myst, Grim Fandango, Planescape: Torment, Okami, Electroplankton, -- all examples where I think authorial intent created a meaningful experience. Guitar Hero -- the use of the form to evoke something other than adrenalin, and create a personal emotional experience. DDR -- the involvement of the entire human body in the expression of music in ways that have simply never been achieved in music before. These may seem laughable today. Most people I know consider Opera laughable today. Maybe in 40-50 years they won't, which is the retrospective we're putting on things.

I just dug up my favorite tired article on this subject up from Gamasutra, which is worth a read. But ultimately it comes down to authorial intent I think. Welles set out to make something very different than the Farrely brothers, and thus CK is a very different use of the Medium than Dumb & Dumber. Most games are variations on Farrely borthers movies -- as is 99.9999% of the time committed to moving pictures -- TV commercials, porn, evangelists and talk shows use the same medium as Miller's Crossing.

To expect more than the very-occasional elevation of this medium beyond TSA security videos and sitcoms is irrational -- but to suggest that it's impossible -- well maybe I'm not articulate enough to explain it, but it annoys me.

But again, I think we're looking for the wrong things. DEEP does not make meaningful. You don't need to create a CK to ask what you ask: teach us something larger about our society, our philosophy, our mortality and ourselves.

Most people who have played Planescape:Torment agree that it's got a great and meaningful story, but it's biggest criticism is that it plays like a novel. Adventure games are about telling a tale, but they still play out as a series of puzzles to unlock said tale. Doom, Thief, Eternal Darkness, Resident Evil 4, and even Metroid Prime succeed at creating a pervasive atmosphere that affects the player. Half-Life 2 is the best action horror movie I've seen since Aliens. Members of Congress argue about the psychological impact of Grand Theft Auto. So what, exactly are we looking for here?

It seems that many gamers want a game that has the cultural relevance and significance of a powerful film, presumably because both are primarily visual mediums. But games themselves are quietly gaining the kind of cultural impact that you see for things like chess, poker, and football. Certainly my friends that share the gaming habit and I discuss what we are playing the way sports fans talk about a game the night before. Shared multi-player experiences are even more powerful in that way. And I don't even want to mention Korean Starcraft competitions.

I think that video games will remain, no matter whatever else they may be, games. Those that aren't tend to fail in the marketplace. Whether it's a college guy playing Guitar Hero on Veronica Mars or South Park riffing on World of Warcraft, games are already in the public consciousness. Perhaps they aren't as pervasive as we want them to be, but I'm a member of the Atari generation. I suspect things will be different for the Wii/360 generation.

I think there's something salient in describing games as more like a sport than an art form.

I would like to bring forward Elysium's quote in his article which is what I believe the article is stating most strongly, "When we ask where is the Citizen Kane of gaming, we are not asking about quality of product, but we seem to be asking when gaming will teach us something larger about our society, our philosophy, our mortality and ourselves.".

Rabbit says, But again, I think we're looking for the wrong things. DEEP does not make meaningful. You don't need to create a CK to ask what you ask: teach us something larger about our society, our philosophy, our mortality and ourselves.

There in lays the heart of the issue. Do games have to be extraordinary to promote a cultural response? No. I don't think GTA is anything special at all and yet it does cause a cultural response in that people believe it causes violent behavior and many feel it is a morally apprehensible game. Certainly it has provoked a response from the Christian Right and therefore from politicians that speak for them. This is a reaction to the content of the game and the game itself. However does the player, of the game, honestly reflect upon the game itself and any sort of message it may portray? Absolutely not. Does the player suddenly contemplate going out and running over some old lady and then getting out and beating her with a bat? I would hope not and so really there is nothing more to the game than mindless violence and other criminal activities. This is not a "DEEP" game to borrow Rabbits words, while it does effect society, mainly due to our {ableist slur} and sensationalized media, it is not culturally significant in the ways that Elysium describes.

So I think that Elysium and Rabbit are both looking at cultural significance in different ways. Comparing the Olympics to the X Games, The New York Times to the National Inquirer, the difference between important and significant to the shaping of humanity as apposed to simply being popular and trendy. Meryl Streep compared to Lindsay Lohan.

Elysium's article to me seem to be looking for the Culturally inspirational games not the Culturally popular games.

