MORE THAN JUST A GAME

By Donald Brackett


“Video games are the art form for the digital age.
They combine a variety of disciplines and skills
to transmit the same emotional responses
provided by paintings, photography and film.”


Jean-Paul Amore, Program Coordinator,
Game Development/Game Design




As one accustomed to writing what used to be called art criticism, it has taken me a little while to warm up to video games as a contemporary form of artistic expression, even long after accepting video itself as a serious and valid medium with which to express aesthetic ideas and social issues.
But once I saw this digital medium more accurately, not as an alternative to but as an extension of visual art’s core themes through the technological marriage of television and computers, I realized that there is much more to video games than meets the eye. Mechanical bride indeed, Dr. McLuhan, once again you have been proven correct!
Video games are serious business. I know, since every time I teach my English Communications course to the game design students, I immediately realize that I’m talking to the future tense, and sometimes it can be. I’m speaking to beings from a rapidly transforming age who seem to have absorbed all the art-forms that preceded them and found a novel way to express age old ideas and feelings in a new and utterly compelling manner. My agreement with them is a simple one, I’ll teach you about English communications and you teach me about video games. So far, they have certainly delivered on their side of the bargain. Especially since one of my assignments allowed them to write a review essay on the latest video game release of their choice.
What began as somewhat of a novelty in the 1970’s has expanded from a niche market to the entertainment mainstream and has even influenced other forms of art making along the way, and will generate upwards of 12 billion dollars this year. Serious business, but not only has the format become wildly successful across many demographics, the gaming industry has also been responsible for many advancements in the personal computer domain itself: sound cards, graphics cards, 3d graphic accelerators, CD Rom and DVD Rom drives being just a few of the innovations that gaming bestowed on the rest of the “straight” computer world.



Ben Sawyer of Digitalmill has observed that “The game industry chain is made up of six connected but distinctive layers: the capital and publishing layer, involved in paying for development of new titles and seeking returns through licensing of the titles; the product and talent layer, involving developers, designers and artists, who may be working under individual contracts or as part of in-house development teams; the production and tools layer, which generates content production tools, game development middleware, customizable game engines, and production management tools; the distribution layer of the publishing industry, involved in generating and marketing catalogs of games for retail and online distribution; the hardware layer, with the providers of the underlying platform generally being console-based; and finally, the end-users layer, involving the players of the games themselves.”
This industry has evolved light years away from the day in 1958 when a nuclear scientist named William Higinbotham invented a “game” called Tennis for Two, something he originally intended strictly as an electrical experiment. Even earlier on in 1948, during a time which now seems almost medieval by comparison to today’s stunning content, Thomas Goldsmith and Estle Mann created perhaps the oldest known game, one with the fantastic title of Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device.
The complexity and subtlety of the contemporary gaming industry are well understood and outlined by Program Coordinator JP Amore: “The Game Development and Game Design programs are a community of faculty, students and industry looking to inspire creative solutions, unique designs and artistic expression to the new wave of video games. It takes people of vision to seize this challenge and opportunity. Expanding beyond the idea that games are entertainment, we investigate meaningful ways to design and develop games that allow users to explore, learn, empathize, and experience development in new ways. Our programs expose and explore theory and application across multiple creative and technical disciplines.”
Indeed, the layers of George Brown College’s Gaming department are just as comprehensive as the industry itself, since it has been created to simulate the actual field and to generate the professional designers who will make the next astonishing leaps forward in this supersonic collision of art and business. As Amore outlines it: in Game Development, students develop both 2-dimensional and 3-dimensional artistic abilities by learning concept art, sprite and pixel art, modeling, texturing, animation and level design. Taught by faculty with industry experience and mentored by local game industry leaders, students will eventually develop games for commercial, educational and even more “serious” purposes.
Here, students have the unique opportunity to develop commercial quality games in a video game studio-simulated environment, at times developed with industry partners and professional game programmers. It is anticipated that graduates of the Game Development program will find employment in the game industry at an entry-level position. Prior to graduation, each student will assemble a portfolio/demo of their creative work demonstrating their ability in game development and highlighting their chosen area of specialization.



In the related Game Design program, students develop their production and design abilities in management scenarios by learning design documentation, milestone and pipeline scheduling, game design theory and psychology. The Advanced Digital Design program responds to a growing need within the design industry for a new talent and skill-set - one that crosses the traditional discipline boundaries of advertising, industrial and graphic design and new media design. This program is designed to give power back to designers, teaching them the latest real-time interactive tools and technologies. With the integration of these technologies into public and commercial settings, such as museums and retail environments, as well as education and medical sectors, designers need to be armed with key knowledge of interface design, information visualization and virtual spaces. They have a mission to create friendly systems and interfaces that dramatically improve the lives of consumers and sellers alike.
One famous cultural theorist, Angela Ndalianis, has even bravely compared the video game industry to the complex Baroque art of the seventeenth century, with its equivalent fascination for opulent spectacle. This was definitely the point when I realized that perhaps we should all pay more attention to what these young people are saying and doing with their creative consoles.
I think it was the great German comedian Nietzsche who once remarked that the best students always end up teaching their teachers, and this is precisely what has occurred in the case of my English Communications students. They have given me much food for thought as I navigate the new forms of communication at play in today’s hyper-accelerated cultural arena. They have also alerted me to the fact that the line between science fiction and science fact is often just a keystroke away. Can the realm of Star Trek’s virtual holo-deck really be that far away?


DONALD BRACKETT

Professor Donald Brackett is a culture critic specializing in the history, theory and practice of art, design, and architecture. He currently teaches art history and contemporary art issues at Centennial College, as well as design issues/history for George Brown College, and Art History for The Life Institute of Ryerson University.

He has been the Executive Director of both the Professional Arts Dealers Association of Canada and the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. Brackett is a well known art historian, critic and curator, who was for twelve years was the art critic for CJRT FM, Ryerson’s professional radio station at the time. The author of many essays, articles and monographs on art and design history and contemporary culture, he is also the author of two recently published books on the subject of creative collaboration in the arts.