God and the game designer.
Game designers are leaning more towards creating tools and environments for players to have agency over their destiny within a game rather than creating a rigid set of rules and gameplay. It’s a trend that’s lead me closer to some notions I’ve had about video games and [art in general] for awhile.
With the advent of Second Life, various virtual worlds, MMOs and now Spore, it seems like game designers just want to play God. Is it that surprising? In a way, throughout its history, art has attempted to imitate life, or at least its issues. Whether it was the fact that some hunters killed a few bovine grazers that day [cave paintings] or a statement in opposition of war through abstract poetry, art often attempts to have something to do with our lives representational of our issues. Kandinsky or Duchamp don’t seem to have anything to do with imitating life, but they in fact do. Their underlying philosophies in relation to the form of art were certainly within the realm of “life”. Duchamp’s “descending a staircase” has everything to do with the new-found invention of film, and he was responding to that through static imagery, among other things. Kandinksky responded to the picture plane as an image, and not some representational “trick-of-the-eye” portal to another place in time. They were artists for artists, dealing with the issues of art itself.
This has a lot to do with games. Traditional art, photography, literature and film all have their limits, which were met relatively quickly. But games, what’s the limit there? And really, when I write “games” that’s a misnomer, really this involves all interactive experience. Because personally, I don’t consider Second Life a game, nor do I think many of its users. But, frankly, I’m going to continue to use “games” since I don’t think it’ll hurt anyone’s feelings. So since these games are attempting to imitate life more and more, what will really stop them from completely imitating life? All around the world, we’re developing immersive realities, control systems and headsets to try and feed our every input into the game so that we may truly recreate the experience of “life”.
The most interesting games at the forefront of this effort use tools and environments like a blank canvas for players to inhabit. Much like the Christian God created the world for which all things to inhabit. Setting the rules and creating the arena, waiting to see what the folks on his new Earth would do. Well they screwed it up, but if this were actually true and some being did create the world we live in, then wouldn’t games be the ultimate form of art. Art not just imitating life… but creating it.
Maybe gives new meaning to the line:
God created man in his own image.
Well said. Some very profound conclusions there.
Speaking of artists tackling issues in our time…it’d be really interesting to see a game that dealt with someone’s belief or disbelief in different religions. If someone could somehow express their like or dislike of Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, etc, in a game that focused on it… Well, I’d like to see that!