It's hard for me to believe, but it's been almost 10 years since the days when I spent nearly every waking, non-school hour on IRC. Now, this isn't some hacker story; it has a purpose. Those many years ago, one of my friends happened upon a very unusual tech demo enclosed within a 64 kilobyte file.

Actually, let me correct myself; it was 63.5 kilobytes. Yeah, those extra 500 or so bytes seem negligible, but they were pivotal to the purpose of that particular demo.

The demonstration in question was, and remains, .the .product.

Boy, has the demoscene come a long way.

Having found its way into non-passive media, it's left me mulling over the old question but turned on its head. For better or worse, it stirs up that tumultuous debate once more but, this time, with a twist.

For all their bluster, people argue that video games can be, should be.. are art. Today, I ask from the other end of the spectrum: Can art become game?

The Demoscene and Its Tinkerings

Despite having origins steeped heavily in technology and algorithms, the demoscene has always been an avenue for rather unique visual stimulus. Stemming from origins so humble as environment-mapped, metallic spheres, the evolved displays which have come forth from the demoscene have taken on a life of their own and all but beg to be seen as high-art.

And who is anyone to deny them that honor? I have witnessed journeys through abstract landscapes with ambient tunes shepherding me from destination to destination. As have I have read the collective creators' voice in prose. While flawed (what method of expression in action isn't to some degree , these terse journeys through sight and sound speak volumes about themselves and those create them. Some have even been crafted well enough to the point of leaving lasting impressions. Through the years, my only complaint has been the lack of interactivity. I've been waiting with baited breath for the day technology would allow the look-but-can't-touch mantra to forever vanish from the face of the trade.

Lately, I've been getting my wish.

Through some strange twist, those demos in passing I grew so familiar with in the past have been coming alive in new venues: consoles. I've been both surprised and perplexed by the results we've been shown. Today, I'll be talking about a couple of them and seeing where that takes me.

The particular two on subject today are .theprodukkt's .deTuned and Plastic's Linger in Shadows, and what a peculiar pair they make.

.deTuned

In what feels like irony, my description of .deTuned seems no less bizarre than the experience itself. Set in a purgatorial oblivion of deep azure, .deTuned's interaction feels like David Lynch's interpretation of a Stretch Armstrong enacted upon a James Bond villain. Yes, I mean every word of that.

In .theprodukkt's eyes, .deTuned isn't so much a game as it is a “Music Visualizer”. Now, despite the developers' own words about .deTuned not being a game, it's still under consideration due to its venue and purpose.

What's unfortunate about .deTuned is just how little there really is to say about it. I've gotten quite a bit of mileage out of it and have enjoyed my time spent with it, having loaded it up for the uninitiated when company comes calling. Its problem is one of aimlessness. Recalling my earlier comment about a “Stretch Armstrong”, .deTuned can more succinctly be described as a digital toy. You play with it for a while upon purchasing, and then, on the shelf it goes until something stirs you to play with it again. It's visually stimulating at times, and it performs a few interesting audio tricks once you find them, but in retrospect, it's a hollow experience.

.deTuned's fatal flaw may be that it was designed as nothing more than a “Music Visualizer”. However, I can't fully bring myself to believe that. A wholly unique audio visualizer featuring characters and morphing that doesn't allow for a demo mode when playing music of your choosing? Something just doesn't add up, and in turn, I can't get behind .theprodukkt's claims that it was meant to be what they've coined it.

.deTuned is a failure as many things, but I wouldn't call it a waste of time. It can lead us to interesting and more wonderful places. As could this next interactive set-piece.

Linger in Shadows

I found so many things to love about Linger in Shadows last year: Its art, its rendering, its layered symbolism. It marked what was, in my opinion, a milestone in bringing interactive art into a larger world. Plastic created a real beast in Linger in Shadows. It's an experiment in user-manipulation presented in the scope of a cinematic tapestry. Regretfully, this works against it as strongly as it does in its favor.

For all its ambition in the fields of visual art and symbolism, Linger in Shadows is a predominantly passive experience. As the player, you find yourself viewing visually stunning yet brief vignettes without enacting your will upon them. That is, until each ends before violently returning to its origin. This is what our role in Linger in Shadows becomes: Finding where the pieces fit.

As players, viewers, maestros, or what have you, our impact on Linger in Shadows in action isn't quite bare minimum, but it's hardly robust. We're tasked with stringing events together, but the sequence is hardly any of our own choosing. We become destined to relive the same series of events end over end, being given only but glimpses of the world beyond the frustum.

It's art on rails.

Speaking this way about Plastic's demo-gone-art makes it seem like I was disappointed. Hardly the case. In all honesty, my expectations were met quite well upon release, but I owe that in no small part to my appreciation of art in any medium and for those who attempt to breach barriers. 'Linger' does attempt to breach those barriers. Its problem stems from how it attempts to do so.

If you said Linger in Shadows isn't a game, I wouldn't disagree with you. I'd firmly stand my ground, proclaiming it as interactive art, at best. My reasoning is founded upon the notion of Linger in Shadows following a different set of guidelines.

