Book Review: The Art of Video Games

Over the course of 2010/2011, I was privileged enough to be invited by Chris Melissinos to sit on the advisory board for the Art of Video Games exhibit he was putting together for exhibition at the Smithsonian. The exhibition opened a couple weeks ago and I was unable to attend the opening due to overlap with vacation plans, but I plan on visiting it sometime in May.

In the meantime though I got a copy of the book Chris authored in parallel with it, also titled The Art of Video Games and had a delightful time going through it.

The book is a large format hardcover coffee table book. It is liberal with spacing given to artwork, screenshots and whitespace and this makes it easy and fun to flip through. The games are broken up into different eras, loosely coupled with the "generations" of home consoles, though it also covers many PC games* from those same eras.

[*If I had any contribution to the exhibit, other than voting on the games with the other board members, it was in the debate for the inclusion of PC games to the list. A few of us (John Romero and myself were most vocal) felt that it was important to represent the symbiosis of development on closed platform consoles and open platform PCs (C-64, DOS/Windows PCs, etc - though the Apple II was a notable omission) and each has helped push the progress of the other. Chris agreed and that lead to the inclusion of a number of games from those platforms, including Jumpman on the C64 - itself likely responsible for consuming 1000+ hours of my youth.]

The treatment given each game focuses in part on the game's art and gameplay, and in part on why the game was notable or revolutionary for it's time.

The book also has a number of interviews with industry luminaries including Nolan Bushnell and others. These lend a bit of context to the mindset at the time, challenges in developing the games, etc.

Its a beautiful book that every gamer should have sitting on their coffee table.

The Art of Video Games: From Pac-Man to Mass Effect

Book Review: The Art Detective

I picked this up on a whim when my eye happened upon it at the local library.

The Art Detective: Fakes, Frauds, and Finds and the Search for Lost Treasures is a pretty entertaining read. It's written by Philip Mould, an art historian/collector/appraiser who is also known for his appearances on Antiques Roadshow.

In the Art Detective, he takes the reader into the world of 'found' paintings, specifically works of grand masters that have been recovered after years either missing or lying in unknown obscurity. The work that goes into researching their histories, verifying their authenticity, and in restoring their damages (e.g. from things like later 'artists' having painted a newer and more fashionable hat on them). He does this by picking a handful of the more colorful finds from his career (not all were his finds) and bringing us behind the scenes of the process that can sometimes drag out for months.

Mould is somewhat long winded and a touch pretentious in his narration, but it can be comical if taken with a pinch of salt. The background on the processes used to recover these works is quite fascinating.

Great analysis of a Kickstartr-funded project

Craig Mod (whom I recently had the pleasure of traversing the Mexican desert with - but that's another story) posted a great write up of his (successful) efforts to use Kickstartr to raise money to fund a print run of his book.

The analysis he does of Kickstartr funding tier levels, time periods, etc, make it well worth the read. I've ordered a copy of the book. It looks beautiful. Cloth-bound in a silk-screened cover.

It's as equally applicable to game-funding efforts as it is to book publishing. (i.e. Indies reading this should be thinking 'collectors-edition boxes!'.

Sigh. Games as Art (again)

So Roger Ebert has gone curmudgeon on games again, this time using Kelly Santiago's TED talk as fodder. She posts a good rebuttal here. Kotaku's Brian Ashcraft also chimes in with a good response.

If you were following, you might have missed this really good response from the esteemed Scott McCloud. The whole thing is worth reading but here's an excerpt:

If you’re asking if videogames are art, I think you’re asking the wrong question. I don’t think art is an either/or proposition. Any medium can accommodate it, and there can be at least a little art in nearly everything we do.

Once in a while, someone makes a work in their chosen medium so driven by aesthetic concerns and so removed from any other consideration that we trot out the A-word, but even then it’s a matter of degrees, and for most creative endeavors you can find a full spectrum from the sublime to the mundane.

