Esta es una traducción al español del artículo titulado Level 6: Games and Art publicado en el blog Game Design Concepts.

Nivel 6: Juegos y Arte

Por ai864

(Traducido por Ciro Durán)

 

 

En este punto me gustaría tomar una pequeña desviación para irnos al tema de "¿pueden ser arte los juegos?". Esto puede ser un tópico extraño para cubrir en medio de algunos principios fuertes de diseño. Es también uno de esos argumentos viejos y gastados que han estado dándose por años, así que ¿para qué perder nuestro tiempo lloviendo sobre mojado? Tengo algunas razones para incluir esto en el material del curso, y eres libre de debatir los méritos y desventajas de su inclusión en el curso.

 

La primera razón para que este tópico esté aquí es porque las próximas semanas estaremos hablando de todo el concepto de "diversión" y de cómo hacer los juegos más disfrutables. Para la mayoría de los diseñadores de juegos practicantes, este es su objetivo principal: Toma Este Juego y Hazlo Divertido. Antes de que nos vayamos por ese camino, quiero hacer quedar claro que la diversión no es el único propósito del diseño de un juego, y de hecho algunos juegos pueden ser pueden ser exitosos en sus metas de diseÑo incluso si no son particularmente "divertidos" en el sentido que la mayoría de los juegos lo son.

 

Segundo, como un debate que ha estando andando por años, quiero que aquellos que sean nuevos a la discusión tengan una base. Es una de esas cosas que seguramente saldrá en una conversación entre diseñadores de cuando en cuando, y quiero que los novatos entre ustedes estén preparados para entrar en esa discusión. Para aquellos que ya están familiarizados con esto, espero que pueda subir el nivel de tal manera que podamos hacer estas discusiones con un discurso más sofisticado.

 

Tercero, los llamados "juegos artísticos" -- eso es, juegos que están hechos principalmente para propósitos de expresión artística (al contrario del entretenimiento) -- están alcanzado una masa crítica. Por ahí hay mucha gente talentosa haciendo cosas muy interesantes en este campo ahora. Un montón de juegos artísticos son muy simples y pequeños en alcance, hechos por una sola persona en un período muy corto de tiempo. Un montón de avenidas potenciales todavía están por ser descubiertas. Esto hace que los juegos artículos sean una maravillosa oportunidad para aquellos que están buscando establecerse como diseñadores de juegos.

 

Y finalmente, sé apenas algo de historia del arte y crítica del arte para ser peligroso. Luego, tiendo, hasta cierto punto, a hablar sobre un área de interés personal... aunque reconozco que eso sin duda alguna me meterá en problemas en algún punto.

 

Anuncios del Curso

 

Para aquellos que han prestado suficiente atención, he cambiado mi nombre de usuario en Twitter de @ai864 a @IanSchreiber, a petición de mi co-autora Brenda Brathwaite (@bbrathwaite). La idea es que mi nombre verdadero será más sencillo de recordar... suponiendo que la gente aprenderá a deletrearlo correctamente. Ténganlo esto cuenta aquellos que twitean sobre este curso con regularidad.

 

Resultados del Mini-reto

 

He aquí una pequeña selección de las respuestas al mini-reto de la última vez (identifica un deporte físico con un ciclo de retroalimentación, y propón un cambio de regla para eliminarlo):

 