'Linger' owes most of how it conveys itself and its interactions to the language of film. Its methods of establishment, progression, exposition, and catharsis are all revealed in a passive manner. Hardly what games are about, wouldn't you say? It falls prey to one of the many pratfalls that plague game narratives: passive narratives and forced immersion. We're not learning about the world through personal exploration; we're being funneled down a path with little to no control over how we experience the events laid before us. It feels like we're being denied something fantastic what with how we've been granted the ability to scrub through the scenes in search of the next link in the fence. Or maybe the statement being made by 'Shadows' is that we are, in reality, that sprawling spectre recounting our own personal history and contemplating whether we should have taken on 'Death' itself.

Heady stuff.

Now, with all this having been said, I can get to the heart of the issue.

Introspective Objectivity?

Neither of these experiments in the medium of art-versus-interactivity succeed as game. They find themselves relying too heavily upon foundations discovered and developed by other mediums and methods of entertainment and play.

But what is the real problem with this?

I, along with many others, find there's a constant struggle within game design these days. It's a malady causing most projects severe issues. Most designers, artists, and programmers cannot find the proper balance in the “Vision vs. Technical” spectrum and always end up tipping the scale in either of the two sides' favor. Sony's released some rather interesting pieces of interactive art on their storefront for the PS3, but they're hardly game. Jonathan Blow's Braid has beautifully rendered worlds in a style reminiscent of hand-paintings, but the game itself is not art. A required experience, sure, but I would not call it art.

I was originally going to weigh the pros and cons of artists against programmers and who is more suited to game design, but I later decided that's a poor decision. Neither side is directly responsible for the misconceptions surrounding game design and how to advance it. Both sides are directly responsible for not wiping their slates clean and starting from the ground to work their way back up.

Everyone is to blame for making compromises.

Who we're in need of is a series of individuals who understand 'art-as-game' and vice versa as an inseparable coupling of vision and interface. However, there's a catch. There's an oft-unnoticed third party who should never be left out of the mix: Target emotion.

And I can think of a couple of guys who've been picking up the slack quite well.

Shining Forces

cloud, flOw, flOwer; thatgamecompany's Xinghan “Jenova” Chen believes a game starts not as a world concept, a controller layout, or even a story but the emotion he wishes for the audience.. The player to feel. His philosophical approach to game theory and design has led to many a debate surrounding the state of play. Particularly well-known for his personal belief in eschewing violence from the experience, his school of thought is looked upon as a tangential shift in game development. His approach to moving the soul leads me to believe someone really is striving for true unity of art and game.

I'm only repeating what most out there familiar with his work would already know, but it must be said time and time again. There may be no end to the acclaim Chen receives, but it does nothing to alter the fact that he is but a drop in an ocean of uniform thought.

Thankfully, there are some other drops out there worth noting.

Keita Takahashi; everyone knows and loves him – well, I do – as the creator and designer of games such as the Superflat Katamari Damacy 「塊魂」 and Noby Noby Boy 「のびのびＢＯＹ」, and he's garnered quite a notorious reputation. Though, I'd hardly call it any fault of his own. With his 'BOY', his attempt to encourage a community through experimentation has proven commendable despite its lukewarm reception. And while he functions on a different wavelength of thought, Noby Noby Boy has its own fair share of issues. It falls into the same grey-area of game as .deTuned. It's not quite a game, but it has a great deal more substance than the previously mentioned art-madhouse brought to us by the demoscene. Noby Noby Boy is a digital playground, and I'm not the first to have said this.

In the future, I hope to detail my personal recounts of experiences in either direction of the art → game → art debate from lesser proclaimed developers, but for now I leave you with two of the most well known proponents of alternative design theory to further my claims.

The Way Forward

There currently exist only a few shining examples furthering the concept of art becoming game and back again. Many people have made their missteps and can only learn from them in their future efforts. Hopefully, they will, in time, learn of the theories separating toy, film, and game.

We play with a toy then shelve it when we're done. We watch films but cannot intervene. We play games, but.. what? Games, digital or otherwise, should have rules, but should they have boundaries? Rules will be rewritten, and horizons must be broken. There should be no misgivings. I can wholeheartedly say that we are indeed making progress in the effort to unify art and game, but we've still a long way to go.

If anything can be culled from this wall of text, it is that art supported by a message in tandem with a sturdy mechanic should be the origin of all these experiences lest they fall into disarray. With the advent of gestural control, game theorists will find new, exciting ways to bring us into their worlds. Our bodies will be affected as well as our hearts and minds. The thought is both frightening and comforting, but such is the way of the future.

Unknown.

These are the words of but one, and it has taken a while to come to terms with exactly why I feel this way. Perhaps my whole lifetime. I do find myself wondering if in the distant future, some new form of entertainment will be born to titillate our sensory functions which will render this burgeoning debate obsolete.

Then again, I also wonder if we'll still be arguing the reasons for and against as we walk down the corridors to run through an engaging session on the holodeck.

Life is full of irony.