Author Archives: jimbo

Exhibition Review: The Art of Videogames

Today, I took a trip to the American Art Museum to check out The Art of Videogames, and here is what I found:

I was expecting a somewhat larger exhibit than what I ended up finding, but overall it was still interesting. The first of the three rooms gives an overview of the history of videogames. In the second, one finds 4 iconic titles to play as well as a fifth game called Flower, which is more art than game. Finally, the last room has every major console from Atari to Playstation 3, each with clips from four games.

My recommendation for the first room is to go slowly and watch the videos. There’s not a whole lot of text, so that’s where you learn the most about the exhibit. Here, they break the history of videogames into 5 major eras: Start, 8-bit, Bitwars, Transition, and Next Generation. This is also perhaps the most interesting feature of the exhibit. There are five screens side-by-side which show specific game-play elements have changed across the eras. It is striking to see how jumping, for example, has changed in 40 years, and a clip from each era plays simultaneously to highlight that progression. There are also interviews with luminaries in field about how they see videogames maturing as a medium for artistic and narrative expression.

The second room is the interactive one, with a game from each era that visitors can play. Four are classics: Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, Myst, and The Secret of Monkey Island. However, the fifth was one I had never seen: Flower. It came out in 2009 and is more of a pleasant, relaxation activity than a game. In it, the player is a gust of wind that goes around picking up flowers in a pleasant 3D world with soothing music that responds to the player’s activity. For me, this is the epitome of an art game.

The largest portion of the exhibit was the final room. Here, twenty game consoles are presented in chronological order and each has its most popular game in the genres of Target, Action, Adventure, and Tactics (full list here). For those who have been gaming for a while, the room provides a walk down memory lane with classics such as Sonic, Zelda, Tomb Raider, SimCity, Mario, and others. Take as long as you want in this room, there is a lot to take in. Then, just before the exit is a video discussing more of how videogames are coming to be a more important cultural force.

Overall, I enjoyed the exhibit, and the most interesting takeaway was seeing the progression of videogames all at once (specifically the 5-era display at the beginning). In fact, I wish I had spent more time in that first room watching the videos there. I especially recommend the exhibit for those in our class as an opportunity to see many of the games and consoles we discussed earlier in the semester when we went through an early history of vidoegames.

Finally, here are some pictures I took of the exhibit.

Videogames are Growing Up

Seamus Sullivan is a playwright by trade, and this background has given him some great insight into the analysis of narrative in videogames. One key idea is that making a story for a videogame is much like making a story in other media, with a few special items to take into consideration. The previous posts from today already summarize his key points (smile11), and mention that much of what he says applies as much to videogames as to other storytelling media (edang).

Building on that last idea, something struck me towards the end of the presentation: that videogames have become a serious medium for narrative. Much of what we have read this semester (and thus, the class discussions on those readings) has shied away from discussing videogames as stories in search of the more unique characteristics that set them apart from other media. Sullivan’s presentation was my first exposure to a thorough discussion of character development and narrative crafting in videogames. My biggest takeaway was that videogames are maturing as a medium and are beginning to offer the rich, layered stories that great movies and literature have provided for decades and centuries respectively. Sullivan used many of Valve’s hits to illustrate this. For example, Half-Life 2 tells the player about the game’s world not through a dry debriefing but by showing characters in the game interact in a way that quickly highlights their personality and relation to the main character.

Considering videogames as narratives provides a way of unearthing the depth of some games while seeing how poorly-done others are, and the ideas Sullivan discussed in his presentation provide a solid framework to begin a critique or creation.

Gender’s Influence on Gaming

Today’s discussion touched upon the identity of Chell and the effect that it has on the game. Specifically, we briefly discussed how the fact that she is female has an effect on the story and potentially the gameplay as well. This wasn’t a major theme for the class, but in case anyone wanted to do some further reading on the topic, there is an article I came across yesterday which specifically addresses how a person’s in-game gender can have an effect on how he or she plays (sometimes regardless of the player’s own gender).

The author found that many male gamers played as female characters in online multiplayer games not because of the enticing view but because of how other players treated them. Whereas, male characters tend to appear as brutes capable of not much more than fighting and destroying, female characters are often expected to have more of a personality, subtlety and the ability to think. Thus it can be an attempt to come off as more than a brute to other players in the game that men will sometimes take on a female avatar. Nevertheless, there are still many players who do choose female characters because of their often-exaggerated shapeliness.

