The game involves no running, shooting, stabbing, driving, flying, blowing up or indeed down, no stomping, belching, inventorying, levelling up or in fact any concrete goals of any kind, save one: explore. You play a character visiting an island in the outer Hebrides. You explore the island. There are buildings and strange landmarks to visit. As you journey around the island, music is played (the music is beautiful, as far as I’m concerned, and worth the price of admission alone) along with a voice over recalling, perhaps, a car crash. Things aren’t quite clear; someone, certainly, is absent, and sorely missed.

The mod was so successful that, when the original team decided to re-develop it – expanding the soundtrack into full orchestration, re-building the island in high-resolution – Valve, the makers of Half-Life, decided to give it a full release via Steam, their digital distribution network.

It’s out in February – I honestly haven’t been this excited about a game ever. It’s given to be absolutely beautiful.

I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say “never,” because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.

A great deal has already been written about this, mostly arguing that Ebert is wrong; or rather, assuming that he’s wrong, utterly misguided, condescending and, according to some, the internet’s biggest troll. Hyperbole aside, I also think Ebert is wrong, but in addition I think what he said could be a launchpad to asking some interesting questions about games, and about art.

What’s in a game?

Laying out my stall good and early, I think that criticising games for not being art is much the same as criticising a hawk for not being a handsaw. I also think Ebert is being strikingly presumptuous in saying that no gamer now alive will live long enough to experience a game as art, for the simple reason that I already have. It’s patently clear that Ebert hasn’t played the right kind of video games if, indeed, he’s played any at all (later posts on his blog reveal that he hasn’t). But that said, I also think there’s something to what Ebert says: that, if a ‘game’ is to be considered art (that is something to be read and interpreted), the concept of a ‘game’ as being simply an interactive entertainment will have to be abandoned, or at least re-assessed.

The first problem is one of definitions: what is defined as a game, because it has been defined as a game, Ebert implies, cannot be defined as art, for the simple reason that games and art have different and mutually exclusive intentions. As stated by Ebert, a game has conditions of victory, of completion. In short, it has audience objectives, and strictly defined rules of engagement. Art, by implication, has none of these things. I feel that this is somewhat unfair on the part of games. Shakespearean theatre has rules of engagement: the audience listens, observes in silence (though this is only the modern approach; Renaissance audiences thought nothing of booing the bad guys and cheering the good), and sits facing the stage. There’s nothing in the rulebook to stop you going to a performance of Romeo & Juliet and sitting facing the back of the auditorium, or with a blindfold on (or juggling frozen chickens, for that matter); but just because something is tacit doesn’t mean it isn’t present, or that it doesn’t exert an influence.

Ebert vs. Barker

I notice that Ebert has been engaged in a bit of a dialogue about games with filmmaker and writer Clive Barker. Barker has laid out his position thus:

I think that Roger Ebert’s problem is that he thinks you can’t have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative. In other words, Shakespeare could not have written Romeo & Juliet as a game because it could have had a happy ending, you know? If only she hadn’t taken the damn poison. If only he’d have gotten there quicker.

Ebert responds that ‘Yes, this is what I think’. He goes on to summarise his and Barker’s positions:

Barker: “Let’s invent a world where the player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is art.”

Ebert: “If you can go through ‘every emotional journey available,’ doesn’t that devalue each and every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?”

I think both Barker and Ebert have missed the point. A game doesn’t necessarily present a malleable narrative, one which the player can alter to fit their whims. In fact, the ability to alter the story – that is, to change its parameters, rather than operating within them – would completely undermine the central point of a game, which is to overcome obstacles.

Certainly, some games offer a variety? of conclusions, depending on the player’s style of play throughout the story, or their fulfillment (or not) of various criteria throughout the game. Others offer a free-roaming arena in which the player can do anything, within certain parameters, such as Grand Theft Auto and Oblivion. They’re referred to as sandboxes, allowing the player to wander the game world and basically do as they will. But these games also feature a central narrative thread – a main quest – and a variety of sub-plots woven in and around the central narrative (and which are sometimes accessible only upon completing a certain portion of the main quest) – sub- or side-quests. These can be played, or not, as the player wishes. Thus, a game such as Oblivion doesn’t aim to give the player access to ‘every emotional journey available’; this would be, as Ebert hints, a nonsense of excess. Rather, it offers a variety of options, from which the player, dependent on the variety of experience they desire, can choose. The storyline is not freely malleable; at least, the eventual outcome differs depending on how the events leading up to it have been played. This is storytelling at its most sensible; consequences follow logically from their causes. The player hasn’t chosen the conclusion, but only influenced it.

