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Censored Video Game Content Stifles Artistry
Posted by
Soulskill
on Fri Jun 19, 2009 08:28 AM
from the i-paint-with-virtual-bullets dept.
from the i-paint-with-virtual-bullets dept.
AnInkle writes "The question of whether modern video games represent art and the persistent attempts to censor controversial content in games have been discussed here at length. Now, a blogger at The Tech Report makes the case that censorship of violent and sexual images and themes in video games is precisely what inhibits video games from maturing artistically beyond a nascent form. He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production, as well as geo-cultural comparisons of film production in the US vs. Europe and of video game development in the US vs. Japan. Are these comparisons apt and the assertions valid, or might the embrace of video games as a legitimate art form be limited for entirely different reasons?"
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Are Videogames Art? 242 comments
Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?
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'Systems-As-Art' In Games 106 comments
GameSetWatch has an interesting essay about the relationship between games and art. Matthew Wasteland discusses the difficulty in translating other artistic creations to video games, giving Moby Dick as an example. "If Melville had so much as allowed for any possibility at all where Captain Ahab 'wins,' no matter how remote, the work's message and its interpretation of the world completely changes. Instead of destiny and fate, we would now speak of probability and chance." He then goes on to examine whether the logic systems and rules that define a game can achieve the status of art. "Distancing the work from the 'entertainment' of popular games is fine, but even the most artsy, obscure and difficult works must connect with an audience somehow. I am not sure a system of rules by itself is the best method to achieve that. If rules are art, could not one just as easily publish a rulebook, and leave it at that?"
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On the Advent of Controversial Video Games 343 comments
eldavojohn writes "At some point in the history of video games, violence became uncomfortably real for censors and some parents. In addition to that, realistic use of narcotics has entered mainstream games. While gamers (of adult age) have by and large won the right to this entertainment, a large amount of games have arisen lately that challenge a different aspect of video games — inappropriate or sensitive topics. We've covered it before on Columbine to Fallujah, but I noticed through GamePolitics recently a large trend in severely controversial video games. Where do you stand on these titles?"
Read on for the rest of eldavojohn's thoughts.
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I think the real problem is... (Score:5, Insightful)
that most people who make video games are technicians rather than artists. I think that the few people who overlap creativity in the story telling or avaunt guard space, rarely overlap with coders or the middle management corporate structure that herds them. So you get Doom->Quake->Wolfenstien->Doom->Quake games that are just excuses to kill shit with rocket launchers as a development platform.
There are games that tell stories, Halo, Half-life, Morrowind, & et al. and they're blockbusters. He's what we need to do, hire writers, pay them starvation wages and provide them with shitloads of high quality hallucinogens.
Or go educational, Immune Attack is really impressive and just needs a little bit of play polishing and graphics massage to be awesome.
Or just remake really good games, Ultima Underworld, Marathon, Starcontrol, and on and on on new engines to bring real games to the starving masses.
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most people who make video games are technicians rather than artists
Perhaps "most" as you say, but I think there are plenty who don't. In fact, many studios are preferring a model where there is a larger dichotomy between engineering and art. For instance, Mistwalker offloads their engineering work to other firms so they can focus purely on music, story, and visual design. I suppose that their artistic accomplishments using this method are subjective, but I don't think it helped all that much personally. There's almost certainly a larger problem here, and this article m
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Re:I think the real problem is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
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that most people who make video games are technicians rather than artists. I think that the few people who overlap creativity in the story telling or avaunt guard space, rarely overlap with coders or the middle management corporate structure that herds them. So you get Doom->Quake->Wolfenstien->Doom->Quake games that are just excuses to kill shit with rocket launchers as a development platform.
Well said. Games most often contain things of high artistic value (tell any 3d modeler that what he's doing isn't art, and then duck!) but seldom is the game itself art. Think of the game as a gallery -- no artistic value, but it puts on display things of [subjective] beauty and wonder.
Re:I think the real problem is... (Score:4, Insightful)
Think of the game as a gallery -- no artistic value, but it puts on display things of [subjective] beauty and wonder.