• Pool Bola 8: Una retroalimentación negativa es que mientras más bolas entroneres, menor cantidad de blancos legales vas a tener. Cambio de regla: las bolas entroneradas se vuelve a poner en la mesa, el primero que entronere cualquiera de 7 de sus bolas puede intentar entronerar la octava bola para ganar. Cambio de regla alternativo: si no entroneras una bola con éxito, el oponente automáticamente obtiene un punto.
• Artes marciales, boxeo o similares: una retroalimentación positiva es que mientras más golpees a tu oponente, él tendrá menos oportunidades de reprender. Cambio de regla: esperar un día entre rondas. (Quizás poco práctico, pero probablemente bajaría las heridas graves).
• Fútbol, Basketball y otros deportes en equipos: un ciclo negativo cuando después de anotar, la bola se le da al otro equipo. Cambio de regla: después de anotar, usar una "bola de salto" o equivalente para dar a ambos equipos la misma oportunidad de reclamar la pelota.
• Croquet: un ciclo positivo es que obtienes tiros extras al golpear estaquillas. Cambio de regla: haz los tiros extra opcionales, mantén la pista del total de tiros hechos durante el juego, el menro número de tiros gana.
• La mayoría de los deportes profesionales: un ciclo positivo es que un equipo que gana tiende a recibir más dinero (de los fans, por patrocinios, etc.) lo cual les deja comprar mejores jugadores, lo que hace más probable que sigan ganando. Cambio de regla: no dado. (Esto realmente es una lucha con algunos deportes profesionales, porque es más emocionante ver un juego si sientes que ambos equipos tienen oportunidad de ganar. En el mundo real, algunas propuestas que se han hecho para arregla esto incluyen cosas como límites de salario. Los deportes que no hacen algo para prevenir este ciclo tienden a perder popularidad. Y te estoy viendo, baseball americano).
• Bicicleta, carreras de autos, y similares: ciclo negativo es la habilidad de hacer drafting, aprovechar el efecto de succión que deja un carro para conservar energía que te permita rebasar al contrario luego. Cambio de regla: correr en el vacío (muy gracioso, amiguito).

 

Lecturas

 

Debido a la repsuesta positiva del lunes, seguiré colocando las lecturas al inicio. Lee éstas ahora:

 

• Challenges for Game Designers, Capítulo 17 (Los juegos como arte)
• A Theory of Fun for Game Design, Capítulo 12 (Tomando su lugar correspondiente), si decidiste adquirir este libro.
• Understanding Comics, Capítulo 7 (Los seis pasos), si decidiste adquirir este libro.

 

¿Qué es Arte?

 

Understanding Comics es, como ya lo podrás haber visto, un libro de comics sobre el arte de los libros de comics. Si leiste el capítulo 7, inmediatamente verás un número de paralelismos entre el arte de un libro de comics y el diseño de juegos... aparte del problema de imagen pública que ambos tienen de ser "no serios" y "sólo para niños".

 

McCloud comienza haciendo un intento de definir "arte" como cualquier cosa que no es hecha con la intención de sobrevivir o reproducirse. La mayoría de los estudiantes con los que he hablando piensan que esta es una definición demasiado amplia, pero por supuesto pocos pueden ofrecer algo mejor. Para lo que vale la pena, si aceptas esta definición, entonces el que "los juegos son arte" no es una conclusión descabellada -- después de todo, cuando estás profundamente concentrado en terminar el próximo nivel de Left 4 Dead, o estás considerando tu próximo movimiento en un juego de Ajedrez, probablemente no estés haciendo mucho para ayudar en tu supervivencia o reproducción en el mundo real (a menos que juegues Ajedrez de alguna forma erótica única, en tal caso no deseo enterarme de nada de eso).

 

He escuchado la definición de arte como algo que es comunicativo y transformativo. Esto es también muy amplio, pero también incluye claramente a los juegos.

 

Dictionary.com define el arte como la calidad, producción, expresión, o reino, de acuerdo a principios estético, de lo que es bello, atractivo o algo de mayor importancia. De acuerdo a esta definición, un juego con mucho "dibujo bonito", o un juego que es más que "sólo un juego" por cualquier razón, puede ser considerado arte.

 

Wikipedia define el arte como el proceso o producto de arreglar deliberadamente elementos de tal manera que apela a los sentidos o emociones. Los juegos tienen elementos formales que pueden ser deliberadamente diseñados. Los juegos pueden apelar a los sentidos, obviamente, a través de sus propiedades visuales si no hay nada más. Los juegos pueden apelar a las emociones -- dos ejemplos frecuentemente citados del mundo de los videojuegos son la muerte de Floyd en Planetfall y la muerte de Aerith en Final Fantasy VII, aunque nota qué emocional se puede poner la gente apenas mirando un deporte por televisión, o cuántas amistades y relaciones amorosas se han terminado con un juego de Diplomacy.

