So, this is an idea I've been kicking around for a while: A semi-regular thread about games that I think are either fantastic or horrific standouts in terms of artistic quality. I'll take games curbed from my personal experience and try to unleash the massive power of my liberal arts education on them for in-depth analysis.
But first, before I even begin, I should talk about what the "art" of a game is in the first place!
See, games are neither paintings, nor are they books. They are GAMES, interactive experiences that cull their aspects from many different areas of human experience. Games combine visuals, motion, music, sounds, voices, even things like vibrations (through your controller), with an intense (or not so intense) feeling of interactivity. Often, it is that interactivity that discerning gamers use to judge an ENTIRE game. To put it simply, in words we've all heard before: Gameplay over graphics.
In my experience, the best examples of the video game artform are games that seamlessly combine all the experiences into something that transcends the limitations of the individual fields and becomes something wholly enrapturing, something that can take away HOURS of your life and leave you wanting more.
In those short hours, though, are forged lasting impressions that are carried within everyone who has experienced the game. And isn't that pretty much what every true artist longs for?
So, lets take on the first game that made me realize I was playing with art...
Homeworld.
###
I am an unabashed Homeworld fanboy, as most people could tell from the avatar. Unless you've never played Homeworld, in which case my avatar is about as meaningful as any other scantily clad woman floating in a tube. For those who see just a woman in a tube, Homeworld was a revolutionary RTS produced by Sierra and designed by Relic, who most of us should recognize as the creators of the phenomenal Dawn of War and Company of Heroes series...which I'll be touching on in later posts.
What made Homeworld so revolutionary? Simple: Wherein other RTSes were routinely fixed on a two dimensional plane, Homeworld presented a field of battle that had an entire third dimension. Units could move up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards...in all directions. This, plus a new graphics engine and a unique atheistic are what sold this game. But it was the marriage of story, graphics, audio and gameplay into one harmonious whole that made this game a classic and a true example of Games As Art.
Lets start with the story: The Khusan people have lived on the harsh, desert covered world of Kharak for thousands of years. For hundreds of years, they had fought with one another over a break in their religious doctrine, a disagreement on why God had seen fit to place them on such a horrible planet. The Gaalsien believed that God had created the Khusan simply to suffer, while the Siidam believed that God had exiled the Khusan for an act of great arrogance.
However, both factions were defeated from the complete left field by the arrival of the Nabaal, a clan of Khusan who had hidden from the devastating religious wars and invented chemical explosives...I.E, gunpowder. The Nabaal, assisted by Khusan who were sick of war and violence, crushed both the Siidam and the Gaalsien and created a new regime based on science and cooperation. It was then that a discovery was made that would change the fate of their people.
Khar-Toba, the First City. It was found in the central deserts, where one had to work by night in specially designed environmental suits just to survive. The archeologists there discovered that no...Khar-Toba was not a city. It was a SPACESHIP. And within its ancient halls were two artifacts of immeasurable value: A solid state hyperspace core that would unlock Faster Than Light travel for the Khusan...and a blasted piece of black rock. On this rock were etched a pair of galactic coordinates and a single word, older than the clans themselves.
Hiigara.
Our Home.
Jump cut 80 years later and the Khusan have finished building a massive colony ship that will carry 600,000 of their best, brightest, and richest to Hiigara. The colony ship, called The Mothership, is designed to handle every possible situation the Khusan could think of. It can build support craft, has thick armor, research capacity, the whole manila. The only problem is how to operate the thing without needing a bridge crew numbering into the hundreds and a command hierarchy complex enough to give a genius a headache.
The answer came in the form of a young neuroscientest named Karan S'Jet. She plugged her brain into the Mothership's computer banks and became Fleet Command. (And my avatar!)
And so, the game begins with the Mothership in orbit around Kharak, ready to test out its hyperdrive and take the first step into the cosmos.
It is in the space around Kharak that you are introduced to how graphics, music and gameplay are married. Kharak is a forbidding planet...and yet, quite pristine. There is something comforting about its sandy wastes, and the lack of cloud cover makes it seem even calmer. It lacks the beauty of our blue-green gem of a home, but you still feel comfortable here. To add to the comfort is the fair ease of the first mission's objectives: Test the Mothership's capacities. Build some ships, shoot some drones...no hurry.
The music underscores this...its haunting, and yet relaxing. Soft and floating, with only a few minor percussive notes that add a bit of tension, and then a soft piano which relaxes you again. (Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqWcm6MMiHk)
The game sets up a semi-peaceful situation, with an excitement underscoring it all. In the direction of the galactic core, you can see a nebula, the glowing splotch that marks the center of the galaxy.