Can't the Louvre or the Uffizi be thought of as works of art in themselves? I agree that games are mostly thought to be mere entertainment, but I think it's not unreasonable to say that sometimes (if seldom) games are art.
Parent
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Think of the game as a gallery -- no artistic value, but it puts on display things of [subjective] beauty and wonder.
Can't the Louvre or the Uffizi be thought of as works of art in themselves? I agree that games are mostly thought to be mere entertainment, but I think it's not unreasonable to say that sometimes (if seldom) games are art.
I agree - my generalization is for "most but not all".
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I know a proper definition of art is hard to come by, but 'well done' certainly shouldn't be part of it. A piece of art is a creation (or recreaction) that filters some sort of sensibil
Re:I think the real problem is... (Score:4, Interesting)
Sorry to be all McLuhanistic on you, but there is the medium, and the message.
The medium, or dev platform, enables differing kinds of user interaction.
The content (story line, user interactions, group play, value and weighting of scoring dynamics) is something else entirely.
Is it art? Sure. There's a dizzying variety of it, too. Some appealing, some clearly un-evolved, some realistic and staggeringly so. To believe that these have no artistic value is a slap in the face of designers everywhere.
That said: some designers make their livings appealing to a very violent nature based on highly animalistic behavior. But then the movies/cinema does this, too. Is this bad, this ultra-violent trend in some areas of gaming? There's no doubt that whacked people use violent entertainment sources to legitimtize their own behavior. Are we obligated to stop them from doing that by censorship? It's a good question. We're not responsible for them, but we are responsible within the constraints of a civil society to prevent others from reasonable harm. Should there be a sanity-ID card offered to buy these things? Clearly, that's not possible. Sanity is transient. The conundrum of what to do, remains.
Parent
Re:I think the real problem is... (Score:4, Interesting)
That may depend - some games may be art, others not. I suspect as the medium develops, some will truly be considered art, and some may be already. The tale told by Doom the video game may be trivially simplistic and all about blowing things up, but was the tale told by Doom the movie any better? Why should Doom the movie be considered art and not Doom the game?
Some people consider literature art, others not. Is Alice in Wonderland the book art? How about the pictures in the book in the book or on the cover (most versions are illustrated)? Is a trashy romance novel art? How about the cover? How about the D&D manual? It certainly isn't literature, but it contains art.
You will always have the argument of it being interactive vs passive, so the story changes depending on the viewer, but theater is considered art, and improv theater is interactive, so it is possible.
Also if art is something you have to have some emotional attachment to, I'd say at least some video games are art - who doesn't have at least some emotional reaction to Dogmeat (Fallout), Gwen (Guild Wars), April (The Longest Journey), or even Samus (Metroid, though more so in later games)? I'd even go back to 1984 with the mostly forgotten Below the Root [wikipedia.org] as any of the three protagonists (and how many other action games [it is essentially a platformer] become unwinnable if you kill ANYONE?).
Parent
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Let us look at an analogy. In a street festival with arts and crafts, there is some art, but most of the people there have paid significant amounts of money for a booth, and they need to recoup the costs plus a profit. So there may be a few serious artists there, but mostly what you will see are cat motifs, some regurgitated western prints, and variations on naked ladies. Now all this can be art, but it is
New medium (Score:4, Insightful)
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Not to mention the "secret room" in the back of the cave where other activities might have been drawn.
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I don't know about that. To me art is - or ought to be - something one or two steps up from routine artisanship, sonething that is somehow above and beyond the ordinary. In most cases a video game doesn't qualify as art any more than the latest album by any of the trivial boy-bands, however well-crafted it may be.
The problem I see with modern games is not that they are too radical, but that they are too trivial and that they trivialise subjects like war, violence and suffering. A lot of games are in that re
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Bunk (Score:3, Interesting)
He cites a historical comparison between video game and film production
Censorship forces you to either:
Hollywood made a lot of great movies in the Hayes Code era, thus demonstrating that it is possible to create Great Art while refraining from constantly spewing foul language, women hanging out their breasts, constantly showing blood and gore, or hopping into someone else's bed every other moment.
