[danielvaughn]

The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness. And yet, by any conceivable standard, they’re by far the most complex creative endeavor.

Creating a video game requires knowledge of the following: programming, graphics, 3D or 2D art tools, artistic ability, UI and UX design, game design, music production, cinematography, storytelling, copywriting, etc etc. It’s just astoundingly complex.

[yakubin]

That's a broader theme. Watching TV is considered more childish than reading a book, even though TV content requires a lot more kinds of creative work in order to exist. The reason is that usually when the medium is richer, it demands less of its audience. Instead of imagining a scene, you're given its picture ready-made. Instead of actively following the lines of a story, you passively assimilate what appears before your eyes. It's less effort, and it's less active. It's common for people to watch TV in order to "turn off their brains" when exhausted. "Turning one's brain off" when reading a book is usually an accident, not an intentional thing, and happens a lot less.

Games demand more from their audience than TV, but you're still given a lot to consume passively, compared to a book: instead of imagining scenes, you're again given them as pictures. Games do compensate though with demanding that you make choices as you play a game, which may impact a story. Well... that's as long as the game is not an FPS, or a racing game, where choices don't matter for a story, as the story is either non-existent, or barely important; and what matters a lot more is your dexterity and reflex.

[crtasm]

There are games that are entirely text-based. I play less than I used to but always try to check out the yearly winners on https://ifcomp.org/

Also see https://ifdb.org/

[rascul]

> There are games that are entirely text-based.

There are a lot of MUD games. I've been playing WoTMUD on and off for a little over two decades now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MUD

https://wotmud.info/

[andrewflnr]

Pretty sure those still fit the thesis in practical terms. They demand more of the player, and AFAIK are not particularly associated with childishness (if only because much fewer people know they exist, but still, you can't take imagine people thinking some arty piece of IF is childish, can you?).

[StillLrning123]

"That's a broader theme. Watching TV is considered more childish than reading a book, even though TV content requires a lot more kinds of creative work in order to exist." While TV shows are more involved and complex to make, that does not automatically give the TV show depth, reflection, nuance etc. A TV show is often quite the opposite; a banal story full of platitudes.

[Tostino]

I absolutely agree with your comment from the consumption perspective, but I believe GP was referring solely to the creation aspect.

[andrewflnr]

By bringing up the association with childishness, no, they were not.

[cma]

In sandbox games with lots of building you are often painting the picture moreso than someone reading a book.

[aschearer]

I agree. For a long time I felt games weren't art in the same vein as e.g. painting. More recently I've come to feel that's not true. As you say, making compelling games requires compelling art across multiple mediums. Add on top of that interactivity and agency! That's part of what's so satisfying about making them. It's an incredible challenge and measure of your ability.

[gmueckl]

But is the actual game, as in, taking actions obeying a premade set of rules, art? That is the essence of every game. We use various representations, physical or virtual, for representing the game. Yet, the representation is not the game.

[archagon]

Can taking actions that obey a premade set of rules communicate something to the player? I think it can. For example, Jonathan Blow has played around with this notion in Braid and The Witness.

[gmueckl]

You must separate the game from its presentation when considering game as art. Chess figurines can be artful, but that does not mean that the act of playing them becomes art. That same separation translates to Braid and The Witness: how is requiring to press a button to reverse the player actions in a specific way in itself art? I'm deliberately separating that from the notion of "time reversal" here because that's how that action is embedded into the game's presentation. The actual physical flow of time for the player in the real world is unaffected by the button press; so this separation is justified. Therefore, the final flow reversal from the phantasy to the real plot in the last level is just a twist that happens in the presentation and not a consequence of the game rules.

The Witness is a slightly more interesting case in that it presents a sequence of evolving puzzle rules. The rule evolution again relies on presentation aspects to achieve the "twist": early puzzles are clearly framed to stress the notion that puzzles are limited to clearly discernable canvases. Later puzzles dissolve these boundaries until they are no longer present and the puzzles are simply part of the environment. This sequence is only partially gated by the game (whether or sequencing/gating in a game is part of the rules or the presentation is another can of worms). The only real change from clearly framed to unframed puzzles here is that the problem statement transforms into finding the right viewpoint. Which part of this is art?