Leaving all the above aside, and for the sake of argument, I feel I could agree with Ebert on ‘art vs games’. I certainly agree with him that offering the audience a choice of ‘every emotional experience available’ isn’t art but, on closer examination, Ebert’s interpreting this in a certain way. As demonstrated in his Romeo & Juliet analogy he doesn’t mean, as I say above, that the player can determine between pre-set stories, but rather that the player can choose to change the story as it unfolds to suit their immediate desires. They can give give Romeo & Juliet a happy ending, if they wish. This is not what great art does, but nor, as I have said, is it what games actually do.

A game of chess

Ebert is correct in saying that a game of chess wouldn’t be considered art. At best, such a game might be artful, meaning ‘skillfully played’ – but even this is a judgement of the players, and not the game itself. But a game of chess cannot offer the carefully constructed obstacles to progression that a video game can. Such obstacles are the basic building blocks of a plot: the protagonist wants something (say, in the case of The Big Lebowski, the Dude wants his rug back) but obstacles exist to that (Kraftwerk-loving nihilists, aggressive sheriffs, greedy pornographers and a deeply-ingrained idleness are all arrayed against the Dude). Gordon Freeman wants out of Black Mesa; in his way are a variety of structural collapses, alien invasion and government treachery. As Ebert states, a game can be won, but only in the overcoming of those obstacles which form a part of any narrative.

But even if we agree that, as with chess, a video game cannot be art in itself, I would still say that a chesspiece could be art, just as I can certainly deem character design or environment design or sound design in a game to be artistic.

Shadow of the Colossus

The creatures of Shadow of the Colossus spring to mind, for their design flair and their ability (to my mind, at least) to cast a shadow of moral questionability over the player’s actions within the game. Their facial features especially are artfully managed, being tantalisingly unreadable, even potentially innocent (in the sense of being ignorant of wrong, rather than incapable of it), whilst still being damned intimidating. They are almost childlike and so, like children, when they attack the player the impulsion seems to be one of misunderstanding or fear, rather than aggression or a negative desire.

This, in turn, impacts on the player’s appreciation of the game; destroying the Colossi, the only method of advancing through the narrative invites a gradually building sense of wrong-ness, of transgression. This is, ultimately, shown to be quite correct (and this is why I’m confident enough to call it great design borne of intention, rather than just a happy accident) in the game’s conclusion: the destruction of the Colossi is shown to be a transgressive act, releasing a great evil into the world, even while it is the necessary condition to completing the game. There is a tension between the desires of the player to finish the game, and the moral ambiguity of how this is attained; referring back, the outcome certainly isn’t what would be chosen by the player, who would naturally desire the character’s success and unambiguous moral standing. Instead, it does what good stories do – it gives a conclusion both natural and coherent to the conclusions preceding events; it satisfies.

Korsakovia

In the case of the smoke-creatures of Korsakovia, in which the player travels through the hallucinatory world of a man suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome, there’s little visual design to speak of, as the creatures are simply animated strands of smoke that attack the player on sight, emitting nerve-shredding screams. But the intention of the designers was to subvert normal gameplay – to try the effect of removing all the normal cues of antagonist intention in games, such as a familiar, ‘readable’ physiognomy, even things such as the direction an enemy is facing. Such subversion of established forms is nothing if not artistic in intention; and it’s here that I think Ebert is doing games a disservice, in confusing the crude intentions of the broad swathe of game designers with the intrinsic capabilities of the medium.

Too many arts

Any discussion as to whether such-and-such a thing is art is also, from another angle, a discussion of what art is. And in this context the problem with the word ‘art’ is not that it means too little, but that it means too much.

‘Art’ can denote a sphere of human activity, the objects or experiences arising out of that activity, or simply a highly proficient level of skill. For example, a potter may by said to be engaging in art when he is throwing a pot; likewise, the pot that he creates can be called an art object; and the skill he demonstrates in creating it may be called ‘the potter’s art’. To further complicate things, ‘art’ in the final instance can be both the potter’s own individual skill, and the body of knowledge held by potters generally. To make things still more complicated, all the different meanings I’ve given interpenetrate: we wouldn’t call the pot finally made by the potter an object of art if he didn’t demonstrate enough skill – or ‘art’ – in the act of creating it.

Yet another layer of complication can be added, as ‘art’ can also refer to an object’s high degree of craftsmanship, even in areas not normally defined as artistic. We say that computer or this camera is ‘state-of-the-art‘ but we don’t mean that the computer or the camera itself is a piece of art. We mean that the technology it contains is so advanced and so well constructed that it acquires a status much above others of its class. It’s on the cutting edge, we say. I’m dispensing with this definition of art for now, for the simple reason that of course games can be ‘art’ in this sense; because some games will always be better, the best, even if they don’t stay that way forever, or for long.