The Developer's Duty

I attended both the IGDA Leadership Summit and the Montreal International Game Summit recently, and both conferences were punctuated by keynotes given by Chris Hecker. The keynotes were different, but related. Summaries are covered here and here.

One of the main points of both keynotes was that games are at a crossroads, and that whether they end up as a respected medium of entertainment and artistic expression, or get relegated to a 'cultural ghetto', or worse, get regarded as 'just toys'. Jason captured this slide on that point:

Chris also made the point that the industry was moving from questions of HOW (e.g. "How do I put 100 characters in a scene?") to questions of WHY ("Why do I want to put 100 characters in my scene? What am I trying to say by doing so?" etc)

His call to action was that developers should all ask themselves, during the course of their development, two questions:

- "What am I trying to say, and why?"

- "Am I saying it with interactivity?"

It/they were brilliant and provocative keynotes. Chris' big picture thinking always impresses me.

Yesterday, I watched Good Night and Good Luck, the story of Edward R Murrow's attempt to take a stand against Senator Joe McCarthy's communist witchhunt and circumventing of due process, etc.

The film begin and ends with Murrow's speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association convention in 1958. The transcript of the speech is well worth reading (the film only provides the beginning and ending).

There's a passage toward the end that Murrow directed toward television, but I think applies equally to games and is in keeping with the ideas conveyed in Chris' speech. Given the sentiment of Murrow's speech, that the medium has a responsibility to *try* to do more - that those that develop and fund content have a duty to do so - I have to think he'd be OK with our applying his words to games in the same way:

We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.[1]

I do not advocate that we turn television into a 27-inch wailing wall, where longhairs constantly moan about the state of our culture and our defense. But I would just like to see it reflect occasionally the hard, unyielding realities of the world in which we live. I would like to see it done inside the existing framework, and I would like to see the doing of it redound to the credit of those who finance and program it. Measure the results by Nielsen, Trendex or Silex-it doesn't matter. The main thing is to try[2]. The responsibility can be easily placed, in spite of all the mouthings about giving the public what it wants. It rests on big business, and on big television, and it rests at the top. Responsibility is not something that can be assigned or delegated. And it promises its own reward: good business and good television.[3]

Perhaps no one will do anything about it. I have ventured to outline it against a background of criticism that may have been too harsh only because I could think of nothing better. Someone once said--I think it was Max Eastman--that "that publisher serves his advertiser best who best serves his readers." I cannot believe that radio and television, or the corporation that finance the programs, are serving well or truly their viewers or listeners, or themselves.[4]

I began by saying that our history will be what we make it. If we go on as we are, then history will take its revenge, and retribution will not limp in catching up with us.[1]

We are to a large extent an imitative society. If one or two or three corporations would undertake to devote just a small traction of their advertising appropriation along the lines that I have suggested, the procedure would grow by contagion; the economic burden would be bearable, and there might ensue a most exciting adventure--exposure to ideas and the bringing of reality into the homes of the nation.

To those who say people wouldn't look; they wouldn't be interested; they're too complacent, indifferent and insulated, I can only reply: There is, in one reporter's opinion, considerable evidence against that contention. But even if they are right, what have they got to lose? Because if they are right, and this instrument is good for nothing but to entertain, amuse and insulate, then the tube is flickering now and we will soon see that the whole struggle is lost.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it is merely wires and lights in a box.[5]

Parallel's with Chris' talk:

1. Art vs Pop-culture ghetto
2. The important thing is that we all try
3. Indies can't do all the heavy lifting. Big Games needs to pitch in too.
4. "Cotton Candy for Dinner"
5. It's ours to fuck up, and we CAN fuck it up.

I thought the parallels quite electrifying. I don't know whether to find encouragement in it though. The struggle Murrow spoke of 50 years ago continues today, and a few minutes watching Fox news makes a case that we are losing ground if anything.

That a struggle does continue though, is good. Hopefully games can fare as well, or better. So long as developers (and publishers, and the rest of us on the periphery) consider it their duty to try, then maybe we will do better.

