游戏与艺术编辑本段回目录
我曾经看到Silicon Knights创始人兼总裁Denis Dyack讨论关于有多少游戏能够被视为艺术，以及故事与游戏设置同等重要的文章。
我必须先申明，不论你是否认为游戏是“艺术”，其制作人都是一些非常有天赋的艺术家，他们擅长于创造文字，图像，动画，网格，机制或编码等。游戏产业中有无数才华横溢之人，他们在这个产业中的作用决不亚于电影，漫画或者小说的创作人。
游戏能否被当成艺术？当然，游戏平台也能够是一种艺术表达媒介（如游戏《血径迷途》）。但是，游戏是否就必须是一种艺术？也不然。有时候游戏就单纯地只是一种娱乐形式或者我们逃避现实的寄托。
商业游戏也可以是一种艺术吗？可以，商业目的也能够与艺术性结合在一起。
游戏可以只是游戏吗？当然可以，游戏也可以不用迎合任何艺术形式，并且也能够做得很好。
can games be classified as art(from gamepodunk.com)
你必须按照自己的想法去创造游戏，如果你想要制作一款基于艺术目标的游戏，或者想要通过游戏传达一种创意理念或艺术观点，那么这就是你今后应该努力去争取的目标。而如果你只是单纯地出于娱乐性并不想传达太多复杂的想法，那么也请你按照这一理念去实践你的游戏。如果你想要尝试着制作一款主流游戏，而且也有了一些艺术理念，那么就围绕着这些观点去创造游戏吧。
就像与好莱坞电影同存的独立电影，艺术类游戏也能够在满是AAA级游戏的市场中获得生存，只是它们需要不同的预算成本。同样地，那些兼具艺术与商业性的热门游戏更是具有发展潜力（游戏邦注：《时空幻境》和《House of Goo》便是这类型游戏的典型）。除此之外，那些结合了优秀的叙述，游戏设置和故事并合理执行了这些要素的游戏也能够成为高居排行榜的经典作品。
热门排行榜中的游戏总是具有以下三大特征之一：
它们是一种能够驱动游戏（以智力游戏或者模拟类游戏为典型，如《俄罗斯方块》，《Civilization》，《模拟城市》或者《模拟人生》）的系统，即虽然不存在故事，但是却因为这个系统的存在而让游戏具有乐趣。
拥有条理清晰的叙述内容（如《半条命》系列，《骇客任务》以及《Lucasarts》）。而你主要也是因为受其故事所吸引，所以能够记住并且愿意玩这些游戏。
它们在某种类型或平台的游戏中表现得比其他同类更出色（如《雷神之锤》，《光晕》，《马里奥》，《魔兽世界》或《星际争霸》）。
那些引起许多人共鸣的游戏甚至包含了以上2个或3个特征。所以我并不会对《半条命》总是名列前茅的情况感到意外。而《俄罗斯方块》虽然与《半条命2》一样都很优秀，但令其脱颖而出的原因却各不相同。
虽然格式，平台或类型并不相同，但出现在这个列表中的游戏都拥有一个共同特征——精心制作的有趣游戏玩法。
我认为这是一个不容忽视的事实。即使是一篇非常出色的故事也会因为拙劣的执行而毁于一旦。作家或者美术人员会发现，玩家都不会喜欢那些让他们感到沮丧或者措手不及，甚至会萌生出厌倦感的游戏。此外，互动性也是我们艺术媒介中另外一项有利的工具，更有趣的是，这里只有我们想不到而没有实现不了的互动形式。尽管这对于我们来说也是最大的挑战，因为如果互动性难以取得较好的结果，那么其它元素也会受到牵连。就像在电影中，一篇非常优秀的剧本会被拙劣的摄像技巧或者演员糟糕的演技所糟蹋，如果游戏玩法不尽人意或者存在不人性化的交互性，再好的故事元素或者强大的故事也难以挽回局面。
我认为，我们不应该执拗于将游戏定义为某种艺术形式，并以此为自己的事业正名。游戏当然算是一种艺术。同时，游戏作为一种多元化的媒介形式能够有不同发展方向，而这也正是这种媒介的魅力所在。
我们可以创造一款有趣的20分钟智力娱乐游戏，让忙碌的白领在午休时间或者漫长的飞行中能够更好地消磨时间，为他们的孩子提供一款平台动作类游戏或者赛车游戏，或者开发针对于年轻人的社交网络游戏，也可以在AAA级游戏中融入更多有深度的元素……那么游戏到底是不是艺术？当然了，游戏可以是艺术，但是却没有必要非是艺术不可。
游戏邦注：原文发表于2009年7月17日，所涉事件及数据以当时为准。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，作者：Craig Morrison）
Games as an art form
Craig
Saw an interesting article on Gamasutra where Silicon Knights (Eternal Darkness) founder and president Denis Dyack was quoted talking about the issue of how much games should be considered art, and how narrative can be as important if not more important than game-play.
