The recent
rise of this new form of ludic art, overcoming the obstacles that for a long time
prevented games and pastimes – then considered cultural manifestations of
lesser importance – from rising to the forefront of global economy and culture,
is an absolutely unprecedented phenomenon that signals, in addition to profound
economic transformations, a revolution in the way we understand the artistic,
cultural and social role of games whose developments are only beginning to be
felt. Indeed, they are part of an already established trend of progressive
transformation of cultural processes into economically predicted and determined
realities, but their distinctive characteristic, which is precisely unprecedented,
lies in the fact that they are at the same time mass-produced goods, games
endowed with interactivity and objects widely recognized as works of art by the
public. Past mass culture realizations often exhibited some of these
characteristics in isolation – for example, in a song one might find both the
element of being an art object and its mass character, but not any
interactivity, whereas in a board game one might find both its interactivity
and its mass character, but not its status as an art object – but never or only
rarely all three in combination.
In video
games, however, we undoubtedly have the three elements present simultaneously.
As is known, the logical systems that serve as the basis for computers and
their executable programs have a primitive origin in the logic of Aristotle
(without which computers themselves and, consequently, video games would never
exist in a non-trivial sense of the term), but perhaps the philosopher's
metaphysics is also of some use in helping us better understand the fundamental
nature of electronic games through their direct relationship with the logic
they presuppose and, indirectly, through their relationship with Aristotle's
thought, which should not be surprising insofar as the philosopher himself,
being a thinker of the structures, hierarchies and equivalences that govern
reality, is in a privileged position to help us explain the metaphysical
principles that underlie the activity of playing video games.
There can
hardly be any doubt that most electronic games are art objects, and art, to
offer a brief explanation, can be characterized as the human activity that aims
to give expression to the idea of beauty. By its very definition, the act of
giving expression to something presupposes an active role on the part of the
one expressing something and a receptive role on the part of the entity to
which expression is given, but this paradigmatic conjuncture does not
fully contemplate the mutant capacity
that exists in the world
and in the objects that
inhabit it. For
instance, when a painter handles paint, transforming it into raw material for
their painting, the paint does not merely offer a passive role, but resists and
reacts to their brushstrokes as matter endowed with form, that is, as a
physically existing object possessing certain sensory properties. Activity
exists in all areas of the creation and interpretation of works of art, but it
is considerably more pronounced in the appreciation of video games. This active
principle also presents here a distinctive character: it is not limited to the
subjective creation of meaning (as
would happen, for example, in the appreciation of a painting) but modifies the form of the artwork itself,
that is, interactivity, as the foundational principle of video games, actively
creates and shapes – like an artist does – the work of art. This means that the
characteristics – and, therefore, quality – of an artwork then become fluid and
receptive, lacking, in a way, a given formal dimension, always awaiting the
hand of the player which, like the hand of the artist, operates qualitative
transformations that determine the greater or lesser aesthetic merit of the
work.
From this
one can easily understand how electronic games are radically different from all
types of art ever created to this day, which begs the question: is there a
sense in which video games could be said to be superior or, at least, qualitatively and aesthetically different from the great works of art
of the past? The answer is obviously difficult and requires a critical
assessment of this opposition between activity and passivity. On the one hand,
the passivity of the traditional work of art allows the artistic genius to
easily give vent to his brilliant expression without it being hindered by the
potentially deleterious activity of the human receptacle, but, on the other
hand, the activity of interaction opens up new possibilities that should not be
wasted to the extent that they enrich the scope of possible artistic
expression.
One thing, however,
seems clear: given that the experience with games is recent, and that their
process of deriving meaning is, in a sense, far more complex – due to
interactivity – than that which exists and prevails in traditional art, the
good use, the optimal use of interactive audio-visual resources must naturally
be in a constant process of development since the possibilities are far too
great to have been fully realized by the brief historical trajectory that ends
today. Therefore, it is easy to argue that the art of the past is superior by
virtue of its greater degree of maturity, but, at the same time, it suffers
from the lack of a vital impulse that its decadent forms are no longer capable
of expressing. Virtually all art today has been subsumed into the capitalist
mode of production, which is to say that the purpose of a work of art is no
longer the candid and disinterested exploration of the limits of human
experience, but the creation of value in the commercial and economic sense of
the term. The consequences of this have been mostly negative, conventional art
has stagnated due to it, but in the realm of video games the new reality of
interactive art – of game-art – adapts better to market demands and thrives
where traditional art withers away and declines.
