Essay on the Never-ending Debate

I decided to upload the essay I wrote for our first master course in hypermedia (or interactive media). It’s basically another (more thought-out) attempt in trying to situate myself in the “games as art” -discussion. Loads of the articles and books I’ve read on games and art didn’t make it to this paper, and loads more are still waiting for my eager eyes. Nevertheless, this course and essay were a nice, soft landing to the field.

The essay is a short and easy read. Please leave a comment/send email if the essay provokes any thoughts, you have some good ideas to share, or you think a certain researcher, book or article is a must for me.

(As a sidenote: I’m actually planning on gathering up a list of publications I should read, and publishing it here.)

Games as Art (manSEDANse09 -style)

First of all, let me point out that old jazz is so good I’m at a loss of words. Yes, I do realize this doesn’t seem to have any connection to games as art whatsoever. But it does, oh yes it does.

I’ll get back to that claim later. Now, back to the actual business. I had a fair share of “games meet arts” -debating today, starting with a some theorizing with Annakaisa Kultima at the soon-to-be-renamed Hypermedialab at University of Tampere, and continuing with a panel discussion at an event called manSEDANse09. As if that wouldn’t have been enough, the discussion continued after the actual panel was over, with Jaakko Stenroos (one of the panelists) and a fellow master student. After Jaakko left, we still continued the debating for an hour or two (or three) in a coffee house nearby.

The value of the “Games as Art” -panel discussion wasn’t so much in it offering me new information, nor in the panelists surprising me with their stance in the Holy War of Art and Non-Art. The value was in me obtaining good questions that didn’t get answered satisfyingly enough. For example, the classical question “are games art?” was flipped upside down by Jaakko Stenroos, resulting in “can art take the form of a game?”. Continuing from this question, and assuming the answer is yes, the next question would be “are games good art?” and “is there any artistic value in games?”. The original question Jaakko came up with was shot down by Jussi Holopainen with a counter-question: why couldn’t we just take games as art the way they are, in stead of using them as a material for making art?

Some excellent points were also made, about the true nature of art, and about the topic of the panel:

Art reveals something unexpected of the human nature and the society, something that makes you stop and think about the big questions in life, like “why are we here?”,  ”where will we go?” and “what the fuck?” (Holopainen)

The artistic aspirations don’t match with the current trends in the gaming industry. — An art game has to be unique, but when you make something unique, it’s hard to make people understand what it’s all about. This gets us back to the Dinosaurs versus Small Hairy Animals -notion in my previous post.

The division between art and games isn’t as steep as it seems. (Stenroos)

We don’t have game criticism, it just doesn’t exist. What we do have is game reviews. (Stenroos)

The panel ended with the panelists happily disagreeing on what kind of art games are, and me wondering about the question one listener posed: would someone play a game for the art-experience? I know I would, but what about the rest of the world? The Average Joes for example, would they do it?

Small Hairy Animals (MindTrek pt. 2)

As everyone knows, lectures, workshops and panel discussions are not the most important part of a conference. The most important part is everything that happens in between and after these (no I’m not referring to free food and beer).

Like I noted in my previous post, Adam Greenfields’ presentation really made an impact on me. Worrying that he might dissapear as fast as Miguel Sicart did, I hurried down to him to prevent such a situation. I’m glad I did, for it turned out he was leaving in less than an hour. Luckily, he was willing to spare some of that time for me, resulting in me having worthy information, and good hints on what I could and should do in the future. To conclude, I’d say he’s one pretty awesome dude, and I’ll definitely be following his doings from now on. Although, I have to admit I was disappointed with his attitude towards games (ie. dissing them), but I think I’ll just take it as a challenge.

After the chat, I walked around doing nothing until the end of the conference, and as I was just leaving, a guy came up to me, looking like he actually wanted to talk to me of all people. He had heard my conversation with Adam, and after he introduced himself and his ideas, I understood why.  The guy is called Slava Kozlov, and although still working for Philips, he’s starting up his own company, Summ*n, with a guy called Nikolay Yaremko. Their slogan is “We summon the futures for you to play with them now”, and it sounds very very intriguing to say the least. Obviously, their aspirations go well together with my interest in what games could be. Also, it seems that Slava appreciates what young people have to offer, and that is something I definitely admire. Can’t wait to see what happens with Summ*n!

Our chat was cut short by Slava having to go to an evening event. I had luck on my side again, and got to join the party, although I had no idea of what I was getting myself into this time.

The event was held at Demola in the Finlayson complex, and by the people running Demola. In their site, they say “Demola is a multidiciplinary open innovation environment for the creators of the next generation of digital products and services”. In practice, this means that companies (for example Nokia and TeliaSonera) that happen to have ideas they want done into real products can bring them to Demola, and teams of young talents from the three universities in Tampere get to use their skills and learn project working. Obviously, I had no idea of such a place excisting and definitely no idea someone was doing something so great in the middle of Tampere.

Not only was Demola inspiring, but the event itself was quite something too. Pardon my prejudice, but I never imagined that 40-something and older men (and women too of course, but not that many were present) could have such good and innovative ideas and such readiness for change, plus willingness to give young people some power too. On top of that, many of them are working for big, conservative companies. I loved the way the importance of humanities and art were brought up multiple times during discussion when debating innovations and the next Google. Also, an excellent notion was made:

“Everyone knows that dinosaurs used to be the ruling species, but they were wiped out, and their place inherited but small furry animals. Well, I see big companies as the dinosaurs of our time, and small, innovative companies as the small furry animals. No big innovations that changed the world have been made by the dinosaurs, but by the small, innovative and agile furry animals.”

I couldn’t agree more. Big companies are just too careful and too stuck in their ways to come up with the next Big Thing. The notion applies especially well to game companies, and is also the reason for games being pretty but brainless. Almost all of the few good, innovative games have  been made by small indie developers, not by Squeenix, Nintendo or EA. They’re not willing to take any risks, nor to think about designing games that would appeal to smaller audiences.

Enough of ranting for now, next I think I’ll look into Greenfields’ texts and jot down what kind of thoughts they provoke.