Interactive Entertainment as an Art Form

In thinking about the future of interactive entertainment, it would be a mistake to consider only the advances that are likely to take place in the world of commercial, mass-market gaming. That would be like assuming that the potential of cinema was limited to what you see in Hollywood blockbusters, or that the written word was capable of no more than Danielle Steel novels . Interactive entertainment is an art form, just as filmmaking and writing are. Unlike filmmaking and writing, however, it has not yet been recognized as an art form by the public at large.

Film has the advantage that it is an outgrowth of drama, and, of course, drama was recognized as an art form by no less a figure than Aristotle. It took film a little while to achieve this status, but it is now unshakable. Computer games' roots are not in drama, however, but in gameplay. Their nearest noncomputerized parallels are board games and fairground shooting galleries, neither of which are or ever will be recognized as art forms. As a result, we face an uphill battle for recognition.

Part of the reason that board games and shooting galleries aren't art forms is that they contain very little expressive content. Graphically, they're abstract and minimal, requiring a lot of imagination on the part of the players to pretend that the little cardboard counters are really troops and tanks. They also seldom include any narrative or characters . Computer games, on the other hand, have a lot of content, both visible and audible; they have a distinct artistic style; and they often have a great deal of characterization and narrative.

Interactive Artwork

Most works of art require only passive observation, especially in traditional media such as painting, sculpture, and music. The observer brings his own knowledge and personal history to it, and these color his understanding and interpretation of the work, but the influence is entirely inside his own mind. He isn't asked to take an active, participatory role in creating the aesthetic experience.

There's no reason why works of art can't be interactive, however, and some are. In San Francisco, a science museum called the Exploratorium considers its exhibits to be works of art, and it actively seeks out artists to design them. Most of the exhibits are interactive, offering a learning experience as well as an aesthetic experience; they illustrate principles of nature, but also principles of design.

Not all interactive entertainment is art, but then, neither are all movies or all novels. Most movies ”and most novels, too, for that matter ”are merely light entertainment, popular culture. But just because James Bond novels and James Bond movies aren't generally considered to be art doesn't mean that film or the novel isn't an art form. Interactive entertainment is a collaborative art form in the same way that movies are, and it can be judged according to a variety of aesthetics the way movies are.

Requirements for Recognition

For interactive entertainment to be recognized as an art form, it must do some of the things that other art forms do, the things that people expect of art forms. We believe that game developers and publishers, and people who write about the game industry, can take several concrete steps to help it achieve that status.

We Must Devise Principles of Aesthetics

More than 20 years ago, Chris Crawford mentioned in his book The Art of Computer Game Design that the interactive entertainment medium needs principles of aesthetics. It remains true today. We're not much farther along than when he wrote that, though, for two reasons.

First, the serious study of computer games has only just begun. The commercial world is too busy churning out games as fast as it can to think deeply about them, and until recently, the academic world has ignored them as childish toys rather than important elements of popular culture. This is starting to change, and as we begin to see real analysis of computer games, principles of aesthetics will arise.

Second, computer games have been a rapidly moving target. Games have changed, at least in appearance and depth, far more in the last 20 years than movies or television did in any 20-year period of their history, partly because of the rapid development of new hardware. The principles of interactive entertainment aesthetics should perhaps be independent of hardware developments, but this is easier said than done. It took 20 millennia to go from cave paintings to color photography; computer games have made a similar journey in two decades.

However, we're already on the right track. We've all seen games that were clunky and awkward to use and others that were smooth and seamless. We've all noticed games with tacky, slapped-together graphics and others with elegant and atmospheric graphics. These are good first approximations for game aesthetics. At the moment, they are purely surface impressions , the equivalent of showing basic competence at oil painting or music composition. To be a great painter or a great composer, you must go beyond basic competence; you must reach out and touch your audience's soul. Interactive entertainment is capable of doing this, but it seldom does, and we have yet to devise an aesthetic for it.

Our Awards Must Change

The game industry is ridiculously full of awards, mostly given by magazines or web sites, some by trade associations and parents' pressure groups. Within the industry, however, we have a problem: We tend not to distinguish between art and craft in our awards.

In the film industry, the Academy Awards are actually presented at two different ceremonies. One is the glittering spectacle that everyone knows , broadcast live on TV and attended by movie stars and Hollywood bigwigs. The other is for the technical awards. It's a much smaller affair, usually held in a hotel ballroom, and attended only by technical people, the film industry's craftsmen. The "big" Oscars that everyone hears about are all about art: acting, storytelling, art direction, music composition, and so on. The technical Oscars are all about craft: new equipment and techniques that have advanced the craft of moviemaking.

