The more I look at artistic video games...the more confused I become. Over the last couple of years I have encountered beautiful, enchanting, thought-provoking, and emotional games there seems to be a horrible trade off :the artsier I find the game the less work was done on the gameplay. Take for instance the "games" from developer Tale of Tales.
The game developers at Tale of Tales have been attempting to make games that are much more than
themselves. As a result, their games focus heavily on the aspect of experiencing the game, rather
than playing it. Instead of controlling the avatar of the old woman in their most recent development, The Graveyard, you are forced into the shoes of her and become her.
Now I feel there should be a clear difference between interactive art and games. Games are often characterized to having an external goal: you are told what to do...and you do it. Art is a more subjective experience...depending on how you see it, and your own thoughts, do you interpret it.
Now Estamos Pensando tried to use gameplay as the stage to enhance the story of the game. Trying to reach a goal that was by all means unreachable played into the story and gameplay. Team Ico used futility and inevitability in their games (Shadow of the Colossus and Ico) to enhance the feeling of loss the main characters would feel trying to escape the inescapable much in the same way Estamos Pensando did.
The Old Woman's reaction, in The Graveyard, to her husband's grave is entirely random, and changes every time the game is loaded up. However "non-linear" this may be, it uses nothing of what a game is except for a control scheme.
But at what point does a game become art? As I read through the various blogs on tale-of-tales.com I realize that their ambitions are to make art act like a game and not make art from games. The problem with this method is that the works that result from this end up becoming interactive art instead of games. No semblance of a game is there...though you may have an experience you lose the fun of the game, you no longer play it...but feel it.
Games have so much potential as an art form as they use interactivity, along with classical visual art and music to tell a story, express an emotion, or send a message. But it has to be a combination. You have to feel it and you have to be able to play it. Herein is where the challenge lies.
All games do not have to boil down to mindless shooting (Call of Duty, Halo) or leveling for the
sake of leveling (Maplestory, WoW) though these games have their place. But they shouldn't have to be entirely passive experiences (The Graveyard, Estamos Pensando) either. A game should not be stripped of fun for the sake of a message, but the best games will use what a game is to make art not try to mold art into a game. And only when games like that are made can art in this industry really exist.
