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[raiten]

As said previously, I URGE YOU NOT TO REFER TO ART IN GENERAL. Do not either consider games as ART. Why? Because art is very tricky word for discussion and I don't want to discuss it here because I know that discussion will take totally different direction. Let's just start from fresh conceptual framework and use simple, core concepts to build our discussion around.

I think you're being a bit dictatorial here. I think of games as art so it's hard to pretend I don't (which in effect seems to be what you're asking for).

[Craig Stern]

For this discussion to have any meaning, we have to assume first that games are art. If games aren't art, then there's no need for a creator's statement, because there isn't any underlying meaning to the work.

[Mikademus]

For this discussion to have any meaning, we have to assume first that games are art. If games aren't art, then there's no need for a creator's statement, because there isn't any underlying meaning to the work.

That's a rather dull perspective. The question whether something "is art" is meaningless. Everything may be art or not depending on definition, and that is not very interesting, but the key point is in fact that the very act of denying things as art makes the one defining stand outside art, or the potential of art in the object in question.

Rather than ask "is it art?", instead ask "is it good art?". That is much more unproblematic and more meaningful a tool from which to generate relevant opinions.

[Fuzz]

Look, if you want to write a creator's statement, by all means, do it, but don't pressure other people into writing them. Creator's statements have often ruined games for me and they just make me extremely angry. I want to discover my own meanings, I don't want anyone to shove their interpretation in my face. Who cares if I get something completely different out of it then what the author intended?

[esc]

I remember that the maker of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was kind of forced to write an artists statement.

At first he released it anonymously, but eventually some kind of authority forced him to reveal himself,
upon which he had to give a reason behind the making instead of letting it speak for itself.
This was to not make him look like a horrible person for making this "sensationalistic entertainment" the media was making it out for.

[Fuzz]

I remember that the maker of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! was kind of forced to write an artists statement.

At first he released it anonymously, but eventually some kind of authority forced him to reveal himself,
upon which he had to give a reason behind the making instead of letting it speak for itself.
This was to not make him look like a horrible person for making this "sensationalistic entertainment" the media was making it out for.

Yeah, that's what I heard, and in that case, an artist's statement is sadly somewhat necessary. I really liked SCMRPG!, and I thought the game was pretty self explanatory. What I don't like is how, after everyone found out about him, he started to sound so pretentious with all his bullshit. That doesn't stop me from liking the game on its own, though.

[Craig Stern]

For this discussion to have any meaning, we have to assume first that games are art. If games aren't art, then there's no need for a creator's statement, because there isn't any underlying meaning to the work.

That's a rather dull perspective. The question whether something "is art" is meaningless. Everything may be art or not depending on definition, and that is not very interesting, but the key point is in fact that the very act of denying things as art makes the one defining stand outside art, or the potential of art in the object in question.

Rather than ask "is it art?", instead ask "is it good art?". That is much more unproblematic and more meaningful a tool from which to generate relevant opinions.

Oh good grief, please don't drag this thread down into some pointless semantic debate about whether games created without authorial intent to incorporate hidden meanings are A) not art or B) bad art. I am simply saying that games are an artistic medium which, like any other, can serve as a vessel for meaning, and that if the author does not deliberately put any discoverable meaning into the work, it does not post facto become "art" or "good art" simply because someone decided to read themes into the work which it cannot support, or because the author attached a text file claiming to have incorporated hidden themes into the game.

Again, the job of the artist is to make the meanings he or she wishes to imbue the game with discoverable through careful observation and reflection. Someone who does not do this, but rather produces something at random hoping that others will manage to read something brilliant into it, has not done their job as an artist. Either it's not art or it's bad art (I don't care which you call it), but the point is, it's not something you can fix by simply claiming that you really did make the game about something else after the fact.

[mirosurabu]

Craig, I have no idea of what you're talking about. I don't want to sound rude or harsh, but I really can't understand what you're arguing. You probably have a point and the reason I can't get it is probably because it's not addressing my true intentions with this topic and attitudes I have tried to show in same. I would really appreciate if you could let go what you were arguing at the moment, clear your mind and approach my topic from this post onwards, again. I believe we misunderstood each other and I am not going to put the blame on anyone. I just want to get back to original topic.

