Look at your videogames. Who do you see?
It’s an uncommon situation to find a name emblazoned across a videogame case. Rare examples include Sid Mier and more recently, Stephen Spielberg. Many see the lack of a prominent author a problem for mainstream acceptance of videogames. Why?
Sid Meier: author, designer, or just a name on a box?
A few years ago now, venerable film critic Roger Ebert sparked a fiery debate about the merits of videogames, and their potential to be considered art. He concluded that videogames could never become art because they lack the possibility for authorial control. That is, when we go and see a film by Hitchcock, the movie is controlled entirely (or at least enough) by the director to consider him the author of the work. It’s the same with a book — J.K. Rowling is considered to be the author of the Harry Potter series because (save her editor) she had complete control over the body of the work. This one person, this author, carries the vision for the work. It’s their story, it’s their meaning. The interactivity of videogames, so we’re told, presents a problem for the artist as we know it. How can a videogame be considered art if the player has such strong control over the outcomes of the narrative, the movement of the characters, the ebb and flow of the structure?
There are several points on which Ebert can be challenged here, but let’s take the road less travelled — videogames are limiting texts. Every game, no matter how open, no matter how free, has rails and boundaries. You can’t play Grand Theft Auto IV and expect to fly to London. You can’t play LEGO Star Wars and expect to interact with the Star Trek universe. These are basic, utterly basic points, but it’s worth remembering that videogames are not part of some fairytale medium where total immersion and interactivity are possible. Games are only playable within the limits set by their designers. That in itself implies authorship.
Let’s look at some more serious examples. The Liberty City of Grand Theft Auto IV is not a friendly city. Despite its often-exaggerated freedom, it’s infinitely easier to break laws in Liberty City than to follow them. Take it to the next level — what does that say about the author’s conception of the city? Look at Assassin’s Creed. What are the crowd profile levels, but a comment on acceptable and unacceptable societal behaviour? Simplistic examples, sure, but the scope is evidently present.
Orson Welles might be touted as one of the greatest filmmakers, but his work began to deteriorate when he lost his best team-members.
The problem then becomes not if there is an author, but who. The games industry has seemingly always been split between the urge to draw out big names within the industry and a desire to credit entire teams. On the one hand, it has become clearer than it has ever been that tens, if not hundreds of videogame workers are responsible for the final outcome of a game, and even any meaning found within it. When behemoth videogames like the upcoming Star Wars: The Force Unleashed release on every console known to man, you know that literally hundreds of minds have gone into creating it. Yet we still draw out identities — the Will Wrights, the Sid Meiers, the Hideo Kojimas.
Why did Stephen Spielberg’s name make it on the front cover of Boom Blox? Certainly, he played no more a role in the creation of the game than your average videogame producer. The obvious answer is that it was for marketing reasons, and surely, any publisher with a game contributed to by Spielberg would have to be stupid not to make his name as prominent as possible. EA’s CEO John Riccitiello recently told MTV that “With games it’s typically 30, 50, 100, people that make these things and they’re all integral to the process … [the highlighted individuals are] more representative of teams than they are individual stars. And they know they’re representative of teams … I’ve always been of the belief you should give credit where credit’s due … I don’t think there are any creator[s] in the industry that would say it’s them individually making that happen.”
However, the question of shining a light on the individual is fast becoming a political one. Many argue that by growing the cult of the individual author, games can progress artistically — and not just in the sense that some concrete rebuff might be provided to the likes of Roger Ebert. Hollywood, in the latter half of the twentieth century, largely held on to artistic credibility by championing the individual genius: the Coppolas, Scorceses, Tarantinos, and even the Spielbergs. The big idea is that an individual with enough artistic clout can drive a project away from the grasp of the evil men with suits and briefcases. It changes the relationship — the publisher knows that the reputation is worth more than the product. The last thing that film companies want to do — especially now in the age of the internet — is be seen to be interfering with the artistic purity of a great artist’s work.
But do you trust Will Wright to work only on good — no, great — games, untainted by the desire for quick and easy money? This is the most important question. Do you trust the man, or the machine?
Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie: great musicians, but perhaps not as interesting without a rhythm section.
Perhaps the simplest answer is that, left to their own devices, development studios have slowly but surely begun to gather artistic clout to be trusted on name alone. Many gamers will try almost any game that Valve releases. Other companies, like BioWare, 2K Boston/2K Australia, and thatgamecompany are all gaining traction very quickly (or have been for some time). On the other hand, developers can fall from grace only after a few bad misses, or after a few key employees move on. In holding up teams, corporations, even the occasional loose association of various designers as our artists, we must admit that collaboration is an uneasy circumstance at best.
Perhaps the videogame world is a signal that art as we know it is coming to an end, or perhaps never existed in the first place. The music world holds up Jazz giants like Charlie Parker or John Coltrane as genius, but it’s rare to improvise a solo without a backing rhythm and chord progression. There’s no better sound than a band working absolutely perfectly together. The auteur theory of film is now only clung to by aging cinema studies academics and critics who need to brush up on their reading: film is a collaborative medium, and anyone who thinks a director has full control over a movie needs to spend a good day on a film set.
The most important question of this article, though, still remains unanswered. If we do think that developers are the artists and authors of our medium, can they gain the clout to excerpt a strong enough pressure to keep the wolves in suits at bay?
It’s a question that can only be answered by looking around us. Where is the art in this medium?
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