 

My intención no es definir el término arte; es hacer notar el hecho de que es tan dificil e inútil como darse a la tarea de definir el termino juego. Más bien, mi punto es que no importa qué definición de "arte" consigas, parece que no es particularmente dificil incluir juegos dentro de esa definición.

 

¿Por qué entonces el problema?

 

Si los juegos calzan con cualquier definición razonable que podamos pensar de "arte", probablemente te preguntes por qué esto es siquiera un debate. ¿Por qué las afirmaciones, reales o imaginarias, de que "los juegos no pueden ser arte"?

 

Aquí es útil hacer la distinción entre "arte" puro y simple y las "bellas artes" que es más intelectual -- el tipo de arte atemporal que captura y comunica la esencia de la experiencia humana. Shakespeare. Da Vinci. Monet. Ese tipo de cosas. El argumento entonces, puede que no sea que los juegos no puedan ser "arte" en el sentido de que puedan ser deliberadamente hechos con algún propósito, sino que los juegos no puedan alcanzar el nivel de "bella arte" debido a algo inherente en el medio.

 

No me extenderé más en el tema porque está ampliamente cubierto en el ensayo de Clint Hocking On Authorship in Games, el cual generosamente nos dio permiso de reimprimir en el texto Challenges.

 

Si estás notando a estas alturas un tema en mis lecturas, puedes ver cómo opino personalmente del asunto. Puede ser que no tengamos todavía el equivalente en videojuego de la Mona Lisa o de Ciudadano Kane, pero eso solo significa que existe una oportunidad. Así que, pasemos de este tema. Asumamos por el momento que los juegos pueden ser un medio válido para la expresión artística, y comencemos a hablar de cómo haría uno para lograr eso.

 

Seis Pasos

 

Quería resaltar dos puntos claves que se refieren a la lectura en Understanding Comics. La primera era la definición de arte de McCloud. La segunda es sobre las seis capas del arte:

 

• Idea / Propósito. ¿Cuál es el mensaje que se va a expresar, la semilla de la idea para una historia que debe ser contada? ¿Por qué estás creando una obra de arte en primer lugar?
• Forma. ¿Qué medio artístico usarás para expresar tu mensaje? ¿Óleo? ¿Escultura? ¿Danza? ¿Libros de comics? ¿Juegos?
• Idioma. Lo que McCloud llama idioma se conoce más comunmente como género cuando hablamos de juegos. Shooter en primera persona, estrategia en tiempo real, simulación de vehículos, MMORPG, y así (para juegos de mesa: juegos de manejo de recursos, juegos de pista de lanzar dados y moverse, juegos de dados, juegos de poner cuadros, juegos de apuestas...).
• Estructura. En las historias, este es el arco básico de la trama, personajes, y otros bloques de construcción. En los juegos, podríamos llamar a esto la "mecánica fundamental" del juego. ¿Cuáles son los componentes estructurales que forman el corazón de la experiencia del usuario/espectador/jugador?
• Artificio. En los libros de comics, esto incluye qué tan bien contada está una historia. En los juegos, es la habilidad de hacer que las reglas y experiencia de juego sean tan intuitivas y naturales, que los jugadores no estén luchando contra las reglas sino más bien disfrutando la partida.
• Superficie. Esta es la capa externa de la experiencia: los colores, sonidos, visuales, belleza, atención a los detalles que son inmediatamente percibidos. Lo "bonito" de la pieza.

 

McCloud nota que un lector de comics experimenta el trabajo desde la superficie hacia adentro. Primero ves la superficio; luego, mirando más adentro, disfrutas la historia. Aún más profundamente, puedes ver las ideas detrás de la historia, y quizás apreciar a un artista innovador incluso si la calidad del dibujo no es tan buena como quisieras. Con aún más estudio, puedes ver las divisiones entre diferentes géneros y estilos, e incluso entender la razón por la cual ciertos elementos de la historia y otras convenciones ocurren dentro de un género. Mirando aún más profundamente, puedes eventualmente ganar una apreciación del medio de los comics, entendiendo las maneras que lo hacen único como forma de arte; y, puedes ver las ideas detrás de un trabajo, el propósito detrás de lo que es en esencia, literatura atemporal.

 

Probablemente notarás que esto también se aplica a los juegos.