The topic is about verbal assistance for video games which are objective and have clear purpose/meaning. This means that I am not talking about games which are created to be open to interpretations (if such works already exist). Assistance can be done through buzz, word of mouth, creator's statement, in-game tutorial or something else, but it's important to notice that it's not bound to creator's statements. The purpose of verbal assistance is to help people switch to required mindset. Yes, these do not represent games in verbal form. These do not necessarily explain how and why creator made the game. (though, in case of creator's statements, they do).

Key reason I advocate verbal assistance to most experimental clear-purpose games out there, whether they are considered art or not, is because I cannot understand some of them, neither I can understand the design ideas behind same. I can see that creator's statements can be troublesome to creators who do not have clear design. If they don't have clear design, they should admit that - but most don't.

All Jason Rohrer's games have clear-purpose. All Jason Rohrer's games are verbally supported. Most of his games have creator's statement. Still, people like them.

On the other hand, we can see Petri Purho's experiment with no clear purpose other than showing underused MMO concept and being the smallest MMO ever. But he does say his design is not clear and I'm perfectly fine with that.

[Mikademus]

For this discussion to have any meaning, we have to assume first that games are art. If games aren't art, then there's no need for a creator's statement, because there isn't any underlying meaning to the work.

That's a rather dull perspective. The question whether something "is art" is meaningless. Everything may be art or not depending on definition, and that is not very interesting, but the key point is in fact that the very act of denying things as art makes the one defining stand outside art, or the potential of art in the object in question.

Rather than ask "is it art?", instead ask "is it good art?". That is much more unproblematic and more meaningful a tool from which to generate relevant opinions.

Oh good grief, please don't drag this thread down into some pointless semantic debate about whether games created without authorial intent to incorporate hidden meanings are A) not art or B) bad art.

I haven't been active on this board long enough to know whom to reply to or whom to ignore, so anyway; that's a strawman if I ever saw one. In fact, I argued close for the very opposite, that defining games as "art" or "not art" is meaningless, and if, and only if, that debate has to be taken it is better to talk about whether it is good art (or good as art) than if it is art. I did smirk a bit about you calling me authoritarian whereafter immediately proceeding to define the "job of the artist" though...

Since this thread is about artistic vision, intent or expression in games though, I do think that the average game with an artistic ambition, more so than other media due to its relative youth and technical limitations, suffers from a higher necessity to explicate subtexts or meanings simply because (1) the audience will generally not be amenable to extracting them, and (2) the artist/developer simply not being good enough at all the diverse aspects of game creation to make his intent accessible enough. A well done game ("good art" if you will, to continue that line of argumentation) will probably be self-sufficient.

[Craig Stern]

Hey Miroslav, I'm sorry if I'm not making myself clear, but I think I'm directly addressing your topic. I'll try to rephrase my point using some of the terms you're using: if a game creator does not have "clear design" in his game, so that his "purpose/meaning" is clear to the player, although he may be able to convey his meaning to the player with a written statement, he will still have failed to design a game that conveys his idea. He has failed to achieve his goal to use the game to convey "purpose/meaning." Does that make sense?

I did smirk a bit about you calling me authoritarian whereafter immediately proceeding to define the "job of the artist" though...

Mikademus, I simply cannot find the spot where I supposedly called you an authoritarian. If you could kindly quote the offending language for me, I'll be happy to clear up for you any confusion you may have about the meanings of the words I used.

A well done game ("good art" if you will, to continue that line of argumentation) will probably be self-sufficient.

A game can be a huge amount of fun, and thus be a good game, while failing to deliver coherent "subtexts or meanings." Hence, why I am discussing "good art," and not merely "[a] well done game." I'm sure you can appreciate the difference, particularly given that you yourself first suggested the terminology.