Defining art (for next time)

To keep things simple, I’m going to clarify my terms. In fact, I’m going to pretty much dispense with the term ‘art’ altogether because, as I say, ‘art’ is just too capable of meaning too much. Instead, I’m going to use the term ‘literature’, meaning a work, whether written, drawn or otherwise created, that is:

• characterised by beauty of expression and form; and
• possessing a broad, if not universal, intellectual and emotional appeal.

Reading Ebert’s post, I think the question he is posing is not whether games can exhibit a degree of craft in their construction so as to make them art, but rather this: can a game be read? Can a game be interpreted? Can a game invite interpretation, demand it, in the same way that great paintings or great novels or even great music does? And though I think Ebert hasn’t given anywhere near enough credit to games to answer the question fairly, I do think it’s a question worth asking.

But I’m actually away on holiday tomorrow, so I’m going to have to ask it some other time.

Motion comics interview

First, Craig Smith asked me to answer a few questions about The Boy with Nails for Eyes for his blog, which has pointed me towards some really great motion comics over the weeks that I’ve been following it. This I have done, more than happily, and the results can be seen here.

I also want to provide links to a couple of the online comics that I mention during the run of the interview, which are:

• Dresden Codak – this isn’t a motion comic, but it is a free, online comic that is intelligent, well written and drawn, and definitely worth a look; and
• The Talos Project – of which I’ve only seen the first part, but which offers an interesting near-future world that’s fully realised with computer-rendered graphics, and makes use of simple animation to great effect.

Dun, dun, dah-dun-dun dun-dun-dun-dun:
the Dark Lord returns

Second, arch-keeper of the NuLabour panopticon Lord Mandelson, is back from his holiday in Barud Dur and primed for action. He’s attempting to push through NuLab’s Digital Economy Bill, which is neither digital nor economic, but most definitely will end up with a lot of people forking over large quantities of cash. For that reason, I reckon ‘Bill’ is the only accurate bit. Headline: Mandelson presents his Bill. Sounds about right.

In any case, amongst some of its truly half-baked measures, the Bill seeks to require internet providers to monitor the activities of their customers and share any items they access with copyright holders. In effect, the people you pay to provide you with internet if you’re in the UK will feed information about your surfing habits to companies without your permission, whether you’ve committed a crime or not. This fits in well with NuLabour’s paranoid, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later approach to the people that elected it into power.

Any internet providers who do not monitor their users in this way could be fined up to a quarter of a million pounds. But the term ‘internet provider’ is taken to include all businesses providing free wifi to its customers. So the little cafe on the high street that offers a free wifi zone could be disconnected without trial, and find itself subject to a quarter of a million pound fine without the cafe’s owner having anything remotely wrong.

Another measure of the Bill is that all internet users who are alleged (note that word – ‘alleged’, as opposed to ‘shown’; since no presentation of evidence is required by the bill on the part of the accuser, an allegation is, at this point, what it is) to have downloaded illegal, copyrighted content will have their internet connections severed, and will be forced to appeal the disconnection in court. Essentially, this is the assumption of guilt on the part of the accused, reversing a central plank of modern democracy (without wanting to put too fine a point on it).

If you want to find out more about the bill in an easily accessible manner with some (quite a few, actually) funny bits, listen to The Now Show from the 3rd April 2010. It’s on the BBC’s iPlayer as of this writing – have a look-see.

Calm down dear, it’s only the internet

In case I sound a little hysterical, I should make my position totally plain. I’m not really cool with piracy, personally, but that’s not a blanket judgement – I can see the difference, morally, between stealing something from a millionaire and stealing the same something from a pauper. When you add to this the fact – especially in the digital age:

• piracy doesn’t strictly constitute theft, which requires the removal of an object with the intention to permanently deprive its owner of its possession and/or its usage (thank you, Yes Minister) but, rather, the copying of an original which is not itself removed; plus
• the basis (to my knowledge) on which piracy is prosecuted is that it constitutes the depriving of a sale, when a lot of the things that get pirated wouldn’t be downloaded by people if it wasn’t for free; to whit, no sale has been lost, because people don’t consider what they’re downloading to be sufficient quality to be worth their hard-earned moolah

… you can see why it’s a thorny issue.

By the way, the above certainly isn’t a justification for illegal activity or whatnot. My position is to obey the law, but know that, at times, it’s an arse. Oh, and feel free to correct me if I’m outrageously wrong on any of the above.