This piece is a first! I mean, Ely put together 1,156 words and not even once bemoaned the deloplorable state of "gaming journalism" the way he usually does. Congrats on the new achievement!

So, when people talk about trying to move these common notions of artistic meaning onto gaming it feels artificial. Meaningful art takes many forms, and there's no question that from a perspective of pure aesthetics gaming has achieved numerous successes.

I think the problem that we've had thus far is that any attempt in this direction has been blatant and heavy-handed in its implementation. If you look at the great novels, movies and paintings their underlying connotations don't always shine through and it is only after meditation, discussion or research that they come to light.

Take fight club for example. I'm not a great literary critic or knowledgeable about social themes etc and i never knew it had tones about emasculation of the male culture. I know it's a great film though and a fantastic commentary about self expression in a world that has become more sanitised than real.

Which games do this? How many games have themes that contrast themselves against our culture and provide critical comment on it in an unobvious way? Haze, for example, touts that it's a critique on modern warfare and political manouvering. But that shouldn't be how it's done. How is it done? I point you to Platoon or many of the other great war movies whose main focus takes the participant's attention from the message that it wants to get across.

[edit]

kilroy wrote:

There in lays the heart of the issue. Do games have to be extraordinary to promote a cultural response? No. I don't think GTA is anything special at all and yet it does cause a cultural response in that people believe it causes violent behavior and many feel it is a morally apprehensible game.

But that's not what "art" does, it's the opposite. Art is supposed to make the participant question themselves, their ethics, their assumptions, beliefs and their biases. Not make people who haven't experienced the art worried that it will have an effect on those who do. GTA is not art, nor does it inspire reflection - as most games do not.

Gorilla.800.lbs wrote:

This piece is a first! I mean, Ely put together 1,156 words and not even once bemoaned the deloplorable state of "gaming journalism" the way he usually does. Congrats on the new achievement! :P

IMAGE(http://achievements.schrankmonster.de/Achievement.aspx?text=Didn

Duoae wrote:

Art is supposed to make the participant question themselves, their ethics, their assumptions and their biases.

One word: Defcon.

Trachalio: thank you, sagely sir!!

I'm somewhat in the same boat as rabbit. I think that gaming has reached that point, in a way. However, I feel that it can evoke a reaction, but the limit isn't based in the age of the medium, but rather in the overall cultural acceptance of the medium. I look to many of the same games that rabbit mentions for examples, but there's one I see as being left out; Final Fantasy, or more specifically, FFVII. Ordinarily I tend to avoid spoilers, but at this point the game has been out for long enough that if you haven't had this spoiled already, you live a life far too sheltered. Towards the end of the first disc of play, at a point where you've presumably made a connection, albeit not terribly deep, to your characters and their moral dilemmas. Then, while chasing down a comrade who's gone off on her own in a somewhat last ditch effort to counteract events that have been set in motion, is killed in a rather brutal fashion. It wasn't really something that a lot of people expected. In many cases, it evoked an emotional response.

Looking at it from that aspect, I think that it is possible. However, to borrow the CK cliche for a bit, weak as it is, I don't think that currently, our culture as gamers makes it possible. There are certainly people who do want something to that effect in a game; I number myself among those. However, I look to the MMO genre to show that our culture and tendencies as gamers make it impossible. Very few companies are going to take a chance on something revolutionary like this. Nearly universally, you're going to find that they want to continue to make games like LoTRO, WoW, WAR and the like. Noone wants to take a chance on something that has a phenomenal chance of failure, but is revolutionary, similar to EVE Online. It's that barrier that will determine whether or not we get a truly emotionally evocative game, I think.

...Is all this going to mean less boobies in games?

rabbit wrote:
Duoae wrote:

Art is supposed to make the participant question themselves, their ethics, their assumptions and their biases.

One word: Defcon.

Good counter-point but i would submit that Defcon only really re-affirms that nucelear war - war in general - has no winners. It's on the way but not quite where we want it to be

H.P. Lovesauce wrote:

...Is all this going to mean less boobies in games?

Not necessarily but they'll definitely be killed in more interesting ways...

rabbit wrote:

Games bring in a wide, diverse audience, and one that will become increasingly so. This creates -- like prime time TV -- an opportunity to deepen any dialogue across far more of society than CK did or does.

