Art in Games

I was talking with my sister over the break, talking about video games and movies and how art is seen in the latter and not so much in the former. About how there are no games made purely for the meaning inherient instead of for entertainment. Meanwhile films with artistic meaning are made all the time, with meanings about life, the universe, and everything. There's no Brokeback Mountain in the industry, not even close.

Largely this is because games are still, well, games. Fun diversions from modern life. True, the industry is young in terms of storytelling, but that's hardly an excuse. There hasn't exactly been a "Birth of a Nation" in the gaming industry yet, although I'm not entirely sure if that's a bad thing.

Then I played a game called Indigo Prophecy. An Xbox game with a unique control system (alternates between button mashing and Simon Says) and a very cinematic flair, and manages to be very fun despite a story that starts only a bit wierd and then just gets increasingly surreal as time goes on.

There is this one sequence near the beginning that is a good example of an artistic method that is rather unique to games, something that I had forgotten entirely about.

The basic story of Indigo Prophecy is that you've killed a man. Sorta. You didn't have control of your body when doing it, and you've got no idea what caused you to do it. When you left the scene of the crime, before anyone found the body, a cop saw your face, and you're pretty much the only suspect.

Anyway, its the next day, and you're in a park. Its the middle of winter, nearby pond is frozen over, and a strange precognition ability kicks in and you see that a little kid is about to fall into the pond. And then you see that same cop. Yeah, unlikely coincidence, but these things can happen. And then the kid falls in. So, what do you do?

Do you dive in after the kid and try to save his life, even though the cop will see you, recongnize you, and probably arrest you?

Or do you turn around, walk away, and hope someone else helps him, saving your ass in exchange for the kids?

I didn't hesitate and dove right in, saved the kid, and the cop kinda let me walk away.

What movies do is they tell you about the actions and consequences of other people, what they did and how they turned out. There's no "what if" going on, except for the idle wondering of the characters and the audience. It tells you about how others turned out, and enriches your life, true, but it doesn't tell you anything about you.

Games CAN do that. It's self-discovery. You're not finding out what happened to these two men who fell in love but couldn't bring themselves to let it be known. You're finding out what you might do in a situation that, hopefully, you'll never find yourself in.

BTW: Play this game! Not only is it clever and innovative, its one of the few games that actually allows you to interact with the plot! We need more of these!