Art History’s Newest Chapter

Concerning the chapter on videogames as art, Bogost talks about proceduralism as a method of making videogames that are art, but this is not the only way they can be considered as art. Rather, I think he severely limits his discussion of art by merely focusing on the art of the last two centuries: the modern rejection of realism and beauty, attempting to make the artefact the purpose of art itself. However, he does not give fair attention to the other 6000 years of Art History. Ancient civilizations used art as a way of telling stories and teaching their mythology (Egyptian hieroglyphics, European cave paintings). Then, with the rise of Classical art (Greece and Rome) this religious/mythical aspect became imbued with an attempt at representing beauty and reality (some would argue they are the same). With the rise of Chrisitanity and the loss of Classical methods, art shifted its primary aim toward teaching the beliefs of the Christian faith. But in the Renaissance, there is a renewed attempt at capturing beauty and realism in art (Botticelli, Caravaggio). This later led to art bringing up other, non-religious themes (e.g. the plight of the proletariat with the Realist movement in the 19th century). Taken together, the Classical movement (400 BC – 300AD) and its rebirth (1400-1900 AD) represent over a millennium of art seeking beauty and a representation of reality. So, then, why does Bogost totally neglect the art of the beautiful? If one were to look at the current trend of videogames, this would appear to be the direction it is taking (think Skyrim). And, if we think of literature as the art of storytelling, videogames have taken an impressive step in that direction with epic series such as Mass Effect or Uncharted (both in their third installments).

While I agree with Bogost that videogames deserve a place in the world of art, I think he oversimplifies art and limits the place of videogames in that realm. “Artgames” notwithstanding, the Smithsonian American Art Museum has an exhibit devoted to “Video Games as Art” and is largely a history of the medium. Like Duchamp’s toilet, if for no other reason than being in an art gallery, videogames per se have become a legitimate form of artistic expression.

One Platform to Rule Them All

It seems so natural to have competing videogame platforms. We’ve all grown up with it, and without those options, we might feel something missing in the gaming world. However, this may not be the best situation. In her post, skrause2 brings up a quote by Denis Dyack (cited from the Collins reading) that suggests a single platform is not only the best situation for hardware and software companies, but an inevitable situation.

I strongly agree with the first assertion Dyack makes: that a single, ubiquitous platform will streamline the development of hardware and software (he goes into some detail as to how exactly things would improve on pg 83 of Collins). However, it is the inevitability of the convergence that I am not so sure of. As it is, the videogame industry is huge and growing, which means the players driving it must be profiting as well. With seemingly unstoppable growth and relatively high profit margins, there does not seem to be much incentive for the Big 3 (Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo) to converge. Rather, with so much opportunity for growth, they are each trying to set themselves apart as the best console. Also, in an industry as big as videogames (and only getting bigger), there seems to be room for multiple, established consoles competing for users. So, even though a long-term consolidation would likely produce higher profit margins and better games, the short-term incentives are pushing the market in the opposite direction.

 

For concrete numbers and figures, refer to this 2008 article on the unstoppable growth of the videogame industry: http://seekingalpha.com/article/89124-the-video-game-industry-an-18-billion-entertainment-juggernaut

Perhaps We Can Make a Difference

http://ethisphere.com/how-nike-is-changing-the-world-one-factory-at-a-time/

Many people accuse Apple of not doing enough to enforce their supplier code of conduct. Their response in the last half decade has been to audit their suppliers (with more audits happening each year). However, this may not be enough. Among the comments to an article criticizing the poor efforts of electronics companies, one reader used Nike as an example of a company working together with its suppliers to improve conditions. Amazed that a company seemed to know something Apple didn’t, I looked more into it.

In fact, the giant multinational has gone far beyond merely auditing its suppliers and giving them a slap on the wrist for violations. They work together with the companies and try to understand the issues that lead to excessive overtime and poor working conditions. By educating suppliers on ways in which more humane conditions actually improve the bottom line and thinking through more flexible purchasing decisions on their part, Nike has concretely set out to improve the working conditions in its many third-world factories. Perhaps, Apple could spare a sliver of is $100 Billion of cash to engage more with suppliers as Nike is doing.

Comparing Video Games to Financial Markets

While thinking about Galloway’s special treatment of video games as a special kind of game, I initially thought “Aren’t they basically just really complex board games with a ton more pieces (i.e. millions of lines of code)?” Then, I realized there was more that separated video- and board-games than scale, in much the same way that there was something unique about the first financial institutions.

Before banks, lenders and borrowers had to find each other and trade directly. This worked for small economies, but limited the amount of money an entrepreneur could get to fund a new or growing business. Similarly, many games (board games included) require the direct action of the players to make it work. Every piece in Monopoly is moved by a human, with the exception of gravity and inertia working on the dice. This allows for great diversity in games, but there is a limit to their complexity (Anyone who has ever played the game Squad Leader by Avalon Hill understands this all too well). However, when financial intermediaries (banks) came around, they provided a valuable middle-man with larger networks of lenders and borrowers than any individual. This opened up a new world of financing for businesses, and the result has been a tremendous increase in prosperity. Again, in a similar way, the game console is that middle-man for games. No group of players could possibly keep track of everything necessary to play a game like Civilization or World of Warcraft without the help of a computer. Much like banks opened up many new financial possibilities, computers have, to an even greater extent, opened up a new world of games that were previously unimaginable.