But, hey, listen man, facts want to be free

I don’t have a problem with facts being free, because a fact is a statement of truth with no special requirement on the part of an individual for it to exist. To put it another way, no one makes facts (or, if you know someone who does, they’re not facts, and you may be in a cult – are you wearing a robe or an over-brocaded naval outfit? Then my advice is to run or, perforce, swim). But it’s individuals who make the music, art, stories, that I enjoy, and that millions of others also enjoy. These things rely on the efforts of people to exist; and these people need to eat. I’m not talking about millionaire rappers or rockers, or the latest pop group sausage that’s been concocted out of the musical equivalent of bovine rectum and road kill; these people, frankly, will do alright, deserving or not. But independents are different.

Take the producers of the videogame The Void, a small Russian studio called the Ice-Pick Lodge. The Void (which I haven’t yet played, emphasis on ‘yet’) is a strange game in which the player plays a deceased soul, stripped of its former identity, trapped between life and the hereafter. The world of the game is devoid of life or colour; the player must placate certain denizens of that world, and battle others, through the manipulation of colour, which is the central component of the game’s control system. From what I’ve read, it sounds enthralling, innovative and original, and I’ve done it no justice here (try this article on Rock Paper Shotgun for more information and, also, expletives). When the game was released, it appeared quite quickly on pirate sites in Russia. Bear in mind that this is a small studio, and that every lost sale hurt. This makes the their reaction all the more laudable, as I see it.

They went onto the pirate site, and spoke to the people downloading the game. They answered questions about game mechanics, and encouraged people who liked what they saw to download the official release. They even made an official torrent available, with special bonus materials.

This is a grown-up response, in comparison to what Mandelson’s proposing. Actually, ‘proposing’ is too kind a word, giving the impression that he’s inviting discussion. In reality, it’s what he’s trying to crowbar into law before the closing of this Parliament. People will download things for free, because it’s easy, and it’s cheap. But people are, well, people; if you treat them with respect and as if they had a modicum of maturity, and make a decent case as to why you should be paid for the hard work you do, I reckon that more often than not they will respond positively. It’s hard for a large, faceless corporation to do this, because (and here my bias creeps in) there’s a lot of things that a large faceless corporation do that doesn’t count as hard work, and indeed, there’s a lot of things they do that are ridiculously easy, and which are only designed to fleece their customers. Don’t believe me? Read this interview with Trent Reznor, especially the bit relating to the ‘sales guy’. What the hey, here’s a quote:

[T]he first thing I did when I got to Sydney is I walk into HMV, the week the record’s out, and I see it on the rack with a bunch of other releases. And every release I see: $21.99, $22.99, $24.99. And ours doesn’t have a sticker on it. I look close and ‘Oh, it’s $34.99′. So I walk over to see our live DVD Beside You in Time, and I see that it’s also priced six, seven, eight dollars more than every other disc on there. And I can’t figure out why that would be.

[...]

Well, in Brisbane I end up meeting and greeting some record label people, who are pleasant enough, and one of them is a sales guy, so I say “Why is this the case?” He goes “Because your packaging is a lot more expensive”. I know how much the packaging costs — it costs me, not them, it costs me 83 cents more to have a CD with the colour-changing ink on it. I’m taking the hit on that, not them. So I said “Well, it doesn’t cost $10 more”. “Ah, well, you’re right, it doesn’t. Basically it’s because we know you’ve got a core audience that’s gonna buy whatever we put out, so we can charge more for that. It’s the pop stuff we have to discount to get people to buy it. True fans will pay whatever”. And I just said “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve heard. I’ve garnered a core audience that you feel it’s OK to rip off? F— you’. [...] They’re thieves. I don’t blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s— that they pull off.

It’s hard to talk people into signing up to be ripped off voluntarily. But a small producer, who will directly receive the remuneration for their carefully-crafted and reasonably priced product? I can’t argue against buying that. I don’t think anyone could, without simply acknowledging it’s wrong and doing it anyway. But it’s hardly a good idea (or even democratic) to punish the undeserving many in order to catch a deserving few.

I do think artists and creators should be protected; but I don’t think the Bill is designed to do this. Indeed, I don’t think any bill can do this, at least, in the way that its proponents are suggesting; the worst offenders on the net are those most likely to find ways to evade the monitoring. As part of his consideration process, Mandelson has had a chat with billionaire record producer David Geffen, while staying on an island apparently owned by the Rothschilds. So, it’s clear who the bill is intended to service.

So, basically, please take a moment to consider your feelings about this and, if you feel strongly enough that this is a bad idea, or even a good idea that needs modification (which is what due process is supposed to be for) write to your MP. The link is to a website that will provide a form email, and will locate your MP for you. All you have to do is write your name.