Do you consider video games to be art?

Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation
Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution
of Higher Professional Education
Moscow State Industrial University
(FSBEI MSIU)

Department of "Philosophy and History"

ESSAY

for the discipline "Sociology"

on the topic "Games – Art?"

Group

Student

Professor

Grade
Date

MOSCOW 2012

Contents:
Abstract………………………………………………………………….……3

Terms and Concepts……………………………………………………….…..4

Historiography……………………………………….………………….…….5

Problem……………………………………………………………..…………7

Survey Data…………………………………………………………….…..9

Significance…………………………………………………………………..….11

Problems arising when analyzing games as art………..13

Conclusion………………………………………………………………………….…...15

List of Resources…………………………………………………………..…….16

Abstract.

The essay explores whether games are art. Individual criteria are examined which, collectively, allow one to determine whether games (as a phenomenon in general and individually) are art or not.

Terms and Concepts.

Art - an extremely developed skill in a certain specific field.

Game (in our case) – something that can be controlled using certain devices and the display of our actions can be seen on some output device.

Sound – some action, effect or similar, but which is not music and/or a song.

Music – that which (usually) plays in the background and gives the player a certain mood during a specific interval of the game.
Often, although incorrectly, these two terms are combined.

Graphics – how the actions occurring on the screen look externally.
Based on my observations, one must consider the criterion of when the game was released, as (for example) in 1990 there were no technologies like those in 2012.

Animation – can be considered a sub-point of "Graphics," which shows the smoothness of movements on the screen.

Gameplay – how conveniently the controls and similar elements are constructed.

Interface – the display of various menus, indicators, options, and similar items on the screen. It is important that the interface does not clutter the screen so as to prevent the player from enjoying the game.

Plot – what the game tells a story about.
It is not a mandatory attribute in all games.

Historiography (skip this point immediately, I only wrote it because the professor wanted it).

1) "Classification of Games". Source – tv-games.ru. Authors: Leonis and ALLiGaToR.

Briefly: the article contains detailed descriptions of genres, types, and kinds of reviews in games.

2) "Myths of the Game Industry". Source – baraholkin.ru. Author: Johnny.

Briefly: the article describes people's misconceptions in various spheres of the gaming industry.

3) "History of the Genre: First-Person Action Games". Source - lki.ru. Author: Timur Khoreev.

Briefly: history of the emergence and development of the shooter genre.

4) "History of the Horror Genre". Source – baraholkin.ru. Translator: Soman.

Briefly: tells about the birth of the Horror genre and its successors.

5) "History of the RPG Genre". Source - ru.wikipedia.org. Authors: people visiting this resource.

Briefly: tells about the birth of the genre and its successors.

6) "Historical Pages". Source - tv-games.ru. Authors: people visiting this resource.

Briefly: tells about the establishment of games and their development up to the crash of the video game industry in 1983.

7) "History of Konami Company". Source – "Romomania No. 1". Author: Bazer.

Briefly: describes the main points of this company's development.

8) "History of Sega". Source – "Romomania No. 5". Translator: Igor Sinyavin. Original: materials from Sega of America (sega.com) and Planet Dreamcast (planetdreamcast.com).

Briefly: the material narrates from the creation to the collapse of the Sega company.

9) "Game Versions for Different Countries on NES". Source – "Romomania No. 8".
Author: Shiru.

Briefly: using games for the "old lady" Dendy as an example, it shows how a game can be changed beyond recognition in different regions (EU, JP, US, etc.).

10) "Cycle of Articles on TAS-videos". Source – shedevr.org.ru. Author: AnS.

Briefly: describes another type of hobby for people who like games. This passion is characterized by attempts to complete a certain game in the possibly ideal-minimum continuum of time.

11) "Kojima, Hideo". Source - ru.wikipedia.org. Authors: people visiting this resource.

Briefly: notable for inventing a new genre in games – stealth-action and creating the famous "Metal Gear (Solid)" series.

12) "History of Nintendo Company". Source - ru.wikipedia.org. Authors: people visiting this resource.

Briefly: contains materials from its birth to the present day.

13) "Steepler". Source - tv-games.ru. Authors: people visiting this resource.

Briefly: they fooled a whole country, passing off an NES clone as a real console and making colossal profits from it.

Problem.

Nowadays, the question of what should be considered art and what not is becoming acute. The main reason for this is new ways of transmitting information. One such way can be called computer and video games.