Re:Bunk (Score:4, Insightful)
Hollywood made a lot of great movies in the Hayes Code era, thus demonstrating that it is possible to create Great Art while refraining from constantly spewing foul language, women hanging out their breasts, constantly showing blood and gore, or hopping into someone else's bed every other moment.
Yeah, maybe art needs some guidelines. I'm not saying art should be controlled and stifled, but if it can't take the easy "tits n' blood" way out, maybe it forces the artists to be more creative.
Parent
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What I think we need is censorship on crass commercialism, not necessarily nudity or violence. Don't sell tits and gore, sell your story. Too often, tits, gore, or both are added gratuitously simply to get that R rating to entice (adult, presumably) viewers. Or just gore to get a 14A/M rating to entice teens. Or whatever. Usually, it's not needed, and the story could be told just as effectively without it.
There are exceptions, of course, and here comes the fine line. To me, it's gratuitous unless the
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With a bit more imagination, I think the story of tempation and rejection/falling could have been told in other ways without resorting to the base sexual lusts that they did.
They? What's this about "they?" Criticize Stanley Kubrick if you must, but ascribing artistic decisions to an anonymous Hollywood cabal is wrong.
Personally, I felt that the American cut missed the voyeuristic point, but then, I also like titties.
Why is "art" always sex and violence? (Score:4, Insightful)
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As a side note, I don't think that the article is talking about sex and violence in the GTA sense; "Let's run over a hooker with our cars." It's in a much deeper sense - how can something be decent art while not dealing with the most central and passionate areas of our lives?
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Hmm that gives me an idea.
Since GTAIV added in drunk driving, and using hookers has always been a part of the series..... why do you still have to park to use the hooker? Why can't you drive while using the hooker? I'm sure the developers could use the drunk driving engine to make that work....
Also, I've never picked up a hooker in GTAIV, mostly because I don't think I've ever seen one.
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But won't somebody (Score:2)
Nascence (Score:5, Insightful)
8-bit games are the cavemen drawings of what games will become. At the time of their inception they were probably revered above many other things by those who viewed them. Today they are crude and easily reproduced by a two year old. This will not be the case with games. And why not?
I can sit down with pen and paper and make a caveman drawing but I cannot sit down at my computer and make a Contra clone for an NES emulator? Why? Because the tools that represent pen and paper in this analogy are not open to me. They are closed and guarded by law and by obfuscation. I can look at a Picasso and begin to imitate the colors and angles and feel. I can play a Playstation One game but not imitate. I am not arguing that these methods should be open and available to all, I am just pointing out that this inhibits the everyone-can-do-what-they-want factor of most art mediums. It's difficult for me to acquire oils and pastels but it is near impossible for me to acquire a Neo Geo developer's license and kit.
In part this is due simply to complexity. Which brings me to my next point: games require a team.
Painting, drawing, photographing do not necessarily require a team. Films do but it is often to create a vision of a director or writer. I believe that games require much more teamwork and collaboration. Your texture folks have to be on board for the feel, your 3D engine has to be tuned to work with your feel, your dialogue has to match the feel, the coordination seems endless to me for modern games. This prevents the explosion of games and relegates us to a set number right now. I am not sure this will ever change.
In short, I feel that the difficulty in anyone picking up something to create a game inhibits the artistic expression. No one can arise by their own will in this field like you could in art or film. Furthermore, the idea of a lone genius revolutionizing or creating a movement is far more rare due to these inhibiting factors whereas that may more often happen in other arts.
I argue that games are art but they do hold different complexities and properties from other traditional arts. It may be a long time before they are recognized in the general public as such since the general public may always be removed from being able to create their own games with open tools.
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I can sit down with pen and paper and make a caveman drawing but I cannot sit down at my computer and make a Contra clone for an NES emulator? Why? Because the tools that represent pen and paper in this analogy are not open to me. They are closed and guarded by law and by obfuscation. I can look at a Picasso and begin to imitate the colors and angles and feel. I can play a Playstation One game but not imitate.
