Games as Art – Riven

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UPDATE: The morning after I wrote this post, I read this article about how MoMa is adding an exhibit on video games, in which Myst is included. 

Can games be art? When we discussed this in class a few weeks ago, I honestly couldn't decide.  I found both Roger Ebert's blog post and Kellee Santiago's TED talk on the question to be unsatisfying. On the one hand, I feel the Ebert, as some one who evidently doesn't play video (or computer) games, can not possibly grasp the kind of emotive or aesthetic power they can have. But based on how she defines art in her talk, I don’t think Santiago herself is really an artist, nor really understands what art is.

I don’t play video games very much, but as a kid I had a few preferred computer games, which are effectively the same thing. The one that sticks most with me was the Cyan’s 1997 immersive puzzle-world game, Riven. I watched my sisters play the game but didn’t really get into until around 2001, when I was nine.

Riven is the second installment of a series of puzzle games that also form a story, which is why I bring it up in response to the question “can video games be art?” It’s the story component of the game that makes it memorable. The physical world of the game eerie and beautiful, the puzzles are complex and difficult, but the fact that you are taking part in a dramatic unfolding of events makes it more than just a game. It is different than video games that have a story line pasted in between levels, because the story is not totally revealed to you, and the characters and intrigue are genuinely developed.

So I think it begs the question, if a computer game can be like a novel, why can’t it be art? I think Ebert would point out that you can’t win at art – but you “win” Riven differently that you “win” other games. Sure, you solve puzzles, but and there are occasionally places you can “lose” (by solving a puzzle the wrong way, you can allow the evil brother characters to prevail), but it’s not really like you’re competing with anything other than yourself. I guess that makes it like (single-player) chess, which both Santiago and Ebert agree isn’t art. But Riven is different from chess because the emotional and aesthetic sensibility of the player are integral in their ability to solve the game. In that sense, it really is like reading a novel, where the reader’s ability to notice imagistic details and understand connotation greatly enhance their ability to appreciate (and “get”) the book.

         I think the crucial thing about art-video-games is that they engage the viewer on an intellectual and emotional level; they have to be about more than winning a competition or solving a puzzle. I’m not sure that Riven quite got there – I admit that while the storyline was good, it wasn’t masterful, about equivalent to any piece of decent genre fiction. But I believe it proves that the potential is there, and video games may achive the status of art much sooner that Ebert predicts.