True Gaming Why do so many 'art' games focus their subtext around such a limited number of subjects? |
| Why do so many 'art' games focus their subtext around such a limited number of subjects? Posted: 01 Feb 2018 07:50 AM PST Clarification: What I mean by an 'art' game in this post is any game that aims to be more than skin-deep, games that tend to go around the whole 'Youtube analyst' circles. Or, to put it simply, games that have been on Errant Signal's channel. Of course every game 'is' art, but I'm using the term in this sense mainly for brevity's sake. So this has been a topic on my mind for a while now. A trend I've seen throughout the years is that a seeming majority of well-known 'art' games are focused around two groups of concepts; these two groups being hard sci-fi/philosophical ideas (e.g. AI, continuity of consciousness, augmentations, etc) and meta-narrative ideas looking at the medium of video-games themselves. Below is a list of just some of the games that fit these two groups to help paint my point
Bear in mind that this list isn't meant to be conclusive, there are many other games that focus on the two aforementioned subjects, but I feel that it points to a trend in 'art' games towards a limited number of key subtexts. It seems that, for every Papers: Please, Hellblade or This War of Mine, which use game mechanics to portray a real-life, non-meta issue in an interest way, you have ten games discussing the meta-narrative of video-games and/or lofty, semi-fantasy concepts that have little bearing on the real world. In the worst cases you get a sort of bait-and-switch where, say, a story of racism and the perils of Christian fundamentalism turns, by the end, into a mixture of meta-narrative and philosophical sci-fi that, frankly, fails to say anything meaningful (I think you know what game I'm talking about). As for why, I'd argue that gaming as a medium attracts the kind of people who enjoy discussing concepts such as the ones outlined above. As for why, it's unclear, perhaps it's due to demographics or perhaps it's due to a lack of life experiences outside of gaming. What I can tell is that many of these topics are, generally, very 'safe' to talk about whilst still receiving attention from the gaming community. A meta-narrative look at video-games or a discussion on abstract sci-fi and philosophical concepts are, politically, pretty in-offensive. Bioshock Infinite being more Ten Year a Slave than Interstellar would have very likely put off many of its potential customers. They're also concepts that are much easier to make a game around, a critique of violence fits perfectly into an action game, a story on continuity of consciousness fits well into a medium where, by design, continued consciousness is a rarity. A game about the corrupting power of politics on an otherwise well-meaning person? A contemporary look at the racial divides of inter-city America? A story of misplaced, near-obsessive love in the shadow of 1920s New York? Not so easy. So, to add some discussion: If you agree this trend is happening then why do you think this trend has been taking place and do you think it's an issue or not? If you don't agree with the trend being a thing, what games would you use as counter-examples to my point? [link] [comments]  |
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