While it does not invalidate your point, perhaps you're just looking at the wrong era. I remember during the '80s when PC magazines would have a "software of the day" thing where they'd give you the entire source-code (all of two pages!) for a cool app or game so not only was it possible for you to reproduce it and, perhaps, improve on it, it was *expected* from you to do so. The sheer awesomeness of it was one of the factors that drove me into programming, in fact.
Really? You can't express yourself? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not advocating censorship, but really, can't you make games that represent any political or artistic notion that comes into your head? What viewpoints cannot be expressed because of this repressive censorship we now have?
And it's hard to swallow the idea that video games aren't allowed to be violent enough. You can already kill prostitutes for fun and torture people to death and make people explode in gore - what else do you want? Are there ANY rules right now, other than a rating system that gives people fair warning?
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Author not looking for art but for porn. (Score:3, Interesting)
However the author of the article just talk how you cannot have art with have nudity. So based on his thinking bioshock would of been a better game if the females wore no clothing or if the zombie could gang rape Zoey in Left 4 dead.
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I believe such art already exists involving Zoey and the Witch.
Tired of these stupid debates (Score:3, Insightful)
Does anyone remember(presuming you were born) when the big debate was not if video games were art but if anything that was done on a computer could be called art?
Let's stop having these debates and giving the morons who will never understand a voice.
They are the same people who claimed that expressionism wasn't art, surrealism wasn't art, pop art wasn't art. They are a pox on humanity.
"not being able to create art
they will not understand art
they will consider their failure as creators
only as a failure of the world"
http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-genius-of-the-crowd/ [poemhunter.com]
The Genius of the Crowd - Charles Bukowski
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I don't consider Charles Bukowski art.
Yes, Citizen Kane needed those sex scenes... (Score:3, Insightful)
I admit I haven't read the article yet, and perhaps it's got a very nuanced discussion on this subject that will persuade me otherwise...
but I doubt it.
Look, it's a new thing, really. I don't know why we haven't had 'art' in VG yet, but the simple fact is that it isn't because we don't have explicit sex. (Explicit violence has been censored from VG? Uh...)
I just drew a simple classic off the top of my head. Citizen Kane has nothing approaching violence and sex, and yet it's well regarded. And although Shakespeare had violence (and bawdy puns) it's nothing that you couldn't do without being a MA game.
I could probably list a 100 movies that affected me greatly, that are well regarded, and at least half of them I'd put forth as art, and of those, at least half again would be lacking in violence and sex. Sometimes, lacking colors in your palette can ENHANCE the experience.
We're getting there. Things like Braid are a step forward. Quite honestly, though, the real problem is the lack of a broad audience. When the 40 year old gamers of today hit 60, they'll have different tastes and requirements.
Very little effect on real ART in games... (Score:2)
Yes, the censorship can be annoying and ridiculous (eg, GTA series: its OK to murder hundreds in a random crime spree, but god forbid there be hidden, unaccessable content of still-underwear-clad figures bumpin-boots).
But I think it has very LITTLE effect on art in games. EG, what effect did censorship have on something like Braid?
The game developers which are actually serious about doing ART are not interested in building "Sex-laden-splatter-fest-3000".
Absolutely.. (Score:2)
Something is Art because it expresses some emotion rooted in the human experience that causes a cathartic reaction in the observer, or some reaction (yeah, I suppose confusion counts)
It's like speech (Score:2)
Possible spoilers below: (Score:2)
A few months back I was playing the Fallout 3 expansion, The Pitt. The game pretty much assumed that you were going to take the nice guy role and not harm a child and have a sense of guilt when that action results in a city of people being enslaved because you pussed out. I played it, went the route the developers wanted me to take and it had the desired effect. The next day I played through it again and played as a bad guy, only it didn't follow the gravity of the good guy route because they couldn't kill
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art is for homos.
Says the guy displaying ASCII art :).
Re:8==U=N=C=E=NS=O=R=E=D==D ~~-_ (Score:4, Interesting)
Art is anything that conveys emotion from the artist to the audience.
-The artist can also serve as the audience. (a diary)
-If there is no emotion from the artist, it's not art. (a police log may generate emotion in a reader, but it's not art)
-If the emotion does not penetrate the audience, it's not art. (elevator music)
In other words, art is anything that passes these three tests:
1) Did the creator intend to convey an emotion?
