Games Taking Cues From Art History

[Oddysseus]

A while back, I was pondering the age-old (and by this point, very boring) question: Are videogames art?  The answer doesn't really matter, but the question led me to another question: why doesn't someone make a game that embodies an established art movement?  Although many games may be visually inspired by art from the past, not many people try to take the essence of what a movement was about and translate it into a game.

So far, I've been bouncing ideas around in my head for Cubism: the Game, Surrealism: the Game, and Hat Explosion Thursday: A Dada Game-Construct.  I could elaborate on my ideas, but I'd much rather hear yours.  What art movements would you like to see translated into games?  What would the plot/main concept/theme of the game be?  What would it look like?

And on a lesser but related note, are there any other folks on this board who share my interest in art history, or am I the sole bourgeois intellectual snob here?

[Candall]

I immediately thought sumi-e brush painting, but then I remembered Okami.

It would be really cool to see a game rendered to look like a moving stained glass window.  Metal edges and barely-visible behind-the-image scenery and all.

[ildu]

Do you mean visually or content-wise, though? It's quite a shallow gimmick, although a cool idea, to show a game through an artistic filter, but should the content reflect that filter, and exactly how?

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

The only complaint from me is that you seem to be talking about mostly visual art, in mostly visual contexts. If you go that route, I'd like to see some other forms of art - imagine a game whose story structure is the same as a sonet, or a sextet (that's those things with the keywords, isn't it?), or which explores the divinity in Liszt's or Bach's sacred musics versus the passion of Chopin. F'r instance.

Of course, if you're just planning to use filters, then it gets a bit more dificult to do this - not to mention, as ildu said, shallow. Take a look at "RON - Surrealist" and "Exit" to see two attempts at what you're describing that, IMO, just don't really work as *art*, just as a gimmick. Take a look at Dada - Stagnation in Blue for an experience I myself really enjoyed, and there's also Novo Mestro, Jovenes de la Guerra, and some game which had photo-style images and all text in latin...

But you know what? From the above games, very few are really enjoyable. Most of the games that try to be "art" suceed only in sucking. IMO, that's what happened to the game all in latin, and I told the author that at the time. I don't read latin. I don't know latin. I'm expected to play the game not knowing latin. Then what's the whole point?

Remember - a game should be fun. If it tries too hard to be art in a snobby, elitist, "I'm the artist and this is my vision and I don't give a damn if you don't get it", or if it just turns out like that, the result is a same - bad game.

[OneDollar]

Would you count comics as art? If so there are quite a few games based on both the visuals and on the ethos of the comic era (Freedom Force being a good example of one based on the silver age of comics).

As for other art forms, I can think of several games taking inspiration for graphical styles, but not really story lines, or game play. Blue Ice was very 'arty', I guess, but I don't know much about it (I had the demo but never finished it).

Then again I can't remember much about the different art movements. I studied art nouveau way back in GCSEs (at about age 16), and while its obvious how to design games visually around it, I wouldn't have a clue where to start with basing the game on the movement. (Matching the setting and making the characters artists?)

[Akatosh]

Actually, I kind of already did this. If Me Go Store! isn't Conceptual Art, what else*?

* Other than some... thing brought about by lack of sleep and sanity which I'm desperately trying to stuff meaning into.

[Vel]

The last express embodies Art Nouveau in a particularly grand manner.

[OneDollar]

I keep hearing about The Last Express, I really will have to get the demo some time. As far as I can remember (and correct me if I'm wrong, I'm far to tired to refresh my memory with a Wikipedia article) Art Nouveau was about creating art based on the flowing forms of nature, and returning to more traditional hand crafted ways of making it. Does that come into anything other than the artwork?

Now that I think about it, there are a lot of games out there that could be called 'arty', though they're often simple and short Flash games in which the object is to explore a world, and I guess you could even say something like Myst was art, the game being portrayed through the use of pictures and sounds. Okay that sounds like any game, but what I mean is that the vast majority of the game was static artwork and sounds, rather than text (looking at items, getting response from using things, dialogue) or animation. But no, I really can't think of anything that was specifically made to encompass an art movement or the principles behind one, right down to the story and gameplay. Maybe I just don't know enough about art (GCSE made me rather cynical towards a lot of it).

How would you do it Oddysseus?

[auriond]

Samorost is a game that I've seen that is heavy on art and concept.

Samorost 1: http://www.amanita-design.net/samorost-1/
Samorost 2: http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2/

[lo_res_man]

To me, art is when you are trying to make art. It may not be good art, thats for the critics to figure out, but its still art. It all depends on your intention. "Mourir en Mer" to me was art.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Vel - nicely done, bringing The Last Express to the conversation. Possibly the best example of what we're talking about.

