Video games: an immersive new art form

In an endless expanse of sun-scorched sand lingers a faceless figure cloaked in crimson samite. The vastness of the desert only yields to scattered stone ruins and a vast mountain cleaved by a pillar of light. The figure slowly walks. And so its pilgrimage begins.

This scene comes not from any book, painting or movie. The artist has chosen, deliberately, to realize these dreams in the unconventional medium of a video game.

“Journey,” ($14.99) the third title by independent video game developer thatgamecompany, is but one of many games comprising a growing movement to create video games played and appreciated not only as entertainment, but also as works of art. While the application of games as an art medium may seem baffling at first, the practice is actually quite common.

“That’s the thing with the realm of art – you can’t put limitations on what medium you can use,” AP studio art teacher Pilar Agüero–Esparza said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all that artists are now seeing the digital medium of video games as artistic.”

Because video games allow the player to interact with the depicted environment and influence events, they can offer fuller immersive experiences than other media.

“There’s not that much of a difference between a movie or TV show and a video game,” Harker’s Eclectic Literary Magazine’s (HELM) Junior Co-Editor Andrew Rule (11) said. “All art is a conversation between the writer and the reader: this is just a more interactive version of that conversation.”

Art games come in many forms with different goals. While some, such as “Journey,” create sublime, evocative locations for the player to explore, others focus on experiences.

Agüero-Esparza brought up the example of a game created by a graduate of the University of California Santa Cruz called “…&maybetheywontkillyou.” The game tries to simulate the experience of being an African American by constraining the player’s actions and subjecting them to humiliating ordeals.

“The user can go in here under these set parameters – ‘what is it like to be an African American in this country?’ – and be able to hopefully have a better understanding of what that is like: socioeconomically, cultural biases, stereotypes,” Agüero-Esparza said. “[The developer] wants a certain amount of empathy and understanding with the users being able to interface with this game.”

But art games have several obstacles to surmount before they can become as prolific as other media.

“From what I understand about the industry, it’s sort of grappling with [its] consumer base not being very accepting of alternatives to the standard,” Media Arts instructor Joshua Martinez said. “As an outsider [to the video game community], it appears to me to be very similar to the Hollywood film industry, where there’s a kind of formula, and the way that people consume that formula very much behooves the producers to adhere to that formula.”

And while video games’ interactive features grant it a unique edge over orthodox media, developers may not be currently utilizing their full potential.

“[Art games are] kind of like between a movie and a game, but not using the better parts of each,” Game Development Club president Nikita Kosolobov (12) said. “If you really want to take the whole game medium to its maximum potential then you should really do interactions.”

Though the art games movement is fledgling, it may only be years until video games are accepted as a serious art medium comparable to sculpture or photography.

“From the creative side, I don’t really see there being a limit [to video games’ potential]. I think [a video game] has all of the basic factors necessary to be a great art medium,” Martinez said. “It’s experiential, so you have somebody going in and actually interacting with the material. It’s narrative, which provides really fantastic platform for stories from different perspectives to be told. And they can be very, very beautiful.”

This piece was originally published in the pages of the Winged Post on May 4, 2016.