I watched Saving Private Ryan over this past weekend, since I hadn't seen it in a few years (and had only previously seen it on VHS), and I had forgotten just how great the movie really is. I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it after watching Band of Brothers so many times due to the fact that Band of Brothers devoted so much more time to character development, as it had the luxury of a lengthy running-time as opposed to the time constraints placed on Ryan as a theatrical feature movie. The worrying, though, was for nothing, as the movie has held up after a mere eight years and is still one of my favorite movies of all-time. Even though I knew and remembered all of the major plot points of the movie, every scene was still intense, every bit of dialogue still poignant, and every major character death still as difficult to watch as it was the first time I saw the movie back when it was released on video. I'm not much in the way of a legitimate film critic, but I feel fairly confident in my assertion that a movie like Saving Private Ryan can be considered an "artistic work" on the whole.

For whatever reason, though, halfway through the movie I drew a mental comparison between Saving Private Ryan and a number of the World War II first-person shooters that I've played over the years, from the various Medal of Honor iterations to the Call of Duty series and Company of Heroes. I've played every World War II shooter I can get my hands on over the years and, to this point, have greatly enjoyed every one that I've played -- so I'm not one of those gamers who laments the fact that there are so many WWII shooters populating the FPS genre.


Call of Duty and Call of Duty 2.

I would go so far as to say that the World War II shooter is, far and away, the most cinematic a game experience is at this point in time (I'd more consider Metal Gear Solid a viewing experience). The missions are designed in such a way as to immerse the players in as historically-accurate a portrayal of actual World War II operations as is possible by the medium and, at least for Call of Duty, I think it actually works very well. When I played through the original Call of Duty, I was absolutely floored with just how well developer Infinity Ward simulated the emotional impact, battle intensity, and overall chaos of World War II. The game, to this day, is still one of those games I look back upon as being one of the most enjoyable games I have ever played, and is a title that I continually use as a benchmark by which I gauge player immersion and atmospheric intensity by for any first-person shooter I play since Call of Duty's original release.

This all said, as I sat through Saving Private Ryan, I realized that as fantastic a game (and an experience) as it was, I couldn't call the game art. Throughout Call of Duty I probably killed over a thousand Nazi soldiers, but not once did I cringe at the sight of their death or the death of a fellow Allied soldier throughout the entirety of the game. Yet, Ryan, I actually had to look away from the screen for a moment several times throughout the movie, a reaction which is very unlike me, as I'm very rarely squeamish when it comes to blood of any sort. And, although it tried at times, Call of Duty cannot even begin to approach the level of complexity and emotional depth that the more low-key, personal scenes throughout Ryan contained. One scene, in particular, near the end of the movie -- where the entirety of the squad that the movie followed were on the edge of their wits after losing one of their own in what most of the characters considered a useless, though dangerous, operation given by Tom Hanks' character -- was handled in a way that there was an immense amount of intensity immediately after the sadness experienced by a character's very visceral death scene, and then there is a complete turnaround where the scene becomes a very thoughtful exposition of a character back story.

Why, at this point in time in the life of the video game industry, can games set in a realistic environment not achieve the necessary level of complexity to evoke the any sort of real emotional response from players? The common response seems to be that the graphical representation of human actors is not to the point yet where games can accurately simulate the necessary human functions to really make players feel some sort of attachment to the in-game models… But I'm not sure that's really the case at this point. While games are still a far cry away from accurately simulating reality, I don't think the lack of a highly realistic rendering is what's holding modern titles away from being considered a legitimate art form. It seems far more likely that the limiting factor of artistic complexity for realistic titles like the war games is the industry's immaturity as a medium -- this isn't even to mention the immaturity of a large percentage of the target demographic (though this is on the decline as those people who grew up with video games are now entering their middle-ages). Games are still being released which feel the need to add unnecessary "hooks" or add unnecessary or out-of-place mature content for the sake of being edgy.

Although I have difficulty calling a game like Call of Duty an artistic work, I think there are a few classification rules that could be established for games. Firstly, there are the cinematic games, which are the titles designed to feel like movies -- which can be accomplished through lengthy cutscenes, very tightly scripted or well-designed missions, or some mixture of the two. Call of Duty is clearly a very cinematic game, but it achieves its movie-like qualities through very well-designed missions and gameplay features rather than lengthy cutscenes. Game like Metal Gear Solid or Indigo Prophecy, on the other hand, are very blatantly modeled on a traditional movie experience. The characters and plot are fleshed-out through a number of very well-done, choreographed cinematics that the player has little-to-no control over.

