作者：Dylan Woodbury

今天我将开始处理产业中最富争议的问题：电子游戏是否是一种艺术？

首先，我不会基于一些肤浅的原因进行说明——我不会说因为自己很喜欢游戏，所以它们就是一种艺术，并提供一些无知的借口去说明它们的艺术性。我将在此提供一些实在的答案。

所以，什么是艺术？是一种资格限制，只有专家才能获取，或者说它的定义非常广泛？像绘画，照片，歌曲，工艺品，雕塑，建筑，电影，书籍，诗歌，食物等都被当成是艺术。而问题在于这些事物对于技能的要求是各种各样。

就像食物。专业厨师精心制作的一道菜是否能够说是一种艺术？我刚刚做的汤怎样？我在纸上花了一个标志。这是否能与达芬奇的《蒙娜丽莎》相提并论？不能吧。

Mona Lisa(from wikipedia)

也许我的画会被当成艺术，但却不会是非常出色的艺术。如此，艺术将被当成是衡量某些内容的艺术价值的标准。我认为这在某种情况下是合理的——有些艺术比其它内容更出色，且更具有艺术性。然而，是什么决定我的图画是不是艺术呢？

我认为任何事物都可以被当成艺术，但却不是所有。我认为这取决于艺术家的目的——艺术家是尝试着创造一些迎合用户喜好的内容，还是出于其它原因进行设计。这将我们引向了主要的资格条件。艺术家必须具有想要创造出艺术作品的想法才能设计出“艺术”。这意味着什么？这意味着，如果建筑公司设计了一套房子，并考虑它的实用性和其它性能，那这便不能说是艺术。如果我是带着想要创造艺术品的想法去画画，那么用户便能在某些方面发现它的吸引力，并产生某种想法或感受。

所以游戏是否符合这一要求？有时候会。有时候设计师打算让玩家进行思考或获得某种感受。有时候他们会考虑目标用户想要看到什么—-一款带有许多坏人，强大的武器和诅咒性言语的射击游戏。这些元素都将艺术性带离了游戏，因为设计师是为了迎合玩家的需求去创造游戏。对于某些游戏而言，设计师是根据玩家所喜欢的，而未曾考虑游戏真正的需要在设计游戏。一开始，游戏中并不“需要”任何内容—-只需要添加玩家体验便可。这便是艺术性。

说到可用性，游戏产业中的某些元素因为不具有艺术性而遭到攻击。游戏在公司的测试过程中可能就会被否决了，即宣称设计师正在改变玩家喜欢或不喜欢的内容。如果设计师这么做，即拿掉了游戏不喜欢的游戏元素——认为这能够完善游戏体验，那么游戏将不具有艺术性。最常出现的情况便是，设计师明确了哪些内容可行而哪些不可行，但却根据玩家的体验对其做出修改，从而拉低了游戏的艺术价值。如果设计师能够探析用户的想法并将其作为创造出更棒游戏体验的考虑要素之一，他便能够创造出更具艺术性的游戏。

我在很多文章中看过将游戏当成是艺术的内容，即考虑到构成它们的艺术内容。作者指出音乐是艺术，为玩家设计建筑和场景也是艺术，但这并不意味着游戏也是艺术。当然，所有的这些内容都能增加游戏体验，能够提升艺术价值，但这却不足以造就艺术！这就像在说专辑封面是艺术一样，因此不管你将什么放进CD中便都是艺术，而这种观点是错误的。专辑封面的确能够完善体验，但却不是最重要的。

所以对于电子游戏来说最重要的元素是什么？其根源是什么？我们可以将其分解成一些重要元素——故事和游戏玩法。故事是大家都知道的一种艺术媒介，但游戏玩法却是游戏独特的艺术元素。当这两个元素结合在一起时，它们便能够创造出一些独特的内容——让故事扮演着与在书籍中完全不同的角色。

艺术是故事和游戏玩法的结合所造就的—-是的，它们必须都包含在内。然而，拥有了这两个元素的游戏也不能表示它就是艺术。例如一些简单的益智游戏，像《俄罗斯方块》便不能被称作艺术—-它们不具有故事，所以游戏是以游戏玩法为基础，不具备那些不会让玩家轻易获胜的传统元素。大多数体育类游戏（游戏邦注：如所有的艺电体育游戏和2K的游戏），大多数音乐/节奏游戏（因为《Rock Band》带有音乐，所以便不能说是艺术），大多数迷你游戏（它们的唯一目的是让玩家在一些轻松，肤浅且不带任何信息的挑战中竞争）以及一些模拟游戏（飞行模拟器）等等游戏类型亦是如此。当然，对于这些游戏类型也存在例外。就像艺电可能创造出一款让你在1800s上经历一名移民运动员的生活的拳击游戏，让你深深感受到这名运动员所经历的种种不幸与困苦（本文是根据故事可以被分解成一件艺术作品进行描述，如果游戏玩法和故事并不能汇聚在一起去教会用户如何深刻地感受人性，那就不要提如何玩棒球了）。我认为《模拟人生》就可以称为艺术，就像我们可以在这里感受到有关人性，生活等等的问题。《孢子》也是。

