If you're anything like us, you're probably getting a little tired of the seemingly never-ending "games as art" debate. Well try and revive your interest for just one more moment -- the Washington Post took an interesting approach in expanding the debate this weekend with a short piece looking at the artistic merits of BioShock.For the piece, Post technology and games writer Mike Musgrove took an Xbox 360 and a copy of BioShock over to the home of the Post's 58-year-old, Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda, who played the game unassisted for a couple of weeks. As might be expected for a guy whose last game was Myst, Dirda had trouble getting past Neptune's Bounty. "I've got a first-aid kit, but I haven't figured out how to use it," Dirda said in a quote sure to draw guffaws from gamers who haven't won a Pulitzer Prize.
But what about BioShock as art? While Dirda said the game obviously has artistic value and was easy to get lost in, he wouldn't quite go so far as to call it "art." The key threshold for games to become an art form, Dirda said, is the ability to make the player feel depressed. Apparently Dirda has never seen his rightfully-earned loot ninjaed after a five-hour World of Warcraft raid. Depressing indeed.
But the final word on BioShock as art should probably go to head designer Ken Levine. "Is BioShock art? I don't know, and I guess I sort of don't care. All I care about is, does it work -- does it have an impact on an audience?" On that important score, we're going to have to answer with a resounding "Yes!"
(Page 1) Reader Comments
3d models. animation, musical scores, sound-effects lighting textures voice acting
if you say video-games arent art, your a complete moron
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A paintbrush may have some artistic designs, but that doesn't automatically make everything I draw with it Art.
And for that matter, I think games like Okami and Loco Roco more artistic than Bioshock (which like it's FPS predecessors, still focus on violence and moral disambiguity than other values).
Still, Bioshock is more artistic than many other FPSes. (Though not Doom 3. Despite the gameplay "flaws", they were intentional and part of the whole experience. Doom 3 = Art, Bioshock = Design, look up the difference between art and design and you'll know what I mean)
"your a moron."?
not good art
but still art, I don't understand how interactivity would change a 3D model ( which by itself is surely art) from being art to just being a piece of a bigger picture thats not art
if the plot of a movie and the acting dont come together well does it stop being art? besides if your judging something for its ability to invoke emotion youve already decided its art and you merely judging how good it is
n i cant believe sum1 corrected my grammar on da internet
Wow. Just wow.
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Ask you mother or someone who has never played a FPS before and put them down in front of BioShock or any other modern day FPS and see how well they do without your assistance. I've tried it and it's amazing the level of prior FPS experience you need to have to really enjoy and complete these games.
It's no wonder why the Wii has been such a hit - the controls are a heck of a lot more intuitive. That being said, I love FPS style games and have come to love a good keyboard/mouse combo. Definitely not for everyone though as it takes time to develop that automatic coordation of circle strafing regardless of it's on a console controller or though mouse & awsd combo.
Now, take Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. These are the type of games that should be the test material for the games vs. art argument. I think people who didn't even understand the stories behind these games can find themselves depressed while playing them - not to mention how they'll feel once they actually do understand them.
Games are art. Some just have more artistic value than others.
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What is art; I know it when I see it.
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I mean you could declare Daikatana art. Most likely you have mental problems, and people will laugh, but it is art to you.
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I like it!
He gets props for at least trying to play the game, and then criticizing.
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No. Just, no. The architect of any work (whether it be art or not) is the LAST person that should be able to set the value of the piece to society at large.
Anyway, I've said it before and I'll say it again. Bioshock should have been a movie or a novel, not a game. The setting is beautiful. Just simply beautiful. And picking up all the tape decks was a joy. But there was no character development, NO MORAL CHOICES OF SIGNIFICANT VALUE, and the plot wasn't all that great, save one or two points. I honestly don't care if that's a spoiler or not at this point. Such a big fuss was made about the moral choices in Bioshock, and moral choices did not affect the game AT ALL. Period. Don't even get me started on the gameplay. Linear as hell. This game disappointed me greatly. Sure, that might be because the hype was so great that it was impossible to fulfill. But 2K Games sure didn't go out of their way to try to control that, now did they? You may bitch and moan about the Halo 3 hype, but virtually everyone that's looking forward to Halo 3 knows exactly what they are getting.
Before people reply to me talking about how I'm so negative and that my opinion doesn't belong here, let me tell you that I've never seen a person badmouth Bioshock. To my knowledge, I am the only person in the universe that did not like Bioshock. I'm not jumping on some bandwagon here, or raining on someone's parade just because I like doing that. I was looking forward to Bioshock a lot. The whole "thinking man's shooter" and all that. Well, I suppose Bioshock is a thinking man's game if you consider Pipe Dreams to be the ultimate mental exercise.
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No character development? Did we play the same game? You learn new skills throughout the game, and the story is in fact about your development. I won’t spew spoilers - but hell dude, the story showed some nice character development without the typical fps startup of "You are an angry [insert job here] cause your wife was killed; now you are out to kill them all and get revenge." If that kinda schlock is character development, then yeah, it didn’t have it. Otherwise, Bioshock started you as one person, and led you through a new world, with new abilities, and taught you that you were someone else entirely in the process. I thought it was brilliantly done. Especially if you listen to the tapes as you play, and gather more hints about how things evolved with the children.
