The debate about whether video games are art continues unabated, but maybe there's another question that transcends it: Are video games just a smaller simulation of reality? Or, is life as we know it a form of video game? John Tierney, the libertarian former Op-Ed columnist for the NYT, ponders the notion that consciousness is digital and virtual:
Until I talked to Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University, it never occurred to me that our universe might be somebody else’s hobby. I hadn’t imagined that the omniscient, omnipotent creator of the heavens and earth could be an advanced version of a guy who spends his weekends building model railroads or overseeing video-game worlds like the Sims.It's "The Matrix," "Blade Runner" and Errol Morris's superior and even more challenging and imaginative "Fast, Cheap and Out of Control" merged into one. And, as David Cronenberg will tell you, evolution is not limited to the organic...But now it seems quite possible. In fact, if you accept a pretty reasonable assumption of Dr. Bostrom’s, it is almost a mathematical certainty that we are living in someone else’s computer simulation.
This simulation would be similar to the one in “The Matrix,” in which most humans don’t realize that their lives and their world are just illusions created in their brains while their bodies are suspended in vats of liquid. But in Dr. Bostrom’s notion of reality, you wouldn’t even have a body made of flesh. Your brain would exist only as a network of computer circuits.
You couldn’t, as in “The Matrix,” unplug your brain and escape from your vat to see the physical world. You couldn’t see through the illusion except by using the sort of logic employed by Dr. Bostrom, the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford.
Dr. Bostrom assumes that technological advances could produce a computer with more processing power than all the brains in the world, and that advanced humans, or “posthumans,” could run “ancestor simulations” of their evolutionary history by creating virtual worlds inhabited by virtual people with fully developed virtual nervous systems. [...]
There would be no way for any of these ancestors to know for sure whether they were virtual or real, because the sights and feelings they’d experience would be indistinguishable. But since there would be so many more virtual ancestors, any individual could figure that the odds made it nearly certain that he or she was living in a virtual world.
If life is (like) a video game, then what we experience is based on math (intangible, yet real principles/causes) and there must be a "solution" (tangible effect)...a way to intentionally achieve the objective.
What fundamental logical principles are these video games based on?
Non-contradiction, contrastive thinking, causality, and growth.
Why do we fight these principles in our personal lives, YET hold everyone else accountable to these same principles?
Go ahead, prove me right and use these principles on me in your response...
Jim, this sounds exactly like a movie called "The 13th Floor" with Craig Bierko, Gretchen Mol, and Vincent D'Onofrio that came out about 2 months (I think) after "The Matrix".
The basic premise of the movie (from what I remember, which isn't much) is that a guy has built a program that is a complete simulation of a city with completely independent thinking people, only to find out that he lives in a city that is someone else's virtual city.
From what I remember the movie was good but quite far from great, and (of course) nowhere near reaching the level that "Dark City" reached the previous year with it's "the world is not what you think it is" premise. However, "Dark City" was better because there was an interesting reason behind why things were happening, and why there was a fake world (especially if you don't listen to the opening narration). "Dark City" also had a far better visual sense than "13th Floor", in addition to just general storytelling superiority. From what I understand, Cronenberg "eXistenZ" follows along these lines as well, but I haven't seen it. For me "Dark City" easily trumps "The Matrix" "Blade Runner" "13th Floor" and the others as the best of the "Reality isn't real" genre.
Kyle,
"eXistenZ"'s story does follow along these themes. Once you've input yourself into such a world, can you ever release yourself from it, and since in the movie in the end you're not sure which world they actually started in...well, it's a pretty mind boggling experience. One that is just as compelling as "Dark City", though simpler in it's visual motifs.
But to disown "Bladerunner" in any way would be to disown the genre itself. "13th Floor" is the mongoloid of the bunch.
Thanks for the fascinating read, Jim.
It reminds me of Metal Gear Solid 2 (a game which, if any, proves that video games can, indeed, be art). One of the themes explored within the game is the digitizing of memory and thought, and the main character, Raiden, goes through a similar revelation where he learns that nothing is as it seems; his world an illusion of sorts.
I think Roger is such a great commentator, and I love reading his thoughts, but he's very wrong about video games. And I do have to wonder how many he's actually played, as many video games ARE a means to an end with relatively little variation in narrative path.
Interactivity (in the few games that I WOULD call art) is not simply used to provide variety, multiple narrative paths for gamers to choose from, but rather, it tends to take on more postmodern applications, attempting to deeply implicate the gamer into the experience, capitalizing on the fact that gamers are forced to deal directly with the conflicts (even if these conflicts are predetermined).
If video games can truly be "high art," Metal Gear Solid 2 certainly isn't an example. It's a complete mess in both raw gameplay, controls, voice acting, and in basic narrative. Really, it's that bad. As Emerson quotes so often, "There's nothing I like less than bad arguments for a view that I hold dear."
