Gravitation

If this kind of crap is the best we can come up with for the “games is art” argument, Ebert was right. This is like pointing to a blank canvas and saying that it is a cow eating grass (you know how the joke goes). You can sell a blank canvas as anything you want, but it’s still a blank canvas (regardless of what people think they see in the white). If you see melancholia in this game, you need to start taking your Celexa again. This and Passage are the two greatest hoaxes gaming has ever seen.

If watchmaking is art, games are art. There. Won the argument. Now let’s stop looking for meaning on blank canvases.

Why so much hate Squidi? Can you not handle people are trying to evoke feeling and understanding through game play? Like the blank canvas in your argument, your post lacks any sort of substance, you never once said why these games cannot qualify as art. Are you perhaps, trying to make yourself feel cool by hating on what is popular in the community?

At the risk of feeding a troll I feel the need to respond. Whether or not you want to call them art (which I don’t think is really a productive argument to have), this and Passage are games that evoke genuine emotional responses in people. I’ve shown Passage to a number of folks, gamers and non-gamers alike, and in almost every case they’ve both managed to pick up on the game’s primary metaphor, and voiced an emotional response to the game.

While it wasn’t melancholy, this game evoked an emotional response in me as well. I think that’s amazing, and I’m glad I played both. They’re games that are beautiful in their simplicity, but they’re certainly nothing akin to a blank canvas.

Even if you don’t like the games, I think you at least have to respect that this guy is out there trying something new and trying to express some new things through gaming. Give the guy a bit of a break.

What I’m about to say will seem like I am negatively criticizing _Gravitation_, but wait for the end to see my real point.

I’m impressed with the ideas at work here, because it is clear that emotional response is the author’s intent. That is not the primary definition of art, though the word does have a lot of claimed and defended possible meanings.

Visually, some games are more _clearly_ art than this or than _Passage_. Visual (or for that matter, audible) art is not what makes a game art though, because visual art and music exist separate from gaming and that which is in a game may be separated from it. The interaction, experiences, and mechanic then are, as best as I can see, the primary points of interest in games as art. That being the case, I have had stronger emotional responses, been more involved, had more memorable experiences, and viewed more elaborate/elegant mechanics in a few commercial games. That does not make the game any less art, though it starts to push in the direction of it not being the _best_ art in the realm of gaming, of it not being exemplary.

_Gravitation_ is exemplary of games as art though, but for new reasons. It is not deeply interested in the player as one to be entertained and gratified, but it is interested in the player as an audience. That’s uncommon and usually results in “games” that are only interesting as ideas to rabid (usually indie) gamers or to creators – artists. _Gravitation_ and _Passage_ still have a certain unapproachability for outsiders (mostly because of the current aversion to the oddity of limited pixels), but they can be appropriately experienced by outsiders when given the chance.

These two games are also notable as art in that they are attempting to break new ground, to do new things. Experimentation and creation are necessary to the development of art, and seem to be scarce in the realm of videogames.

Ok, i’m just gonna throw my thought out there for the hell of it.
Passage was to me not a game. The point with games are that they’re supposed to have some point of interactivity, right? That’s why they’re called games and the reason we’re playing them.
When i played Passage i was contemplating putting down my waterglass on the right key and let it do the “playing” for me.
It actually did evoke a few thoughts from me though, which was nice, but i never saw myself as playing the game. I know, it had a few choices in there: pick up the chick, go solo.

To me games are very much an artform, i’ll go down in a beautiful mess of blood and gore before i claim otherwise. I don’t have to play them for enjoyment as long as they evoke some other kind of emotion(s). But i really do want to play, not just watch a few bouncing balls collide with each other *cough* the marriage *cough*.

With that said, I enjoyed Gravitation a lot more than Passage. Both as a game and as art. At one point I thought about Gravitation “Hey, I’m way too focused on my own goals here (going up), maybe he failed to make this an artgame by making it interactive and hinting on goals.” But then i thought, maybe that’s the point. We all know how the creative process can be like, sometimes you just want to reach a goal.
Blah, blah. Enough brainfarting.

What the hell is a game? Just because it looks like one, does it make it one? *looking at the marriage again*

I was too greedy and blocked myself in with lots of ice cubes. :(

When my dude’s hair caught on fire, it reminded me of Michael Jackson filming that Pepsi commercial. Suddenly that game of ball with the little girl took on a whole different meaning and the game elicited an emotional response; though probably not the one the author intended.

Alec,
What if Passage was a screensaver and chosing to go with or without the girl could be checked in an option box. Is this enough to be interaction and make it a game?
I’m not asking to prove a point, just want to know what people are thinking about what makes a game.

gustav … did you notice the treasure-collection side-objective of Passage? The interaction is deeper than just a check box.

Regardless I would even call Progress Quest a game in a sense; I don’t see any point in insisting on a strictness of definition there.
Is the label important to you? Why?