 

McCloud también nota que, mientras que una obra es encontrada "desde afuera hacia adentro", es todavía creada de "adentro hacia afuera" -- el creador debe primero decidir una idea y una forma y luego escoger un idioma dentro de esa forma, incluso antes de poner el lapiz en el papel. Estas elecciones pueden ser deliberadas o pueden ser hechas temeraria o emocionalmente, pero deben ser decididas de primero. Luego la estructura debe ser definida; luego los detalles deben ser dispuestos en el artificio; y finalmente la superficie debe ser creada.

 

¿Te suena esto familiar? Debería. Es, en gran parte, volver a decir el marco MDA.

 

De hecho, creo que los seis pasos de McCloud es una extensión de MDA. La mecánica es casi un equivalente a la estructura de McCloud; la dinámica análoga al artificio; y la estética similar a la superficie. No es un paralelismo directo, pero se acerca.

 

En ambos casos, el consumidor le concierne la superficie, mientras que el verdadero artista mira hacia el corazón del proceso artístico.

 

Towards an Artistic Process

If MDA represents the outer three layers of a piece of art, how do we represent the inner three layers? To answer this, we again turn to McCloud’s model.

McCloud takes one additional, important step behind LeBlanc et al. He states that while works are experienced from the outside in and created from the inside out, artists and other creators follow a process of learning from the outside in.

Think about it. What was your first “Great Idea” for a game? It probably concerned the surface characteristics of a game that you liked. “It’ll be just like Pac-Man meets Space Invaders. Only better!” Many people start out by “modding” a game that they like, taking existing gameplay and simply changing some of the surface characteristics – changing the appearance of characters in a game, reskinning everything so that instead of Marines Shooting Aliens In Space, the game now looks like Wizards Battling Dragons In The Mountains. Same mechanics, same dynamics, different surface.

And then what happened? Maybe you played enough games to see past the surface, to see that some games with dragons and fireballs and wizards are fun but others are not, and that the difference comes not from the story or the genre but from the gameplay. And you start to see the different types of play, and which types are and aren’t fun. With further experience and study you can get a good feel for what kinds of mechanics lead to compelling gameplay. And maybe that’s all you want or need, to become an established designer who is known for making games in established genres that are fun.

But if you look a little past that, you’ll start asking: where do genres come from? Who decides that a certain set of core mechanics can be copied from game to game, with variations, and that this particular set of mechanics creates good gameplay? How are new genres created? Is there a process for doing what no one else has done before, finding an elusive set of compelling mechanics that have not been discovered yet? And you could become renowned for creating one or more new genres of gameplay. You may or may not be able to take those genres and polish them as far as they can go, but you can create something that other people can take, those who work closer to the surface, who can then use your core ideas and perfect them.

Is that all you can do? It is probably more than any of us would aspire to in our lifetimes. And yet, you might wonder if there is something more. And there are two paths to explore: Idea and Form.

If you explore form, you can push the boundaries of the medium. What are games capable of? Can they generate emotions in the player (other than adrenaline rush and power fantasy)? What kinds of things can be expressed through games better than any other artistic medium? How can you use games in ways that the medium has not been used before – not just new gameplay styles, and not just new ways to have fun, but as a means of expression or transformation in the player? Can you change someone’s mind? Can you change their life? Can you touch them in ways that a painting or movie cannot? How? And then you create experimental work, probably very small games, that explore some aspect of what games as a medium can and can’t do. These games might not be particularly interesting or compelling to a wide audience, but they will give a lot of ideas to others who work within the medium, who can then use your experiments and modify them to express their own meaningful ideas.

If you explore idea/purpose, you instead have a message you want to communicate to the world, and you have chosen games as your preferred method of expression. Here, the challenge is to communicate in a medium where the player, and not the designer, is in control of the experience. You must use every trick you know in order to provide meaning through gameplay. What ideas do you want to express? What deep meaning exists in your life, that you want to share?

Lots of questions, few answers…

You might be wondering at this point if I have any answers at all about how to do this. I do not, but this is because of the nature of art.

