Popular and academic recognition of video games as an artistic medium is utopia?
I do not think so. Cinema was initially perceived as a technological medium voted to entertainment for its own sake, without any artistic future. 30-40 years after its birth, it began to assert itself as an artistic medium; this perception has been finally fixed in the academic and popular culture after the Second World War. Why? 30-40 years is the time necessary to children and young people born in the period of the first film projections to grow and become adults! A simple matter of generational change! Historical cycles, really! Now we find ourselves in the same situation with regard to gaming. No coincidence that the topic about relationship between art and video games is flashing everywhere. The signs are all here. Some world-class museums such as the MOMA or the Smithsonian American Museum exhibited video games as works of artistic design, right next to Mondrian’s paintings; the so-called pixel art has established itself at an academic level, and it is just one of the currents of the Videogame Art, art inspired by video games. Not to count dissertations and academic papers on the subject; you can find a few in Suggested Bibliography .
In this historical moment market is a step back. Production core is still voted to mass entertainment. The big companies choose to make large and immediate gains with minimal costs by recycling as much as possible the same ideas and game mechanics. And so we have the mainstream production dominated by “jump, shoot, kill and fight” games, “ignorant”, full of muscular men, where you do only click click click and nothing else. They recycle the same mechanics, the same engine, the same algorithms, just with a little “make-up” for graphics and sound. Producing a creative title, full of contents, with a serious story, a well-made direction, smart dialogues, artistic screenplay, good actors, original aesthetics, innovative and interactive gameplay etc. etc. obviously it has a higher cost. In short, paying for a good artistic section results in a higher cost, and it is more risky, especially in crisis years, because an artistic product is not for everyone! Maybe the kids are going to be bored! Another pretty big slice is mobile market, mostly oriented to random entertainment of those who play during the way to work.
Yet the more mature audience searching for artistic video games with the same expressive power of a good movie, is constantly growing. My generation is the first one grown up with Donkey Kong, Pac Man and Space Invaders and now playing significant roles in society. For example, I am an italian high school teacher.
Such a generation is already very demanding for depth and maturity in video games. Among this audience, i would like to be clear not to appear discriminatory, there are also the more sensitive and cultured kids and teens. It is very important to engage them through education. The next generations have to be even more demanding!
As said, today market responds poorly. We are in lean years because of the global crisis! But the winds of change are palpable.
At E3 2015 all the big companies have emphasized their commitment to support the most promising artistic indie productions. There are indie companies developing works of great artistic breath (see advices on the Curator Page).
There is more. The mainstream AAA productions are increasingly managing to mix artisitic contents, at least before the crisis peak. Think about Deus Ex-Human Revolution, Assassin’s Creed 2, The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption, Alien Isolation, Tomb Raider (Reboot) , etc. etc. Just like Cinema, where sometimes the hollywoodian productions managed to mix exciting show, good entertainment, mature content and deep art; see the movie Titanic by James Cameron, The Pianist by Roman Polansky or the more recent The Wolves of Wall Street by Martin Scorsese, just to mention a few.
And what about the enormous success recently gained by an alternative videogame like Life is Strange? It is a clear proof of the running evolution. Players need good stories filled with high contents and made precious by fine aesthetics.
It must be clear that all expressive media, from literature to cinema, always meets mass entertainment needs at first. We recognize to cinema the status of seventh art, but the bulk of movies production is devoted to entertainment, often even vulgar!
I do not expect that for video games might be different. I expect only that popular perception and academic recognition of Video Games as art become stronger and the average cultural profile of mature gamers grows even further; it should also lead to greater quality of mainstream titles and greater diffusion of indie titles. As indeed it is just happening because of evolution and automatization of development tools. More and more people can be videogames artists thanks to the recent technological leap of development tools; now also a small indie team with not so many financial resources can use high tech tools for developing indie AAA titles!
The times are good, the change is underway. Video games are increasingly perceived as the “tenth art” (Comics is the ninth)! They are the more and more intended as virtual interactive experiences and not only as challenges or electronic toys. Developers are focusing the more and more on storytelling, contents and aesthetics. Maybe VGArt is just intercepting and riding the new wind in advance, VGArt mission is to encourage this change.
It depends on the passion of all of us, players, producers and developers! Together we will succeed and VGArt will be the Cahiers des Jeux Vidéo! 🙂
Video Games Art 