我所说的故事–游戏玩法也可以进行分解（许多严肃的游戏并未具有真正的故事，但仍然能够教会我们基于某种方式进行感受）。不过极少数游戏能够有效地做到这点。然而，没有故事的迷你游戏也能够带有一些侧重严肃主题的迷你游戏内容，即让我去思考某些事。任何游戏都可以称为艺术，但却并不是所有游戏都是。

我所得出的结论是，电子游戏可以说是艺术，而电子游戏媒介也应该出现在艺术媒介列表上，即在文学与建筑之间。实际上，电子游戏可以说是最强大的艺术媒介，因为它们对于游戏的强大吸引力是我们在其它媒介中很难看到的。在玩《文明5》时我会思考文明与人类的角色与责任。在玩《Photopia》时，我感受到了不一样的公会，而不管这整款游戏只是关于10页文本的事实。在玩《骤雨》时，我对人生与爱产生了疑问。除了这些游戏外，我们每天还可以找到更多不一样的例子。

我非常清楚自己相信游戏是一种艺术，它们可以比其它媒介更加强大，但是我们的媒介却是一种新媒介（游戏邦注：自从《PONG》诞生以来只有38年的历史），我认为游戏还未真正满足作为一种艺术媒介的潜能。实际上，一个不显著的事实在于，游戏可以是一种艺术的观点告诉我们，前面还有一条很长的路要走，直到我们最终能够像《愤怒的葡萄》或《Beethoven’s Fifth》那样真正把控住所有用户。

之所以说作为一种艺术形式的电子游戏更加强大，是因为它们使用了许多艺术元素去提升用户的体验，包括美学，音乐等等。这也是为何设计师很难创造出一款真正强大的艺术游戏，为何《Photopia》可以无需任何图像（除了文本）和音乐而牢牢锁定艺术形式的主要原因。我需要重申的是，这些额外的元素不能用于证明电子游戏就是艺术，当然，一些个体组件却可以，但是你却不是在销售个体组件。游戏的核心在于价值。

所以我们可以做些什么？我们需要继续创造游戏，更加努力地从《PONG》的“洞穴壁画”进化到未来的《蒙娜丽莎》。当我们能够做到让用户难过，害怕，并思考人性时，他们便会觉得我们的作品就是艺术。到了那时候，我们就可以果断地在游戏名称上加上艺术的标志了！

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Video Games as Art

by Dylan Woodbury

Today, I am going to begin to tackle one of the industry’s most debated questions: Can video games be art?

Up front, I want to say that I am not going to just pick one based on superficial reasons – I am not going to say that games are art because I really really like them, and give you some uneducated excuse as to why they are artistic. I am going to give you an honest answer (upon writing this introduction, I still have no answer written in stone).

So, starting, what is art? Are the qualifications restrictive, allowing only masterpieces to qualify, or is it very broad (I once saw a commercial vacuum in an art museum… on display). Some things that some consider art include paintings, drawings, photos, songs, crafts, sculptures, buildings, movies, books, poems, food, etc. The problem is that these things are all very varied in terms of skill required.

For example – food. Is an expert chef’s well-planned dish considered art? What about the bowl of soup I just made? I just made a paint mark on my paper. Is it put on the same level as da Vinci’s Mona Lisa? No… right?

Or maybe my painting is considered art, but just not very good art. In this case, art would be a scale used to measure the artistic value of something. I think that this is true to a point – some art is better, more artistic, that other art. However, what decides whether or not my single-stroked painting is considered art or not?

I believe that anything can be considered art, but not everything is. I think that it can depend on the artist’s intentions – did the artist try to make something pleasing to the audience, or did he/she design it for other reasons. This leads us to our major qualification. The artist must have designed the “art” with the intentions to make art. What does this mean? It means that if a construction company designs a house, taking into account its usability and other practicalities, it cannot be art. If I painted my painting with the intention to make art, something its audience will find attractive in some way, creating feelings or thoughts.