This course is concerned primarily with the outer three layers of the art of game design: Mechanics, Dynamics and Aesthetics (or if you prefer, Structure, Craft and Surface). Teaching you how to make compelling games by creating their rules is already a daunting task for a ten-week course; teaching you to create new genres or to push the boundaries of the medium are a bit much.

But beyond that, as McCloud says, the inner three layers can’t be learned from a class or a book. To reach an understanding of the inner core of an art form, you will have to spend your entire career, maybe 20 or 30 years or more, working towards this on your own. And that’s only if you want to. You may have no interest in this, and that is perfectly okay. The world may need more people pushing the boundaries of games as an artistic medium… but the world still needs some good games, too. Only you know how far you can or want to take your art. It is not my place to tell you, but rather to point you to a road map that will let you get where you want to go.

 

And now, a little art history.

This is the part that always gets me into trouble, because a lot of people are mistrustful and cynical of contemporary art. Some guy calling himself an “artist” can poop in a tin can and sell it to an art gallery for 20,000 Euros, and the rest of us wonder how we can get people to pay us that much for our own excrement. This is art? And if so… is this what games aspire to be? It helps to take a step back and look at how we got this way, because games fit in quite nicely with contemporary art, and we should really understand why.

Let’s take a trip back to the Renaissance, when painting was elevated to an art form. At that time, art was supposed to be a faithful representation of the world; the picture frame could be thought of as a window through which you could view this other reality. The more realistic a piece of art depicted a scene, the better the artist. Judging art was as simple as seeing how lifelike it was – simple! And then around the 1890s, the photographic camera was invented and it ruined everything.

Now, with photographs being able to create a 100% perfect reproduction, the old form of art suddenly became obsolete. Painters had to ask themselves the question: what now?

The artist Wassily Kandinsky, followed by many others, started by asking if art could be its own object, rather than a representation of something else: what if a canvas is a “screen” rather than a “window” or “mirror”? And thus came what is now called abstract art, art that is not symbolic or representative of anything except itself.

How do you judge this kind of art? How can you tell an artist that is genuinely talented and inspired, from a poser who just flings paint randomly at a canvas and waits for undeserved accolades?

The influential critic Clement Greenberg offered a solution: judge art purely on its aesthetic value. Technical execution is king. The artist is the creator, and a good artwork should provide the same aesthetic value, regardless of who, if anyone, is viewing it. Greenberg formalized what is now referred to as “modern art” (modern here refers to a specific time period in the general range of 1910 through 1950, and is not to be confused with contemporary art which is the art of today).

Over the next few decades, the art world experienced a rejection of Greenbergian formalism, insisting that art should not be passive but interactive; it should be a dialogue between artist and viewer; art is allowed to have multiple interpretations; art should carry meaning. This era was referred to as “postmodern” art.

During the 1960s and 70s especially, art ran into a potential problem: it became a hot commodity and suddenly big-name artists were worth a lot of money. (I hear you saying: gosh, we should all have such “problems.”) Still, a lot of artists felt their work was being devalued in the sense that they made it for a purpose and instead it was being treated as a commodity. The work is not as important as the name attached to it. And while it was nice for some artists to earn a healthy living, it was at the cost of “selling out”… something that no all artists were willing to compromise on.

Now look at games. Does any of this sound familiar?

How do we judge games? Numeric review scores. Technical execution. Critical praise for the audio or graphics. Game reviews give “fun” a rating from 1 to 5, implying that what is fun for the reviewer will be equally fun for every reader. The current state of game critique is the equivalent of Greenbergian formalism. We are, apparently, stuck in an odd time warp that takes us back to 1930.

Are games more Modern or Postmodern? Are they passive, or interactive? Do games produce different play experiences for different individuals, or does a game provide the same experience for everyone? Do games simply carry visuals, or are they capable of carrying a greater meaning embedded in their mechanics? You may disagree, but I see games as very much of a Postmodern art form. I hope that some day, game reviewers start looking at games in this light.

What about money? Games are definitely suffering the “problem” of being commoditized. The video game industry exceeds $20 Billion per year these days. I don’t have any figures for the board game industry, but given how many millions of copies of Scrabble and Monopoly are sold each year, I’d imagine it is significant. Most major studios exist to make games that make money, and sometimes developers must compromise between their desire to make something unique and something that will sell.

