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Avant-Garde: A New Art Form
Alessandro (nickname: TClaymore, no further information given) adresses some properties of games, narratives, movies in form of a short video clip. For further elaboration on this topic I can recommend Espen Aarseth (narrative and games), Gonzalo Frasca (reflective games), Julian Kücklich (realism and modifications of games (german)) or the TV-Tropes website (4th wall and other tropes of TV, movie, games).
From the comments on youtube:
mafurock33 (3 months ago)
- "very interesting! The one critique I would make is that the essay seems to focused on defining video games as art only under the premise of how they resemble movies, tell stories, or draw the user into the world.. But if you think more deeply about art you may realize that the comparison should run deeper.. Especially with title like "avant garde,what about avant garde video games? Or impressionist games, minimilast, cubist, expressionist..is there a sublime aesthetic to video game art?.etc.."
TClaymore (3 months ago)
- "To be perfectly honest, I didn't get to cover nearly as much as I wanted, so I more or less got stuck in games as narrative device. It focused the message, but if there's anything I would advise to anyone watching it, it's to do your own further research into games of all kinds. You will find worlds of possibility for art from all angles.
Thanks for the comment! I'm glad I wasn't the only one who thought it could have done so much more."
From the maker of this clip:
This was my final project while studying at the New York Film Academy. It's a short essay I wrote about the concept of the video game as a new medium for art. Whether in terms of music, art design, narrative, or even the mechanics themselves, video games have an as-yet unsurpassed potential for producing works of amazing beauty and depth.
This is not to say that games can't or don't function as a commercial venue as well - they do, and quite well at that. The commercialization of literature, film, and music is mirrored in video games, with one less facet - video games are still in their infancy, still somewhat in an experimental state. I have tried to give people my take on what has been done and could be done to produce great works of art that are themselves entertaining.
Footage I used for this movie came from:
Games
Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones (UbiSoft)
Grim Fandango (Lucasarts)
Katamari Damacy (Namco)
Street Fighter II (Capcom)
Street Fighter: The Movie: The Game (Capcom)
Devil May Cry 3 (Capcom)
Devil May Cry 4 trailer (Capcom)
Guilty Gear X-2 (Arc System Works)
The Sims (Maxis)
Armored Core 3 (FROM Software)
Star Wars: Battlefront II (Pandemic Studios)
Shadow of the Colossus (SCEA)
Lilo and Stitch (Disney Interactive)
Taz: Wanted (Blitz Games)
Final Fantasy X (Square Enix)
Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner (KCEJ)
Samurai Warriors 2: Empires (Omega Force)
Tetrollapse (GameGuild)
Jagged Alliance 2 (SirTech)
Enter the Matrix (Shiny Entertainment)
Eragon (Stormfront Studios)
GunMaster Onslaught (LostVectors)
PONG (Atari)
The "footage" I put together of Pong was done with simple shapes that were manually moved around the screen, and though I did credit PONG to Atari because I did utilize Pong as a reference to the first video games, I didn't use actual PONG footage.
Movies/Series
Charlotte Sometimes (Visionbox)
Eragon (20th Century Fox)
Crash (Lion's Gate)
Noir (Bee Train)
I'm Your Man DVD Cover (Choicepoint)
Space Mutiny (Action International)v
Terminator 2 (TriStar)v
Star Wars (Lucasfilm)
Street Fighter: The Movie (Universal)
The Matrix Reloaded (Warner Bros.)
Enter the Dragon (Warner Bros.)
Music
"Cyberbird" by Gabriela Robin
"Vergil Battle 3" by Tetsuya Shibata
"Battle with the Colossus" By Kow Otani
Other
"Eragon" by Christopher Paolini
"Serra Angel vs. Hypnotic Specter" by Greg Staples
"The Treachery of Images" by Rene Magritte
"The Lost Jewels of Nabooti" by R.A. Montgomery
Self Portrait by Scott McCloud
"Fountain" by Marcel Duchamp
Understanding Civilization (III)
Bibl. reference:Jenkins, Henry and Kurt Squire (2003). In: Computer Games Magazine, p. nn.. Internet:
http://www.educationarcade.org/node/66
This is an example for an off-the-shelf commercial game used in an educational setting.
Excerpt:
"Over the past year, Kurt Squire has been studying how Civilization III can be used to teach high school and middle school social studies. In CivIII, players lead a civilization from 4000 BC to the present by managing its natural resources, economic system, civil infrastructure and diplomacy. One of the game’s most educational components is its elaborate technology tree that ties together everything from the alphabet to nuclear fission. Using CivIII’s mod building tools, Kurt created custom scenarios to teach global history and then examined what students learned through game play."
