EPT![[image loading]](http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v485/thereisnosaurus/makeagamelogo.jpg)
This week Make a Game of That dons a beret, practices its sneer and infiltrates the highbrow world of art theory, only to flip it the bird and dance naked upon the altar of games design while eating symbolic hamburgers.
When studying aesthetics, it’s important that one understands the history of the aesthetic movements. I’ve always found people get scared when you throw around words like postmodernism and auteurial intent, with good reason. There are a lot of pretentious types who like to make these concepts sound more fearsome than they actually are. I’m sure some will take me to task for doing this, but over time as part of my thoughts as a designer, I’ve been forced to construct a simple and more usable model of this history which requires neither beret nor latte to grasp. If you are a trained art historian, tissues have been provided in the atrium in case of ocular bleeding. Please don’t weep blood on the other readers.
Now, the western movements in aesthetics are broad ideas that took the public and artistic imagination of the time. For much of history, we were in what you might term the ‘naive’ era. We made music and stories and art without really thinking about what we were doing. during the middle ages and peaking in the renaissance, however, people began to write treatise and study the act of making their artwork, studying the effects it had and trying to improve it through this understanding. Really, people had been doing this for millenia, but this was the first time it was a noticeable movement across literature, music and visual art. We began to codify the ‘rules’ of artwork, and from this arose the great classical masters of music and painting, exemplified by the likes of Bach, Da Vinci and Michelangelo. This is what I call the ‘classical’ movement- classical music, classical art and classical storytelling- at this time, the grand narrative was still more or less the same as the greek myth, the archetypal story that Joseph Cambell later examined in ‘The Hero with a Thousand Faces’, the book that inspired George Lucas to begin his Star Wars series.
![[image loading]](http://thegirlfromtheghetto.files.wordpress.com/2008/06/star_wars_movie_poster1.jpg)
Star Wars was very carefully and deliberately written to a script that had been common to almost all myths across cultures for thousands of years, the growth of the hero from ignorance to wisdom, the defeat of evil and the cycle of power. When people call it epic, it actually deserves the title...
Then, once these rules were established, people began to question them. I would say it began with Beethoven, just because I find his progression exemplary of this trend. Beethoven is often stated as the first of the romantic musicians, a movement that produced works like O Fortuna, Carmen, In The Hall of the Mountain King, The Planets and many others. Romantic music was typified by a questioning and rejection of the strict rules of classical music, and by the author’s intent to portray not just a complex sound, but a story. Note that all the above works are titled with something evocative, instead of ‘symphony 5 in B#’or similar. visual artists soon followed, and the impressionists, expressionists and cubists began to gain public acclaim, again, rejecting the meticulous style of the old masters for wilder, less collected work. Literature also changed- perhaps the most- becoming literature as we know it today, varying from the myth-telling of old into the modern novel, period piece, mystery and political drama.
As time wore on, works began to not just play with the boundaries but deliberately and openly flout them, beginning what we call the modernist movement. Books like Ulysses, music like the 20 minutes of silence and artwork like that of Mondrian. The sort of stuff we love to hate. The hardcore modernists aimed to show us that there are in fact no rules, as the classical had spent hundreds of years trying to codify. All there is is what the author produces and, in a disconnected way, what the viewer or listener takes away. For those educated in the classical movements, modernism was shocking, exciting, almost indecent. For us today, it is generally just annoying.
![[image loading]](http://www.stupid.com/mm5/graphics/products/modernart-1.jpg)
I recommend this for anyone struggling with the stuff. Cheap, effective and probably only moderately toxic.
But the modernist movement began to peter out as the modernists just started to do wierd stuff. You can only crap on a wall and frame it so many times before the public starts looking at you funny and the critics reach for their pince-nez. When the artistic community calmed down a bit, they began to re-acknowledge the power of the classical rules. That certain types of story, sight or sound could spellbind you, send you into a rage or make you dissolve into tears. You just had to do it just right. We realised that this was powerful and, as all powerful things are, dangerous. So began the postmodernist movement.
Postmodernism, for all the la-de-da that surrounds it can be summed up very simply: A work with postmodern elements draws attention to the classical rules it uses. Breaking the fourth wall, anachronism, parody and pastiche are all heavily post-modern concepts. By doing this, the postmodernist attempts to show you how the magic is performed, so you won’t be fooled again. The great postmodernists can not only do this, but actually hit you with all the power of a classical work even though they’re telling you time and again how they’re making it happen. These days you’re hard pressed to find work without a bit of postmodern flavour, so powerful the movement has been. It lies in in almost all the great modern works- the simpsons, scrubs, Discworld and the Hitchhiker’s guide and many pieces of referrential, surreal and tongue-in cheek artwork
![[image loading]](http://blog.notanendive.org/public/pas_une_pipe.jpg)
This is perhaps the most emblematic work of the spirit of postmodernism. The text reads ‘this is not a pipe’, drawing attention to the idea that a representation is not the thing in and of itself.
And so we arrive, somewhat more confused than we set out, to the present day. The great aesthetic movements are still with us- most attempts at art are still mostly of the naive kind, based simply on what feels good at the time. those who put a bit more time and effort in graduate to the classicist school more often than not, and still the majority of art is primarily influenced by this school- producing more work within the great rules of powerful art. The modernists have found a role within the system of the world. Each time they break the established rules, the classicists will swarm into the breach and measure, analyse and compile the discovery into the great tomes of learning that form the cultural history of the west, turning newly turned earth into another garden plot. The Postmodernists study and critique the classicist works, or simply seek to ensure that as many as possible understand the rules of art in such a way that they can appreciate them without being controlled. Our progress through aesthetics and art can thus be summed up with a simple flow chart:
do>understand>question> expand> control
This summary came from a tutorial I worked through with a friend I am tutoring in games design. What, I hear you say, does this have to do with games design? We don’t need this artsy fartsy stuff to pwn noobs and top the scoreboards. Yet games, particularly video games, have been as powerfully influenced by the aesthetic movements as any other creative pursuit. I challenged my friend to identify some designers and studios who identified strongly with one of the movements.
We looked at Valve and Irrational as examples of very classicist studios (though TF2 was agreed to be a rather postmodern dabble). Powerful use of aesthetics to tell equally enthralling stories, games with stories that are so real they’re not games any more.
Will Wright and Tale of Tales came up as examples of modernist influenced work in games design- pushing the boundaries of what videogames are, often with remarkable success
And, of course, who but Blizzard could fill our postmodern slot. You might initially twinge a bit at this. What, you say, but Blizzard make enthralling games! I totally get into the story! I totally get into the game!
Of course, and if you read Pratchett or watch the Simpsons, you’ll know the same feeling- being utterly engrossed in a work of art while never forgetting that it’s just that. Look back through Blizzard games, how often do they remind you you’re playing a game? through jokes and humor mostly, but even aesthetics themselves, from the exaggeratedly referential style of WoW to the just a bit too larger than life personalities of Starcraft 2, Blizzard has more often than not been about hitting you in the face with the fact that you’re playing a game, that this is not real. And, like all good postmodern art, their story suffers very little from it.
if you can deal with the obnoxious british voice, this is perhaps the most... colourful... example of what I’m talking about. Who else but Blizzard.
Till next time