It can be
easily established, therefore, that electronic games demand a high degree of
player activity. This is not simply a matter of interactivity, even if inherent
to the medium, since the participatory element also exists in other forms of art and
entertainment. Someone watching TV, for example, interacts with the television,
someone listening to music on the radio or any other device interacts with the
radio or with the device, and a reader interacts with a book and so on. A video
game’s active property, however, is a form of activity found at a foundational
moment of the work of art, a pillar of its very existence. It is not merely the
activity of interpretation, of decoding, the subjective creation of the artwork
as an aesthetic phenomenon that exists in someone's mind, but a creation that
takes on objective characteristics insofar as the activity creates the work of
art as a selection from a limited series (or even from an infinite number) of
possible configurations.
This is
what previously I called the active principle of video games, which is a
fundamental concept for their existence as artworks – their underlying reality.
Through the experience of playing, the player, like a pair of scissors, cuts
through possible realities, structures the elementary potency of the work of
art and transforms it into a unique, irreplaceable and particular objective
basis for subjective experience, that is, through the player's activity, the
possibilities of the work are irreversibly (insofar as the experience of the
work of art cannot truly be restarted from scratch) and singularly (insofar as
each chain of actualized possibilities is unique) actualized.
This is
quite evident in a game like Minecraft,
in which the possibilities are innumerable and the player's freedom is almost
absolute, so the structuring role of their actions is easily perceptible since
the enjoyment of the game depends almost entirely on their creativity. However,
even in a game like a kinetic novel the fundamental role of the player's
activity can still be recognized. In a traditional novel, the reader may read
with greater or lesser speed, with a greater or lesser level of attention, over
a greater or lesser number of days etc., but the moment the act of reading is
interrupted, the existence of the work of art as a linear subjective experience
in the individual's mind momentarily ceases, only to return when reading
resumes. In a kinetic novel, however, the subjective experience of the artwork
continues even when reading is interrupted, and the player's attention, which
must be divided between the textual, musical and visual elements displayed on
the screen, can hardly fully appreciate the range of actualizable symbolic,
semantic and aesthetic possibilities that this small audiovisual universe
presents even in a brief moment in time. The player, therefore, must actively
divide their attention between each of these competing elements, thus being
forced to play a more active role than they themself recognize or admit.
It is true
that games did not invent this principle: it already existed in the art of the
past in the form of interactive art, but what previously had only a very
secondary cultural relevance is transformed, through games, into a founding
element of contemporary culture and mentality, into a way of being and acting
that displays the potential to resignify our world.
It becomes
clear, then, through the fully visible and undeniable potential of video games,
that all their transformative capacity, their global cultural power, stems from
a simple principle, the now augmented activity of the individual, their
potentiated and amplified power.
The way electronic
games increment the individual's potency is through joy. Unlike conventional art, in which the idea of beauty is expressed in a pure, unmixed way, and
therefore in a more liberal and daring manner, in games the idea of beauty is
typically subjected to the ludic character of the joy of playing. Thus, the
object of the game-art is ludic beauty, that is, beauty in which there is the
inalienable character of ludicity.
The
practical consequences of this fact by which, on the one hand, there is the
playing with its ludic dynamics, and on the other art with its transcendental
ambitions – ambitions of representing and encompassing totality itself, of
representing and encompassing what lies beyond being –, are, for the
game, its transformation into something more serious and, for art, its final
subjection to the meaning-giving capacity of the human receptacle of the work
of art, that is, of the appreciator of the artwork. This process through which
the work of art comes to have its quality determined by the very
characteristics of the receptacle has a double meaning: on the one side, the
limitations of the individual diminish the scope and aesthetic capacity of the
artwork, potentially masking greatness where it was intended to exist, but, on
the other, they also allow self-discovery in a way that traditional art would
hardly be able to achieve. Thus, the game-art is also a kind of art that is
turned inward, a means through which the subject reflects first on themself,
then on others and the world around them.
