We live in a bit of an echo chamber. We start out with these rather well-intentioned wishes, and then the reverb around them builds until we're espousing ideals, stating demands, without even really knowing what it is we're asking for.
The whole "Citizen Kane of video games" thing spiraled out of control a little bit, I think, so I wrote an editorial over at Gamasutra (with thoughts from Ian Bogost!). Excerpt:
If more internet commentators did a quick Wikipedia check before leaping into the debate, they'd see that the Citizen Kane issue is moot, anyway. Although its cinema technique helped movies fully come into their own, films were generally considered "artistically legitimate" right off the bat, so there's really no translatable parallel for games.
"The world doesn't work that way anymore," says Bogost. So as for raising Kane: "We should stop it."
Anyway, if you're interested in the issue, have a look!
I have been a little bit occupied today covering the fact that Interplay is still promising Bethesda it can make a $75 million Fallout MMO when in fact it seems like it's hard for it to keep the lights on right now, unfortunately.
Thursday, April 16, 2009
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19 comments:
Sounds like a very interesting article Leigh, especially since that film is brought up so much during the "games = art" debates. I'm off to read it!
I agree, but I'm still holding out hope for an eventual "big daddy kane of video games"
Simtizen Kane.....
I discovered this week that back in June 96, Les Cahiers du Cinéma had a special number about video games saying that interactivity was the way of the future and that every serious movie-maker should also play video games. That is legitimacy in my opinion.
I just ready your article earlier; good read. Thx for sticking your neck out there to assert yourself (and doing it professionally). We don't necessarily need gaming's landmark Citizen Kane. We just need a gradual evolution that will come about as thoughtful people like yourself get their provocative points across without being obtuse.
Bogost nailed it. The world doesn't work that way anymore.
Artistic legitimacy isn't necessarily what makes something culturally "legit".
I hate typos. I really do. I want to die.
You should bring up your Dark Knight/GTA 4 blog entry up more in these contexts. It seems the world--whether we're talking games or cinema or music or literature--has moved beyond a stage where new works are capable of rising to the level of what Bogost called a "masterwork." You seemed to be hitting on the same thing in that DK/GTA4 entry.
Maybe the real questions should be: if tabletop RPGs and LARPs didn't become "artistically legitimate" in their time, why do we expect their descendant--the narrative computer game--to do so because it's now on a screen instead of on a table and the DM has been replaced by a computer?
Why do we expect Fallout to go somewhere GURPS couldn't?
Awesome. I'll read it now.
=)
I was thinking about the whole notion of 'games as art' while doing the dishes last night. One of the things I was thinking about is that we do not really have a vocabulary for talking about the art of videogames. People keep trying to make a case for videogames as art by drawing comparisons to other more established forms of art: writing, music, visual arts, cinema, etc. But really, the art of videogames isn't any of those things. The art of videogames comes from how all of those things converge with player control to provide a unique holistic experience-- an experience that can only be had through playing the game. In fact, videogames are not art... at least, not as we have historically known art to be. In trying to describe video games as art, we rely too heavily on describing their story, music, and "cinematic" visuals. We do this because those are the obvious and familiar artistic elements. But videogames are something new and different that can't be classified as art by outdated criteria. Videogames are art because they are shaping what art even means.
Amusingly, I skipped the Kane article on Gamasutra when it cropped up in my RSS reader because I was tired of hearing about it. As it turns out, that was the whole point of the friggin article. >_<
You know honestly…I never even watched Citizen Kane until two weeks ago and surprisingly enough it was in response to this kind of sentiment you’re asking people to let go.
I do appreciate that you laid it out that gamers may not be sure exactly what they’re asking for with such a “slamming” desire. For people wanting more “acceptance” for games they’re traitors to their own cause with this kind of resolve. The context is being disregarded for Kane not only as a film but as the piece of culture it’s hailed as. I think it’s a bit of a parody for the by-product consumer culture games are so unfortunately built from.
“Hey I’d like some “Rosebud” with that plz.”
I’m conveniently going to overlook the legitimacy discussion it leads to for right now because that’s like being at my grandmother’s house for me (despite a full stomach, I’m constantly being crammed full of “soul food”).
~sLs~
Love Bogost's work, and his argument does a lot to take apart my latest editorial.
That said, Kane as a concept is still useful as a goal even if it isn't the right parallel. Maybe we should be looking for the first piece of theater that codified the drunken shouting of ancient Greeks into an art form. Or the the jump from swing to cool/bebop in Jazz.
These sea changes exist, and even if Citizen Kane isn't the one we should be talking about, it serves a pragmatic purpose for discussion about gaming as a medium.
There's two major points to this debate:
Firstly, Citizen Kane wasn't looking to be "The Citizen Kane" of movies. It was just looking to be a movie. We're like some lonely, unloved scientist trying to force robots to love each other without understanding the spontaneity and magic of love itself. We're trying to force our industry to grow into something more than it is instead of just experimenting and letting it evolve. We're trying to run before we've even worked out what legs are.
