The Way Technologies Transform Already Existing Art Forms

Compelling games are not the consequences of accidents, any more than are riveting novels, movies, or music. Creators for all these medias draw on well-established set of strategies and techniques to create a particular emotional experience. Musicians, for example, may create tension through reiteration and increasing the dynamic level. Film directors use close-up shots to excite intimacy. Unlike film, fiction, or music, a common language between designer, players, and society at large has not yet been developed to fully understand why and what is going on in the minds and hearts of players.

Art exists on the cutting edge – a place where games have been for most of thier history. Games designers have been able to create works that sparked imagination and made their player’s heart race. These game designers were achieving this without the safety net has inherited many other artistic mediums. Game designers often struggle to justify what they are doing or why they are doing except by commenting on ‘the fun factor’, that being the quality of the emotion experienced they deliver to players.

Kroll argued that even the most advanced games lack the nuances that make human life unique from mechanical processes. The basis of his argument is that moviemakers do not need to imitate people, as they are genuinely there. However, it can be argued that we have learnt to care as much for creatures of animation as we care for images of real people. As many animated movies, such as Toy Story and Grave of the Fireflies, are capable of eliciting strong emotions responses from their viewers. this highlights the idea that game characters should too be capable of enabling their players to feel rich emotions. Even if current games are incapable of achieving this, it is not to say that there is an intrinsic problem in the game medium itself in achieving emotional complexity.

To understand how a video game is able to make players cry, Jonathan Frome analyse the psychological elements that give rise to sadness, such as a perceived helplessness and significant loss. Through most videogames struggle to deliver these elements as part of a player’s experience. However, it is not impossible and games are edging towards being able to deliver their players a similar emotional experience to what film is able to produce. Humans find story telling elements extremely meaningful and often use storytelling to create meaning. Games enable players to produce obvious narrative sense, even if the story is not complete.

Technology has transformed the way that artists are able to tell their stories. As an art form that has solely existed in a digital space, video games are genuinely a blend of art and science.

Video games are the only medium that allows for personalising the artistic experience whilst still maintaining the approval of the artist. There are three defined voices within videogames: the creator, the game, and the player. Those playing a game are following the author’s story and are constrained by the restrictions of the rules – but given the choices the player makes; the gaming experience can be entirely personal. Art has been realised when a personal connection is made by observing the work of another. It is also conceivable to argue that all art is interactive; it is there in the very feat of interpretation. The artist is never the soul arbitrator of meaning, making artists create forms that communicate instead of dictate.

Ambiance, mood, feeling, sound and look: make up a large part of the pleasure that games provide. Often as a player moves through a game, every image and combination of images creates moods, feelings, and ambiance, unlike primary information that is found in film and literature. Many games are not just visual but utilise sounds, music, actions, and decisions to add to the player’s virtual world experience.

It is argued that the game industry is not art, but popular culture. It is said argued that art is something that is purchased in art galleries and conserved in art museums – it is not sold in toy shops. But that fact that most of what games industry producers is popular culture does not preclude the interactive medium from being an art form. It just means that it faces an uphill struggle to be recognised as one -much like movies did. Film is considered an art form, but that does not mean that every movie produced in a work of art. Some are and others are not – much like games.

Critics claim that interactivity precludes art, that art is a channel that enables an artist to communicate to a viewer, and if the viewer begins to interfere, the message is lost. Critics argue that because movies were an outgrowth of drama on the stage -a very clearly recognised art form – that their roots are from art. Computer game’s origins are not from theatre, instead they are in gameplay. Board games and original forms of play are not art forms, as they have little emphasis on aesthetics.

Video games should be indorsed as a convincing form of artistic express as they have the capacity to creatively express an idea in a way that no other form of media can claim to achieve. This signature uniqueness if created through the interaction of the game’s director and the player. The root of art is that it should make you feel something. And games unquestionably can make you feel things.