What is the point of all of this? Simply that if this is an area of interest for you, it is worth your time to study art history. The world of art critics and art historians already figured out how to judge if something is “art” or not, back in 1917 when Duchamp signed a pseudonym to a urinal and called it art. In fact, while many developers imagine the art world snobbily refusing to acknowledge games as worthy of attention, this is just fantasy; the reality is that games have been on the radar of art critics for awhile now. My own literature search turned up articles as early as 1994 (this was a year before the first PlayStation was released, mind you). In all of the cases I could find – and I’m talking peer-reviewed academic art journals – not only are video games being analyzed, but there is an implicit assumption that games are art. I did not find any articles that wasted any time defending games as a means of artistic expression; it was an a priori assumption. Let’s get over our delusions of persecution, then, and make some art.

 

What are Art Games?

How does one go about designing a game that is artistic in its purpose rather than purely entertainment-driven? This really depends on what counts as “art,” as there are many games out there already that are primarily made as a form of expression. As you’ll see, they fall into several categories. There may be other categories I am missing here… partly because there are undoubtedly games that could be called “art” that I have not yet seen, and partly because this is a largely unexplored space. But these should give you some starting points.

I’ll give you a few games to play. Go ahead and play them first, if you can. Then, read down for further discussion. The following games are all playable in just a few minutes, usually five or less. Those that take longer, will at least give you the general idea of gameplay right away, and you can play them for longer or not. Play some or all, as your time allows.

Playings

• Passage and/or Gravitation, by Jason Rohrer. (5 and 8 minute play times, respectively.)
• The Marriage, by Rod Humble. (Playable in just a few minutes.)
• Stars Over Half-Moon Bay, by Rod Humble. (Playable in just a few minutes.)
• September 12, by Gonzalo Frasca. (Plays indefinitely, but the mechanics are simple and immediately apparent within the first minute or two.)
• Samarost, by Amanita. (Takes awhile to play through completely.)
• Cloud, by Jenova Chen. (Takes awhile to play to completion, but it shows you the major mechanics in the first level, which only takes a few minutes)

 

Lessons Learned

The question of whether games can be “art” will continue to be debated for some time, I’d imagine. For our purposes, it is a rather fruitless debate; if you are interested in making an artistic expression through the medium of games, then do so.

Studying art and the artistic process further can be useful to game designers. If you’re wondering what to do after this course ends, that is one of many potential avenues you can explore to deepen your understanding of design.

Even if you are not looking to be an artiste, you may still be creating art in a sense, and it is good to understand a little bit of what art is and what artists do. As Koster says in today’s Theory of Fun reading:

“Most importantly, games and their designers need to acknowledge that there is no distinction between art and entertainment… all art and all entertainment are posing problems to the audience. All art and all entertainment are prodding us toward greater understanding of the chaotic patterns we see swirl around us. Art and entertainment are not terms of type – they are terms of intensity.”

 

Now, About Those Playings…

By looking at some of the games that seem to be referenced a lot in discussions of art, we can get some clues about how we might go about creating our own artistic statements through gameplay. I should be clear that what follows are my own personal interpretations of these works, and your experiences (and the artists’ intent) may vary. I do not see this as a problem; Postmodern art allows for multiple interpretations and multiple layers of meaning.

Samarost is “art” mostly in the visual sense. It is like an interactive painting: very pleasant graphics, and a nice form of exploration. The creators are going for a particular visual reaction in the player.

Cloud takes this a step further, deliberately trying to create an emotional response in the viewer (specifically, the emotion of childlike wonder when gazing up at the clouds). Some of my students have found it coming off a bit heavy-handed in this department, and I remind them that this was an exploratory work that was trying to answer the question of whether games could induce emotion at all, so one can expect it to be a little wide of the mark.

Passage and Gravitation both express a specific idea or feeling (that of death and dying, or parenthood, respectively). Rohrer took his own emotions and did his best to translate them directly into gameplay. The difference between these games and Cloud is that Cloud’s goal is to create an emotion; with Passage and Gravitation, the goal is self-expression of the creator’s emotions.