[archagon]

How do you define art, then? What is the art in a Kandinsky painting?

In my opinion, the art in these games is the beautiful intersection of a set of puzzle rules with the world they inhabit. In The Witness, the world is additionally constructed to be thematically interesting, and I think that the set pieces on the island are intrinsically connected to the puzzles next to them. The island by itself would not make for very interesting art: it’s the game element that brings the art to life.

Also, “pressing a button to reverse time” feels very reductive. By playing the game, the player learns, and this learning leads to understanding. Usually, this understanding is tied solely to the game world and is used to tackle new and more complex challenges in later areas, but maybe it can also lead to extra-game insight. Even a tiny game like Passage makes powerful gestures in this direction.

[gmueckl]

My position is mostly based on Brian Moriarty's Apology for Roger Ebert, by the way. I also define art mostly the presence of an intent that an artist wants to convey to the audience that goes beyond the immediate form.

Somewhere along the path towards modern computer games, a conflation happened between the game and its presentation. My intention here is to point this out. If you retain the meaning of the word "game" from its pre-computer origin, you arrive at the reduction that I outlined and the question whether you can convey artistic intent solely in a set of game rules.

Artistic intent is always somehow relying on a certain level of control over an artwork's presentation. What is (or isn't) shown in painting, how is it represented and where is it on the canvas relative to everything else? Music, film and video have a temporal aspect under the control of the artist. In that sense, Kandinsky paintings can be art under the assumption that the compositions of these paintings are very deliberate.

In a computer game, there is always tension between the game elements which give agency to the recipient and the presentational aspects for which the creator has to assert control from the player in some form to ensure that they are conveyed with the proper intent.

This tension makes any answer to whether video games can be art nontrivial.

[SyneRyder]

The Witness is absolutely an astonishing work of art, a life-changing experience. So much so that I wonder if it really can be called a game. (I'm over 100 hours in, and that's not counting all the time I've spent on trains looking out the window and thinking about its themes.)

It's frustrating that the reasons The Witness is lifechanging can't be explained to others without preventing them from having that same experience and understanding. But that in itself is a revelation to discover. It can't be told, it must be experienced.

[mawadev]

I would say there is a lot of creativity involved when you play multiplayer games. It is a mix of strategy and decision making depending on the context of a situation that layers on top of gameplay mechanics.

[hypertele-Xii]

Reading a book is also obeying a premade set of rules, the meaning of words, to convey art.

[Trigg3r]

This :) Got into dev maybe 20 years ago or so, because I wanted to build a game, but no one I knew could code. Eventually got annoyed enough and decided if no one (I knew) can code, then I should learn it instead! so I did. Now working as a senior dev (building mostly web stuff), but still not having built a game, I tried a few times (trying again at the min with Godot!) I now appreciate the people working on rendering, storytelling, animation, model creation and so much more, I am with you on the complexity, I think you have to try it to understand.

[hinkley]

I think part of that is because we are expected to put up with frustrating software at work because we are getting paid for it so if the work is more work than it needs to be, well just shut up and do your job.

Games are supposed to be fun. The money goes the other way, so the annoyances are taken a bit more seriously. The creator has to take that frustration on themselves instead of externalizing it, which is more work for them.

Add to that the delight aspect, and games try crazy stuff that would never fly with business software. 'Safe' doesn't get you many accolades so you're essentially obliged to try at least a few things. And the shelf life is lower so even if you fuck up you usually only have to hear about it for three years and then you can try something new. Once in a while, every five years or so, one of those UI gambles ends up being adopted by the industry, so while not the most effective petri dish for general UX research, it still gets some results.

[paulryanrogers]

IME the US has a unhealthy culture of work. Religion too carries a "put childish things behind you" influence.

Things do appear to be changing, yet with older generations there's still a lot of judgement.

