Beyond games as art

Are games art? It’s a question that’s been discussed and argued and torn apart and put together countless times. Every game from Super Mario Bros. to Braid to Metal Gear Solid 4 have been used as positive (or negative) examples of games as a legitimate artform. And a new wave of developers interested in pushing the medium of games have reopened this age-old question with new indie games that probe and explore and provoke.

But this question is completely silly. Of course games are art, by most modern definitions art is a immensely broad and open categorization that encompasses nearly anything and everything in the proper context. And its not the advent of newer games that have pushed games into such lofty air, games are just as much art 30 years ago with the Atari 2600 as they are today (although much like other embryonic mediums games have become hugely refined from such humble beginnings).

Ian Bogost has written an interesting article on Gamastura about going beyond the now tired “are games art?” argument. Instead, after dealing with the issues of that monolithic question he dives into a more pressing issue. If games are art then there must be styles that we can define, movements and their responses. To this task Ian Bogost finds one which he defines as proceduralism, a style found in games like Braid, The Passage, and The Marriage. His definition of this movement as follows:

Proceduralist games are process-intensive. In these games, expression is found in primarily in the player’s experience as it results from interaction with the game’s mechanics and dynamics, and less so (in some cases almost not at all) in their visual, aural, and textual aspects.

These games lay bare the form, allowing meaning to emanate from a model.

It’s all good weekend reading here as Bogost goes on to work out what aspects would define such a movement. And while you can quibble with some of the definitions, it’s a start to what I feel can only be an immensely fruitful discussion. Something I may like to talk about in greater detail in a few days…