The Marriage is similar to Rohrer’s work, but The Marriage is expressing an idea rather than an emotion (specifically, Humble is attempting to detail the mechanics behind a long-term relationship, hence the title).

September 12 also expresses an idea (mainly, that declaring war on terror is a flawed concept), but it takes things one step further. While Humble’s and Rohrer’s work is simply an expression of the artist’s ideas and emotions, September 12 is an attempt to persuade the audience. This is not exploration, but rhetoric, making it slightly different in purpose than the others.

Stars Over Half-Moon Bay is similar to The Marriage in that it is expressing an idea (in this case, it is making some statements on the creative process and how you start with an open sky of possibilities, then things get cloudy as you enter this mysterious process of creativity and innovation, and at the end things crystallize and you put together the pieces to make something permanent. As game designers and other artists struggle with the creative process, Stars is a bit more “meta” than The Marriage. While The Marriage could theoretically speak to an audience of anyone who wants to understand long-term relationships, Stars is speaking directly to an audience of other game designers on the challenges of their medium.

Looking at these in the context of McCloud’s six steps, we can see some patterns emerging. Here are some potential starting points for art games:

• Use games as a medium of self-expression (“Idea/Purpose”). You might express a feeling, an idea, or an ideology. You may simply be presenting your expression, or actually persuading the audience to your point of view. For emotional expression, start with the Aesthetics (in the MDA sense) and work backwards: what emotion do you want the player to feel, what Dynamics would cause that emotion, and finally what Mechanics can create that kind of play? For expression of ideas, remember that games are systems; find the systems behind the ideas that you want to express, and then find the gameplay inherent in those systems. (I should mention my co-author’s series of games in progress, including Train, which are exploring the systems behind human atrocity. Unfortunately these games are non-digital and therefore I cannot simply give you a link to play them. But I did want to point them out, lest anyone think that only video games are capable of being artistic.)
• Use games to explore the limitations of games-as-artistic-medium (“Form”). In this case, start with a question: can games do X (whatever “X” is)? Then, try to answer that question by designing a game that tries to do X.
• Create a traditional work of art, with interactive game-like elements (“Surface”). In this case your creative process may be different than that of game design.

Are there other artistic works you can do in the other steps? I think there are, but we have not heavily explored them yet.

 

Homeplay

Today I offer a choice of designs, based not on experience level (I must admit that most of us are novices in this area, even if we are experienced game designers) but on area of interest. Here are four options, all inspired by the “non-digital shorts” at the end of the Challenges chapter:

Option 1 (Creating emotions): Design a non-digital game that introduces children to the concept of grief. Post the rules and required components. If desired, also include commentary on how you approached this problem and why you think your game does (or does not) succeed.

Option 2 (Persuasion): Modify the board game RISK to advocate world peace. Post your changes to the original rules. If desired, also include commentary on what you were trying to do, whether you think you were successful, and why or why not.

Option 3 (Exploring the boundaries of games): Design a game that has intentionally incomplete rules, requiring player authorship of rules during the play of the game in order for it to be playable. Post your (incomplete) rules.

Option 4 (Exploring the nature of the medium): Choose a digital game that you consider to be artistic and inspiring. Create the rules for a non-digital version of it. Note how the difference in medium affects the experience; think about what kinds of artistic ideas are best expressed in digital or non-digital form. Post your rules, plus commentary.

Choose whichever of these most interests you, and make a post in the relevant forum. I have created one discussion area for each of these four options. Make your post before the next scheduled lesson here: on or before Monday, July 20, noon GMT. Then, offer constructive feedback to at least three other posts in the same forum (that is, with the same interest area as you). Do this on or before Thursday, July 23, noon GMT.

 

Call for Content

Do you have an “art game” that you have played, that is not mentioned in this lesson or in the Challenges book? Post it, along with a link and brief summary, to the course Wiki under the “Art Game” section. (If you are not registered for this course but still want to contribute, leave it in the comments here or post it to Twitter with the #GDCU tag, and I or someone else will add it.)

 

Mini-Challenge

Come up with a core concept for any kind of artistic game that can be expressed in 135 characters or less. Post it to Twitter with the #GDCU tag. One concept per person, please! Tweet before July 20, noon GMT.