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Essay by Aliyn Raven
Video games have gained the status of art thanks to relevant laws passed in many countries through parliamentary votes.
But why so many difficulties for the sake of what is obvious to anyone and everyone at first sight?
Yes, when video games first appeared, they had neither meaning nor beauty.
It was a good way to kill time, but nothing more—no better than dominoes in the nearest cafe or grandma's home solitaire.
However, cinema was also once just a plug between the performances of dancers in a cabaret (if the next number was late). At best, a 2-3-minute movie was a way to quickly calm the audience in the theatre after intermission and divert their attention from the buffet, the lavatory, and gossip to the stage. Yes, yes, the very phrase "cinema(movie) theatre" comes from those same short videos with stupid gags that were shown in an ordinary stage theatre; the broadcast went on the curtain; no one has thought about a white screen yet.
Cinema was considered trash, a hopeless trinket, and a delight for fools. But one day, suddenly, movies turned from toy-trinkets to art, and no one even thought to argue with it.
When and how did this happen?
First, we need to understand where the border between a toy and art lies.
Dolls and cars from the nearest supermarket are only trinkets for children. Collectible dolls and cars are works of art.
Family photos and posters with photo arts.
Children change toys, break them, and forget. And you can tell so much about each collectible doll and car that it would be enough to fill a book.
Offering to look at a family photo album is the best way to get rid of overstaying guests. Photo posters are a great topic for a long conversation.
Art is a story that is equally meaningful to many different people.
But a story is just a listing of events. This is not enough. Something else is needed.
A meaning that is important to many. An idea that can unite many. A pain that torments many. Healing is needed by many.
This is the same quadra that separates art from lists and trinkets.
Cinematography became an art when the length of the film made it possible to tell not only how the klutz slipped on a banana peel but also where and why the person was going, how the fall made it difficult to achieve the goal, and how he or she or they dealt with the problem.
Meaning, idea, pain, healing. Without this content, there is no movie, no book, no painting, no music.
And then someone remembers "Black Square".
Rest assured, this work complies with the rules. But we'll talk a little later about how it does this and why it's related to video games.
Now let's look for the line between a video game, which is a toy, and art.
Of course, the power of digital hardware is very important. No matter how hard you try, you can't do anything more than throw a small pixel at a large one on primitive hardware.
However, we have long had both long films and powerful digital hardware that can easily handle the complex movements of photorealistic characters in a setting that is more realistic than our reality. But good works worthy of the title "art" are still scarce in both cinema and video games.
And yet, the situation is not hopeless.
Match3. Bored public transport passengers love it, and gamers hate it. A game without content; a toy game. But what if the outcome of the battle of the heroes depends on the number of points scored, and if you make a mistake, they die?
Oh, there are a lot of questions here about who is fighting and why, how well developed the lore and characters are, and whether the collection of triplets occurs logically or chaotically. The situation has changed, hasn't it?
What if, by collecting triplets, you needed to build a city with all the necessary infrastructure? So think about what is more important: turn three bushes into one tree to raise your index from the scale of clean air, or exchange them for three piles of bricks to get points from a smooth road for transporting goods. You can't get a new map area without raising the index, but you can't build without money, and your city will die without farm fields next to it and jobs for the people inside it. Silly Match3 has dramatically added adrenaline and challenging gaming challenges to your life, right?
Mahjong. These video games have a very distant resemblance to real mahjong, but the only thing that matters is how much the colouring of the dice conveys the atmosphere of East Asia and how deep the associations are with the ancient and rich cultures of this region.
Dreams and fantasies. The desire to touch something different, to enter another world—modern, past, or future. Pain that we are not there right now, and healing through interaction with the pictures on the dice. Immersion in reveries, creation of your own world—for which the video game itself is only a springboard, but what an effective one. Will this video game be art? Oh yeah.
There are thousands of video games with deep and clever plots about how heroes save the world, avenge murdered relatives, restore tragic events of the distant past through old letters and photographs, fight social injustice, establish love or family relationships, escape from captivity, etc. These games are amazing for the splendour of photorealistic graphics or the creativity of drawings.
But one day it turns out that those same pieces of indistinctly shaped pixels, which not so long ago were the only option for video games and were shocking with their ugliness and stupidity, can tell an amazing story about problems with self-esteem and self-realisation, about friendship and loneliness. I'm talking about "Thomas Was Alone". This game is reminiscent of those days in childhood when we suddenly got bored with expensive, beautiful toys from the store, and we made dolls and cars out of candy wrappers and tree leaves, right?
Or a video game has no plot and realistic visuals at all but makes you think about the variability of the world around you and your own soul, as "140" does.
And then "Black Square" and "Circles in a Circle" say hello to us. Art doesn't have a duty to tell a story. It can encourage us to ask questions of the world, thereby changing it. And in this case, video games give a head start to all paintings, books, and movies taken together, since through interactivity and our direct influence on the situation, we see the world wider and deeper, which means there are more questions to it.
No one argues that in the early years of its existence, the world of video games did not shine with intelligence and beauty. Well, cinema was no better in its infancy. Another thing is that cinema is much older than video games, and therefore we forgot the unsightly period of cinema's formation under the pressure of many masterpieces.
The same thing happens with video games. The gaming world has even started furious debates about who is a genius and who is mediocrity, who is a creator and who only wants money, just like it was with artists at all times (despite the fact that everyone wants high fees and rich customers).
The video game market is developing as quickly as the cinema market was in due time. This means many new masterpieces await us. And it's not necessary that only AAA-class work will conquer the world. NNs and online trading that doesn't require a physical medium have provided enormous opportunities for tiny indie teams.
