Over the past few days I’ve read several columns about how games are not art. And over the past few years – two dozen. I have repeatedly watched video game authors being asked what they consider their work to be. Some are art, some are art, but with reservations, and some are strictly not. Who’s right?There are two key problems with this debate.First: participants in the discussion cannot agree on what art is. There is no clear definition of this term. There is no complete list of already “approved” art forms. What is there: there is no confirmation even that the movie is worthy of this title! But at the same time, in our time there is modern art, which can include any interesting object, even the excrement of your domestic cat. Here are the cartridges with E.T. dug up from the graves. The game itself may not be art, but time-worn cartridges are (if a person reputable enough in the art world says so)!
Second: participants in the discussion take games that are opposite in content as evidence, without realizing their fundamental differences. Relatively speaking, one discusses Destiny, another – The Last of Us, the third – Super Mario Bros, and everyone thinks that the favorites of the other discussion participants do not exist.
As a result, the question of the essence of games turns out to be completely philosophical. Smart people talked, went their separate ways, and in the end everyone remained with their own opinion. However, if the course of the discussion itself is recorded on paper, it will be an excellent exercise for the mind.For example, some people say that the main thing in games is the game itself. That is, naked mechanics. The word “game” here is understood either as a game theory term (then the priority of the result appears), or in a broader sense, but always with rules (sandbox games). Graphics, plot, characters, music – this, they say, is just decoration. They say there is art in them, but this is separately the art of the artist, the art of the composer, the art of the screenwriter, and so on, and they have nothing to do with games. Naked mechanics, a set of rules. And it’s hard to call it art – we’re not really talking about chess like that.
Game theory is a mathematical method for studying optimal strategies in games. A game is a process in which two or more parties participate, fighting for the realization of their interests. Each side has its own goal and uses some strategy that can lead to winning or losing – depending on the behavior of other players. Game theory helps to choose the best strategies taking into account ideas about other participants, their resources and their possible actions.Or so. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics, or more precisely, operations research. Most often, game theory methods are used in economics, and a little less often in other social sciences – sociology, political science, psychology, ethics, jurisprudence and others. Since the 1970s, it has been adopted by biologists to study animal behavior and the theory of evolution. It is very important for artificial intelligence and cybernetics, especially with interest in intelligent agents. Game theory began to be studied back in the 19th century, and one of the first to study it was
You can argue with this too (inventing bare mechanics is also creativity, and the chess game itself can be beautiful), but I won’t. I’d rather say that video games are very rarely games. And certainly in our time they are never reduced to bare mechanics.The secret of this paradox is simple: you need to look not at how a thing is constructed, but at how it is consumed. To use Kant’s language, people are usually concerned with things for them, not with things in themselves.
Immanuel Kant (born April 22, 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia, and died February 12, 1804, there) is a German philosopher, the founder of German classical philosophy, standing on the verge of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.
Let’s ask gamers a question: “What is the most important thing for you in the game??». Among the leading answers will be “plot”, “graphics”, “characters”. “Gameplay”, of course, will also be there, but only a few will answer “gameplay and nothing more”. You can talk as much as you like about the fact that the script in games is very bad, that for the sake of the plot you need to read books and watch movies – this is just empty chatter. Gamers (at least a significant part of them) perceive electronic entertainment as media that tells a story. Even in the fighting game Mortal Kombat, it is important who all these people are and why they rip each other’s heads off, although there was no benefit from such knowledge. There’s a phenomenon these days of gamers getting to know the hits through full playthroughs on YouTube. In this case, there are no bare mechanics at all, zero, and people get about the same pleasure. Gameplay, therefore, is not the content of the game. The gameplay is a nice obstacle to the story’s rewards; relatively speaking, as foreplay before sex (watching YouTube in this case is analogous to porn). Those who prefer co-op games are rewarded with shared experience with friends. In World of Tanks, gamers receive a new addition to their collection of real tanks from the Second World War. Rewards can be very different (spectacular special effects, humiliation of opponents), and the gamer strives for them.Relatively speaking, a video game is not a game of “hit the target from three meters”. This is a fair where you come with a girl, shoot at a target from three meters, get a huge hare, give it to your companion, receive in exchange a cup of coffee late at night visiting a beautiful woman, in the morning her husband comes and punches you in the face, and in the evening in the hospital you tell the whole story to your friends. This obstacle plus the reward is multiplied by the experience you personally gained during the passage. If you need an example, then read about Metal Gear Solid and then try to reduce Kojima’s work to pure gameplay.