Two words: “Sewer Shark” ^____^

Zaphos,
It isn’t really. I just expect certain things from something called “a game”. Part of that being interaction.
I played through the passage twice and didn’t notice any treasures.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m very excited about seeing the medium branching out and growing, in any direction.

Like i said, i want to know what people think makes a game: down to its simplest form.
What Lackey said gave me an answer I’m very content with ;p

konjak, i’ll be around when things are less threatening. Send me noitu2 and love, ok?

mots, she does all the time but i never get it. Go figure :D

“What people are reading into it isn’t actually there. If you played this game without knowing it was by the Passage guy or have a little sentence “To say any more, of course, could potentially ruin the experience” – you wouldn’t know to look for anything unless someone told you to. And when you look for something, you’ll find it, whether it actually exists or not. All this hoity toity talk about the deeper meaning of Gravitation is just a bunch of people trying to GUESS what the author intended. It’s not there. You just know that something is supposed to be and that’s enough.”

Have you ever taken an english class? This is exactly what you do with books. You read the book, then you look for meaning in it, whether there is meaning or not.

Art is given meaning only when people look for meaning. The art itself serves only as a guide in finding a theme.

Flight Simulator is not art. It is artifice. It’s right there in the name: Flight *Simulator*. It is not Flight *Interpretation* or Flight *Abstract Rendering”.

Of course, you can have an emotional response to a simulation, but a simulator is not going to attempt to make you feel sorrow or loss or regret.

At the very moment that the child in Gravitation and the Wife in Passage left, I felt a true shock of loss. It was a far more effective emotional response than any sympathetic character in a movie *because* of the interactive nature of the game. I had become far more emotionally invested in the game character than some dumb drone up on a movie screen.

So, just as a film or book or song can have any number of possible goals, why should a game be denegrated for having a goal beyond a pure visceral high?

I think you try too hard to fit these games into what you believe a game should be based on all the others you have played. Sure the game play itself is simple, point collection just movement and jumping, but that is part of the design, you don’t get hung up on the mechanics if its only jumping and points.

Every experience in life triggers emotion. The problem being the majority of video games work on 1 or two emotions, excitement, usually, and joy, if you are lucky. Passage and Gravitation tend to evoke emotions that haven’t been dealt with before. I felt sorrow when the little child was gone, I knew that my actions contributed to its demise and I felt bad. Arguing that games should be emotionally void is a poor argument and bad for games.

No one expects these to revolutionize gameplay only how people look at games.

Yeah, but part of the fun of these games comes from knowing that the author has a certain intent, and then figuring out (or not figuring out) what he’s trying to convey to you. The expectations the developer sets up with each game is a big part of the enjoyment.

I dunno, have you ever seen the Cremaster movies? I tried watching one and couldn’t get through even half an hour of it. I felt it was a pretentious jumble of random and uncomfortable imagery that was barely tied together.

You probably feel similarly about Jason’s games, but for me they succeed in a way that Cremaster doesn’t. Mostly because I actually get to diddle around with the symbols in the game, rather than just sit and let them play out in front of me. I think games are much more suited for these types of things.

And yeah, look at the discussion it’s drummed up! Mostly because of people who hate the game, rather than people who like it…

I’ve seen Cremaster 3 (whatever one has the guy trying to get to the top of the Guggenheim to meet the goat legged topless girl). Totally retarded, to put it mildly.

Subtext is an underline. It’s something which supports, emboldens, and enriches an experience through a deeper understanding of the connections between the different elements. In this case, the subtext is being used as a replacement for gameplay. Yeah, it deepens the experience, but only so far as to take bone dry and make it slightly damp.

Sorrow is easy. The reason why melodrama exists is because sorry is easy. It’s a very predictable mechanical response. The fact that such a simplistic experience can elicit such a response from people says less about the artistic value of games than it does for the simplicity of the human emotive experience. You felt sorrow because a little four pixel girl disappeared for no reason? Ask people about a little robot named Floyd sometime. Why aren’t we talking about Planetfall? There’s some god damned art! Or Planescape: Torment. There was some subtext applied within the context of actual character, plot, and interactivity. Know that quest where you have to solve a murder, only you never really have any conclusive evidence and the game never really tells you whether you picked correctly or not? There’s your subtext with the emotional response, but it’s a complicated emotional response that operates on many conflicting levels.

I just… why can’t we have these conversations about GOOD games? You want to talk about sorrow. Let’s talk about a game that so affected its audience that many of them spent YEARS looking for cheat codes to bring the pink dressed girl back from the dead! Want to talk emotional responses? Let’s talk about a game so sick and twisted that it makes some people physically ill to hop into the shoes of a brutal murderer! Want subtext? Let’s talk about a game where the main character may have been wandering around town killing innocent townspeople thinking they were demons that represented repressed sexuality and rape!