After this mission, though, things take a non-specified turn for the worse (no need to ruin the surprise!) and the game's music underscores this PERFECTLY...and the real genius of the gameplay comes into focus.
See, your 'fleet', comprised of the Mothership and all support vessels, is continuous. IF you have 10 fighters and 2 frigates at the end of Mission A, you start with them in Mission B. This adds an emotional connection to the Fleet and the Khusan within that would not have existed otherwise...simply because the longer we know something, the more invested we become in it. We can see this example of attachment building methods used in RPGs and RTSs and FPSs, through the use of veterinary, leveling up, customizable guns: All of this creates attachment, and Homeworld is one of the first examples of it being used.
Best of all, this gameplay concept marries with the plot perfectly, as you are almost instantly thrust into the "rag-tag fleet" mindset of the Battlestar Galactica series. Spending ships becomes important...not simply a flippant "throwing people into the meat grinder".
Again, the audio and the graphics compliment this. Ships begin to spark and smoke as they are damaged. Nothing is more agonizing than watching a favorite capital class ship in flames, desperately trying to save it, the crew on board, and the half hour you put into gathering the money to build the damn thing. Audio wise, you HEAR your pilots and crews talking, reporting on the situation. And though they lack the depth and number of responses of later Relic games...it is still a fantastic concept that adds to the experience.
The story captures the essence of the unknown. Missions start as one thing, then morph into others, and the graphics and the music keep pace. What is at first a peaceful nebula, with only slightly eerie music, can become a swarming hive of religious zealots. Miniature fighters fill the glowing sky with contrails and mass driver shells fly back and forth. The music switches to a droning, eerie rhythm with vocalists moaning in the background. Its a really hair raising, edge-of-your-seat moment that see's you frantically scrambling fighters to defend yourself from an unexpected attack.
(Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1fVrI2NFQ&feature=related)
Does Homeworld have its flaws? Yes...but damned few of them, and most of them are brought on by age rather than poor decision making. I could see plentiful ways to improve both the gameplay, the graphics, the audio and the overall experience. But none of this changes the simple truth of the matter: Homeworld is a near perfect marriage of all the different facets of a game into one artistically sound WHOLE that has nearly unparalleled emotional impact and thematic depth.
Final Verdict: Art!
I hope you guys enjoyed my ramblings. If you did, I'll get to work on my next Games-As-Art...and it'll be a real shocker!
But first, before I even begin, I should talk about what the "art" of a game is in the first place!
See, games are neither paintings, nor are they books. They are GAMES, interactive experiences that cull their aspects from many different areas of human experience. Games combine visuals, motion, music, sounds, voices, even things like vibrations (through your controller), with an intense (or not so intense) feeling of interactivity. Often, it is that interactivity that discerning gamers use to judge an ENTIRE game. To put it simply, in words we've all heard before: Gameplay over graphics.
In my experience, the best examples of the video game artform are games that seamlessly combine all the experiences into something that transcends the limitations of the individual fields and becomes something wholly enrapturing, something that can take away HOURS of your life and leave you wanting more.
In those short hours, though, are forged lasting impressions that are carried within everyone who has experienced the game. And isn't that pretty much what every true artist longs for?
So, lets take on the first game that made me realize I was playing with art...
Homeworld.
###
I am an unabashed Homeworld fanboy, as most people could tell from the avatar. Unless you've never played Homeworld, in which case my avatar is about as meaningful as any other scantily clad woman floating in a tube. For those who see just a woman in a tube, Homeworld was a revolutionary RTS produced by Sierra and designed by Relic, who most of us should recognize as the creators of the phenomenal Dawn of War and Company of Heroes series...which I'll be touching on in later posts.
What made Homeworld so revolutionary? Simple: Wherein other RTSes were routinely fixed on a two dimensional plane, Homeworld presented a field of battle that had an entire third dimension. Units could move up, down, left, right, backwards, forwards...in all directions. This, plus a new graphics engine and a unique atheistic are what sold this game. But it was the marriage of story, graphics, audio and gameplay into one harmonious whole that made this game a classic and a true example of Games As Art.
Lets start with the story: The Khusan people have lived on the harsh, desert covered world of Kharak for thousands of years. For hundreds of years, they had fought with one another over a break in their religious doctrine, a disagreement on why God had seen fit to place them on such a horrible planet. The Gaalsien believed that God had created the Khusan simply to suffer, while the Siidam believed that God had exiled the Khusan for an act of great arrogance.
