Bruny on 7/4/2001 at 22:31

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<a href="http://www.mgon.com/interviews.phtml?id=62238&language=en">Here.</a>
<blockquote>Do you consider game design an art? If so, then do you consider yourself an artist? What inspires you to create?

WS: I guess if you really push me, I do think of game design as an art (though one with a lot of "craft" about it). But I've always felt it's not for the people working in a medium to decide that they're artists or to work in ways that are consciously artistic. It's for others -- critics, audiences, academics -- to decide what's art and what's not. But even more, it's for posterity to decide. History will tell us what has lasting artistic value, not newspapers, magazines or websites -- and certainly not developers themselves. Run in terror from any game developer who says, "I'm an Artist!"

The one thing I fear is that, if we ever consciously approach game design as an art, we'll become even more timid about thinking about it analytically. If thinking of oneself as an artist makes it harder to think about game design, if it stops us from getting beyond meaningless words like "fun" and "interactive" that seem to dominate discussions of games and gaming, count me out!</blockquote>

Warren is the last person I would expect to misunderstand art (unless I misunderstood him). I think game design is an art, I agree posterity will be a good judge of whether or not it's "good" art. But why shouldn't game designers consider themselves artists? What's so dangerous and pernicious about that? He seems to imply that artists cannot be analytical when it comes to their work. Ever try and compose a fugue without being analytical? Or perform one for that matter? I also think a consciously artistic perspective would bring a lot to game design.

buglunch on 8/4/2001 at 10:37

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I think he meant artists should just DO and not think about whether or not it's art or it can affect the result negatively.Fugue-writing is especially math and analysis-dependent but the ear has the final say.The less self-conscious you are at work the more artful and elegant the result.

Bruny on 9/4/2001 at 18:00

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Those are good points. I don't mean to analyze his off-hand comment to death, it just seemed wrong from somebody with a professional artistic background (film). I think he was commenting on pretentious vs unpretentious artists and I just don't think that has anything to do with it. Either an artist's stuff is good or it's bad, that's what it ultimately boils down to.

My only experience with art is music, with which I have a long background. I played around composing for awhile but gave it up when I realized I didn't have the knack. I have the most experience with performance which, in my experience, is 90% analysis, and just plain hard grunt work. The last 10% is "pure" art but without it you have nothing.

Some people work top-down, others work bottom-up, stepwise refinement is also a technique. I've always been a bottom-up kind of worker. I'll study all of the phrases, find the high points and low points, move a little further out to stamp out repetition, identify three-fold patterns, all the little stuff. Move out further, quantify the moods, identify explicit segments of the piece, do harmonic analysis. Move out to the top, quantify the overall structure of the piece, decide what "the point" of the thing is, find broad patterns in phrases, harmonies, and rhythms. Sing through the piece (even if it's not a vocal composition), dance the rhythms. Move out further still and look at the piece in the context of everything else the composer has done. Move out yet further and look at the piece in the context of all the other pieces being performed. During all of this is the pure grunt work of technique through practice and repetition. All of this is quantifiable and even found described clearly in textbooks.

The last 10% is a conscious drawing upon the artistic soul. It's impossible to quantify. It's a state of mind where you become in touch with your mood, listen to where you soul wants to take the music (even if it's at odds with what you decided during the analytic phase), even draw strength and inspiration from the audience. My teacher used to claim that during some parts of a erformance she would contact something higher from which beauty and inspiration would flow. The point is that that last 10% is what turns mere technique into beauty and art.

I imagine it's the same with other art forms. A writer goes through much the same hard work but ultimately relies on something more to turn a bunch of pages into an organic, living, thing which speaks to the reader's soul.

There are dangers involved in this (perhaps this is what he was alluding to). When you discard a part of your hard work and analysis to capture a moment of inspiration you run terrible risks. You can destroy the large structure of a piece of music, throw off tempi, draw too much attention to a segment too soon. All music performers know this though. I've been warned about it many times. It takes long years of experience (or inherent genius) to recognize good inspiration from "bad" or dangerous inspiration.

I'm just saying games might benefit from a little bit of art thrown into the mix. Listening to inspiration or ideas beyond the path which was carefully laid out (which is what I think art ultimately comes down to).

But Deus Ex turned out pretty good so what do I know?

liquiddark on 10/4/2001 at 14:27

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This is very, very true



"Financial success" <> "Success"

Sorry, but it just ain't. The crux of your argument falls apart if you take it outside of the realm of commercial games creation. And with modding (modders ARE artistically free) becoming increasingly significant to the success of a product, "fine art" is going to be a small but lasting component of what differentiates between the chaff and the wheat. Much as it is in every other area of life. Modern artists might be more pretentious as a class, but the really important stuff still comes mainly from their ranks.



It's possible to be an artist and know it. Visit your local fine arts college if you don't believe it.



Agreed. But that doesn't mean that being a self-proclaimed artist makes one unfit for creation. Take, for example, Warren Ellis: he's unapologetic and a cantankerous old creator. And he really, really rocks at what he does. Just because our equivalent of Transmetropolitan/Cerebus is Daikatana and our Ellis/Sim is John Romero doesn't mean anything. Every artistic medium has commercial interests these days. They also all have artistic interests, and these turn out to be the roots of real creation in our society - see independant filmmaking, see small-time comics, see half a dozen literary "revolutions" per genre in the past half a dozen decades. Unless you think the drek that Hollywood/Marvel/Harlequin/Girls Of Fantasy Calendars are the really important stuff. And if you do, I can only say that I pity you.



I'm just wondering what that last sentence means. Obviously in the most technical sense they're "artists". But do they produce ART or art? Like you say, the line is between fine art which gets you no dough and mindless drek which makes you another cog in the machine.

I'm just going to say this: theatre for the stage suffers through much the same thing you're pointing out in games. Nobody makes any real money off of staged theatre in small markets, so the effort is entirely amateur. But let me quote a local director who does get paid for his work:


That sums it up pretty well; you're right that commercial interests dominate artistic in games. But that's the worst reason I've ever heard to argue against the conscious consideration of the artistic value of games in either the generic or the specific sense.

ld

frozenman on 10/4/2001 at 22:25

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You interpreted it wrong. I doubt that there are very many artists that sit down and go -- "I wanna make a really revolutionary and beautiful piece of art.". Painting for example -- a painter may have this one emotion to express, if he sits there and goes, "What would be a good image to express this emotion?" the painting will come out flat and not inspiring. If the painter sits back and lets himself be inspired (by whatever it may be) it's gonna be a great painting.

You obviously completely ignored this:



cause that's exactly what i'm saying. Not that art isn't hard to make. There's the idea and the execution. The idea has to be great -- and it should come to you naturally -- and then there's the execution where the hard work comes in to realise your idea.



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"I got this great idea for a movie. It'll be about these two guys, and they have the party of their lifetime. But when they wake up, they can't find their car! I think i'll call it, 'Where's my car, dude?'"