Interactive Art?

Don't mind me, I'm on a video game kick of late.

Whether or not video game design is considered an art form has been debated many times over by geeks like me, and I still hold that in some cases it might be. Ultimately as a whole video games cannot be considered an art, no matter how artistic some are, but in time certain franchises (occasionally from the start) become works of art in the design, rather than just the visual representations they have. Unfortunately it's very difficult to determine which games fall into this category, since most exist solely to make money. In other cases, game franchises that previously held artistic integrity may have lost it as it became a franchise, rather than just a game.

Katamari Damacy (only the first, and maybe the second, We <3 Katamari) is an example of an art game, as the entire game was an experimental statement about consumerism. The game play is essentially rolling up a snowman with two analog sticks. The concept was probably written in an acid trip, and the soundtrack was a very varied electronica-cumshot that was mostly loosely self referential. The visuals were made boxy and overly simplified, almost like Lego mockeries of reality.

The short of the story is that your father is God, who gets drunk one night and smashes all the stars in the sky. As his son, you need to fix it while he belittles you. You do this with the help of a spherical self contained quantum singularity. This mini-black hole will cling to any object smaller than itself, growing bigger while you push it around the earth. Once it's big enough, your father turns it into a star.

As the series went on, it seemed like it was making more fun of itself. In the second game your father realizes the popularity of the first game, and forces you to keep rolling shit up into your gravity-ball so he can keep his fan base. This would've been a fitting end to the series, since the game was better designed than the first. It also featured a long time endurance level, in which you need to roll up one million roses.

The series didn't stop. No more were made for the PS2, but instead ported to many other systems that could better handle the visuals. Why? Namco got greedy. Beautiful Katamari (Xbox 360), Katamari Forever (PS3), Me and My Katamari (PSP), I Love Katamari (iShit), and an only loosely related Tetris-like game has been released for the DSi in Japan rounds out the list of other games in this series. This franchise has only been out since 2004. 7 games in 6 years. From a game that was supposed to be a stand alone. It's become a parody of it's original message.

I don't love the franchise any less now, but it is no longer art.

In contrast, the Nintendo DSi Art Style series might actually fall into the category it's named after, or at least Art Style: Aquia does.

Art Style is a series of puzzle games built to milk the DSi for it's crisp visuals and simple design, and each game is a $5.00 download. There are seven now, making it a $35.00 series to own. I haven't played them all, or even most of them. Aquia is the only one I own, but the game was worth the download.

Aquia places you as a diver going deep under water to discover new breeds of fish. As you do so, you fight off the darkness inherent in deep sea diving and try not to black out from lack of oxygen. You keep this diver alive by moving colored squares into lines of 3 or more with a slider. This slider only moves from left to right. If you clear more than one line in a chain reaction, you get more air. If you don't clear lines fast enough, your screen transitions to black and you lose.

At first, the music is supplied by your slider and actions. All movements in each level are tied to a set key, and give random sounds in that key as you clear your lines. As you dive deeper the level music raises in volume, and by the end you can hear some pretty thumpin' tunes from each level of difficulty. All sound cuts out as you get closer to death as well, replaced by an ominous beep that happens between silence.

What's nice about the Art Style series is that none of the games are related outside of production house and name. Every game in this series is made to have nothing to do with one another, from game play to audio to rewards. Each represents itself.

What makes this (possibly) art is the level of simplicity that exists in such an avant garde exterior. It's layered enough to care about if you're the kind of geek that likes to analyze puzzle games (like me), but simple enough where you won't need to. It's addictive enough to eat hours harmlessly, but not in the harmful way like World of Warcraft or any strategy game.

This was going to be a list, but I don't really have time to give this kind of detail to everything I'd want to list. Here's one anyway, I might reference it again down the line.

Katamari Damacy
Art Style: Aquia
The Sims
Portal
Postal
Tetris
LSD (that's what the game was actually called)
Final Fantasy X

An honorable mention is Little Big Planet. In itself it is not art, though it is very artistic. It's beautiful, and the music is wonderful, but stripped away it's just a customizable platformer.