There are better games out there to be having this discussion about – but nobody is having it because these games had the balls to be games first. They aren’t short. They aren’t simple. And they don’t say “ooh ooh, I’m deep” when you first load them up. You’ve got to work to see these things, and it’s that work which makes them all the more valuable. But most importantly, they are good effin’ games – something these mini-games seemed to have forgot.

As for Flight Simulator, oh I assure you that it’s art. Simulations are perhaps the greatest art computers are capable of. The watchmaker’s art.

If this is indeed the real squidi, I am not surprised by his answer, maybe Gravitation needs a Negative space… hey at least the guy had a good idea and made a game with it..

Passage and gravitation are closer to real life than any other game I’ve played, scores mean nothing, you can’t win, you just play and stop when it’s over.. it’s a lo-fi portrayal of life. look back at your experience with passage, be honest with the reactions you had while playing it.. I remember seeing a chest while walking with my partner and cursing because i couldn’t reach it as she was blocking my way.

I didn’t think much of it at the time but after reading the creator’s statement it got me thinking.. I can’t say any other game I’ve played lately got me thinking about my person.

Gravitation probably had a bigger impact because i knew what to expect from it.. flying up and catching stars only to come back down to recharge.. using the child, his reaction of love when playing with him didn’t move me, I was after the stars.. coming back down to the lone ball after my run got me thinking.

while squidi has a few valid points about interaction he completely misses the point of emotions.. feeling a certain way should make you think about it, seeing emotions as something overbearing and dismissing them will lead to a deficit. Emotional intelligence is as important as IQ, not to insult squidi but my impression of him is of a narcissistic individual.

I’ve played Passage countless times through, just to get that sad emotion that no other game has really given me before. I think the arguments on this page are a little pointless. I played it, I loved it, I think it accomplished something that no commercial game to my knowledge had managed before it.

If someone else played it and didn’t get it, then fair enough. I hate Halo like the plague, but I won’t call it a bad game. If any game can attract such a strong and passionate fan base, then it must be doing something right. If Passage makes a load of people feel a sadness and closeness that they haven’t felt before in games, then the game should be commended for doing so, despite whether you personally got it or not.

As for the art debate, I don’t think games are art, or at least not yet. I don’t want to go into details on why, but I just don’t see games as an art form. Nor do I care about ‘interactivity’ or whether it’s ‘intellectual’. If I enjoy something, then well done to whoever made it. If people aren’t fans of Passage, then step around it and move on. It’s ridiculous and completely unfair to claim that those who do enjoy it are wrong. If the game didn’t work on any level, then why would it be attracting so many passionate fans and sparking so much conversation?

It kind of seems to me that the only reason Gravitation and Passage are considered art is because they’re filled with metaphors and symbolism and that stuff. Take that away and you’re left with two pretty bland games. Is making the player think enough to call a game art (and good)?

I don’t know. I don’t think I ‘get’ these games.

What the hell is wrong with you people? I think you are just jealous. :-/

” Instead, Ico creates the belieavable illusion that it’s game characters are emotionally connected. The player character’s life is intertwined with his companion’s, he needs her to proceed and vice verca.”

In defense of gravitation, it also does this to some extent: in order to jump higher you need the little boy (yes, it’s a boy with long blond hair, I thought it was a girl at first too), so there is a game mechanic tie between the two companions. This tie was less important in Passage (although not totally absent because the girl did double your score, but she also made walking and navigating the maze more difficult, which may lead some to resent her for that handicap rather than feel a connection with her).

What I don’t like about his games isn’t what any of you guys are talking about though. What I don’t like about his games is that it’s a pessimistic idea that romantic partners or family domestic life *handicap* one’s ambition and that there’s a choice involved between the two. I mean, sure, the both take time, but why can’t you do both? Why can’t you excel both at collecting treasure and being a husband, or both at collecting stars and playing with your son? You can do both, and it’s weird to have two games basically saying you can’t, although I give them props for saying that no matter what you choose it won’t really matter at the end, which is true.

That sounds fun! It is like going back to the old school version!

“His games have a pessimistic idea that romantic partners or family handicap one’s ambition and that there’s a choice involved between the two”
True. In real life, more people in your social circle means expanded opportunities common among you. A game about life should at least partially reflect this.

“You make your own connection with the art.”
No. You CAN make your own connection with the art. But that doesn’t mean all art is arbitrary in regards to it’s emotional response. There are specific emotional circuitry in the brain, and so long as an art piece employs those, it creates an emotional response.

“Do you think people who were affected by Passage are lying?”
No. They ‘re true about their emotions. But the game didn’t provoke these emotions through gameplay (art-game). They are transferring their emotional experience onto the game world.

25 years ago these games would be like every other game out there.. simplicity is not a flaw