The ever on going question about video games role as art is a discussion of both importance and redundancy (important because it furthers the understanding of video games out of an array of aspects). Redundant because it imposes the notion that video games would somehow benefit, or have higher value, if they were to be regarded as art. The question if video games are in fact art is by itself, at least in my opinion, essentially pointless since it will always run down to how to define art rather than how to define video games. What in recent time has become interesting though is how video games more and more seem to aspire to the role of a “classic” art form. Or rather how creation and delineation of video games seem to resemble that of other art forms.

For long the definition of art was closely connected to the work by the human hand, the creator. Weather it came to sculpting, painting or writing they all shared the mark of the creator, the creators hand, and thereby also bare the mark of the creators own specific style. Today this perspective on art is almost completely abandoned (I say almost because of some conservative views on art that still remain), mostly thanks to technical landmarks such as the printing press, the camera, x-ray, film etc. These landmarks, though in many ways removing the creator or artist from the actual process of creating and thereby, it would seem, diminishing the value of the creator, actually fortified and reinforced the role of the artist in the long run. A new paradigm emerged where the identity of the artist became as important as the work – in many ways culminating with Marcel Duchamp’s Readymades which fortified the role of the artist as a sovereign creator and his products as just mere products. Parallel with this new view on art came the idea of the artist as a creative genius, a constructed identity reflecting the eccentricity of the artist’s work in the personality of the same. The artist became the bohemian, a prodigy creature with the need to create, an outsider viewing society in a way the non-artist is incapable of. Art historian Linda Nochlin discusses this phenomenon in her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?”:

“…We find the myth of the Great Artist–subject of a hundred monographs, unique, godlike–bearing within his person since birth a mysterious essence, rather like the golden nugget in Mrs. Grass’s chicken soup, called Genius or Talent, which, like murder, must always out, no matter how unlikely or unpromising the circumstances.”

In video games the identity of the creator has for long been marginalized in terms of the creator’s recognized influence over the visual and gameplay style of a game. Video games are in general ensemble pieces and have thereby been regarded as works by studios or different offices within studios rather than a product of one creative vision by one director, designer or producer. However, this representation of video games has in recent time seen a dramatic change. While many games still gets marketed as products of prominent teams (a fine example of this is the games by Rockstar), we have seen an increase in games where a director/producer/designer is presented as a sort of grand mastermind behind the creative process, story development as well as visual and gameplay style. What’s even more interesting to note is how well the commercially constructed identity of these creators seem to correspond with the tone of the game in question. We’ve seen a variety of personas talking about “their” games and at the same time represent both gameplay and visual content purely through the representation of their identities. We have the joy and happiness of Shigeru Miyamoto perfectly reflecting the notion of social fun and entertainment of an array of Nintendo Wii games. There’s the energetic, jock and kick-ass-ness of Cliff Bleszinski (alias Dude Huge) in complete harmony with the hardcore image of Gears of War and of course the ever sunglass wearing Tomonobu Itagaki, embodying the harshness of as well Ninja Gaiden as Dead or Alive via his low key but fierce appearance (we could go on with Will Wright, Hideo Kojima, Denis Dyack etc.). All of these signify the essence of their respective game and denote visuals and gameplay through their own personal creative vision manifested through both their appearance as well as their represented personality. It’s a constructed identity highly resembling that of the “Auteur” in film, a creative mastermind using a media to express his creativity and personality in the form of art.

It’s of course of further interest to note that the majority of these video game creators are all white or asian males and all more or less considered geniuses in their field. Thereby we also see a identity corresponding with the artist genius described by Linda Nochlin, a eccentric male, looked upon as a prodigy genius and in constant pursuit of their own aesthetic vision. This new notion of video games therefore reinforces the myth of the genius artist presenting it’s own version who in no doubt will bring us many interesting and inspiring video games but still follow and uphold a paradigm of art and the artist. Let us therefore contemplate this development and ask ourselves if this is the direction we want video games to move? If we want to extent the search of the »Citizen Kane« of video games to also enclose the search of the Van Gogh of video games? And do we really want video games to move forward in a paradigm that might promote creative conformity due to the constructed identity of a sovereign auteur?

Video games are in many ways an art form who has the opportunity to bury the idea of the artist as a genius, not only because they are simply put together by an ensemble of people but more so because they are creatively conceived by the very same ensemble. An excellent example, I would argue, is »Assassins Creed«. »Assassins Creed« was in many ways marketed as the love child of producer Jade Raymond, I have however failed to find any form of clear correlation between her persona as a producer and the game itself. The reason lies within a very simple fact revealed in one of the game’s introducing disclaimers itself:

“This work of fiction was designed, developed, and produced by a multicultural team of various faiths and beliefs.”

Now I, just as others, found the gameplay of »Assassins Creed« to be a bit repetitive but I still feel that it delivered one of the best developed and profound narratives seen in years. It introduced a continuing dialogue connecting the player to the main protagonist and eventually his victims through out the game and still managed to supply an in-depth intrigue well worthy of the appraisal it got. The success was, in my belief, to a wide extent thanks to the multiple points of views contributed by the team rather than the distinguished producer. It is a product reflecting the views of many rather than the sovereign “genius” of one. It is, in my opinion, the future of video game development as it moves the art forward to a collective creative process (furthermore relating with the wider collective creative process of user generated materials) rather than continuing in the tracks of the old paradigm of the male genius.