No moral choices of note? OK, so you felt nothing the first time you had to grab one of those little girls? By later in the game you didn't feel anything by the choices you made with them earlier on? Please, you are one jaded sounding person if you don't think those were emotionally charged moral decisions of note. What does it matter that making the meaner choice didn't end the game and kill you or something? There had to be a way to allow people to choose either direction with the sisters and then still be able to play the game - otherwise it wouldn't be a choice. If to get through the game they had to be the nice guy, then there would be no effect from moral choices, as you would learn fast to restart and not exercise any choice. There is also choice with dealing with some of the bosses such as the music hall area.
Linear gameplay I can see..of sort. It’s not a sandbox game, it’s a story you are playing through. You can blow off a lot of things in the game, and not visit many areas if you want, or you can explore more and be rewarded. I don't feel it was nearly as restrained as most fps games that feel more like a 3d version of the old 2d game world of run in a line and gun till you make the end. It also gives the ability to either use weapons, or become more ability based in fighting, which is a change.
I think it deserves its high marks. Its one of the most polished games I have played in a long time, and I grab most console games made these days.
That's not character development, though. That's just fictitious physical development.
Character development is coming to learn about and feel for a character. What makes them tick. Why they do what they do or act how they act.
Just because Goku reaches Super Saiyan in DBZ doesn't mean it's character development. Seeing how he reacts to it would be...and even then, it wasn't very deep.
There's character development in every game to a certain degree. The problem is that it's never ever very deep unless it's told entirely through cut scenes. And the problem with cut scenes is that after it's over, you're back to playing your generic hardly feeling avatar.
Bioshock with it's book on tape voice over thing is a clever idea and a step in the right direction, but it's mostly narrative focused. Almost all games are...but narrative is typically separate from character development unless you're talking about like a poem or something.
NLGSean - Next Level Gaming - www.nlgaming.com
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Honestly, the meaning of the word "art" in this day and age is so contorted that a guy shoots himself in the head in public with a sign that says suicide is the most beautiful self expression the world has ever known, and SOMEONE is going to call him an artist. An artist at shooting himself.
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fuck that elitist circle-jerk shit. If I like it, I like it. Who fucking cares?
Some people might see Bioshock as standard videogame fare with the prevalence of other science-fiction-themed shooters. A story meant for contemplation based on the works of Rand, Orwell, etc. is going to be very inaccessible for most to appreciate, so they judge a game based on what they know, on how it plays, its aesthetic value, etc...
Personally I'll say that Bioshock is a very good implementation of the videogame medium. However, it may not be that way for everyone.
Saying something is art is the fastest way to open the piece to criticism. Not only that, but because everyone interprets art in their own ways, ALL of that criticism is VALID. Technical achievements or an epic production budget may not matter at all.
Gamers will have to get used to the general public having their own say about games if games are to truly to be known as art.
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It's kinda funny, people who are disappointed with Bioshock are victims of their own doing - they fell for/got involved with the hype and they failed to make the game hard on themselves. What I mean is that the difficulty of Bioshock is almost completely up to the player, and most players plow through a game and complain about how easy it was when the whole time they could have been trying other strategies.
For me, Bioshock did a wonderful job of appealing to players who just like to explore levels. I'm not really that kind of player but man was it interesting to look around Rapture and go the opposite direction of that little golden arrow.
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I'm sick of the "games as art" debate because all it does is invite a bunch of pompous pricks who are clueless about video games to evaluate the medium. The far more relevant question is "Do games deserve first amendment protection?" which is the answer is "HELL FUCKING YES". Everything else is meaningless as far as I'm concerned.
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I'll be damned if I'll hear some a-hole tell me that videogames are not art and then look me square in the eye and explain the s-in-a-can.
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I definitely will give it props where it's due, but for all the chatter that was/is going around about how revolutionary it was for it's story progression and immersion, it's laughable at best.
It certainly doesn't manage to break any of the standard videogame conventions and cliches that we've become used to over the years. It does manage to do what it does very very well, I'll concede (even though I didn't like it, I can still see where/why/how something is good).
It's a step in the right direction...but there's no way in Hell one could consider Bioshock art, outside of the art direction.
As far as gaming/art in general goes, gaming is still waiting for it's Citizen Kane to arrive. One could rightly argue, however, that gaming's Metropolis has already arrived in games like Ocarina of Time or Shadow of the Colossus.
I think videogames in general need to undergo a fundamental revolution before they can really start to be considered art, at this point.
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I totally agree with your comment, except I think Pong was our Great Train Robbery, Pac-Man was our Trip to the Moon, and the early Miyamoto games (Donkey Kong, SMB1, Devil World) were our experimental Buster Keaton flicks. They were trying new things and everybody loved video games back in the golden arcade days. Then SMB3 was our Birth of a Nation and really got the ball rolling. Then Ocarina of Time was our Citizen Kane and FFVII was our Casablanca, and now we're in the boring-ass golden age of Hollywood, with 1000 Hollywood scripts getting pumped out per week. Everything's shiny and pretty and boring. We're still waiting for our Godard and Bunuel and Fellini to really spice things up.
C'mon, don’t be so transparent.
Also, who mentioned anything about PS games, dude?
It is my intention to secure two copies of the game, entire - one Collectors’ edition, and one exclusively to shove up Roger Ebert’s ass. If Bioshock isn’t “art,” then art is the poorer for it.
End of discussion as far as I am concerned. None of us will say it better than that.
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"but man was it interesting to look around Rapture and go the opposite direction of that little golden arrow."
Yes! I did that all the time. Most of the fun was ignoring that arrow until I was sure I had seen *everything* there was to see.
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