So do games meet this requirement? Sometimes. Sometimes, designers set out to make the player think or feel. Sometimes, they hash together what the targeted audience wants to see – another cliché shooting game with lots of bad guys, powerful weapons, cursing dialogue, etc. These kinds of things rip the title of art right off the game, because designers are creating the game to please what the gamer already wants. For some games, designers design the game in a way to make the audience experience something that they will like without taking into account what “needs” to be in the game. From the start, nothing “needs” to be in the game – just whatever will add to the player’s experience. This is artistic.

In regards to usability, some elements of the game industry receive fire for not being artistic. The testing process games go through within the company can be shot down, with claims that designers are changing what gamers do and do not like. If a designer does this, taking out aspects of the game the player doesn’t like, even if the designer thinks it will add to the experience, the game can be considered non-artistic. I think what happens most of the time, though, is that designers take what works and doesn’t work in the game and changes it based on the player’s experience to make the artistic value easier to admire. This could make games even more artistic, as designers peer into the user’s mind and take that into account to make the game into a better experience.

It is very common in the other articles I’ve seen on the topic of games as art to see the claim that games are art, taking into account the artistic things that make them up. Writers point out that the music is art, as well as designing the buildings and landscapes the players see, but that does not mean that the game is art. Sure, all of these things add to the experience and could make the artistic value greater, but that does not make it art! It would be like saying the album art is artistic, therefore whatever you throw onto the CD is art, which is absolutely untrue. It is possible that the album cover could add to the overall experience, but it is not the main point.

So what is the point of video games? What is at the very roots? I’d say that we can break it down to the primary elements – story and gameplay. Story is a known medium of art, but gameplay is the unique artistic aspect to games. When these two are combined, they make something extraordinary – giving the story a far different role than the story in a book.

Art is made by combining story with gameplay – and yes, they both have to be there. However, just because a game has both of these does not mean that it is art. Some examples of these principles… Simple puzzle games, like Tetris, are not art – they do not have a story, so the game becomes a gameplay-focused process that has no additional aspects that cannot give the audience anything to walk away with or think about (beyond the gameplay). The same thing goes for most sports games (all of the EA sports and 2K titles, etc.), most music/rhythm games (just because Rock Band has music, does not make it art), most mini-game games (their sole purpose is for the player to compete in light-hearted, shallow challenges that have no message), some simulation games (Flight Simulator), and some of every other genre. There are exceptions for all of these, though. EA could come out tomorrow with a boxing game that takes you through the life of an immigrant athelete in the 1800s who goes through much inequality and adversity (this artistic setup in terms of story could fall apart as a work of art if the gameplay and story do not come together to teach or make the audience feel something deeply rooted in humanity, not just how to play baseball). I think that the Sims should be considered art, as one could find inside questions regarding humanity, life, and everything. Same goes for Spore.

The story-gameplay I gave can be broken, though (many serious games do not have a real story, but still teach us or make us feel a certain way). Very few games do this, though. However, a minigame-game with no story could have minigames that concern a serious topic, and make us think about something. Any game CAN be art, but not all games are.

I have come to the conclusion that video games can be art, and that the medium of video games should also be listed under artistic mediums, right in between literature and architecture. In fact, video games could be considered THE most powerful artistic medium, as they fully engage the audience in a way that cannot be seen elsewhere. I thought about the roles and duties of civilization and mankind while playing Civilization 5. I experienced the feeling of guild while playing Photopia in a way that I have never felt before, regardless of the fact that the whole game is about 10 pages of text (play it now – you will see just what I am talking about, http://www.ifiction.org/games/play.phpz?cat=&game=87&mode=html). I questioned life and love while playing Heavy Rain. There is an endless list of examples, and it grows every day.

I have made it clear that I believe games are art, and that they can be more powerful than any other medium (seriously, play Photopia), but our medium is so new (it has been 38 years since pong – there are prehistoric cave drawings), and I think that games are not meeting their potential as an art medium. In fact, how unobvious the fact is that games can be art shows that we have a long way to go until we make a game that grabs hold of people with the same strength that Grapes of Wrath or Beethoven’s Fifth does.

Video games are even more powerful as an art form because they use so many artistic elements to add to the audience’s experience, aesthetically, musically, in terms of flow, etc. This could be a contributing factor as to why it is hard for designers to make artistically powerful games, and why Photopia, one of the most artistic games I have played, really nails the art form without any graphics (besides text) and music. I should restate that these additional elements cannot be used as proof that video games can be art – sure, the individual components can be, but you are not selling the individual components. The game’s core is what counts.

So what can we do? We need to continue making games, evolving our art form from the cave drawings of Pong to the Mona Lisa of tomorrow. Others will learn our art is art once we make people cry, shiver in fear, ponder humanity, etc. Until then, we can all spread the message by putting the titles of games in italics or underlines, as art should be.(source:dtwgames)