2) Did the medium capture that emotion?
3) Did the audience receive that emotion?
Some video games pass this test. Some do not.
Asking whether video games are art is like asking whether furniture is art.
Parent
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8==C=O=C=K=S=L=A=P==D
Brilliant! Exquisite! Darling, you simply must let me exhibit this in my gallery!
Re:8==U=N=C=E=NS=O=R=E=D==D ~~-_ (Score:5, Insightful)
What a coincidence, I just post a journal pointing out that some mods are idiots, [slashdot.org] and an anonymous troll gets modded "insightful". OK, troll, I'll bite (I have to). [kuro5hin.org]
Yes, art is for homos. It's for heteros, too. I pity anyone who is so culturally deprived that they can't appreciate art.
What's funny is about ten years ago, I was in an online discussion with Charles Broussard, who was of the opinion that videogames were NOT art. I think in the end we agreed to disagree, I wonder if he ever changed his mind? I certainly haven't changed mine, games ARE art. Some are good art and some are bad art, but all are art.
And I do think that censorship may be keeping the art from advancing, but what is a bigger factor is the fact that the folks who make games don't see them as art.
My daughter Leila, still an avid gamer, mentioned to me that in the last GTA she got, there's a dope dealer named "Osama". It seems to me that the designers are censoring themselves, and pushing politically correct themes (like dope dealers being terrorists) and their snideness is hurting both their art and the quality of the games themselves.
It's a long way from Duke Nukem 1, where shooting the Energizer Bunny resulted in points. I remeber when games were a lot more primitive, but a lot more fun. And a lot more artistic.
Parent
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Welcome to Slashdot, the only place where a comment that focuses on "cockslap" gets modded Insightful.
Re:artistic maturity ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Graphic Violence and exploitive sexual images represent artistic maturity?
They certainly can. Ever seen "Apocalypse Now?" "Eyes Wide Shut?" "Psycho?" Picasso's "Guernica?"
Dismissing something as an art form simply because it's violent or erotic is just silly. Do I think that Quake's a masterpiece because you can blow heads off? Of course not. Do I play through the Half-Life cycle once or twice a year because it has a compelling story and it's like revisiting a favorite book? Absolutely. And I'll defend that game as art to my last breath.
Parent
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Oedipus isn't art then? the works of Shakespeare? The Barber of Seville? The Rite of Spring? The Song of Solomon? These works by and large are not much more than spectacle, particularly to those who lived in the time period they were written.
I know you said "modern" art, but there has always been an extreme violent and sexual side to art throughout western civilization...it's not new...and people have always expressed the opinion you've expressed now...one which clearly shows you d
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You are wrong. Art is not simply spectacle. Art is a communicative effort. Art is about drawing the focus of the audience to consider a certain perspective that was preconcieved by the artist. That is where it's merit lies. Violence and sexuality are important parts of the human experience, and they have a place in art, but only in art that is actually trying to comment on those aspects of the human experience. Art is supposed to provoke thought and open the mind, not close thought and rouse the base
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Spectacle is often a communicative effort.
You know fuck all about art...you think it has a concrete definition.
Don't try throwing credentials at me, I'm a (successful) professional artist as well, as is my partner...it's what we do for a living...I am a working composer, performer, and dramatist, my partner is a working visual artist.
I would tell you immediately the one thing in life you're not going to see agreement on is the definition of "Art." The fact that you try to present one shows your complete ig
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Psycho features graphic violence and sexual images? I'm going through the movie in my mind, and nothing about it stands out as sexual or graphically violent. Maybe you're talking about a remake that I haven't seen, but those descriptors do not match the Hitchcock film I know.
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I'm going through the movie in my mind, and nothing about it stands out as sexual or graphically violent.
In fact, Hitchcock made the movie B/W because the the Shower Scene in color would be too exploitative.
Maybe you're talking about a remake that I haven't seen,
1998 remake by Gus Van Sant. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0155975/ [imdb.com]