Having
briefly explained the peculiarities of beauty as it appears in video games, it
is now necessary to examine in more detail how it contrasts with beauty as it
appears in conventional art. Obviously, when I call beauty, as it appears in
traditional art, passive, and beauty as it appears in games active, I do not
intend to introduce an absolute qualification, but merely a comparison.
Strictly speaking, all beauty is active insofar as it is the actualization of a
potency of the subject carried out by the subject itself, that is, it is the
power-to-feel-beauty-in-such-a-way that becomes the effective feeling of beauty
in such a way. But the work of art that is also a game introduces a new
variable into beauty, namely, the conscious creative capacity of the human
receptacle of the work of art as a subjective experience, which marks the
transformation of beauty from a more or less passive principle into a decidedly
active principle.
That this
is the primary characteristic of games as art is proven once again by the
example of Minecraft when we consider
the fact that this game, the best-selling of all time (if we disregard Tetris,
as it is not strictly a game-art, but a simple game), is based exclusively on
the magnification of the individual's power through the creation of virtual
realities within the context of a permissive, highly mobile, fluid and liberal
game-universe. The second best-selling game-art of all time, Grand Theft Auto
V, presents the same characteristics: a fluid, permissive and liberal universe
in which the individual – that is, the appreciator of the work of art – finds themself capable of exploring the possibilities of aesthetic experience that unfold before them and that are
actualized by their will.
In Minecraft, specifically, beauty in the
work consists simultaneously of the player's creations, which give vent to
their desire for beauty, the randomly generated world that precedes the
player's intervention and, finally, the harmonious fusion of these two. It is
in this last aspect, much more than in the other two taken in isolation, that
the beauty of the work truly manifests itself, since Minecraft's approximation to beauty occurs above all and first and
foremost – that is, in a primordial way – through the presentation of an implicit
idea about man and nature. Indeed, it is absolutely implicit in Minecraft not only that Steve – the
"human" protagonist of the game and, therefore, the symbolic
representative of mankind – should live in harmony with nature (because,
if the player tried to destroy the world as it appears in the game, he would
never succeed in this endeavor, since the game’s world is infinite and cannot
be destroyed in such a way), but also that this harmony occurs through contrasts,
through dialectical oppositions. On the one hand, it is necessary to modify
nature to play the game, but, on the other hand, this modification never truly
goes against nature in a way that would cause it to react and definitively turn
against the player's presence and potential. If the player dies, he simply
respawns and, in a way, begins his journey again.
All beauty
is the manifestation of an idea. Beauty is nothing more than a sensible
manifestation of the intelligible and, in this sense, it (beauty made real
through the potency of matter) is, so to speak, the copy before the copy
itself, if, like Plato, we understand that the sensible world is a
"copy" of the intelligible world. Beauty approximates the real to the
ideal, and it is the task of art to achieve this approximation. In the case of Minecraft, the implicit theses about the
nature of man and the world around him are the pillar of this approximation,
they are the intellectual root that transforms the game from a simple game into
a game-art.
Insofar as
ludic beauty demands action, and action, as is known, is, in a way, the enemy
of reflection, the capacity of this form of beauty to translate the greatest
ambitions of the human soul has been, until today, limited. The flight of ludic
beauty is much lower, slower and more clumsy than the flight of its older
sibling, contemplative beauty. Ludic beauty is, so to speak, a beauty of praxis for which theoria is still lacking, while contemplative beauty is a beauty of
theoria that almost entirely
dispenses with praxis. The
subordination of praxis to theoria in traditional art allowed for
an unprecedented broadening of the horizon of humankind, but this broadening
was, as is evident, primarily theoretical, mental, hypothetical, noetic, ideal.