-- Daniel Dennett
Michael, Andy:
Metal Gear 2 and 3 aren't necessarily great pieces of art because of their game play; though they do some ingenious things with it. If they are to be considered art it's because of the themes they deal with and how they deal with them. There's a moment at the end of Metal Gear 3 when Snake finally beats the person who trained him in a field of white flowers. But it's not over, she's still alive. You wander around on screen for a moment, then realize that when she said she wanted to die she meant it, with a breath of finality, you realize that you have to approach the body, and press the square on the controller which fires the gun, finishing her off for good. To place the idea of killing in such a way in the hands of the player is genius and makes you think about what you're doing. It really gives you pause, and draws you in emotionally.
It would be easy to look at a Picasso painting and say, yeah but the eyes aren't in the right spot. The same goes for a video game, if you don't like the controls, it hardly means it's not worth playing.
Metal Gear Solid 2 controls perfectly well for me, and the gameplay is quite fun (which is most important). The voice acting I also find to be quite effective in most places. I especially love Cygan's performance, as well as Flynn's. The others all serve their purpose (like Barry Dennen's stylized Fatman).
I will certainly grant that its narrative is messy. I would never deny that. In fact, the last hour or so would make most writers' heads want to explode, and many would probably cringe at Kojima's love for soapbox monologues (though, these I've come to find to be rather charming affectations, an auteurist stamp on his games).
Though, a great deal of streamlining to the plot would certainly be a disastrous decision given the game's thematic premise.
What makes Metal Gear Solid 2 so brilliant, though, is that it completely rethinks the workings of the medium (or perhaps it is better to say it thinks them through to their logical conclusion). It draws a parallel between the gamer and story unlike any game has ever done, and by the game's end, one comes to realize that Kojima has no less implied that you are Raiden, the Playstation 2 is Arsenal Gear, the Game Itself is the GW Artificial Intelligence, and Kojima himself the Patriots, tricking you into playing a simulation of a game you already played (Metal Gear Solid), Yet he was still able to constantly dash our expectations, as is so eloquently and accurately addressed in this formal analysis of the game's design: http://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/DOTM_TOC.htm
While the narrative is certainly not flawless, once you get beyond the problems in its presentation, you find a startling re-imagining of that postmodern perpetuity of self-reflexivity.
Even if one can't forgive certain aspects of MGS2's presentation, it is the one game I've come across that has demonstrated a fundamental understanding of what the medium can be, and how its interactivity can be manipulated to enhance the artistic experience, and not distract from it. Indeed, Metal Gear Solid 2 is art BECAUSE it is a game, not in spite of this fact.
I'll stop there, though, as I fear I may have strayed too far from the initial topic...
Excellent points, but I still don't like the game. I just wanted to play as Solid Snake, but instead was stuck with some random whiny, blond, and eventually naked man/adolescent for six hours.
I also still have issues with the controls. Click the analog stick to aim in first person, which you almost always have to do. It wouldn't be so bad if the button wasn't so touchy and you could move in first person, which you couldn't.
Many critics just accept this. Because it is Metal Gear, it has weird controls. A game like Splinter Cell does control much better and effectively, and the narrative makes sense. To me, control is the true art of a video game, before any lengthy character monologues.
Getting back on topic, a video game becomes art when you forget you are playing a game. This is similar to the way I forget I'm watching TV when I'm really involved, or when I forget I'm watching a movie, or listening to music, or looking at a painting or reading a book. You lose yourself in the medium. It becomes a form of reality. And you can't enjoy a book when the prose is clunky or a movie when it doesn't work.
Similarly, I can't enjoy a video game when I have to remember that I have to hit the shoulder buttons to select an item or I can only hide under certain objects. It's more like operating machinery than having real fun.
The notion that MGS 2 holds status as legitimate art is not one I will disclaim -- some of us just happen to think it's particularly bad art. That Kojima has the cojones to address complex ideas and take a postmodern approach to a lucrative, mainstream franchise is certainly admirable. He just does such a bad job of it sometimes. His exposition is clunky, his melodrama ridiculous and he often fails to integrate his frankly superficial thematic concerns with the gameplay. Squeezing in 45 minutes of clumsy, sophomoric philosophizing after several hours of high school dialogue and (pretty awesome) stealth combat action doesn't make me any less disgruntled or wistful for something smarter -- like rocketing 12 year-olds in Halo or staring at my cat chase its tail and eat bugs. Yeah, I'm being a bit hyperbolic, but pretense and sloppy attempts at depth will not aid in the uphill climb to get the medium's artistic potential recognized.
While I'm on a roll: I have to quibble with Andy's assertion that "a video game becomes art when you forget you are playing a game." I dunno, man. Some of the best art constantly reminds you of its own artifice. I think Ebert mentions this in his "Ali: FEtS" essay. Godard does this, Lynch somewhat, hell, any epistolary novel. Can't think of any more right now cause it's late and I just saw Superbad, but you get my drift.
I stand corrected.