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliyn_Raven
Video games have gained the status of art thanks to relevant laws passed in many countries through parliamentary votes.
But why so many difficulties for the sake of what is obvious to anyone and everyone at first sight?
Yes, when video games first appeared, they had neither meaning nor beauty.
It was a good way to kill time, but nothing more—no better than dominoes in the nearest cafe or grandma's home solitaire.
However, cinema was also once just a plug between the performances of dancers in a cabaret (if the next number was late). At best, a 2-3-minute movie was a way to quickly calm the audience in the theatre after intermission and divert their attention from the buffet, the lavatory, and gossip to the stage. Yes, yes, the very phrase "cinema(movie) theatre" comes from those same short videos with stupid gags that were shown in an ordinary stage theatre; the broadcast went on the curtain; no one has thought about a white screen yet.
Cinema was considered trash, a hopeless trinket, and a delight for fools. But one day, suddenly, movies turned from toy-trinkets to art, and no one even thought to argue with it.
When and how did this happen?
First, we need to understand where the border between a toy and art lies.
Dolls and cars from the nearest supermarket are only trinkets for children. Collectible dolls and cars are works of art.
Family photos and posters with photo arts.
Children change toys, break them, and forget. And you can tell so much about each collectible doll and car that it would be enough to fill a book.
Offering to look at a family photo album is the best way to get rid of overstaying guests. Photo posters are a great topic for a long conversation.
Art is a story that is equally meaningful to many different people.
But a story is just a listing of events. This is not enough. Something else is needed.
A meaning that is important to many. An idea that can unite many. A pain that torments many. Healing is needed by many.
This is the same quadra that separates art from lists and trinkets.
Cinematography became an art when the length of the film made it possible to tell not only how the klutz slipped on a banana peel but also where and why the person was going, how the fall made it difficult to achieve the goal, and how he or she or they dealt with the problem.
Meaning, idea, pain, healing. Without this content, there is no movie, no book, no painting, no music.
And then someone remembers "Black Square".
Rest assured, this work complies with the rules. But we'll talk a little later about how it does this and why it's related to video games.
Now let's look for the line between a video game, which is a toy, and art.
Of course, the power of digital hardware is very important. No matter how hard you try, you can't do anything more than throw a small pixel at a large one on primitive hardware.
However, we have long had both long films and powerful digital hardware that can easily handle the complex movements of photorealistic characters in a setting that is more realistic than our reality. But good works worthy of the title "art" are still scarce in both cinema and video games.
And yet, the situation is not hopeless.
Match3. Bored public transport passengers love it, and gamers hate it. A game without content; a toy game. But what if the outcome of the battle of the heroes depends on the number of points scored, and if you make a mistake, they die?
Oh, there are a lot of questions here about who is fighting and why, how well developed the lore and characters are, and whether the collection of triplets occurs logically or chaotically. The situation has changed, hasn't it?
What if, by collecting triplets, you needed to build a city with all the necessary infrastructure? So think about what is more important: turn three bushes into one tree to raise your index from the scale of clean air, or exchange them for three piles of bricks to get points from a smooth road for transporting goods. You can't get a new map area without raising the index, but you can't build without money, and your city will die without farm fields next to it and jobs for the people inside it. Silly Match3 has dramatically added adrenaline and challenging gaming challenges to your life, right?
Mahjong. These video games have a very distant resemblance to real mahjong, but the only thing that matters is how much the colouring of the dice conveys the atmosphere of East Asia and how deep the associations are with the ancient and rich cultures of this region.
Dreams and fantasies. The desire to touch something different, to enter another world—modern, past, or future. Pain that we are not there right now, and healing through interaction with the pictures on the dice. Immersion in reveries, creation of your own world—for which the video game itself is only a springboard, but what an effective one. Will this video game be art? Oh yeah.
There are thousands of video games with deep and clever plots about how heroes save the world, avenge murdered relatives, restore tragic events of the distant past through old letters and photographs, fight social injustice, establish love or family relationships, escape from captivity, etc. These games are amazing for the splendour of photorealistic graphics or the creativity of drawings.
But one day it turns out that those same pieces of indistinctly shaped pixels, which not so long ago were the only option for video games and were shocking with their ugliness and stupidity, can tell an amazing story about problems with self-esteem and self-realisation, about friendship and loneliness. I'm talking about "Thomas Was Alone". This game is reminiscent of those days in childhood when we suddenly got bored with expensive, beautiful toys from the store, and we made dolls and cars out of candy wrappers and tree leaves, right?
Or a video game has no plot and realistic visuals at all but makes you think about the variability of the world around you and your own soul, as "140" does.
And then "Black Square" and "Circles in a Circle" say hello to us. Art doesn't have a duty to tell a story. It can encourage us to ask questions of the world, thereby changing it. And in this case, video games give a head start to all paintings, books, and movies taken together, since through interactivity and our direct influence on the situation, we see the world wider and deeper, which means there are more questions to it.
No one argues that in the early years of its existence, the world of video games did not shine with intelligence and beauty. Well, cinema was no better in its infancy. Another thing is that cinema is much older than video games, and therefore we forgot the unsightly period of cinema's formation under the pressure of many masterpieces.
The same thing happens with video games. The gaming world has even started furious debates about who is a genius and who is mediocrity, who is a creator and who only wants money, just like it was with artists at all times (despite the fact that everyone wants high fees and rich customers).
The video game market is developing as quickly as the cinema market was in due time. This means many new masterpieces await us. And it's not necessary that only AAA-class work will conquer the world. NNs and online trading that doesn't require a physical medium have provided enormous opportunities for tiny indie teams.
https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aliyn_Raven
