Games as Art

Games can be seen as different things by various people. Some see them as simple time wasters or like electronic fidget spinners (in other words, how I look at Game & Watch). Some see them as challenges to be conquered or fun adventures to go on. And some see them as art, albeit art that is usually only appreciated by players or other programmers/designers (one example I can think of is the Kraid fight on Super Metroid, where the tricks they usually use to make big bosses aren’t used and shows off the SNES’ capabilities, but only other developers would actually recognize this for the most part). And they’re all correct, to some degree.



Video games have evolved from simple gimmicks and time wasters (Pong, Game & Watch titles) to single screen arcade tests of reflexes (Pac-Man, Donkey Kong) to action side scrollers, and sprawling scavenger hunt adventures (Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda) to fighting simulators, stealth games, first person shooters, and more. Over time, more and more genres of games have been developed. I touched on this a bit in my Reflections on the Evolution of Gaming (part 1) post, but as technology advanced, new types and sub-genres of games were developed, which spread the appeal of video games to audiences who weren’t interested in previous offerings. Some genres have mostly fallen out of favor (space shooters, for example) while others keep getting reinvented with new twists (like Tetris).


And while I’m not trying to get into a hardcore gamer versus casual mobile gamer distinction debate, it does have some relevance to the subject of this post. As a product/hobby/sport/whatever expands and gets larger numbers of consumers/spectators, there inevitably comes with it more casual fans, which is fine. But when doing reports on “gamers,” including the suburban soccer-moms who pull up Words with Friends or Candy Crush on their phones (for free) with the guys who spend $2,500 on a computer setup to play competitive Call of Duty is a little disingenuous and skews the statistics. To be clear, I’m not trying to be a gatekeeper here, just suggesting that we start using more precision in our language to describe things, report statistics, and write articles when gaming as a hobby is concerned. 

Games can be many things these days, and as games have evolved, we have seen more story elements being added as features. In the 8-bit days, most of the story was contained in the instruction manual, and often it wasn’t a particularly well thought out plot. Many of the games’ stories could be whittled down to something like, “Rescue the Princess,” or, “Stop the mad scientist/supernatural monster from taking over the world,” type of plots. A few games (such as Ninja Gaiden) had story elements between stages in cutscenes or dialogue dumps. Games in the RPG category had more dialogue and story elements than most, and when the 16-bit era came around, some of them were quite detailed and emotional. It’s clear that the developers at Square took the story more seriously, and it paid off. It really gives the player more motivation beyond just, “try and score the most points” or whatever, and as gamers responded to games with stories developers took note and started including more story elements to satisfy their customer base. Shigeru Miyamoto was very prominent in developing games with a simple concept that can be communicated to the player in half a sentence or less ( “get to the top and rescue the girl” ) and not worrying so much about tremendous amounts of backstory - he left those kinds of things to other people.


But there has been a somewhat new-ish genre of game that is a tad confusing to me, and somewhat controversial because of the role they played in events like Gamergate (the most notable being Depression Quest). These games have, in my opinion, crossed over the line from being a game with a story to being a story that happens to have chosen video games as its medium.

There are many ways to tell a story - orally, in a novel, as a series in magazines, as a TV show, or in a movie. But now we have a new medium that allows the story to be told but with added interaction from the viewer. Overall, I think that’s a good thing. But because the medium is something that is being played and not just read or watched, I think that the story should come second behind gameplay elements. In other words, the story is there to enhance the game, and not the other way around where the game just happens to be how one experiences the story.


The thing that got me thinking about this concept is that I’ve been able to purchase and play a wider variety of games on the Switch than I have on previous consoles, both due to having more pocket money and because the Switch eshop has a lot more overlap with the Steam selection and mobile games when compared to older generations. While I’ve found some games that are truly great, I’ve also found some that I probably wouldn’t have purchased had I known more than the screenshots and description blurb gave me.


Some examples are:

Gone Home - the only real gameplay element is walking around the house and clicking on stuff. There is a very, very scant amount of puzzle solving akin to Maniac Mansion, but it’s so little it’s nearly imperceptible. Mostly it was just a short story about a kinda dysfunctional family dealing with infidelity and coming out as gay, all disguised as a game. The problem is that the game elements are so weak that if you lose interest in the story there’s no reason to play. I’m pretty sure the reason it was so highly rated (at the time) was purely because of the LGBT spin on the game.

Perfect Angle - the story didn’t really matter to me at all. I couldn’t tell if the developers just tacked on a hastily written framework to explain how the solutions of each level somehow related to each other, or if the author was really trying to tell/relive some kind of childhood trauma and chose a game as a method of doing so. As a puzzle game, it was pretty good. But I didn’t see the need to include a story in much the same way that I don’t really need to learn about Mario’s medical degree to play Dr. Mario or find out about Regina to play PuyoPuyo. But the presentation of the puzzles was visually very nice.

