Hi guys, I would so grateful if you could read the first article for our (Lord Ciansworth and I) new gaming website www.deadsmartgaming.com and comment below about what you think of it. We aim to get an article like this out every week.
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Has BioWare Devalued the Video Game?
It was almost as if they planned it. Within five days of the opening of The Art of Video Games at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, an exhibit celebrating forty years of video gaming as an artistic medium, BioWare co-founder, Dr. Ray Muzyka made an announcement to the world, strongly suggesting that the company was in the process of producing downloadable content designed to alter the ending of their latest hit game Mass Effect 3, in line with “fan feedback”. In one fell swoop Dr. Muzyka had obliterated the artistic integrity of the game and the Mass Effect series, while striking a blow for commercial determinism over artistic endeavour.
It really would be hard to imagine such an announcement occurring within any other artistic medium. The idea of James Cameron appearing in front of snapping photographers in December 1997, meekly announcing that an alternative ending to his masterpiece Titanic, in which protagonist Jack Dawson survives the bitter North Atlantic waters, would be available as an extra in the film’s up-coming DVD release seems rather ludicrous. In essence, however, Dr. Muzyka’s announcement is the video game equivalent and his decision to pander to the cries of the masses, rather than stand by his company’s creation, is in direct contradiction of his putative belief “that games are an art form”.
A universally accepted definition of art has proven to be a mercurial concept, and throughout history great minds from Plato to Tolstoy have weighed in on the subject to offer their two cents on what constitutes art; it is a debate that is far from resolved. Despite these definitional discrepancies, what lies at the core of virtually all major definitions of the subject are the notions of meaning and emotional evocation. Leo Tolstoy, in his 1897 essay What is Art?, stated that the telling of a story could indeed be art, as long as its audience could be moved to experience the array of emotions felt by the protaganists. Perhaps this is the definition that best fits video games, but can BioWare’s Mass Effect 3 ever hope to count itself as a piece of art by this definition, or indeed any?
How can BioWare ask players to emotionally invest in their creation, if they are no longer sure what emotions or experiences they are trying to evoke? A powerful work of art in the gaming world is based on a masterfully created experience that comprises of a number of important components: art style, game mechanics, story, each combining to build an atmosphere that is consistent with the vision of the game’s creator. To radically alter any of these components is to drastically change the conveyance of that vision and the manner in which it is experienced by its audience. We, as an audience, do not expect that we should be able to change the narrative of the books we read or the films we watch, nor the colours and shapes in painting and sculpture we admire. A piece of art that touches us emotionally and lingers happily in our memories is one which finely balances a series of components to create that intangible quality: appeal. We share in the vision of a game’s creator and we rely on these components to appeal to us in a way that will allow us to experience that vision. It can be a well, or poorly, executed process, there are, after all, good and bad games.
Where we risk the validity of gaming as an artistic medium, and perhaps even our own ability to derive meaning and emotion from the games we play is when we come to remove vision from these games. Our emotional connection with a piece of art is reliant on deriving our own interpretations of that vision. Where no vision exists, no legitimate interpretation can either. Dr. Muzyka has unfortunately communicated the absence of vision at BioWare, the unwillingness to see Mass Effect 3, not as an experience in which players can share in the artistic vision of its creators but in a malleable commercial product that needs to be altered to fit the whims of market, at the sacrifice of the game’s narrative, a supposedly integral component of the role-playing game.
Worrying too is the potential loss of community and universality of the gaming experience that players will feel, should a player-led demand to re-write game narratives catch on. Gone will be the days when gamers could speak to each other about seminal moments in video gaming, discuss the moments that appealed to them in a personal way. This would surely be to the detriment of an industry and art-form that thrives on its sense of community. Much like the impact of the internet on music, which isolates listeners from the mainstream of music in favour of cocooning them within a personally determined niche, enabled by the constant availability of stream-able music of any given genre, the impact of re-writing game narratives would be to shallow our experience. Much like our increasing failure to interact with mainstream music allows us to listen to only that which we already know we enjoy, an ability to choose only the narratives that comfort us will ultimately lead to a narrowing of our horizons and a progressive inability of games to offer us something is truly new. All of this occurs while simultaneously isolating us from other gamers, each of which will have encountered an entirely different experience, but with the same game.
In a games industry that is growing more and more reliant on rehashes and sequels, BioWare’s decision to allow gamers to swap an uncomfortable ending for a warm and fuzzy one further encourages game developers and publishers to err on the side of the familiar, rather than experiment with the innovative. Perhaps to say that this event is the beginning of a slippery slope away from artistic integrity and innovation towards stagnation and absolute commercial determinism is a bridge too far, but in a year that will see, not only a fan-driven Mass Effect 3 re-writing, but formulaic entries into established franchises such as Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, Assassins Creed 3, and New Super Mario Bros. 2, one cannot help but see a trend.
14 May 2012
