I found myself drawn in by the amazing immersive, historical environment shown in the game trailer. I was also very interested in how Sessler emphasized the function of form, and how this related to the theme of agency that plays out in the video game (quote starts at about 2:25 in the video):
"It only can work as a game. The unique agency and complicity of the player in the game's narrative is part of its commentary. This isn't a game filled with player choice. But it is the best game about the choices we make as a person and a people, their consequences, and their uncertainty of absolution..."How does this relate to Shakespeare? I'm thinking of discussions I've had with Paul or Britton about the status of video games today. They face the same thing that theater faced in Shakespeare's day -- they thrive as something immensely popular, but wither under the stigma of not being legitimate in mainstream society.
I may be hasty to say so, but if Sessler's review is to be trusted, something like Bioshock compares to what one of Shakespeare's signature pieces (like King Lear or Hamlet) did for theater: it makes you quit the conservative reactiveness to the medium and instead requires you to pay attention because something very important is going on here. I haven't bought or played the game, but I tend to agree with Sessler's prediction that this game promises to be ground breaking as a proof that video games are serious art, and not just play. As a teacher, I could see a hundred ways that the game could introduce serious discussion about history, ethics, identity, etc.
My teenage son seems pleased that I'm seriously interested in buying and playing Bioshock Infinite...
When posted this video trailer on Google+ recently, a colleague, Laura Gibbs, pointed me to a serious academic reading of the game by Roger Travis of PlaythePast -- a rather serious group blog about games, gamification, etc.
Are you taking video games seriously -- I mean, beyond the standard worries about waste of time or troubling content? Maybe Shakespeare would have been a game creator were he alive today...
Update (3/26/13)
Roger Travis pointed me to another post in which he's analyzed this game: "That Bioshock is Tragedy" on his Living Epic blog. He applies classical genres to critiquing contemporary video games and theorizes interactivity in some interesting ways. It's a lot to wrap my head around -- video games as a reprisal of oral culture with its improvisational and interactive qualities? Fascinating.
Video games are interesting because I think appreciating them as art requires lots of time. You don't just look at a screen shot of a video game, like you would look at a painting; you invest hours in it, sometimes whole days to playing. I guess that's similar to watching lots of movies, which I would say we've validated as art, but it is a huge time commitment to enjoy this kind of art.
ReplyDeleteTime commitment and intellectual commitment...and I can't decide if that makes me more or less wary of them. Interesting.
DeleteDr. Burton, it's so awesome to have you in this discussion. I've been looking a lot at Bioshock Infinite too, and been having much the same struggle as you about buying it (although I don't have an Xbox, a TV, or a gaming PC, so pretty easy to see the conclusion there...). I really liked Kotaku's review relating it to a sort of animated radio play. That makes sense to me and helps frame how to view it as art.
ReplyDeleteSomething I've been particularly struck by is that games, like a lot of other art forms, are actually multiple instances of art at the same time. There's the voice acting (the radio play connection), the story itself, and the visual graphics, all of which have been handled pretty well elsewhere, but then there's the game mechanics and the interactivity with the player. This is the area that hasn't been well-mapped before and, as the many reviews of Bioshock Infinite already reveal, the one piece missing for games to really explode as a profound experience unlike any art before it.
To your point, Rachel, I've thought about that, too, and there's another Shakespeare connection there. After Shakespeare's death, many of his plays were performed with significant cuts because they were seen as just "too long" for audiences to last. After Shakespeare, plays trended to shorter and shorter lengths, until today's standard 2 1/2 hours or so. Our games today are really long, especially if you want to explore everything, but as we begin to understand the ways to deliver narrative and good gameplay together, and as games go more mainstream as art, I predict games will be shorter. Victorian novels provide another good example of this trend.
This is exciting stuff. Again, thanks and welcome to the conversation, Dr. B.
As an aggregate art form, video games join the epic, opera, and cinema in including multiple genres or media. They are capacious in ways less complex genres or forms are not. At a time when new media is routinely accused of fragmenting and shortening our attention, the video game (or certain varieties thereof) offers itself as an engaging alternative. Rather than think in terms of length of performance, it may be more useful to think in terms of length of commitment and intensity of engagement. Gamers immerse themselves in both virtual worlds and among the communities that play / appreciate them. Moreover, there is a periodicity and evolution to experiencing these games. Think of those who hang on for the next version of Starcraft, Halo, etc. In considering video games as art, one shouldn't separate this from the total cultural package -- which combines familiar varieties of art with digital culture in ways prior arts haven't experienced.
ReplyDelete