Therefore, the problem of this material will be as follows: "Should games be considered art?"

Their (games') potential is quite great, although many will claim that they are not interested in games at all, but in most cases this is not true.

I can give a few examples from real life:

1) a son tells his father about some game, but the father only scolds him in response, yet, coming home from work, he sits at the computer and plays "World of Tanks";

2) it is tacitly believed that games are for guys, and girls turn their gaze away from them, but this is not true. I know many of the fair sex who play games.

This indicates that games are a quite tempting thing, independent of various factors, so it is not scary at all that any person, if they want to, will play them.

This can be compared to books – everyone reads them, and no one considers it shameful.

Also evidence that this segment is interesting to people can be the fact that fan magazines are published: "Romomania", "Replayer", "Herald of Heroes", "Great Dragon" (the latest issues are fan-made), etc.

Fan video reviews for various games are also made. Often they are made by people out of love for a particular game. One of the popular shows from this perspective is "The Angry Video Game Nerd" (I do not recommend this show to persons under 14 years old).

Various mods and similar things are also created.

Example: for "Heroes 3", something like "WOG" was created (considering that at the time it was created, no official tools had been made for modders); for "Dragon Age: Origins" (and other famous RPGs) – tons of mods have been stamped out, some of which are quite interesting; for "Heroes 5", they even created "TE" (an amateur mod that fixes balance and is currently used for Russian and international tournaments for this game), etc.

Survey Data.

Surveys were conducted on various websites that are either entirely dedicated to gaming themes or have a part specifically allocated for it.

Here are some of them: rutracker.org, retrobit.ru, tv-games.ru, heroesworld.ru and others.
What is interesting: on sites where activity has long been low, almost no one answered, but on public ones or those dedicated to entire game series, answers poured in quite quickly.

The survey results showed that (in general) people treat games quite normally, but far from everyone accepts them as art. The reason is that this genre (i.e., games) was born not so long ago (somewhere in the 50s – 60s) and many still underestimate it.

Below are the answers (if answers coincided strongly, I combined them) to the questionnaire questions (it should be noted that nowadays, unfortunately, people have grown out of writing long memoirs, so the survey was quite compressed, but the most important parts were left):

1) how do you feel about games?

The main answer given was: "Positively".
Slightly less often: "I feel good about games, they help distract from various unpleasant thoughts, time flies by unnoticed with them, in general, playing is great!"

2) which genres do you like?

Most often RPGs and strategies (turn-based and real-time) were named.
Slightly less often: action- and "adventure"-oriented games.
Then – "pure" quests.
Least often – those games that in reality one can "play out" to their heart's content (sports and the like).

3) do you consider games art and why?

The most popular answer options were that "games combine several types of arts - visual art, the art of writing a script and plot, musical art, and others" and "not all [games are art], [but only] individual creations deserve the right to be considered art".
Less often: "100 percent art. But commerce ruins everything".
The least popular answer: "No".
4) describe the criteria by which you evaluate games.

Mainly there is one answer: "Atmosphere, game world, interesting plot, characters, harmony and balance, quality of music, graphics and other components".

5) name examples of games that you could call masterpieces.

Here the answers were monotonous and, to be fair, many wrote lists of games they specifically like: "Streets of Rage, Donkey Kong, Killer Instinct, Age of Empires, Carmageddon, Heroes of Might & Magic 3, Unreal Tournament, Twisted Metal 2, Half-Life / Counter-Strike, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil 4, Uncharted 2, Heavy Rain, Deus Ex: Human Revolution, Dark Souls".
There were indeed more correct ones, but fewer of them: "CHRONO TRIGGER".

Significance.

For science, the significance is not as obvious as it actually is, since the scientific world is used to numbers and forgets that zeros and ones do not always show real results. It is often better to model a graphical model than to give some meaning to a random derivative.

As an example, I will provide an excerpt from an article on games.mail.ru:
"Corrupted Blood (World of Warcraft)
In September 2005, a plague came to World of Warcraft, little different from the 'black death' that raged in Europe. Patch 1.7 added a new raid dungeon Zul'Gurub to the game. The bloodthirsty spirit Hakkar the Soulflayer used the Corrupted Blood spell in battle. It periodically reduced the character's health points. The disease was also transmitted to those who stood near an infected person. To everyone's surprise, including the developers, Corrupted Blood escaped into Azeroth through infected hunter and warlock pets. In a few hours, the epidemic wiped out the capitals of the Alliance and Horde. Low-level characters died literally in a few seconds. Epidemiologists from Princeton University thoroughly studied how gamers behaved. According to scientists, player behavior was practically no different from the actions of people who found themselves at the epicenter of a real epidemic. Some called for a 'doctor' — Blizzard Entertainment, while others, as if driven mad by despair, tried to infect as many people as possible. However, many suffered through their own stupidity: players approached the infected out of curiosity."