However, both factions were defeated from the complete left field by the arrival of the Nabaal, a clan of Khusan who had hidden from the devastating religious wars and invented chemical explosives...I.E, gunpowder. The Nabaal, assisted by Khusan who were sick of war and violence, crushed both the Siidam and the Gaalsien and created a new regime based on science and cooperation. It was then that a discovery was made that would change the fate of their people.
Khar-Toba, the First City. It was found in the central deserts, where one had to work by night in specially designed environmental suits just to survive. The archeologists there discovered that no...Khar-Toba was not a city. It was a SPACESHIP. And within its ancient halls were two artifacts of immeasurable value: A solid state hyperspace core that would unlock Faster Than Light travel for the Khusan...and a blasted piece of black rock. On this rock were etched a pair of galactic coordinates and a single word, older than the clans themselves.
Hiigara.
Our Home.
Jump cut 80 years later and the Khusan have finished building a massive colony ship that will carry 600,000 of their best, brightest, and richest to Hiigara. The colony ship, called The Mothership, is designed to handle every possible situation the Khusan could think of. It can build support craft, has thick armor, research capacity, the whole manila. The only problem is how to operate the thing without needing a bridge crew numbering into the hundreds and a command hierarchy complex enough to give a genius a headache.
The answer came in the form of a young neuroscientest named Karan S'Jet. She plugged her brain into the Mothership's computer banks and became Fleet Command. (And my avatar!)
And so, the game begins with the Mothership in orbit around Kharak, ready to test out its hyperdrive and take the first step into the cosmos.
It is in the space around Kharak that you are introduced to how graphics, music and gameplay are married. Kharak is a forbidding planet...and yet, quite pristine. There is something comforting about its sandy wastes, and the lack of cloud cover makes it seem even calmer. It lacks the beauty of our blue-green gem of a home, but you still feel comfortable here. To add to the comfort is the fair ease of the first mission's objectives: Test the Mothership's capacities. Build some ships, shoot some drones...no hurry.
The music underscores this...its haunting, and yet relaxing. Soft and floating, with only a few minor percussive notes that add a bit of tension, and then a soft piano which relaxes you again. (Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqWcm6MMiHk)
The game sets up a semi-peaceful situation, with an excitement underscoring it all. In the direction of the galactic core, you can see a nebula, the glowing splotch that marks the center of the galaxy.
After this mission, though, things take a non-specified turn for the worse (no need to ruin the surprise!) and the game's music underscores this PERFECTLY...and the real genius of the gameplay comes into focus.
See, your 'fleet', comprised of the Mothership and all support vessels, is continuous. IF you have 10 fighters and 2 frigates at the end of Mission A, you start with them in Mission B. This adds an emotional connection to the Fleet and the Khusan within that would not have existed otherwise...simply because the longer we know something, the more invested we become in it. We can see this example of attachment building methods used in RPGs and RTSs and FPSs, through the use of veterinary, leveling up, customizable guns: All of this creates attachment, and Homeworld is one of the first examples of it being used.
Best of all, this gameplay concept marries with the plot perfectly, as you are almost instantly thrust into the "rag-tag fleet" mindset of the Battlestar Galactica series. Spending ships becomes important...not simply a flippant "throwing people into the meat grinder".
Again, the audio and the graphics compliment this. Ships begin to spark and smoke as they are damaged. Nothing is more agonizing than watching a favorite capital class ship in flames, desperately trying to save it, the crew on board, and the half hour you put into gathering the money to build the damn thing. Audio wise, you HEAR your pilots and crews talking, reporting on the situation. And though they lack the depth and number of responses of later Relic games...it is still a fantastic concept that adds to the experience.
The story captures the essence of the unknown. Missions start as one thing, then morph into others, and the graphics and the music keep pace. What is at first a peaceful nebula, with only slightly eerie music, can become a swarming hive of religious zealots. Miniature fighters fill the glowing sky with contrails and mass driver shells fly back and forth. The music switches to a droning, eerie rhythm with vocalists moaning in the background. Its a really hair raising, edge-of-your-seat moment that see's you frantically scrambling fighters to defend yourself from an unexpected attack.
(Music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FY1fVrI2NFQ&feature=related)
Does Homeworld have its flaws? Yes...but damned few of them, and most of them are brought on by age rather than poor decision making. I could see plentiful ways to improve both the gameplay, the graphics, the audio and the overall experience. But none of this changes the simple truth of the matter: Homeworld is a near perfect marriage of all the different facets of a game into one artistically sound WHOLE that has nearly unparalleled emotional impact and thematic depth.
Final Verdict: Art!
I hope you guys enjoyed my ramblings. If you did, I'll get to work on my next Games-As-Art...and it'll be a real shocker!