Firstly before going into my thoughts a little I wanted to make one distinction up front. Regardless of what you think about games as ‘art’ or otherwise, many of the people making them are very much talented artists, be it with words, images, animations, meshes, mechanics or code. For me one of the best parts of my job is the people I get to work with. The talent in the industry is fantastic and they very much deserve to credited in the same way as those who make movies or create comics, or write books.
…but back to the point at hand.
I think, to me at least, that trying to categorize something as potentially broad as gaming as ‘art’ or not is a trying to paint things with too much of a generalization.
Can a game be art? Yes, a gaming platform can be used as a medium for artistic expression for sure (as indeed we have already started to see with titles like The Path), but does it have to be art? I’d say no, it doesn’t, it can just as easily be purely for entertainment or escapism (if you want to argue that is also art then sure, I think the discussion here is if games should be seen as real art, you know, in the way intellectuals like to classify art.)
Can a commercial game be art? Yes, again, you can successfully combine commercial ambitions with artistic ones.
Can a game just be a game? Yes, it can be that too! A game doesn’t have to aspire to be art if it doesn’t want to, and often that is the right approach.
You see to me, a game should be what you intend it to be, if you want to try and make a game that has only artistic goals, or you want to use it to spark creative or artistic thought that is what you should try and design your project to achieve. If you want it to be purely entertaining and not tax the deep thinkers too much, then that is what you should try and design your project around. If you want to try and make a mainstream title, but have some artistic ideas and concepts in there then you should design your games around that.
The budgets will come accordingly.
Just as indie cinema exists alongside Hollywood cinema, art-house style gaming could very well exist alongside AAA mass market titles, they just won’t have the same budgets! Likewise there is the potential for cross-over hits, particularly in a critical sense if not always in sales (Braid and House of Goo would be perfect recent examples of this). I think there is just as much space in gaming for something aspiring to be story and character driven like a good piece of independent cinema as there is the explosions and gfx of a summer blockbuster. Furthermore there is also room for those games that manage to combine narrative, gameplay and story together that when successfully executed become the classics we honour in all of our top games of all time lists.
I think that if you study most ‘best of’ lists the titles at the top of such lists usually share one of three distinctive traits.
They are either a systems driven game (like a puzzle game or a simulation, say Tetris, Civilization, Sim City or even The Sims) where there isn’t a narrative but the games are great because of their system.
Or they have a very strong narrative in an established game style (Half Life series, Deus Ex, the Lucasarts adventures). The story is what you actually remember about these games and are compelled by.
Or they do what they are designed to do better than their peers, defining moments in genre or platform gaming (Quake, Halo, Mario, Warcraft / Starcraft)
Those titles that resonate the most are usually ones that even manage to combine two of the above. It is no surprise to me that the Half Life titles are invariably close to the winners podium, or on it in such lists. Tetris though is every bit as great a game as Half-Life 2, just for very different reasons.
All of the games that appear on such lists though do share one common trait regardless of format, platform or genre.
They have good polished and fun gameplay. I think it is important to never loose sight of that fact. A fantastic narrative won’t survive shoddy implementation. A great writer or artist may see their work not fully appreciated if the user is frustrated, struggling with a control system or even worse, outright bored. With the addition of interactivity (as mentioned in the article linked at the start of this post) we are indeed adding another tool to the artistic mediums available, and the cool part is that the ways in which we apply it are only really limited by our imaginations! It is though also our greatest challenge, because if the interactivity is poor then the other elements will suffer. Just like a well written script may be ruined by poor camera work, cinematography or bad acting in a movie, a game with the best story in the world and a powerful narrative or spectacular technology pushing art will struggle to overcome poor gameplay and / or non-intuitive interactivity.
So to me we shouldn’t try and categorize games or gaming as one thing in our search for some kind of yearned for legitimization of what we do for a living. Games are most certainly capable of being works of art. Games as a medium though is a multi-faceted one capable of being pushed, pulled, poked and prodded in any number of directions, and that is the beauty of the medium.
Providing twenty minutes of fun packed puzzle entertainment for a busy adult during their lunch break or boring air flight is every bit as worthwhile as entertaining their children with a platformer or racing game or connecting teenagers and young adults through social networking games or indeed trying to inject some pathos and thought provoking moments into your AAA title…can a game be art? Sure it can, but it doesn’t have to be.（source:usuallyfine）