A person playing a game in the true sense of the word does not need any additional motivation, no tangible reward. There are no additional meanings in chess, simply moving a piece across the field does not bring pleasure, no one will go purely for fun to look at the animation of a fight. Of course, there are simulators of this game with animation. But they were all forgotten soon after release, because the beautiful animation only made it difficult to think. On the contrary, while playing a first-person shooter the other day, at some point I abandoned the task and went for a walk through the picturesque ruins of the city to better feel the atmosphere. This decision makes no sense in any game. Well, imagine: you are sitting at a game of Magic the Gathering, and you decide not to play a creature on your turn, because it is better to leave a card with such a beautiful picture in your hand. It’s nonsense!
Returning to fighting games: I www.betticasinoonline.uk loved Soul Calibur a lot. And in each episode of the series, stronger and weaker characters were quickly determined (top tiers, low tiers). It would be logical to take this into account and deliberately choose stronger ones (to win) or weaker ones (to increase the difficulty for yourself and give your opponents a head start). In reality, everyone learned to play for the fighter they liked the most, first of all visually. And, of course, no one would waste time on Soul Calibur if it had green triangles fighting red squares. Such bare mechanics with abstract pictures would definitely be a game – and gamers would reject it. And who would collect tanks in World of Tanks if they were not replicas of real ones, but made up out of their heads?? I’d be glad to see someone with a different point of view in the comments.
But surely someone will remember games where green triangles are normal. There is, for example, Quake 3, in which professionals turned off the graphics to make it more convenient to aim. Counter-Strike is also an excellent example of the popularity of pure gameplay without tinsel. But even esports disciplines like StarCraft II often attract not only competent rules of the game, but also a powerful environment. At the same time, many narrative works like The Last of Us are enhanced by purely game elements – trophies. Gaining achievements is just playing (there is an abstract task, there is a solution, there is a result).
Many will ask how Nintendo games, do without dialogues and sex scenes. But they don’t really come down to pure gameplay either; if this were so, millions of clone platformers would have long ago taken away the audience from the company back in the nineties. Nintendo is, relatively speaking, either an impressionist or the “Disney” of video games; works with large strokes in an extremely recognizable manner, denies realism and leaves our imagination to think out the details of the game, and at the same time invites us to immerse ourselves in the metaverse of obviously good fairy tales that can relieve stress even in the most bullied manager. Mix Pikmin, Super Mario Bros., Animal Crossing to pure gameplay, and you’ll find yourself in the same crowd as naive youngsters who don’t understand why tens of millions of adults still give Nintendo their money.
Going back to what I said at the beginning of the blog, I want to smooth out the effect of the sudden revelation that games are not games. The property of any discussion of this kind is that it is impossible to prove any point of view completely, unambiguously. I have now explained to you why for the vast majority of gamers the lion’s share of video games are not games. But there are, firstly, those who even go through The Last of Us only for the sake of gameplay and trophies, ignoring the story. Secondly, there are cybersportsmen. Both consume video games as games. Including those that I personally don’t consider games at all.
Paradox?It is easily resolved by saying that video games (each instance of each game separately) are an object of quantum mechanics, like Schrödinger’s cat. One person starts the game – sees the game. Someone else can run it and see the art.
According to quantum mechanics, if no observation is made of the nucleus, then its state is described by a mixture of two states – a decayed nucleus and an undecayed nucleus, therefore, a cat sitting in a box is both alive and dead at the same time. If the box is opened, then the experimenter can see only one specific state – “the nucleus has decayed, the cat is dead” or “the nucleus has not decayed, the cat is alive”.
Best comments
Thanks Cap for the article. write up so much text, give the example of quantum mechanics, touch superficially on Schrödinger’s cat, and in order to conclude in the end the thesis that the concept of a game is subjective. Bravo.
Let’s talk about Schrödinger’s cat. Somehow the particle is a wave, then the cat is not only alive and dead at the same time, but there is a possibility that he is not in a closed box, but somewhere on Mars or Venus. And as soon as we open the box and make sure that the cat, say, is alive, then the wave where the cat is dead does not go away, the cat continues to be dead, being alive, but this does not affect our observations in any way. So he’s alive. And this is where the many-worlds interpretation comes into play. And the dead cat creates a new world for himself, a new reality where he is dead. Being alive in our reality. I understand it this way. And although there are only a few people in the world who truly understand quantum mechanics. She’s counterintuitive.
And yes, Manul, come and write why I’m wrong.
Hooray! New broken theme! ^_^
Who will we call?? Rinat himself is still cutting the site or has already hired his own developer?
When viewing this topic in your wrapper, I killed my eyes, three times. Eye drops for you.
And the problem of the code is a broken spoiler in a spoiler that is not needed.