OneDollar - I don't know much about art nouveau, but your description fits the game in most every aspects. The story flowed normally, all around you - you had an effect on it, if you wanted, or you could be carried away, but mostly what you did was affect, in SO MANY ways, the flow of the story. So you take the flowing form of a single train journey, and you create the story based on that flowing form - so that it all depended on how you affected the flow. Nevertheless, it flowed on. The more traditional ways of doing it certainly fit into the graphical style, and even the fact that so many of the animations are mere "frame-slideshows" instead of full-blown animations (but there ARE quite a few of the latter), and depending on what you call traditional, the game mechanics might be styled as traditional if you know your way around adventure games - although there are quite a few oddities, the biggest one the way time is handled in The Last Express, which directly follows my point about the flowing of the story.

Heh. By this logic, Warthogs plays as art nouveau.

Lo_res_man - Deep and profound and true, but no-one's talking about that issue - rather taking a game as an artistic object inserted in a defined style. "Mourir en mer" was art, I agree, but it can't be categorized as part of a movement. While that doesn't make it any less "art", it does kinda exclude it from this discussion.

[Oddysseus]

Some interesting responses already.

Rui: That's a good point about a bias towards the visual arts in my post.  I think the visual arts translate more directly into games then other mediums, but it's always worth it to consider other types of art.  Of course, I couldn't make heads or tails of your musical example, but then, I can't even read music or play an instrument, so undoubtedly we all bring our own strengths and weaknesses with us when trying to think about games.  Also, thanks for all the examples!  I haven't played any of those games yet, but I'm sure they'll be a great inspiration.

Akatosh: Me Go Store is definitely art.  I would consider it an excellent example of minimalism or Art Brut, but most importantly, I consider it fun!

Onedollar: Of course comics count as art, and Freedom Force is a great example of an arty game done right.  I also would consider Myst to be an example of Surreal art: the player finds themselves transported to a dream-like world where bizarre machines function according to their own unique rules and logic.

Rui and Onedollar also brought up two related and important points: Onedollar never played The Last Express, though he has heard good things about it (same here) and he never finished the demo for Blue Ice.  Rui played several 'artsy' games, most of which he didn't enjoy.  The fact is, games that specifically try to be 'art' are interesting, but not interesting enough to hunt down or hold one's attention (in Onedollar's example) or they are just plain not fun (in Rui's case).

So the answer of how I would attempt to meld art movements with gamplay, is that I would still make gameplay king.  Frankly, I'm interested in making fun games, not games-as-art.  So I guess it would mostly be a regular adventure game, with the 'flavor' of a particular movement.

For an example, I'll try to explain my idea for my Surrealism game.  In the magazine the Surrealists published early in the movement, they would print 'dream accounts' as evidence of the importance of the subconscious blah blah technical blah.  A dream account was exactly what it sounded like: someone writes down whatever happened in a dream they had the night before.  My game would basically be an interactive dream account- except it would be in third person, with a featureless main character to represent the player.  The character would wander from place to place (as often happens in dreams), with each room of the game tenuously connected to the last.  The character would transform during the game, from black to white, male to female, etc.  Things would chase you and then lose interest, and I would constantly try to introduce new elements: changing the perspective from 3rd to 1st person, for instance. I would attempt to add a basic plot, but it would be very loose and unimportant: maybe the character loses a balloon, and follows it through a series of bizarre adventures. (If you ever read Harold and the Purple Crayon as a kid, you know what I'm trying for)

The puzzles would also attempt to follow dream logic, AKA "It made sense at the time" logic.  An example: The character finds himself at the shore of a lake, and he can't swim.  However, he notices a cloud overhead that is shaped exactly like a boat.  When the player clicks on the cloud, though, the main character suddenly grows tall enough to reach the cloud.  He is now so tall that he simply walks across the lake, without needing the cloud-boat at all.

The more I describe it, the more think that it's pretty much useless to try to explain it in words.  But the main point is, I wouldn't be merely copying the visual characteristics of an art movement.  I'm thinking of including a clock that melts as an homage to Dali, but otherwise, there would be almost no connection to the iconography of the Surrealists.  I'm just using their design philosophies and ideas as a springboard to come up with my own unique 'atmosphere' and 'attitude' for a game.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Heh. You might enjoy the RON "Mika's Surreal Dream" series by DasTobias, although I don't think he meant it to be artistic at all.