Good rant on the 'games as art' thing

From Damion Schubert's (Bioware designer) wonderful Zen of Design blog.

All this being said, narrative is a red herring in the discussion of games as art. Let’s put it this way: can oil paintings succeed without great cinematography? Can classical music be great without a killer screenplay? Can a Ming vase be great without compelling characters?These are very silly questions.

Each artistic medium has its own rules for what makes that particular craft capture the viewers eye and imagination. For video games, narrative is an exceptionally powerful tool – one used exceptionally well in Knights of the Old Republic and Starcraft, for example. But I posit that many games without story, games like Civilization and Minesweeper, are elegant, artful games with barely a lick of developer-provided narrative. The art found in these games is less about what you find in a movie theater, and more about what you find in an ancient Chinese puzzle box.

Go read.

The Unfinished Swan

Jane points us to this interesting concept, a 'first person painter'.

The Unfinished Swan - Tech Demo 9/2008 from Ian Dallas on Vimeo.

Clever!

Pac Gentleman

While I enjoy steampunk sci-fi as much as the next guy, I don't have the faux-steampunk-object fetish that some folks have.

However, this steampunk rendition of Pacman (via Wonderland) is the exception. It's so awesome, I've been ruminating all morning on what it would take to build a working version using the same technique as was used for the mechanical pong machine.

Winds of change

Is it just me, or is this whole "when will games get credit for being an artform?" thing starting to get some traction as of late:

• An article on the subject here includes tidbits like the fact that South Korea drops mandatory military service for those that work in the games industry (because they are contributing to one of Korea's key cultural exports (IGDA site via Raph)
• CNN's got 'Presidential Pong' right there on the homepage. The games equivalent of the editorial cartoon.
• NYT beat them to the same thing a week or two earlier with Food Import Folly, a game about the pressure the FDA is under to try and protect the food supply with an ever growing percentage of imported food and no growth in the manpower to keep it safe.

Strangely, Jack Thompson is silent on the whole thing. And I think that's an accomplishment on it's own! :-)

On 300 and convergence...

Clint has a great post about the movie 300, and what it exemplifies (and doesn't) in terms of the 'convergence' between film and game media. Great read.

Stop and smell the roses

What a beautiful experiment. What an ugly result.

[There's a cynical statement to be made here as well. How many people would have stopped and listened if they'd *known* he was "was one of the finest classical musicians in the world, playing some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made". Same kind of folks that comment on an 'insouciant little pinot'... after hearing the price.]

Thanks to Souris, Hustler of (high and low brow) Culture, for the pointer.

Bodies

Went to see the Bodies exhibit this past weekend. It was pretty nifty, but I'm not sure it was worth the $27/person they charge for it.

It was educational and let you see all the bits of the body cut up and splayed out in ways that a textbook could never do justice to. Still, probably more educational for those that aren't married to and/or have siblings in the medical profession. (I've been surrounded by some fairly disgusting-yet-detailed dinner conversation on occasion over the past 15 years :-)

One thing Alisa and I both found funny was that people that were unphased by the majority of the exhibit would suddenly cringe and flee from the room with preserved fetuses. I witnessed a couple people rushing through that one room, one saying "ugh! Let's just get past this one!". This must happen a lot because they have a big warning before that one room. Hmm...

Personally, the only one that even mildly gave me the willies was one exhibit with man's entire skin preserved like some kind of tanned leather hide. Here's a similar example from another one of their exhibits (lots of good photos of this up on flickr)

The Arcade, the Artist and the Algorithm

Raph Koster pointed to this lovely set of images from artist Rosemarie Fiore, that are all long-exposure shots of old arcade games (mostly old color vector games, though Qix was a raster setup, IIRC).

It occurred to me that you could probably get similar shots by getting the source code to MAME, and either switching off back-buffer clears while doing some post processing on the back buffer. Not sure you'd have the same beauty in the final result though.