Because Schrödinger’s cat is a joke by Schrödinger himself to make fun of quantum mech. But quantum mechanics didn’t understand the joke and took everything literally.
Oh, can I write why you’re wrong, you can, you can?
Firstly, a particle is not a wave. There are quanta of interactions, and they are sometimes particles and sometimes waves.
Secondly, the creation of a “parallel” Universe is only one of the theories, and Schrödinger’s cat can be interpreted in another way. The main point of this thought experiment in general is that measurements can affect the result (which Schrödinger considered heresy, which is why he came up with such a thought experiment to somehow illustrate the heresy of this theory).
Well, also write so much text, give examples of quantum mechanics, etc.d., and all in order to unrealistically merge in the finale – it’s very fashionable, in a modern way. Everyone does this after Interstellar.
So, guys, to hell with such happiness, you don’t need it. The text has been replaced with gluing, and you can start doing good work:
Over the past few days I’ve read several columns about how games are not art. And over the past few years – two dozen. I have repeatedly watched video game authors being asked what they consider their work to be. Some are art, some are art, but with reservations, and some are strictly not. Who’s right?There are two key problems with this debate.First: participants in the discussion cannot agree on what art is. There is no clear definition of this term. There is no complete list of already “approved” art forms. What is there: there is no confirmation even that the movie is worthy of this title! But at the same time, in our time there is modern art, which can include any interesting object, even the excrement of your domestic cat. Here are the cartridges with E.T. dug up from the graves. The game itself may not be art, but time-worn cartridges are (if a person reputable enough in the art world says so)!Second: participants in the discussion take games that are opposite in content as evidence, without realizing their fundamental differences. Relatively speaking, one discusses Destiny, another – The Last of Us, the third – Super Mario Bros, and everyone thinks that the favorites of the other discussion participants do not exist. As a result, the question of the essence of games turns out to be completely philosophical. Smart people talked, went their separate ways, and in the end everyone remained with their own opinion. However, if the course of the discussion itself is recorded on paper, it will be an excellent exercise for the mind.For example, some people say that the main thing in games is the game itself. That is, naked mechanics. The word “game” here is understood either as a game theory term (then the priority of the result appears), or in a broader sense, but always with rules (sandbox games). Graphics, plot, characters, music – this, they say, is just decoration. They say there is art in them, but this is separately the art of the artist, the art of the composer, the art of the screenwriter, and so on, and they have nothing to do with games. Naked mechanics, a set of rules. And it’s hard to call it art – we’re not really talking about chess like that.Game theory is a mathematical method for studying optimal strategies in games. A game is a process in which two or more parties participate, fighting for the realization of their interests. Each side has its own goal and uses some strategy that can lead to winning or losing – depending on the behavior of other players. Game theory helps to choose the best strategies taking into account ideas about other participants, their resources and their possible actions.Or so. Game theory is a branch of applied mathematics, or more precisely, operations research. Most often, game theory methods are used in economics, and a little less often in other social sciences – sociology, political science, psychology, ethics, jurisprudence and others. Since the 1970s, it has been adopted by biologists to study animal behavior and the theory of evolution. It is very important for artificial intelligence and cybernetics, especially with interest in intelligent agents. Game theory began to be studied back in the 19th century, and one of the first to study it was Joseph Louis Francois Bertrand(1822-1800)You can argue with this too (inventing bare mechanics is also creativity, and the chess game itself can be beautiful), but I won’t. I’d rather say that video games are very rarely games. And certainly in our time they are never reduced to bare mechanics.The secret of this paradox is simple: you need to look not at how a thing is constructed, but at how it is consumed. To use Kant’s language, people are usually concerned with things for them, not with things in themselves.Immanuel Kant (born April 22, 1724 in Königsberg, Prussia, and died February 12, 1804, there) is a German philosopher, the founder of German classical philosophy, standing on the verge of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.Let’s ask gamers a question: “What is the most important thing for you in the game??». Among the leading answers will be “plot”, “graphics”, “characters”. “Gameplay”, of course, will also be there, but only a few will answer “gameplay and nothing more”. You can talk as much as you like about the fact that the script in games is very bad, that for the sake of the plot you need to read books and watch movies – this is just empty chatter. Gamers (at least a significant part of them) perceive electronic entertainment as media that tells a story. Even in the fighting game Mortal Kombat, it is important who all these people are and why they rip each other’s heads off, although there was no benefit from such knowledge. There’s a phenomenon these days of gamers getting to know the hits through full playthroughs on YouTube. In this case, there are no bare mechanics at all, zero, and people get about