If we look at the significance for the public, it is particularly high here because, besides its entertainment nature, it allows one to do various things, examples of which are shown below:

1) it is not always possible to go and play (for example) golf in nature, but based on wireless controller management, it is entirely possible to bring this game (and similar ones) as close as possible (by modern standards) in home conditions. Example – "Golf" for "Wii";
2) an alternative way of presenting the study of things such as historical events (with the caveat that in a game, gameplay is often more important than the plot). Examples of games: "300 Spartans", "Sparta", "Stalingrad", "III Century" etc.;
3) to rest and relax from a stressful day (especially if strong aggression is felt): "Resident Evil" (4-5, "ORC" and the "Chronicles" series), "Duke Nukem", "Call of Duty" and similar.

Problems arising when analyzing games as art.

There are quite a lot of game genres, which adds complexity to which criteria to use, so I took those used when giving ratings in various magazines on gaming products (definitions provided on p. 4).

Also, due to the large number of poor quality works, it is difficult to find gems.

Another problem arises in that there are some who only care about graphics (thankfully there aren't many of them), and they are ready to buy a soulless blank with "realistic" images and, excuse my vulgarity, girls in crop tops. These people do not understand or do not want to understand that graphics are far from the main thing in games, and that many graphical things were simply impossible to implement before.

Looking at it from a programming point of view – having played many old games, I come to the conclusion that they (the programmers) tried to push the limits of the hardware for which they wrote the game.

I can name games that in their day made if not a revolution, then certainly showed that graphics could be worthy for their time:

1) "Resident Evil 1" for "PS1" and "Sega Saturn". All backgrounds were painted, and each character was made of several dozen polygons, which as a result gave a fairly rich amount of detail, with quite well-made models;

2) "Heroes of Might and Magic 3" for computer. I don't know exactly what technologies were used there, but considering the requirements needed for the game, it can be said that the developers optimized it well;

3) "Commandos" for computer. Same as in point No. 2.

Genres were mentioned, so a bit about them: one must remember one axiom, that it is incorrect and wrong to compare all games with each other, just as you wouldn't compare a "Volvo" with an "Aist".

***

The classification of genres was taken from the site tv-games.ru (in a slightly compressed form):

Action/Reflex - the most inclusive genre. Games of this genre test the player's reaction, speed and accuracy.

Arcade - one of the oldest game genres. Arcade Donkey Kong. In fact, it is a synonym for Action/Reflex, as these games cannot be attributed to other genres.

Shoot'Em Up - all games where the goal consists of shooting. Space Invaders, Contra, Commando, DooM.

Fighting - fighting games. Mortal Kombat.

Pinball - pinball.

Pong - the oldest game genre (if counting from the birth of the video game industry).

Racing - racing.

Sport - Sports and near-sports games, including futuristic ones.

Gamble – gambling games.

Edutainment - educational games.

Simulation - simulators.

Trivia/Quiz - all sorts of quizzes, for example "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" or "Field of Miracles".

Conclusion.

Based on the materials obtained, it is difficult to make a final verdict, since there is no benchmark concept for defining whether a game is "filler", "entertainment" or a "masterpiece".

The concept proposed in this essay is quite vague, but it could serve as a small stepping stone toward a positive resolution of this topic, were this the work not of a 3rd-year student, but of a person of higher (rank).

List of Resources:

1) TV-games.ru;
2) Ru.Wikipedia.org;
3) Retrobit.ru;
4) Bit16.ru;
5) Rutracker.org;
6) HeroesWorld.ru;
7) Baraholkin.ru;
8) ResidentEvilForver.ru;
9) ModGames.net;
10) HeroesLeague.ru;
11) Heroes35.net;
12) GDragon.ru;
13) WOGGrad.ru;
14) Games.Mail.ru;
15) LOTRO-Russia.com;
16) LKI.ru;
17) Shedevr.org.ru.