The lack of game within a game

It is no understatement that game have become big, huge even. Moviemakers are starting to see the possibilities (with Steven Spielberg collaborating with EA to make a game) and developers are having more and more difficulty to make the cut; make a good selling game. It is also a fact that games have become a commercial business, and as with every commercial business; it is the sales that matter, not the innovation. Yet, as a gamedesigner, I look at the current games and am disappointed. This is because, I feel that there is a lack of game in the actual game.

Over the past few years, to day games have increased in quality is an understatement. In a few years, the technological capabilities of games (digital games) have skyrocketed, and now we are making games that can compete with movies, in terms of realism. We may not have passed the uncanny valley, but so have movies. If we look at games like for example Gears of War, and the news on its second iteration, it is hard to say that it is anything short of impressive. Realistic interaction with water, ambient occlusion, normal mapping, etcetera. But, where the games are technically impressive, they are extremely disappointing at the same time. This is because, even though the game media have an almost unlimited potential, games have more or less come to a standstill. They are just repeating that which "works", without any eye for the actual improvements of a game.

When people are calling a DS game named "The world ends with you" original, just because the graphics are different, it makes me sad. No doubt that game is going to be a good game, great even. But originality in games is not achieved by changing the art direction alone. In fact, I dare to say that we have come to rely too much on this visual aspect of the game. Not just that, as I said earlier; we have come to rely too much on too much that is actually not a worthy part of a game. And we have been accepting it, like the good little costumers we are.

I see games as a highly interactive form of entertainment. We have the unique ability in a game to alter the world with our own actions, unlike movies or books, where you are limited a world that was thought up long before you actually started reading or watching any of them. Yet, it is that very same interaction that has grown to be lacking severely, especially in the last few years.

I am now going to name two elements and their issues, to illustrate my point.

Cutscenes
One thing that I see as entirely obsolete, is the presence of the so called cutscene. While many specialists are still discussing whether cutscenes should be called a part of games or not, I believe that cutscenes actually wreck the gaming experience.

To answer the question whether a cutscene is actually part of a game, we once again have to look at the unique properties of a game. It is a form of entertainment where your actions can influence the world. If we look at a cutscene, or a movie, the properties are very different. With a movie, as the viewer, you are not part of the world. You look at the story unfold without any choice in the matter. In that sense, games and the cutscenes in games are two radically different entities.

By forcing a player "out of the game" into a movie, you can actually wreck the entire experience. After all, you forcefully take away control from the player to advance the plot. In that sense, seeing as how the technology in games have come that far, cutscenes are nothing but a relic of the past. Dinosaurs even. We have developed a lot of ways of creating situations where cutscenes are not even necessary, but because those are more difficult to accomplish that a "simple" cutscene, developers tend to take the easy way out and use them anyway. A shame really.

Soundtrack
Soundtrack is another thing that has become painfully stale in the last years. In fact, the sound in a game has become even more so stale that the cutscene; in that since the beginning of video games the role of the soundtrack has not changed one bit. The only thing that changed is the quality.

The soundtrack, for each game, is limited to only this: BGM and SFX. For each RPG, platform game, adventure game, these are the standards, nothing more. Even titles that used to propel games to a new level (Mario comes to mind) was not able to innovate on this particular piece of the game. Not by much anyway. As part of any game, soundtracks remain the most underestimated and also the most underdeveloped part. In a medium that is interactive, the sound is not. There have been tries to change this (in rhythm games, in a very small part of other games). It has even gotten so far that many gamers do not even see the importance of music. Even though sound is actually of utmost importance. I dare to say sound is even more important than graphics.

Sound is an extremely powerful component. The human hears before he even sees in many occasions, because of the limitations of the eye. We are mesmerized by sound just as much as we are with pretty graphics. Therefore, it is a shame to see that sound is still so underdeveloped in this day and age.

There are more points of discussion when it comes to the lack of game within a game, some even more serious than this. I believe that in order to truly create originality and innovation, we first have to improve on these elements. I hope that one day the developers, and especially the marketing division, can see this and stop limiting games in their raw potential. Because I believe that games are an extremely powerful medium, more powerful than any medium currently available in our lives.

Games are art?

Well, just about anyone who has ever played games seriously or developed them has come into contact with some that are still debating "whether games are art or not".

The question of whether games can be considered art is a difficult question, not only because of the fact that the whole definition of art has deteriorated in the last few years, but also because of the question whether something that is created for entertainment can be considered art.

When someone says that games cannot be considered art because it is commercial or meant for entertainment, it always makes me laugh. The works of Rembrandt were created with a commercial purpose; selling them. The works of all artists (be it music, be it in terms of expression, be it paintings) in the past were at some point created to sell them, artists cannot live of air alone after all. That makes the works in some way commercial. After all, the word commercial (derived from the word commerce) means the buying and selling of goods.

Also, if it is meant for entertainment, the same statements can be used for any medium that was written with the purpose of someone else to look at it. When I went to Mauritshuis a while ago (a Dutch museum featuring works of several famous painters like Rembrandt van Rijn, Johannes Vermeer and so on), I saw a lot of people there being interested in these paintings. They were there because they liked it there, they wanted to be there. In a way, they saw these paintings, these pieces of art as anyone would call it, as a form of entertainment, no matter how "intellectual" their form of entertainment was. There is no doubt that something painted by Rembrandt is art. But when it is looked at as a form of entertainment, does that immediately makes it any less art?

So, I think to say a game cannot be art because it is commercial or for entertainment is not a valid statement. Since the true definition of art has more or less disappeared due to the influence of the 20th century artists, we can even claim just about anything is art. However, I can see similarities between what people call art and what people do not call art; it seems as soon as someone can be mentally or intellectually stimulated by a certain creation they are more bound to call it art. In this perspective, games can be most definitely art.

Then, is any game art? No, I do not believe that to be true. Most of the games that have been considered art up until now (Shadow of the Colossus, Bioshock come to mind) were considered to be that because of their visuals, nothing else. I think this to be a shame. I think, to alleviate a certain medium to the level of art, that medium needs to have something unique. In the case of games, this is the direct interaction the player can have with the virtual world; something the likes of books and movies can never hope to do. The player can be a part, even become a part of the world, to the point that the player will become completely immersed in that world. It is an experience that is completely different from any other medium. But what is it that makes the player immersed? Is it the graphics? The story? Music?

I believe it to be the gameplay.

I think that when a game has truly unique gameplay that challenges the mind on an intellectual level, to the point where the player is completely immersed in what the player is doing, we can speak of games being art. It is unfortunate that this is the area that is so often overlooked as an element of art, but I believe that bad gameplay will hurt any game to the point that players just will not come back anymore. Much less call it art.

It is funny that when people who review games are talking about how some parts of the game play bad, they mostly talk about how design decisions were wrong. Design decisions as in decisions taken by the gamedesigners. Gamedesigners as in the people who create the game from scratch, only to let others "color" it and bring it to life. The gamedesigners create the game, where the art department (and other departments) only breathes life in the whole. Even the concept artists, no matter how big their influence over the graphical side of the game, have to listen to the game designers in the end. How can the results of a department that only helps to strengthen the experience that already existed in the core be called art? It is the same as calling the seller of the paints art, instead of the artist who applied it, or to call the drums art, because the music made with them is pleasant to listen to (and no, I am not talking about how the drums look).

So, the way as I see it, games are art because they are fun. And games that are fun should definitely be called art. Games are the canvas for game designers to paint on. It is after all, the art to have someone enjoy one experience for 20 hours or even more; only to have that someone come back for even more. If that is not worthy of being called art, then I do not know what is.

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