We, on the other hand, have muddled this important distinction. You often see awards for "best graphics," but they don't state whether they're being given for technology or aesthetics. Some people think that "best graphics" means graphics that are displayed at the highest frame rate, or that use the most polygons, or that use sophisticated lighting and shading effects. That isn't good graphics, it's good graphic technology ”good craft, but not good art. It's the same with sound; one award for "best sound" is supposed to encompass both music composition (an art) and 3D spatialization of ricocheting gunfire (a craft). As for those elements that Hollywood makes the most of ”acting and storytelling ”we typically give no awards at all. Small wonder , then, that these remain the weakest and most underappreciated parts of games.

To be recognized as an art form, our awards must change to value the artistic merit of computer games, not merely their technological prowess or craft.

We Need Critics , Not Just Reviewers

Like awards, the game industry is full of game reviews. In fact, that's where most of the awards come from: reviewers. But there's an important difference between reviewing and criticism. A review is a short essay whose purpose is to tell you about the game, to compare it with other similar games, and to give you an idea of whether you might like it and whether it's good value for the money. As they would say in the world of management consulting, it's a decision-support tool ”it helps you decide whether to buy the game.

Criticism is not a decision-support tool. Criticism does discuss the basic competence of an art work, but it seldom goes into the question of whether it's good value for the money. The purpose of criticism is to increase understanding, to interpret a work of art in light not only of other, similar works, but also of the larger cultural and historical context in which it appears. It's not enough for critics to know all about other games. Critics must bring to their work a wide reading and an understanding of aesthetics, culture, and the human condition.

The movie 2001 : A Space Odyssey is a perfect example of why an art form needs critics as well as reviewers. 2001 left the movie reviewers severely confused because it was almost impossible to compare to other movies. It had very little action: no car chases, no fight scenes, no romance, and almost no discernible plot. In fact, it contained very little acting either: The characters in it were intentionally dull and wooden. Movie reviewers simply didn't know what to say about it, and quite a few of them panned it because it didn't contain any of what they thought were "essential" elements of a movie. The film critics, on the other hand, had a field day. 2001 was rich with ideas, crammed with them right to the final frame. It provoked thought about everything from the origin of human intelligence (and perhaps human violence) to our ultimate destiny in the universe. Along the way, it looked at the sterile lives of astronauts and bureaucrats, poked fun at the way we eat, and raised questions about the wisdom of placing human lives under the control of artificially intelligent machines.

2001: A Space Odyssey is a great work of art and one of the most important movies ever made. But by conventional movie reviewers' standards, it was just a curiosity , perhaps even a failure. That is why the interactive medium needs critics as well as reviewers.

Breaking New Ground

Ultimately, the greatest works of art are those that break new ground. They change the rules, challenge the established order, create new principles of aesthetics, and force the viewer to see something in a new way. But how to do it?

Some works of art deserve high praise because they are masterpieces of technique, taking a medium right to its physical limits while still demonstrating superb aesthetic feeling. Michelangelo's colossal statue of David is a good example. But although it's occasionally useful to take a medium to its limits as a technical exercise, it doesn't necessarily produce great art, especially if aesthetics are sacrificed or ignored for the sake of technical achievement. And the problem with doing this in computer games is that the limits are always changing. The challenge that Michelangelo faced, working in marble, is still the same for any sculptor working in the same medium. But in computer games, the medium changes almost week by week. Today's technical marvel is tomorrow's irrelevancy.

Michelangelo's most important achievement in sculpting David was not technical, but artistic. The traditional way of portraying David was as victorious, armed and holding Goliath's severed head. Michelangelo chose instead to depict David before the battle, vulnerable but filled with a fierce courage. This had never been done before, and it set the work dramatically apart from its predecessors.

The Impressionist movement in painting is another useful example of what breaking new aesthetic ground is about. Impressionism challenged existing notions of what painting was for and what it was supposed to do. It asserted that the eye is not a camera, that painting need not be a photographic reproduction of reality. Yet Impressionism was not a new technology of painting; its tools were still canvas and paint. Rather, Impressionism was a new way of seeing.

Interactive entertainment needs an Impressionism of its own, a daring, risk-taking movement to break through the tired old tropes ”not a new way of seeing, but a new way of playing. We hope that you, our reader, might be our new Monet or Cassatt.