In general, there are two entry points to the perception of video games as art: aesthetic and conceptual. The first one reduces the conversation to the visual component: character costumes, object design, architecture. The second offers a view of the game through its structural features.
We can see that both SAAM and MOMA considered video games through design. At the same time, their understanding of design was different. The Smithsonian called actions and player participation the defining features of games, but still presented them as visual art. Reducing a game to an image, whether moving or static, is the same as reducing an opera to a set or a movie to a trailer. In contrast to the more comprehensive definition of IOMA, the SAAM view fails to capture the multilayered experience of a video game.
Computer games are a multidimensional medium that should be experienced holistically. However, there is a key thing that distinguishes it from related arts: gameplay. Gameplay is the way a player interacts with the environment, objects, and creatures in a game. It combines all the elements together and is determined by certain rules of the game – the physics of space, the mechanics of movement, the logic of interaction. No wonder MOMA puts the behavioral criterion in the first place. The other three factors, although revealed in video games in a peculiar way, are still present in other media – cinema, video art, 3D animation. But after reading a book or watching a movie, no one can say that they have experienced what happened there. Instead, in a game, you solve puzzles in Limbo, kill otherworldly creatures in The Half-Life, or make friends in The Sims. That is, the player’s choice is important here, because without it, the game simply won’t happen.
If SAAM has selected games for the exhibition that “remain in the traditional game model,” independent developers can afford to experiment. Small, not overly commercialized studios often play with one of the game’s dimensions – time, space, aesthetics, and most importantly, choice. One such studio, Galactic Cafe, released a conceptual game called The Stanley Parable in 2011. “The Stanley Parable” questions the freedom of choice as a phenomenon, both in the reality of capitalist society and in general, and in the game. This question arises at all levels of the gameplay from the beginning to the end, and even further. This is a full-fledged media art project in the form of a metagame.
This interactive novel tells the story of Stanley, an office worker who follows instructions from his computer screen every day. One day, he realizes that he has been sitting at his computer for several hours, but there are no instructions for further work. So he leaves his office and finds it completely empty. He moves through the corridors until he is faced with a choice – choose a door to the left or right. Stanley chooses the left door, at least if he follows the narrator’s voice. Yes, there is a narrator in the game. It is from him that we first learn all the information about Stanley. He guides us through the game until the victorious end, which comes pretty quickly. But for some reason, the game doesn’t end, it starts over and over again. As soon as you choose the door on the right, things get more interesting. At first, the narrator tries to rationalize the player’s actions: Stanley probably wanted to go to the far meeting room. But if you do not consistently follow the advice, but move further and further away from the first submissive ending, then twenty more endings will open up on different branches of the plot. All but the first one lead to “defeat,” although by the tenth time you begin to doubt the relevance of this word.