ThE MESSENGER - Franco-American School of New York

4
Art: what is it? That’s a pretty good philosophical
question, and, depending on what and
whom you study, you’re going to get a lot of different
answers. For me, art is a representation of abstract
concepts through means of symbolism and creativity.
Art is about the human mind and its varying,
faceted interpretations of life and all of its succeeding
events. Art isn’t limited by tradition, and the
means by which it is conveyed
are not subject to arbitrary restrictions.
Art manifests itself
in book form just as it does in
dirt because it transcends the
material through which it was
made by appealing to the ideal
and the symbolic in us, by appealing
to our reason.
Today, art is taking on
many different forms. Books
are becoming less tangible and
more and more digital. Movies
are disappearing from the big
screen and transferring over
to the small and the mobile.
The big things in music aren’t
albums anymore; they’re actually
live concerts.
But here’s one more change that may not just
be recognizing reality, but a matter of opinion: video
games can now be art.
Consider a couple of the video games that
have come out over the past few years. Consider
Grand Theft Auto IV, which tells the tale of a thirty
year old Eastern European immigrant, Niko Bellic,
who comes to America in search of the American
Dream. He arrives in Liberty City (NYC) to be greeted
by a cousin who, many years prior, had done as he
did. Soon, however, Bellic finds that America’s streets
aren’t really paved with gold, that his cousin doesn’t
own the mansions he claimed he had, and that life
in Liberty City can be just as painful and violent as
life in his home country. As he attempts to restart
his life, he gets bogged down with organized crime
as the debt and the shadows that had haunted him
in Eastern Europe come to bite him even when he’s
a quarter of the way across the world, in the land of
the free and the home of the brave. As the stoic main
character goes through the storyline, he meets more
and more people, each with their own problems,
their own outlooks on life, and their own meanings.
Although Grand Theft Auto IV may be crass, violent,
and pornographic at times, this only adds on to artistic
conception and vision of the lonely, biting, greediness
that can be New York City. It’s a game that has
more layers than possibly imaginable, a game that is
deep in meaning and rich in ideas, giving it a unique
ability to attract people from each end of the intellectual
spectrum.
Or how about Fallout: New Vegas, a game
centered on civilization’s post-nuclear apocalypse?
The world ended with a loud bang on October 23rd,
2077, as China and the United States engage in The
Great War, in which the two countries launch their
respective atomic bombs at each other following a
Second Cold War. Your character is a courier working
for the Mojave Express in the vast expanse of the
Mojave Desert in 2281, and the world is still heavily
Opinion
Ju n e 2012
The Evolution of Video Games: Is It Art Now?
YES! NOT REALLY!
By Olivier Weiss
scarred from the nuclear Armageddon
two centuries ago. There is a
power struggle over the control of
the Hoover Dam between a U.S.based
government called the New
California Republic (NCR) and
Caesar’s Legion, an authoritarian,
slave-holding regime with a cult of
personality centered
around
Caesar, and Robert
House, an
enigmatic billionaire
genius
who protected Las Vegas from
nuclear destruction in 2077 and is
still alive, through his own genius,
in 2281, forwarding his vision of
a free New Vegas with an atmosphere
of decadence without
elitism. Your character is in the
middle of it all, and must decide
whether to help one of these three
sides, or help himself control New
Vegas.
Through amazing dialogue,
thousands of sub-quests that are indirectly linked to
the main storyline, and a Rat Pack-Sinatra-cool-‘50s
atmosphere, Fallout: New Vegas truly captivates, not
just because of its dark, caustic, dripping humor or
violence, but also because it confronts the player with
different philosophies of life, hard moral choices, and
an overwhelming sense of building fun and achievement
as the game goes on and on. In short, Fallout:
New Vegas is art.
Assassin’s Creed, Portal, the Halo series, the Elder
Scrolls series, Heavy Rain, Red Dead Redemption,
the list of amazing, artistic video games goes on and
on. Video games can aspire to great things.
They can be insightful, profound, and revelatory
just as they can be insipid, stupid, and total
trash. Just because Call of Duty is a waste of $60
doesn’t mean that the Fallout series is as well, just like
how Twilight is a waste of paper, but Crime
Illustration by Louis Le Jamtel
and Punishment is worth being assigned by
a school for summer reading.
Whether you buy my argument or not, video
games are no longer limited to Pac-Man. As technology
improves, so video games will become less and
less restricted, and so they will become a part of the
mainstream, just as movies had a century ago. If you
are an adult and you pride yourself in intellectual
curiosity and open-mindedness, please do yourself a
favor and try one of the games I’ve listed. I promise
you, you won’t regret it.
By Emanuel Wickenburg
Every single video game requires creativity,
skill, intellect and painstaking hours of
work to produce. What, then, differentiates
it from a painting, a novel, a poem, a song,
or any other result of similar skill and effort
that is considered an ‘art’? Some would say
that nothing does, that Call of Duty is just
as much an art form as the “Mona Lisa.”
I believe there is a difference.
I believe that art is defined not just by
what is put into the making of it, but also
by the emotional effect it has on people. Art
should convey something valuable to the
beholder; a sculpture or a painting may offer
a different view, the artist’s unique way of looking at
things and finding aesthetic beauty in elements of real
life, a book or film can transmit the author’s or the filmmaker’s
ideas, and a song can inspire, can provoke emotion.
Video games may have potential to do this, but
they haven’t sufficiently explored that possibility yet. A
video game doesn’t teach anything, doesn’t enlighten, and
doesn’t give a fresh perspective on life, because while play-
ing, the gamer is in charge and simply “acts” as in real life.
The video game offers an imitation of everyday life.
Not only do video games fail to expand people’s
minds in the way art should, they also have a negative
impact on people’s lives. Art is supposed to help people
in some way, and if something has the opposite effect it
shouldn’t qualify as art.
After all, who would want to succeed in real life
when there is a much simpler virtual world where you
don’t have to worry about consequences for actions and
your only objective is not to get killed? Real life seems
complicated and overwhelming in comparison, and all
your energy is transferred to succeeding in an electronically
generated, escapist world. This is not my conception
of a work of art.
Finally, video games may have a negative effect
on public health. Scientists continue to investigate the
correlation between exploding child obesity rates in the
US and the growth of the video game industry among
many factors. It is logical that many kids and teens would
not want to run around outdoors and sweat when they
could spend the day comfortably glued to their sofa, maneuvering
a virtual world and exerting only the muscles
in their thumbs. The obesity epidemic and lack of exercise
drastically shorten life span and reduce quality of life.
Taken a bit further they have been projected to cause a
tremendous tax burden on the country due to the extra
medical support needed.
For these reasons, video games are an industry,
rather than an art, which is supposed to benefit Mankind.
That being said, video games may have the potential
to become an art if executed differently; and, after
all, maybe it’s the fact that they are not an art form that
makes them so fun.