Editor’s note: I usually try to stay away from the “games as art” debate, but I enjoyed reading Joaquin’s unique thoughts on the subject. I think you’ll find this article rather interesting. – Aaron
The evolution of videogames, from their humble asteroid-blasting origins to their recent incarnations as million-dollar, Hollywood-esque escapades has been short, but nonetheless magnificently prolific. However, it is not big name blockbuster titles that will ultimately push the medium forward. It will be the independents, the developers small on finance and large on passion who will test the borders on what we consider a videogame and challenge the world’s definition of what is considered “art.”
Over the last few years, game creators like Jenova Chen of Flower and Flow fame have become the voices of a new generation of artists navigating the canvas of this ever-changing medium. In his now well publicized thesis (adapted from the writing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi) Chen mused on the importance of “flow” defined in videogames as “… the feeling of complete and energized focus in an activity, with a high level of enjoyment and fulfillment.”
According to Jenova Chen a videogame must have three attributes:
1. Be intrinsically rewarding
2. Possess the proper amount of challenge based on player ability
3. Have a sense of personal control over the game activity
If a gaming experience can touch on these three qualities then it will capture “flow.” The player, fully engaged will lose themselves in the experience, and, as Csikszentmihalyi describes it, the player will transcend into a shared cultural experience. When a game experience succeeds in creating “flow” it transcends being simply a videogame and becomes art, a cultural vehicle for the furthering of human intellectual evolution.
While entertaining, the summer blockbuster usually fails to create an environment where the fusion reaction of transmogrifying prior knowledge into new understanding takes place. Shooting, platform-jumping, saving the world… these ideas have been repeated and mimicked to death.
However, what games like Flower, the largely unknown Today I Die, and a growing library of others provide is the experience of transcendence. These games approach the human condition through the marriage of poetry and interaction. These evolutionary catalysts — these high art pieces disguised in pixels — challenge the player not in manual dexterity, but in mental clarity. The object becomes not to “win” but to understand, to empathize, to challenge how we perceive an issue or a problem. Experiences like these recreate the experience of reading a good book that stretches the limits of one’s mental faculty. They allow the person to lose track of their ego, of their sense of self, and to touch that shared cultural empathy of the collective unconscious.
“By essentially endorsing complexity — looking for ways to enhance differentiation or uniqueness and to encourage integration or connection with something greater… you become evolution. You are then the embodiment of complexity advancing into the future.”
– Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
It’s possible that the existence of these artistic creations and the big-money blockbusters in a shared space marks the arrival of the videogame medium as a completely accepted entertainment facility. But is that enough for a canvas that possesses so many possibilities, for a medium that can create so many varied experiences?
Maybe we aren’t so far away from seeing videogames displayed on monitors hanging in the Louvre. Perhaps the time isn’t so far off where videogames are not just an accepted way of entertaining, but a suggested method for learning about the self and understanding the ever-growing canvas of the human condition.