My greatest concern with games as art is their need to function properly as a piece of software. In this way, games are kind of like a machine. There are many parts, and all the parts need to coalesce into a working whole. I think about this a lot, actually. How easily can games be art, when they have to accomplish so much objective functionality before anything else?
I guess we can compare it to other forms of art. I think film is the closest because it is the least abstract. Film, for the most part, needs to tell a story. There is a language to film that has been established for decades. In order to operate as a piece of storytelling, certain rules need to be followed. In this way, film is like gaming. There is a certain layer of procedure before you can dig into making it a piece of art.
Clearly, the more abstract you want to be, the less important this becomes. Experimental film can break as many rules as it wants in an attempt to draw your attention to the rules themselves. Games might be able to do the same thing. Maybe a game could have really awful controls on purpose in order to make some sort of statement.
I'm always worried about the how the needs of games as a piece of software limit the art. But I think that as we learn more and more about how to make games, and the "language of games" is established, this will become less and less of an issue. Games aren't the only medium limited by this idea, either. Perhaps this very limitation is what will make them into great works of art.
Maybe I should just talk to some developers about this. New segment for Double Jump, maybe?