While I concur with your thesis, this bit raised my brow. Have you seen prime time TV lately? Keith Olbermann is forced by his overlords to spend 15 minutes discussing American Idol . The opportunity most TV has is nigh-entirely overshadowed by the reality of its inanity. So it goes for wide-release films/music/games, for reasons Dysplastic pointed out elsewhere.

Dysplastic wrote:

Great Piece.
The key problem here lies in two areas:
A) The requirement that games be profitable means that games will never be able to reach a meaningful artistic level until the medium itself has penetrated into a market that will be able to appreciate it and make the game profitable.

2p: I blame the Madden franchise and movie tie-ins.

Elysium wrote:

I think there's something salient in describing games as more like a sport than an art form.

Can it not do both? I'm a retired Pro Rugby player and a Wow guild is unbelievably similar to a amateur club of a team sport. In fact its the only reason I play it because I now crave teamwork and co-op play seeing as its disappeared from my life. We are going for Magtherion tonight and it filling me full of the same emotions that I would get prior to a game. Not quite the same but similar and I can clearly see that.

As far as Art goes, I think it has been repeated a few times, but once the audience is there the more thought provoking games will come. The fact that we are asking the question and having the discussion proves it to me. Its just the "older" gamers are in there Mid-30s to 40s now and are in the minority.

No pop culture medium (nor anything at all for that matter) is exempt from being considered a serious piece of art. We learned these lessons long ago when Duchamp put his urinal in a museum and people started making their academic careers writing about hip-hop. Where there is intent and craft and something resembling beauty and meaning you will find art. But first someone needs to recognize it as such, and then convince others to believe the same.

So I think (going back to the Esquire piece Rabbit linked) it actually is more about criticism than it is about the medium. Motion Pictures were not regarded as culturally significant/meaningful until people started thinking and writing about them in that way.

Take Hitchcock or Film Noir or "Bonny and Clyde." Hitchcock wasn't taken seriously until Trouffet and his crew at Chaiers du Cinema (sp?) starting talking about him as a craftsman as well as an artist; pulpy hollywood b movies were regarded as trash, or at best guilty pleasures until the french new wave started creating a ruckus; and "Bonny and Clyde" was considered a disaster until Kael stepped up and had her say (both launching her career and inadvertently starting the most culturally significant era in american film, the american new wave or golden age of the 70s).

Whereas today we have game designers who grew up playing "pac-man" and "mario bros," tomorrow we will have designers who grew up playing "Bioshock" and "Spore." Whereas back when I was growing up we had "Nintendo Power" today we have "Gamers with Jobs," "Penny Arcade," and Seth Schiesel of the New York Times. This kind of exposure to an increasingly complex and challenging type of game culture will result in even more challenging works by future designers, and commentary by people who have taken this medium seriously for most of their formative years.

If you think video games are beyond the realm of art then put yourselves in the shoes of a viewer who actually saw "Citizen Kane" on the big screen....do you think you would have thought it was anything other than trash? For better or worse critics are out there for a reason and at their best they are the heralds of any new trend or art form.

So get heralding.

rabbit wrote:

What percentage of US citizens between the ages of 15 and 45 do you think have SEEN CK? It was a dismal box office failure on release, ruined Welles career for the rest of his life, and ranks almost 2000 down in Amazon sales.

Does this make it a bad movie? No. Does it mean it's not influential? No. But it does mean as a point of cultural relevance for today's influencable audience, it's largely an irrelevant piece of the past.

This is a misunderstanding of Kane's greatness. The film is a visual goldmine for other filmmakers, not audiences. Kane combined numerous technical innovations, deep focus, low-angle shots, overlapping audio, etc, which didn't seep into mainstream movies for another 20 years after Kane's release.

For non-filmmakers, I compare Kane to 2 of history's most notorious films, Birth of A Nation and Triumph of the Will. Triumph is of course the masterful Leni Riefenstahl Nazi documentary. Birth of a Nation is a largely forgotten silent film which chronicles the birth of the KKK after the Civil War, and was responsible for the resurgence of the modern Klan. The film is also responsible for just about every single modern film technique such as the close up, establishing shot, etc.

A more appropriate film would be The Godfather.

Bourbon ought to be syndicating for GWJ.