[OneDollar]

For an example, I'll try to explain my idea for my Surrealism game...

That sounds a really good idea, and if you got it right you'd have quite an interesting 'experience' on your hands. It sounds rather hard to pull off though.

Something I'm wondering about, how do you define 'game'? Something interactive that follows a set of rules and is designed to be played by one or more people for the purpose of entertainment? In which case MS Paint could be called a game based on art.

[lo_res_man]

I don't think games should follow art trends except as inspiration. Video games can be art in there own right. They can be inspired by the  emotions and themes of other work, using visual cues that motivate them. But it is a distinct art form, and it shouldn't just use these themes mindlessly as a gimmick.

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Oh, I should hope it's not a gimmick, and indeed different art forms should have their own ways of expressing themselves. But the most interesting art can reach literature, music, plastic arts... in this sense, it's okay to make games as part of a movement.

[LUniqueDan]

Soviet Unders *cough* *cough* get created as a part of an artistic movement, by people of this artistic movement in accordance to the manifesto of the artistic  movement. The game was pretty enjoyable and I'm desesperatly waiting for a sequel.

But now, to tell the thruth, you don't really feel it as an 'art release' at all. The game play, the graphix and the puzzle, make it end up to be a very common game style. And that's probably why it was so good.


If you remove the visual aspect (the drawing style), a real dadaist game will be very boring to play. What's going to be the enjoyement of having volunterally illogical puzzles, and random locations appearing randomly to give a near-surrealistic impresion?

> Use corkscrew with elephant.
The elephant start inflating while the corkscrew became a glowing petunia.

> Use glowing petunia with floating garden
The time start blending and you end up at the beginning of the game.

You are somewhere. An elephant is playing accordeon in the sky with a monkey. You remember what Freud said about you and your mother so you decide that you like the drum sounds of the harmonica.

 

[Vel]

Although I am no expert on the subject, Art Nouveau happens to be my favourite artistic movement, and I more or less have an understanding of its doctrine. To me, it is all about beauty, overflowing, overpowering beauty - beauty of nature, the natural beauty of women. The movement flourished in an age when there was thought to be no limit for human abilities, both physical (technical revolution) and mental (the numerous modernist artistic movements). And what the last express does is recreate this long lost era, the belle epoque, with the artistic means of the time. The characters are drawn in a style reminiscent of Toulouse-Lautrec and Mucha; there are lots and lots of examples of then contemporary art, especially in Kronos's private train car. The last express is also a lament for that lost epoch, as the shattering ending shows. This, in short, is why I consider The Last Express the highest artistic achievement of computer games, or at least those I've played. Had it been a movie, it would have been another third man.

[Oddysseus]

The discussion seems to be going along nicely, but where are the suggestions for new game ideas? (Besides Candall's lovely stained glass suggestion-thanks Candall!)

The back-and-forth technical discussion is great, but how about a round of good old "wouldn't it be great if they based a game around..."

Onedollar: I like your definition of game, but games also usually have a beginning and an end (even if the end is death, like most early arcade games) so unfortunately, MS Paint wouldn't qualify- much as I love it.

Lo_res_man: I agree that games can be their own art form, but if you were making games specifically as art, I don't think you should use a genre as old-fashioned and rooted in tradition as point and click adventure games as a starting-off point.  In other words, you should use something besides AGS if you intend to make an art game.  But as I've said, I'm not interested in art games, just using art as an influence when making adventure games.  And not as a gimmick, but as a way of approaching the game experience from a new angle, to get fresh ideas.

LUniqueDan: I was just going to talk about how a successful Dada game would have to play like a normal game, and simply include aspects of the Dada movement (multiculturalism, antiwar sentiment, laws of chance), rather than taking gamepay cues from the aspects of the art itself, but you explain it much better (and funnier!).  A game that tried to recreate the Dada experience would have to intentionally annoy the player.  It would be much better ('more fun = better' in game design) to style a traditional adventure game around Dada politics and aesthetics than to faithfully create an 'artistic' game about nonsense and confusion.

[Oddysseus]

Well, it looks like the discussion has run its course.

I didn't get many of the suggestions I wanted, but the debate was interesting, and more importantly, I actually got an idea for a new game.  Of course, I can't be sure this thread was the cause of my inspiration, since I got the idea while waking up from a bizarre dream, but I definitely used some of the points raised here to help me craft the plot outline and puzzle structure, so thanks, guys!
I just started this thread to have a little chat- I never expected it to be productive or anything. It was a nice surprise.

Now I'm off to play some of those games Rui and Auriond suggested.