[CobrastanJorji]

I think if I ever got asked to write up a religion, there'd need to be a positive commandment ordering you to enjoy yourself in moderation on a daily basis. Something that says "if you're making yourself miserable all day every day, you are sinning." Not sure how to word it in a way that discourages hedonism and also doesn't make people trapped in lousy situations feel even worse, but that'd be the goal.

[msmenardi]

balance, in all things

keep your mind on your self and it's surroundings, and let your self be one with both pleasure and struggle.

let not the words of others compel you to eat too many frogs [1]

[1]: https://experimentalhistory.substack.com/p/excuse-me-but-why...

[meheleventyone]

This is only sort of true. I’ve been making games for over thirty years and nearly hit twenty years of doing it professionally. The truth is you only need to be passable at some of those things. Even if you want to make a game by yourself. Whilst I don’t think everyone has a commercially successful game in them I also am pretty sure that’s way more to do with circumstance and project management ability than any sort of raw talent. On top of which no game is truly the work of one person even if the help is uncredited.

TLDR; games like movies are a sum of parts that is a lot less creative and original than might appear at first blush.

[dietrichepp]

I agree with this.

I've worked with various teams on game jams and I’ve had conversations with people over the years, encouraging people to hold themselves to a lower standard. It’s not just the fact that this is a game jam—we are not competing with Zelda, and our game doesn’t need to have scope, scale, or polish similar to a Zelda game.

I also enjoy playing a game and seeing somebody’s amateur-ish art, or hearing some clumsy musical phrases that they put together. There’s something special about that which is hard to capture when you start spreading the work around people, because it’s just so hard to put together a coherent vision for a game in multiple minds.

We’ve also talked about how you run into a lot of people who’s main goal is to do job X at a higher level of technical ability and polish so they can get hired by a studio they like. It’s understandable why they’d want that, but it also leads to people sanding the edges off their style, so to speak. This makes it difficult to assemble a team of people who are all interested in the same style of development process (no judgment—some people on your team want a portfolio piece for a future job, some people want to express themselves here and now).

I don’t think making a solo game developer should be any different than being a novel writer, in the sense that it’s not a club reserved for the people who are good at doing it—but a club for the people who put in the time and effort to make something.

[qzw]

This is so true, except for that one glorious, fleeting period when iOS apps were new and you could be an overnight millionaire with something like Flappy Bird.

[jonas21]

Flappy Bird didn't become popular until 2014, when the App Store was already 6 years old.

[ketzo]

Oh, hush. The broader point is just that the barrier for entry was very, very low for a brief period.

I definitely bought a $0.99 app that you could tip up to your face to make it look like you were drinking a beer.

Very, very low.

[ransom1538]

"programming, graphics, 3D or 2D art tools, artistic ability, UI and UX design, game design, music production, cinematography, storytelling, copywriting, etc etc."

Also! Physics, vector math, AI, cameras, shaders, networking, etc

[danielvaughn]

Yep, and all the sub-disciplines within sub-disciplines. It’s crazy.

[ketzo]

I know, god damn -- including "networking" as just a single word feels... horrifying.

[darkteflon]

It’s so extensive that you really just have to enjoy the journey. Good experience and life lesson for kids/teenagers. And fully-grown adults.

[Heyso]

Yes it is an art that can contains multiples others arts.

On a small project you also usually have to do the game design, it is art too.

And art is harder than technique in my opinion.

I got a lot of respect for artists.

[fuzzythinker]

Plus heavy math if not using an engine or if it involves more than what the engine provides.

[amelius]

> The irony of video games is that they’re often associated (at least in America) with childishness.

That's because most games are about shooting other people. This is something only children (and perhaps some dictators) love to think about.

[darkteflon]

Imagine what you would think if someone claimed that “most movies are violent”. You would think that even a cursory glance at Netflix or Apple TV or the shelf of your local Blockbuster would quickly disabuse you of the notion.

So it is with games. I’d urge you to take a second look. These sorts of generalisations, ill-supported by evidence, have historically been bad for the medium.

[lIl-IIIl]

38 out of 50 games in https://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/all-games are about shooting people. So "most" doesn't sound too far fetched.