[letsap]

Creator's statements can really be distracting from what people were originally enjoying the piece for. For instance, say the simple charm of something made you smile, then you read the artist's statement about the simplicity reflecting the futility of pollution control standards. The entire atmosphere of whatever piece you were enjoying is totally mucked up, and the whole thing gets a lot less enjoyable.

In my opinion anyway.

[esc]

I do think it can help, in a postmortem kind of way, to discuss with others on how to better communicate your original ideas.
I would never put an artists statement in the game or on the download page though.

But like the case I pointed out with Super Columbine Massacre RPG!, it should never be forced onto the player, or the creator.

For instance, I was really bummed by The Marriage, as I could not interpret the interactions any other way, because the title gave away what it was about. It's not really an artists statement, but it immediately makes me not ever have any other thoughts on the game.

[mirosurabu]

if a game creator does not have "clear design" in his game, so that his "purpose/meaning" is clear to the player, although he may be able to convey his meaning to the player with a written statement, he will still have failed to design a game that conveys his idea. He has failed to achieve his goal to use the game to convey "purpose/meaning." Does that make sense?

You say that constructing meaning (or context of presentation) after the game is made definitively means that creator has failed? If so - I don't see how that addresses my intentions.

I can't care less when meaning is constructed - before or after the game is made. What I care about is whether creator is willing to make his game more accessible to people and whether he considers his game as closed-to-interpretation or not.

I'm firm believer in closed-interpretation - that's how most games are made, whether they are called "art" or not. Leaving something open to interpretation or lack of willingness to explain the game sounds like laziness to me.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

When I played "Passage" for the first time, it made no sense to me. After reading short description about the game and then replaying it - I could understand the design idea behind the game and I was able to connect. And how many people understood "Passage" when they played it shortly after its release?

A lot of us did. The game was actually first posted on these very forums, a few years ago, and a number of people understood the intention without needing an explanation.

I think (as unpopular as it is to suggest this) that some people are just more artistically sophisticated than others, and better at getting the artist's intention than others. Art games tend to be made for people who are sophisticated in that way. Sometimes you just can't make something both sophisticated and approachable. Sometimes you can, but not all of the time.

Also, regarding written statements, I think that misses the point. If something could have been just as easily conveyed through a written statement as through art, why would it need art at all? Art is often for stuff that *can't* be conveyed through other means as efficiently or as easily, if at all. Not everything that can be sung can be spoken, and vice versa.

Relevantly, often when people talk about the meaning being open for interpretation, what they actually mean is that the expression of that meaning is open for interpretation, because explaining something in words which can't really be conveyed in words often creates multiple contradictory explanations, even though they're all talking about the same basic thing. A simple illustrative example: love has a definite meaning, love is something specific. But explaining love in words leads to a multitude of explanations, exactly because it's something that isn't native to words.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

I think the reason that incompatibility exists, as an aside, is that language is often simplistic and overly abstract, and reality is far more complex than language can deal with. So just because the same thing can be explained / interpreted in dozens of ways linguistically doesn't mean it's subjective, it just means that different people attempt to simplify it in different ways, because it's too complex for them to deal with as a whole, so they pick and choose specific parts of it, simplify those parts, construct a theory about those parts, and we call it an interpretation. But interpretations are often laughably simple compared to how complex the thing being interpreted is, which is often beyond the powers of language or even the human mind. In contrast to language, art deals with reality through directly portraying something, in a "pointing" fashion. So it can convey a bit more complexity than language can, although it too has its limits.

[Fuzz]

@ Paul: I couldn't agree with you more.
@ Miroslav: Why do you think that anything can be "closed to interpretation"? It seems to me that nothing is ever interesting unless it is open to multiple interpretations, and I think everything is unless its author decides to impose unnecessary interpretations on the player and not allow them to extract their own meaning from it.

[Mikademus]

@ Paul: I couldn't agree with you more.
@ Miroslav: Why do you think that anything can be "closed to interpretation"? It seems to me that nothing is ever interesting unless it is open to multiple interpretations, and I think everything is unless its author decides to impose unnecessary interpretations on the player and not allow them to extract their own meaning from it.

In Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, most theoreticians argue that it is not that something is interpretable that is the questions, it is to what extent it is. A common argument is that the more conductive a Piece of Art is to convey its underlying intention (the confrontation of intentionalities that Ingarden calls "concretion" which creates a particular Work of Art by actualising it from the many possible ones) the "better" it is.

This might seem dull and academic, but it is really quite a relevant perspective in this context.

[mirosurabu]

Hi Paul,

Yes I know that Passage was posted on these forums for Kokoromi's Gamma256. However, the topic does not testify in favor of "no assistance" advocates, as far as I can tell, considering there are bits of verbal assistance from Jason's side before small wave of posts which reflect positive reaction to the game comes in.

Written statements are not meant to replace the game. I said that like too many times already. I advocate them as means to "educate" or "learn" people whom new design idea is totally foreign.

Regarding love analogy - I don't think that's really good analogy. Mainly because love does not exist in shared (objective) space (it's emotional disposition), while games do. Games can be created with intent or without it. As simple as that. I believe it's very easy for creator to tell whether he had intent or not when creating a game. On the other hand, love does not work that way.

So just because the same thing can be explained / interpreted in dozens of ways linguistically doesn't mean it's subjective, it just means that different people attempt to simplify it in different ways, because it's too complex for them to deal with as a whole, so they pick and choose specific parts of it, simplify those parts, construct a theory about those parts, and we call it an interpretation. But interpretations are often laughably simple compared to how complex the thing being interpreted is, which is often beyond the powers of language or even the human mind. In contrast to language, art deals with reality through directly portraying something, in a "pointing" fashion. So it can convey a bit more complexity than language can, although it too has its limits

You have some good points here. If I correctly understand, you say that reason for multiple interpretations in some cases is because some games are overly complex to be understood as a whole. However, that does not mean that the process of creation is not explainable, right?

Why do you think that anything can be "closed to interpretation"? It seems to me that nothing is ever interesting unless it is open to multiple interpretations, and I think everything is unless its author decides to impose unnecessary interpretations on the player and not allow them to extract their own meaning from it.

One reason why works which encourage "find the real meaning" approach are interesting is because they help people learn how to switch from one mindset to another. Regardless of whether it involves emotions (art) or logic (puzzles).

I don't doubt the positive effect randomness can make, but then, the randomness is just a small player and hence not that valuable as something that has clear purpose.

Not sure I am clear enough. Feel free to point out ambiguous parts.

[godatplay]

I think the reason that incompatibility exists, as an aside, is that language is often simplistic and overly abstract, and reality is far more complex than language can deal with. So just because the same thing can be explained / interpreted in dozens of ways linguistically doesn't mean it's subjective, it just means that different people attempt to simplify it in different ways, because it's too complex for them to deal with as a whole, so they pick and choose specific parts of it, simplify those parts, construct a theory about those parts, and we call it an interpretation. But interpretations are often laughably simple compared to how complex the thing being interpreted is, which is often beyond the powers of language or even the human mind. In contrast to language, art deals with reality through directly portraying something, in a "pointing" fashion. So it can convey a bit more complexity than language can, although it too has its limits.

Woah...that just blew my mind.   I've been trying to put into words how I feel about the objective nature of art.  This is about the best way I can think to explain it.  I hope it's ok that I quote you on my website...

With regards to this discussion, I think that a creator's statement could help, but it needs to be worded extremely carefully in order to be as helpful as it could be.  So far, a design port mortem is the best way I could think of to do this.

[Kneecaps]

Paul gets ten thumbs up from me (out of five).

First off, just like painters do tons of traditional studies before they create "High Art", I believe that game developers should prove to themselves and others that they are competent with making games before venturing into the "art game" realm.  A solid understanding of game mechanics, player responses, graphics, sound, etc will really help art games become more expressive.

On topic, I think that there should only be a creator's statement for a game after:
1. There has been significant response to the game.
2. The audience wants a creator's statement.
3. The creator is willing to share his vision of the game.