Why Art Games are Important | How Avant-Garde Games have Changed Game Design - revartsgaming.com

Why Art Games are Important | How Avant-Garde Games have Changed Game Design

The Game Overanalyser
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This video traces the History of Art Games in our medium, and how they have been instrumental in changing game design. Often referred to as avant-garde games, art games like the marriage, passage, the graveyard and the path have often been dismissed when they first released, but now with the benefit of history, we get a sense of how influential they have been in transforming our assumptions about designing games.

To build this case, we examine the specifics of how these games have influenced more mainstream titles, as well as use the work of brian schrank, who”s work on avant-garde games has been instrumental in defining and identifying the avant-garde in games. What we find, is that not only do art games show a continuity between art history and games, they have fundamentally shifted how we think about our medium, challenging the assumption we hold as inviolable convention, and have inspired all of our creative sensibilities, perhaps without us even noticing

Sources

-Uncharted’s unlikely inspirations – Gamesutra

-Tale of Tales, Lets make a Video Game! -Indie cade

– Jonathan Blow Design Reboot

-Play Beyond Flow : A Theory of Avant Garde games Brain Schrank

-Avant Garde Video Games -Brian Schrank

18 Comments

  1. I seriously think we need to come up with a better term than “Interactive Experience”.Video Games are becoming so diverse that new words are needed to describe them.Games as games = GamesGames as sport = eSportGames as art = “interactive experience”?I’m a huge supporter of Games As Art, but sometimes it can be difficult to express.

  2. Thanks for creating a lovely, concise summary of a point I find it hard to make when discussing games with my friends and colleges. I now have a reference.
    I shouldn't given the history of computer games, but I still find it surprising how smugly intolerant of the avant-garde even some smart players can be, when extremes in other fields at least have some respect and place.
    (Not pointing at my long-suffering friends and colleges, mind you, but the general climate makes the conversation more difficult at times.)
    Even in other popular art forms, most people just for instance ignore Merzbow in confusion, or shudder and decide not to finish watching something by the Bros. Quay–but there isn't a culture of holding these kinds of works in disdain like there is in games, from what I've seen. Some small snark by some people, of course, but not the vocal shared community identity associated with derision.
    Of course, games are so very new, and arose from media aimed at kids, and ask a lot of identification from the player, and have individual as well as medium-wide literacy learning curves, and are often quite expensive, and… so it's not actually that surprising.
    But it's been a bit frustrating to not see this perspective, the value of the avant-garde to a medium as a whole, come up very often; and this is very nicely expressed.

  3. That’s is a fantastic video with some really interesting insights. I hope your channel starts to get the noterietay it deserves

  4. Fascinating an really well constructed video. The length was perfect too. Please keep making these! Have you ever thought about writing articles in the same style?

  5. Really appreciate you keep making these videos! Keep up the good work.

  6. Beautifully done! I'm working on a syllabus for a Music in Video Games course that I hope to teach one day and I've added this video to a list of resources. Thank you for your work.

  7. It's kind of the reason why I think calling something "original" is mostly just pointless.

  8. imagine talking about "art games" – and not mentioning Nier Automata first and foremost , lol

  9. I'm an art game worshipper , I've an art game from 10 years in my phone , even I changed many phones but I keep that game, from java to android , I became coder due to that game , my wish is to increase that game story as it feels it end too soon and can including many versions

  10. The Avant-Garde is so underappreciated and dismissed by the mainstream, it's depressing how narrowminded and conformist a lot of gamers are. It's the Avant-Garde what makes an art form everlasting and ever-changing. The mainstream seems to have entered a dark age, I think. They're focusing on the profits, rather than offering new ideas and new ways of experiencing them.

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