Secondly, as JT rightly said, there is no common vocabulary for the design of games and gameplay, and no fixed school or academia to it. The sad thing is that money has overtaken the whole industry, to the point that things which will not make a clear and obvious profit are seemingly impossible to produce. All the talk of independent development these days focuses on potential profit margins and lack thereof, instead of overheads and publication possibilities.
If we want to use a movie analogy, people make movies on low and no budgets all the time, for no profit. These movies are screened at festivals, distributed online - some even get limited DVD releases.
What we need to do is open channels for development and try and stop focusing on money and profit. Academia can help this - the funding used to teach students should also allow them to develop their ideas into prototypes.
But what we also need is a consistent, shared understanding of the concepts and practices not just of game production, but of design as well. To produce this, we need a single entity that we can look to for collation of the various scattered blogs and other workings this research happens across - a peer-reviewed journal of sorts.
Film as a medium was always going to be easier to accept, because of the lower barrier to entry. To get into gaming properly you need a console, or you need to understand pc gaming. With more people owning a wii, they may be tempted to play "proper" games, although there seems to be a shortage of those available...
As you say, it's not like Citizen Kane was a box office success at the time anyway...
I agree with Alan jack, with the Games Industry as it is you will not see an arty game from a big company and so maybe the people who could have made the arty game have no chance to because there stuck at the big companies without trying to go out on their own. because they think going out on their own is to much hard work for little profit.
And anyway companies wouldn't like a Citizen Kane of Games anyway because Kane wasn't that profitable and only after twenty years was it critically acclaimed.
I'm not very well versed in cinema history but compared to other art films that I've seen, Citizen Kane seems like an emotionally stunted, naively epic and simplistic mega-macho-production. If that is what is needed to consider games to be artistic, then we already have it. In fact, the games industry is so full of titles like this that everyone is sick of it (everyone except for the people buying that stuff, that is, apparently).
I liked Ian's mention of earnestness. That's really what makes the difference: you have to make games with the purpose of making art. And not hope that they will become art by accident.
But, as far as I know, there is no law that says that every medium needs to become artistic. Maybe games will forever remain games. Would cinema really have become less "legitimate" if Godard, Bergman, Kieslowski, Paradjanov, Pasolini and Wong Kar Wai did not exist?
The world would have been a worse place, for sure, however. Which brings me to my point: the question is not whether or not games should have artistic legitimacy. The question is when will artists start making games? And why are there not more of them? Games are a very interesting medium. More artists should be using it. Simply because we need more art, good art, art that is relevant to who we are right now.
Great read, Bogost was a great pick for his sharp understanding of modern culture. Art does not drop out of the sky gift-wrapped, there is a reason people liked it and at the time Kane came out people were looking for something to push the medium.
The other contention I'd add is that analogizing one innovative piece of art to another is problematic because the only thing they have in common is being different and well-received. By that logic Guitar Hero is our Citizen Kane. Or the Wii, or rhythm games. In either case the work dramatically changed what people thought could be appealing to people.
What I find so interesting about your piece is Bogost's contention: there is no changing of a medium. Everything is jumbled. We're doing it all at once. The problem then becomes that it won't be one person or game that changes things, it'll just happen in the form of a critical mass.
As if something that is not art can become art. Sticking feathers into a cat won't make it a bird.
Games are unique on their own and for me far more interesting than the established industry of books and films for me. Why would we want to compare ourselves to the established products(which we already understand) when we could be exploring a new frontier?
Should we not be celebrating the greatness that has already been found in games rather than decrying their legacy to make ourselves feel more important?
Whoa, I'm late to the party here, but will comment anyway.
The Citizen Kane reference is simply a broad allusion that has since been blown out of proportion and taken far more literally than I doubt it was ever meant to be taken. The correlations between the film and the artistic nature of the film medium as it relates to games have been successfully debunked, which is something that wouldn't have been needed had this discussion not escalated to the inflated level that it has.
As far as the games as art thing goes, I'm going to paste a comment I made on another blog. "My problem with the "games as art" debate is more with the way people seem to define art as a category both physically and metaphorically on a pedestal. Not all art was created equal. Just because something is art doesn't mean it's any good or worth seeing. Thus the billing of artsy games as art as opposed to others is missing the point. The best way to make the case for games as art is to explain why Superman 64 is art, because if it isn't, then I don't think Ico should be considered that way either."
Has anyone read any good contemporary art theory writing on the subject? As an artist (and not as well-read as I'd like to be), I'm more frustrated with the behind-the-times perspectives on art that people continue to use in their game comparisons. This is why the Kane references become so frustrating. If the idea of art that people are going for is one that existed before even the Post-Modernist boom, of what artistic relevance are we really talking about here?
hello, this is my first time i visit here. I found so many interesting in your blog especially its discussion. keep up the good work.
Regard,
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