That is why it is only very unfair to consider games as a kind of virtual
prison, one’s "small piece of the Matrix", in the expression of a
contemporary writer, since it is only in video games that the activity of the
human receptacle of the work of art as a subjective experience abandons the
field of theoria and definitively
enters the field of praxis.
Video games
were created at a paradoxical time when, in one respect, there is the apparent –
and to a great extent real – liberation of the individual from the bonds of
tradition and custom, but, in another, the unyielding tyranny of technology is
accentuated and imposed like never before. They are, therefore, a product of this
ambiguity and contradiction: simultaneously the effect of a relentless
rationalization and a manifestation of revolt against that very process. It is
no coincidence that so many subversive people of our time and the recent past
have and had such a profound relationship with video games. In them the potency
of matter is stirred, in them we can clearly feel its creative capacity insofar
as the game, the very act of ludicity, being a becoming of the materially real,
seeks the perfection of the form it lacks. Every game is a search for the
finality of form in which the very lack of form is the motivation for the
process of becoming: chess constantly seeks the form of the checkmate, a visual
novel seeks the true ending and so on. The potency of matter, which is both in
the game and in the player – that is, the mobile, mutable, fluid, plastic and
malleable property of a transitory nature –, this is what speaks louder than
anything else in the experience of the game and, consequently, in the
experience of the game-art.
The pursuit
of the perfection of form reflects the individual's desires, giving them an
active expression. Through this, the subject becomes accustomed to acting upon
the world, to the magnification of their potency, soon demanding its
transformation into the ultimate type of act, that is, its effective
manifestation in the "real world", beyond the virtual world, but, unable to give
vent to their desires in this way, since the reality outside of games is, in a
way, hostile and tends to appear vis-à-vis games as an impediment, as an anti-dream,
the very antithesis of the amplification of power carried out by the game-art
(or, in other words, as a negation or diminution of potency), they naturally
transfer their impulse, their desire for the magnification of potency, to
another sphere of social life. This sphere is the internet and, to a great
extent, it is because of video games that it is so thriving. The development of
games presents as a parallel phenomenon the development of social life on the
internet. To each great step taken in the development of games corresponds a
leap in the development of internet culture. The function of the internet as an
alternative platform for social life thus becomes, in this sense, that of
providing an outlet for desires and frustrations that cannot be actualized (or resolved) in
the "real world".
The natural
consequences of this process are a profound cultural transformation that we are
only beginning to experience and understand. In the future, as the offline and
online worlds merge and become increasingly indistinguishable from one another,
it is possible that the magnification of potency afforded by the game-art will
become increasingly difficult to contain and obfuscate, that the realization in
the “real-world” of desires conceived and potentiated in games and by games will
become an unavoidable reality – that is, that social life on the internet and
social life outside the internet will become one, and that video games will
play a fundamental role in it.
In this
sense, it is beneficial to return, once again, to the unsurpassed example
bequeathed to us by the Greeks. Truly, the Hellenes had certain ways of being
that even today can still serve as an inspiration and an ideal for us. Every
Hellenist, every scholar of ancient Greece teaches and agrees that Greek
existence, as it unfolded in the classical period, was determined by two
fundamental desires: the will to participate individually in the civic political
duties and the desire to manage the economic and budgetary life of the city,
but it is necessary to go beyond these observations and realize that in Greek
social life there was something ludic – and not just liberal –, and that this
ludic element would be impossible without the liberal element and that the
liberal would be impossible without the ludic. We can see this very clearly,
for example, in the typically Greek appreciation of sport. The Hellenics,
inventors of the Olympic Games, were also the inventors of the gymnasiums and,
of all the ancient peoples, they were the ones who most developed physical
practice. The Greek appreciation for play and competition, however, does not
stop at the realm of muscular sport, but goes far beyond it and manifests
itself in an even more characteristic way in the noetic, aesthetic and
dialectical spheres than in any other. In all the discursive arts developed by
the ancient Hellenes shines through an intense pleasure felt in competition and
dispute, in the intellectual "sport" played with the brain rather
than with the muscles of the legs or the arms. Whether in dialectics (which,
among the Greeks, was considered the most serious and the least exhibitive of
all the arts of discourse), in eristics (the most heated and violent) or in the
rhetoric (the most superficial), the notion always remains that it is necessary
to win something, that the process through which one wins or loses is like a
game and that this type of game is not just a game, but has serious consequences
that the citizens of the polis understood very well.
