Game History: An Art Comparison

I recently had a thought. Whilst wondering through an art gallery, admiring  that span across multiple art movements and mediums. I compared several pieces, from impressionist to the Neo-classicism and realism, and wondered, why an art movement always seemed to challenge the last. Things appeared too realistic, and when photography was born the craftsmanship of creating the world in a 2D form, died to complete the art world circle of life. Such beauty in the human form was only truly shown in works by great artist such as Michelangelo (La Dotto Mano) This to then be challenged by things like the impressionist movement years later, it shows a huge shift in the dynamic of what we consider art.

I feel that the game industry has already shown a very similar transition in its short history, in comparison to the history of art that it. This is where I began to compare the two. After briefly looking up video game history, it turns out that the idea of video games was conceived as far back as the 1940’s. According to Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_games - it was patented in America, but didn’t reach mainstream popularity until the 1970’s – 1980’s. In 1971 a game called ‘Computer Space’ was considered a landmark as the first mass-produced video game and the first offered for commercial sale. In 1972 ‘Pong’ was released and was far more successful. This lead to a game company in japan called Taito in 1975, releasing a game called ‘Gunfight’ Tree years later, in 1978 ‘Space Invaders’ was released and became known worldwide. After these arcade classics, the idea of the home game console arrived and things began so snowball from there. As time passed and new technology was being developed, we ended up with classics like ‘Mario’ and ‘Sonic the Hedgehog’ At the time of their release technology had come a long way, but was nowhere near today’s standards. This got me thinking back to fine art and how we went from incredibly detailed and skilled, realistic creations, to impressionist, surreal pieces of imagery that are beyond our world. The game industry has done exactly the same development, but in reverse in terms of it content.

Let me explain. The limitations of early gaming, the lack of high performance technology to create realistic visuals, brought out the most imaginative creations for the game world. A super-fast hedgehog with a two-tailed, flying fox sidekick? An Italian Plummer who eats mushrooms to get really big and strong to save a princess from a big turtle crocodile creature? It’s all madness! As time went by and technology progressed, we have characters with human characteristics in realistic settings. With a much more in depth and complex story line. With the growth of advanced technology to create the visuals in games, we choose to make things far more realistic. Games such as ‘LA Noire’ that use real people, in a real time, doing relatively normal things, such as investigating crime. We have in-game cinematics that show complex scenes, were characters have near perfect facial expressions and body language. We are using the available technology to create realistic, organic things in games. Like how Michelangelo used marble to carve human form and flesh all those hundreds of years ago. Games design has made near exact transition, except art challenged the available materials to still create realistic outcomes. As mediums developed, such as photography, which captures realistic images in a 2D form, quickly and effectively. We decided to abandon making realistic imagery by hand and craftsmanship. We decided to create surreal imagery, unrealistic mark making that resemble nothing we see in the real world.

The game industry is using its new technological discoveries, to their advantage. By making a realistic world and characters to completely conjure a near simulated world where by the player feels part of the visuals seen before them. This also resembles the idea of the uncanny. Whereby, human characters are put in a complete fantasy worlds. The idea of the uncanny is something that is familiar to the viewer and yet there’s still something not quite right. Therefor, in games, a realistic landscape, with human characters, fighting dragons and trolls. Quite an odd concept but one that makes the gamer, feel one, with the game.