The following essay was written for the Objectivist Academic Center Core Program:
Video Games: The Next Great Aesthetic Medium
For decades, video games have been thought of as toys. Pong, Tetris, and other games were virtual extensions of reflex and puzzle-based games that we could play in person. An individual could go outside in the glaring sunlight and play an exhausting round of tennis with a friend, or he could stay inside and simulate the experience with Pong. Likewise, he could try to work with a slow and unwieldy puzzle, or play Tetris. Unsurprisingly, video games were considered objects of simple amusement and relegated to the status of hoola hoops and board games.
But this categorization has eroded over time, and currently we are in the midst of a crucial transition period. Video games will always be toys is some sense, but now they are also becoming art.
And why not? Nearly all video games represent (in the words of Ayn Rand) “a selective recreation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value judgments.” For a standard video game, the creator must choose a story, a setting, characters, character arcs, an atmosphere, and nearly every other component which contributes to the creation of a self-contained reality found within literature or movies. Furthermore, these components interlock in an enormously complex presentation which takes into account not just the aesthetic elements found in other mediums, but the actual gameplay as well.
But to describe the aesthetic value of video games as merely “movies combined with toys” doesn’t do the medium justice. Video games present an enormous aesthetic opportunity for artists, which, after thousands of years of artistic production, is still barely explored. Video games uniquely possess the aesthetic quality of interactivity.
When you look at a painting, read a book, or watch a movie, the experience is inherently passive. That is not to say the audience does nothing; he can still engage his emotions, evaluate the display, and in the case of reading, even do some heavy conceptual integration to make sense of it all. But fundamentally, the experience of the audience is heavily controlled by the artist, who must guide the audience through his artistic vision.
On the other hand, video games are built on the basis of interactivity. The artist may design the parameters of the audience’s display, but it is the player who crafts the experience. This limits the artist’s control over his creation and forces him to factor player choice into his designs.
The potential implications for interactivity are immense. Already we are seeing video game creators experiment with the degree of interactivity offered to the player. A game like Fallout 3 drops the player into a post-apocalyptic open world sand box world and lets him do almost anything he pleases. The player is free take the role of anyone from a benevolent wanderer who deals with other people with trade and respect, to a genocidal maniac who lives by violence and treachery. Meanwhile The Last of Us presents a tightly crafted experience where the player is led down a very specific path, and choices are limited to minute events like how to handle specific combat situations.
Likewise, developers are testing out the concept of narrative interactivity. Most video games still follow a linear narrative path like any (non-“choose your own adventure”) book or movie, but games like Mass Effect and Heavy Rain are testing just how much narrative control can be relinquished from the artist, and given to the player. Such games are developing labyrinthine plot structures where every choice prompts two more choices, and no two players will end the game in the same place.
Another potentially groundbreaking component of interactivity is player-character integration. When reading a book or watching a movie, the audience follows a character through the plot. The artist always tries to make the audience connect with the character by making the character interesting or relatable, but ultimately the reader or viewer is merely observing another entity.
But in video games, the player is the character. That is, the player literally controls the character’s actions, at least within a given range of activity. This enables a much greater, and more easily attainable sense of connection with a character than can be provided in other artistic mediums.
Consider a game like Metal Gear Solid 4, which features a protagonist who is an old, dying soldier in the midst of his final combat mission. A key component of the plot is that the protagonist is no longer physically fit for combat, and thus his body slowly breaks down throughout the story. The player not only experiences this through in-game cinematics, but also in the actual gameplay. For instance, the player has a “stress meter” which increases during bouts of extreme combat or in harsh climates. If the meter gets too high, the character’s abilities suffer in form of decreased weapon accuracy, slower movement, and even fainting.
This gameplay element connects the psychological and physical degradation of the character with the player. Therefore, the player and the character are actually sharing the same experience in some sense. No book or movie is able to attain quite the same sense of connection.
These examples and dimensions of interactivity are just the tip of the ice berg. Video games are in their youth as an artistic medium, and are just beginning to explore their full aesthetic range. The last few years have seen the rise of many new bold experiments in interactive aesthetics, but the video game medium is still waiting for its Canterbury Tales, or Citizen Kane, or The Sopranos to establish itself as a fully realized art form. Decades from now, we may look at video games as equally or more artistically significant than the mediums which have dominated aesthetics for centuries.