Let us now
look at what the Greeks called agonistics. According to Mário Ferreira dos
Santos, "it was divided into endeietic and anatreptic. The first offered
the rules for asserting propositions, while the second offered the way to
counter them”. This means that, long before the invention of Valorant or CS:GO, the Greeks already knew what we now call “meta”, that is,
the most efficient standard strategy for achieving victory. All this
preoccupation with debate, with the game, with dispute, with victory, reveals
an individualistic culture in which man is endowed with autonomy, with an
unparalleled, unimpeded, free, active, pleasurable and playful productive
capacity. The Greek man is a man who sees his own world as a challenge that can
be overcome, as a sum of hidden potencies that can be actualized, depending on
his will, favorably – in short, as a game. Everything in his universe is ludic
and receptive to form. In politics, even practices like ostracism (in which
someone could be banished from the city for ten years each year, depending on
the outcome of the popular vote) and, most notably, the trial with the defense
and prosecution sides, resemble a game and can only resemble it to the extent
that the Hellenic citizen values the establishment of the balanced rule, of the
"golden mean" as it appears, for example, in the ethics of Plato and
Aristotle.
The Greeks
knew perfectly well how to channel their impulses and their will to power
towards the constant promotion of a wellness that is ever-growing. They had what
we could call a “meta” – in the gamer sense – for life itself! A people as
magnificent as this offers us a lesson that is even difficult to grasp. We have
before us, in the form of the internet and video games, an unprecedented
magnification of our power – of our possibilities – and we don't know what to
do with it. We are constantly searching for new websites, new friendships, new
memes, new games, all of it without ever achieving something that truly
enriches us and makes us say to ourselves: "yes, it was worth it: the
internet, games, the digital world, all of it was and remains worth it".
On the contrary, we play games competitively and come away frustrated
from the encounters that occur in the game, we open our hearts on the internet
and are often humiliated or, at the very least, misunderstood, we form
friendships that we believe to be true and then, one day, our
"friends" disappear without explanation. A very elementary analysis
of the internet is enough to conclusively show that it is no longer
experiencing its most culturally vibrant period, and to some extent, at least,
perhaps this can also be said of video games.
The lesson
the Greeks have to teach us is nothing less than the overcoming of our own
nihilism as a civilization – a lesson, I repeat, extremely difficult to
internalize and even more difficult to put into practice. Since the advent of
the new possibilities of being opened up by the dawn of modernity, we have
constantly sought something that might once again fill the void left on the
altar of our civilization, a void created by the collapse of the old idols –
God, homeland, ancestry etc. At the end of his life, interested as well in the
way the Greeks creatively and playfully dealt with existence, especially with
the challenges and vicissitudes of existence, Michel Foucault coined the term
"aesthetics of existence" to describe this aspect of the Greek
genius. Now, the aesthetics of existence is something that perfectly aligns
with the possibilities opened up by video games as art and by the player as, so
to speak, a player-artist. It is necessary to conceive games and, most of all,
the experience of playing games as “aesthetics of existence”, as life that is
art and art that is life. It must be said: we are not up to the task of fully
embracing both the possibilities of being that history makes conceivable – because
what was can very well, if we so desire, be again – as well as the
possibilities of being opened up by the technical reality of video games and
the internet. We must, finally, take a qualitative leap towards the unknown and
rise to the occasion. We must seize the day and allow the forces that we have
unleashed to reach their maximum level of development, which means finding
ourselves, becoming subjects and not objects of the historical processes. The
forces unleashed at the dawn of modernity compel us to create a new way of
being. This is the only way out. This is the only overcoming of the eternal
midnight of modernity. Is it too much to ask that these processes reach the
best possible conclusion among all imaginable outcomes? Yes, but this plea must
be made. For love, this plea must be made!