The Gardens Between - this was a simple puzzle game whose concept wasn’t terribly deep. It more or less was a glorified block sliding puzzle, albeit wrapped in really beautiful scenery. I saw some similarities between this game and Perfect Angle in that I almost felt like the creator was dealing with some personal crisis or was having abandonment issues and making the game was like therapy. It’s basically two friends reliving their greatest memories the night before one moves away from the neighborhood masquerading as a puzzle game. If the nostalgia-inducing graphics weren’t so beautifully made this wouldn’t really be anything special, and maybe not even as good as the colored pipe connection games people play on phones. To me, this felt more like a new electronic art medium that needed a game element hastily tacked on in order to qualify it as a game rather than an interactive digital sculpture. 

Inmost - I knew going into it that it would probably end up on this list, but it was only like $2 at the time so I figured, what the hell? It was pretty to look at, and was really kinda like 3 mini-games that switched back and forth at set points. One was a basic but decent action platformer, while another was a puzzle platformer. Both could have been developed further into more fully realized concepts but weren't, unfortunately. The third part was less interesting, and can be described as hide-and-seek, the video game. The main problem (besides needing some more robust development) is that it was trying to tell a story from three perspectives, and much of it was some kind of fantasy allegory or an imaginary world that someone suffering from trauma escapes to in order to avoid real-world pain. The story's purpose was to stitch the three platformer sections together, but failed because due to poor writing and storytelling. At the end, I wasn't sure what had really happened, which element represented what real-life event, and I didn't really care to investigate because it just wasn't that interesting. A good mystery story might have saved all three other phases of the game and gave it some replayability. 

There’s another group of games that is commonly and derisively referred to as “walking simulators,” which are games that have basically no real gaming elements - no puzzles to solve, no people to save, no bosses to beat, no skills to master, no races to win, no timed elements, no mistakes to make, and no Game Over screens to face. Essentially, it’s no different from reading a novel except that you get it in small doses and you need to press buttons to get the next chunk, or perhaps use the D-pad to move the character to get the next bit of text. In other words, it’s a short story pretending to be a video game that would be better suited on a Kindle. Some of the games listed above might be classified as such.




Some counter examples of games I enjoyed featuring a background story but which are, at their core, games that could have stood on their own are:

Portal or Superliminal - both were mostly puzzle games, but the story of GLaDOS/Aperture and SomnaSculpt just enhanced it in the background while players moved from level to level. They probably could have been successful without the story, but the games were more intriguing with the story and it motivated players to keep moving on. In other words, the story enhanced an already great concept. 

Perfect Dark or Splinter Cell - similar to Portal in that most of the dialogue and story occurs between levels but there is a bit that happens while playing an excellent game that blends both perfectly. The player is given his/her objectives, and then left to complete them with minimal dialogue. 

Ace Attorney Games - It’s been said that these are more of a "choose-your-own-adventure" style visual novel, and it’s fairly spot on. But it also has enough game elements (point/click exploration, decision making, puzzle solving, and the ability to get a "game over") that I feel that it straddles the line and is about 48% story and 52% game. In this case, the mystery story is so well written that it's hard to put down. 

Cobra Kai or Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage - these are both beat-em-ups that have story from the comic book or TV show they are based off of in between levels. At the end of the day, it’s still mostly a game but you kinda feel like you went on the journey with them since the stages are based on events from the original show/comic.

Unravel Two - This was a really neat co-op puzzle platformer featuring tethered characters made of yarn who can help each other overcome jumps and obstacles. The graphics are beautiful, and the concept is a new idea that (to my knowledge) has never been done before. I got this to play with my wife as something to do together, and it absolutely works as a co-op game (and not the kind like Kirby or Mario Odyssey where the experienced player can serve as an assistant to help a younger player). However, in the background of the game there is some kind of story, and it's incredibly vague. I'm not really sure what's going on and what it's supposed to mean or represent, but honestly I don't care. The game is great as just the puzzle platformer and doesn't really need the story. But unlike something like Portal or Perfect Dark where the story augments the game, this one adds nothing. I would say either make the story good and engaging, or just don't do it at all. As it is, it kinda serves as a bit of a distraction instead of an enhancement. I feel that it's almost the opposite of a game like It Takes Two, which is similarly cooperative, but the story of the parents impending divorce is front and center and drives the plot of the game forward. 

Of course, there are plenty of RPG style games where the story/dialogue is a major part of the game, like Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Octopath Traveler, or ChronoTrigger where the story is so good that it's one of the main things drawing players into its world. 

As an art form, games have come a long way. We sometimes get new 8- or 16-bit “retro” games to this day (Shovel Knight, Shredder's Revenge) because we are nostalgic for that style, but we also get new and beautiful games like Breath of the Wild as well. It’s easy to see the artistry, skill, and love the makers put into their craft. Sometimes the beauty adds to an already great game, and sometimes it camouflages the fact that it’s an underdeveloped concept and the shiny graphics distract us from that fact. 

On somewhat of an unrelated tangent, I kinda hope the amount of games that copy the Skyrim opening goes down significantly. Not every game needs the protagonist to wake up without any knowledge of who they are or how they got there. There are other ways to introduce the world and have a tutorial than to assume the main character is an amnesia victim. 



I also realize that not every game is made for every gamer. And if someone wants to dress up a short story as a game, and use sprites instead of illustrations, more power to them. But I wish that reviews and eShops would also classify these games as such so that we know what we’re purchasing ahead of time.