There's also a Caveat here, a quote from the text:
"On the other hand, few detected the game’s geographical, materialist bias, or realized that CivIII minimizes the role of historical figures and cultural factors. In her course, “Spanish and Portuguese Colonization as Depicted Through Computer Games,” Rice University Professor Pat Seed has students critique several games, including Age of Empires, Colonization, and Cutthroat, showing how different games embody different theories of history. There is no such thing as a neutral simulation; they all embody assumptions about the way the world works."
The Sims: Grandmothers are cooler than trolls.
ce: Frasca, Gonzalo (2001). In: international journal of computer game research,
http://www.gamestudies.org/0101/frasca/
Frasca tries to explain why "The Sims" is an extremely unusual game, since it stands in utter contrast to most other mainstream commercial game successes: It sports neither fancy graphics nor fantastic settings of a world in danger to be saved by the player. How come everyday chores and everyday life is so appealing to us, when encountered in a free simulation, in a game?
There's one of the GBL-caveats Frasca mentions here, too:
"The problem of simulating reality is that it can easily become too real."
After reading David Wong's essay on realistic wargames, I'd like to add:
"The problem of simulating reality is that every simulation is by definition extremely selective."
Gaming is a Form of Time Travel
ibl. reference:Wright, Will,
Internet: http://zdnet.com.com/1606-2_2-5998422.html (last visited: 8.3.2008).
This is a 4-minute videocapture of a speech from Will Wright, developer of 'Simcity' and 'The Sims'. He's got some interesting concepts here, the most remarkable one the "possibility space" of multi-factor-simulations. One can contrast this quite well to the path-approach or hypertextual criss-crossing-approach in adventures.
At the When 2.0 workshop, Electronic Arts' chief designer Will Wright, who created the popular "SimCity" series, talks about the role of time in game play. The workshop was hosted by Release 1.0 and took place at Stanford University, Dec 16th 2005
Here's the link to the videoclip: http://news.cnet.com/1606-2_3-5998422.html
(This is a new link - the old znet-link didn't work anymore...)
(There's a short commercial before Wrigth starts to talk)
Breaking the rules!
Zum kreativen Umgang mit Computerspielen in der außerschulischen Jugendarbeit
Author/s:Wiemken, Jens
http://snp.bpb.de/referate/wiemken.htm
Interesting approach from Jens Wiemken to transfer computer game mechanics (Pacman als Geländespiel, RealDOOM) into a real life setting.
Abstrakt:
Jens Wiemken berichtet aus seinen Erfahrungen mit dem Einsatz von Computerspielen in der außerschulischen Jugendarbeit.
Er zeigt mittels überraschender Beispiele, daß hier über die Nutzung als Text- oder Bildbearbeitungsgerät hinaus viel mehr an Kreativität zu entdecken ist, als es die Spieleentwickler selbst gedacht haben: "Pac Man" wird als Geländespiel umgesetzt, "Sim City" als politisches Wahl(betrugs)spiel oder "Roboterspiele", bei denen der Monitor nicht unbedingt im Mittelpunkt steht. Und wenn dann noch DOOM in dunklen Schulgängen inszeniert wird
Bow Nigger
Bibl. reference:Always Black, Internet:
http://www.alwaysblack.com/blackbox/bownigger.html
This is a gripping, well written recount of a duel in the MMOG (Massive Multiplayer Online Game) "JKII: Jedi Outcast", where the line between in-game ethical categories and 'real' good and evil clashes. And there is no well-meaning screenwriter or director intervening, the outcome of this 'game' is open, very personal, and would be devastating if the 'evil' guy had won. Is this still a 'game'-situation? Or is this exactly the gaming experience meaningful gameplay should strive for?
Quote:
"(...) You see what this has become? It's not just a trivial game to be played in an idle moment, this is a genuine battle of good versus evil.
It has nothing to do with Star Wars or Jedi Knights or any of the fluff that surrounds the game's mechanics. I played by the 'rules' and he didn't,
that makes me the 'good' guy and him the 'baddie', but this is real, in the sense that there's no telling who's going to win out here.
There's no script or plot to determine the eventual triumph of the good guy (that's me, five health), there's no 'natural order' of a fictional universe or any question of an apocryphal ultimate 'balance'.
There just me and him, light and dark, in a genuine contest between the two.
And there it is. I don't even know what it was. Some chance slash or poke in all of the rolling and jumping around and his lifeless avatar, with all his racist stabs and underhand duplicity,
goes tumbling to the floor vanquished by the guy who even in the face of all of that, played by the ‘rules'. Only one health point remains but I win.
I'm a fucking hero. A real one."