the same pleasure. Gameplay, therefore, is not the content of the game. The gameplay is a nice obstacle to the story’s rewards; relatively speaking, as foreplay before sex (watching YouTube in this case is analogous to porn). Those who prefer co-op games are rewarded with shared experience with friends. In World of Tanks, gamers receive a new addition to their collection of real tanks from the Second World War. Rewards can be very different (spectacular special effects, humiliation of opponents), and the gamer strives for them.Relatively speaking, a video game is not a game of “hit the target from three meters”. This is a fair where you come with a girl, shoot at a target from three meters, get a huge hare, give it to your companion, receive in exchange a cup of coffee late at night visiting a beautiful woman, in the morning her husband comes and punches you in the face, and in the evening in the hospital you tell the whole story to your friends. This obstacle plus the reward is multiplied by the experience you personally gained during the passage. If you need an example, then read about Metal Gear Solid and then try to reduce Kojima’s work to pure gameplay.A person playing a game in the true sense of the word does not need any additional motivation, no tangible reward. There are no additional meanings in chess, simply moving a piece across the field does not bring pleasure, no one will go purely for fun to look at the animation of a fight. Of course, there are simulators of this game with animation. But they were all forgotten soon after release, because the beautiful animation only made it difficult to think. On the contrary, while playing a first-person shooter the other day, at some point I abandoned the task and went for a walk through the picturesque ruins of the city to better feel the atmosphere. This decision makes no sense in any game. Well, imagine: you are sitting at a game of Magic the Gathering, and you decide not to play a creature on your turn, because it is better to leave a card with such a beautiful picture in your hand. It’s nonsense!Returning to fighting games: I loved Soul Calibur a lot. And in each episode of the series, stronger and weaker characters were quickly determined (top tiers, low tiers). It would be logical to take this into account and deliberately choose stronger ones (to win) or weaker ones (to increase the difficulty for yourself and give your opponents a head start). In reality, everyone learned to play for the fighter they liked the most, first of all visually. And, of course, no one would waste time on Soul Calibur if it had green triangles fighting red squares. Such bare mechanics with abstract pictures would definitely be a game – and gamers would reject it. And who would collect tanks in World of Tanks if they were not replicas of real ones, but made up out of their heads?? I’d be glad to see someone with a different point of view in the comments.But surely someone will remember games where green triangles are normal. There is, for example, Quake 3, in which professionals turned off the graphics to make it more convenient to aim. Counter-Strike is also an excellent example of the popularity of pure gameplay without tinsel. But even esports disciplines like StarCraft II often attract not only competent rules of the game, but also a powerful environment. At the same time, many narrative works like The Last of Us are enhanced by purely game elements – trophies. Gaining achievements is just playing (there is an abstract task, there is a solution, there is a result).Many will ask how Nintendo games, do without dialogues and sex scenes. But they don’t really come down to pure gameplay either; if this were so, millions of clone platformers would have long ago taken away the audience from the company back in the nineties. Nintendo is, relatively speaking, either an impressionist or the “Disney” of video games; works with large strokes in an extremely recognizable manner, denies realism and leaves our imagination to think out the details of the game, and at the same time invites us to immerse ourselves in the metaverse of obviously good fairy tales that can relieve stress even in the most bullied manager. Mix Pikmin, Super Mario Bros., Animal Crossing to pure gameplay, and you’ll find yourself in the same crowd as naive youngsters who don’t understand why tens of millions of adults still give Nintendo their money.Going back to what I said at the beginning of the blog, I want to smooth out the effect of the sudden revelation that games are not games. The property of any discussion of this kind is that it is impossible to prove any point of view completely, unambiguously. I have now explained to you why for the vast majority of gamers the lion’s share of video games are not games. But there are, firstly, those who even go through The Last of Us only for the sake of gameplay and trophies, ignoring the story. Secondly, there are cybersportsmen. Both consume video games as games. Including those that I personally don’t consider games at all.Paradox?It is easily resolved by saying that video games (each instance of each game separately) are an object of quantum mechanics, like Schrödinger’s cat. One person starts the game – sees the game. Someone else can run it and see the art.According to quantum mechanics, if no observation is made of the nucleus, then its state is described by a mixture of two states – a decayed nucleus and an undecayed nucleus, therefore, a cat sitting in a box is both alive and dead at the same time. If the box is opened, then the experimenter can see only one specific state – “the nucleus has decayed, the cat is dead” or “the nucleus has not decayed, the cat is alive”.But in any case, it’s just a collection of zeros and ones. As, by the way, is my text.
Something in the topic code corrupted the page code, but the author did nothing about it and left everything as is. No matter your attitude, you can go far.
