"Video Games as Art?" Presentations

Today we finally got the in-class presentations of "Video Games as Art" from our fellow students.

The first presentation was a slightly obvious choice of the Metal Gear Solid series as a whole. It touched on the cutscenes and the almost photo-realistic graphics on the PS3 gen games. Plus it had a bit on Hideo Kojima as well, like how he started out wanting to be an illustrator. And also how he created stories that were far too long for anyone to develop, until he got to Konami of course. The rest is history.

The guy also showed the Director's Cut trailer for Metal Gear Rising. Of course it was the English version, with it's somewhat hilarious amounts of strange English. I almost always chuckle every time anything is CAPITALIZED or ends with an exclamation!

Then followed a short discussion including how Metal Gear Rising felt like a huge tangent from Metal Gear Solid, as it was extremely fast paced focusing on Lighting Speed Action and stuff like that.


Afterwards we had a short forced discussion about Minecraft being art or not. Apparently the TA had only played a few video games in her life, one of which included Minecraft. And she barely played it too. She complained about the graphics a bit, but also about how utterly pointless the game might be. It didn't have any narrative at all! Where's the ideology in that? But of course, the discussion came about that this one game is more of an experience you create yourself that might end up being art. I think someone came up with the analog of a finished painting, where you can explore the piece throughout, but it has already been completed. Now the game could very much be the act of painting itself perhaps.

With this analogy, I can even relate those "building" games to the fine art of music as well. There are a variety of instruments that can create many sounds that might end up art. Perhaps those games are simply tools. Although there are instruments that themselves could be art pieces, be they the most beautiful lacquered wooden instruments, or a nice polish brass. I'd like to think that even improvised instruments could be art. And in this way the "building" games could be art themselves.

Or at least when the music starts playing. Oh how I love Minecraft music.


Then we got a long presentation about Silent Hill being art. Although I admit to not having played these games for long, the short experience of Silent Hill 3 was enough to make me agree with his points. A point that was quite interesting was the fact that the representations in the games through monsters and the other world are actually connected to the character themselves. It's not just there to creep you out at random, but rather as pieces to a puzzle to helping yourself. Either way, it's creepy and I don't know if I have the guts to ever finish the game quite yet. I have yet to "complete" Yume Nikki either, though that's one of the games I would've really loved to draw from if I had to present video games as art.


Finally, we had the presentation that I was not hoping for. I almost cringed in my seat as I saw the handout fly around.

It was Final Fantasy.

The guy presenting went on and on about features and the cool cutscenes and stuff. I don't even remember if he talked about how the gameplay and cutscenes were at least somewhat integrated, or perhaps how far removed they are.

I remember reading about how Kingdom Hearts was getting remaded for the PS3, and how that one game in the series was simply condensed into movie format. Although some people said it was better since it cut out a lot of tedious stuff, the final boss battle would have been great to show even in gameplay without the spiffy cutscenes. For example, I really felt the tension in the final battle of Persona 3. It lasted for a long time, but I knew that it felt good to be in control of what actions I had to do to beat this huge boss.

Anyways, he went on to cite Hironobu Sakaguchi as being the big guy of Final Fantasy. Of course, as the creator of Final Fantasy, he's largely a part of why the series was so good.

Then he showed a video of Final Fantasy XIII-2. I was shaking my head, as it goes to show that he did not do enough research. Sakaguchi had already left the Final Fantasy series as the producer for any of the games after Final Fantasy IX. Part of that reason could be attributed to the whole Spirits Within box office disaster too. With spiffy new graphics of course it's "art" right? Well I guess it could be, but going with it as a pure game, it's another filled with cutscenes after cutscene with somewhat bland gameplay in between.

I guess Metal Gear Solid and Final Fantasy does have some parallels in it's modern day games. Although perhaps one of the big differences is the vastly superior story telling or execution of one game over the other. Sure they're both art, but I guess you should just say which one is "better". I, for one, already know my choice.


Anyways, that was one of my longer rants/summaries for a while. I think video games can be considered art, though there's various ranges of what is "good" to what is "horrible". Perhaps I should actually get around to finishing all these games before being a critic myself.

Oh and the class ended with a presentation demonstrating some neat virtual reality stuff including the one with the camera and the soldiers. And another where you sort of had these extended arms that could grab stuff from this planet thing that was stuck onto the center of the screen. The visuals reminded me of Starcraft's Protoss somewhat, with it's golden-ish plated contraptions.