The second classification of games is the video game industry's equivalent to Hollywood's action, horror, or drama franchise films. These are the kinds of games that gamers are used to seeing yearly or biyearly iterations of without fail that provide a very well-defined experience that players are familiar with and typically have no expectations for major change so much as yearly enhancements and additional features added to the franchise mold. I consider series like Tomb Raider, Madden, Tony Hawk, Rainbow Six, and other long-running franchise titles. There is a definite overlap possibility between this category of games and the "cinematic games" classification, but I consider the gameplay franchise titles to be primarily delivering a very specific type of gameplay with little regard to maintaining any level of artistic prowess -- not to mention that sequels come at a very fast rate for these kinds of games. A new iteration in a franchise like Madden doesn't compare, for instance, to a new iteration in the Metal Gear Solid series (which only come once three to five years). This isn't to say that these types of games are bad in any way, shape, or form; some of my favorite titles are certain iterations within these series… But there's hardly much in the way of real innovation present in the subsequent titles in these types of franchises (though there are exceptions, such as Resident Evil 4).


Resident Evil 4 and Rainbow Six: Vegas.

The final type of artistic classification for video games is the unclassifiable. These are where the kinds of games which, in my mind, do their part to elevate the idea of video games as an art form. They are typically games that end up being critical darlings but rarely see any sort of commercial success (though there are exceptions to this pattern, they aren't numerous). The most recent, and surprisingly popular, example of a game in this category is Bioshock. The game is spectacular in terms of its story, graphics, gameplay, and general production values, and is one of the best examples of a game being a work of art as I can think of. It also had a fairly large commercial appeal, selling upwards of 500,000 units in its first month of release between its PC and more popular 360 releases. Another recent game that comes to mind is Psychonauts, which delivered excellent gameplay combined with some of the most intelligently and humorously-written dialogue that I have ever seen in a game, and all of these features were complemented with a fantastic art direction which made every level in the game feel refreshing and unique to the point where no part of the game, except for maybe the asininely difficult final level of the game, feel like recycled content to extend the life of the title.

One of my favorite titles of all-time along with being a game which was very much ahead of its time in terms of atmosphere and maturity was Max Payne. This game, developed by Remedy Entertainment, is a noir crime game which puts the player in control of a New York detective by the name of Max Payne who, as it tends to happen for New York cops in the noir style, lost his family due to a seemingly mindless crime. The game's story unfolds through a mix of in-mission bits of dialogue with characters but, far more awesomely, through a between-mission comic book style narrative with a very distinct art style (the game's art style is a photorealistic one) and writing that was handled in a faithfully-noir, over-the-top style. It was the first game, to my memory, which I played that successfully managed a very serious, adult tone without seeming immature or gratuitous.

And then there is, of course, a title like Half-Life 2, which does more to elevate gaming to an art form as any other game I can think of. I was, for the most part, very staunchly against the continual awards that Half-Life2 garnered after its release; I didn't feel the game was worthy of such a massive amount of acclaim. I thought that the game's art was phenomenal, the characters deep and interesting, and the story was presented in a very subtle and thoughtful fashion as to never trouble the action-junkie with its details too much, but allowing the "more intelligent" gamer to take his time and explore the relatively deep mythos of the Half-Life universe… But the gameplay simply did not impress me. Yet, the more I think about the sequences in the game, and when I went back to play certain sections of the game for a second time, I realized that while a lot of the gameplay mechanics were gimmicky, Valve did a lot of very interesting things that proved to be the foundation for a lot of to-be-expected gameplay features for titles to be released in the future.


Half-Life 2.

I held off on putting this question in the early portions of this article for a reason, but now that there are several types of games that have been talked about, it seems that this is the time to pose the question: are video games an art form? Every game certainly contains a great deal of items which, on their own, could be considered art (concept art, CG cinematics, musical scores, dialogue scripts, and so on), but are games, taken on their whole, allowed to be considered art like Blue Velvet or Taxi Driver can be considered art?

The answer to the question is invariably based on what a collective people would agree "art" actually is. The problem with considering a video game as art, in my mind, is the pure variance of the experience. The best game imaginable can be designed for the most artistic, though-provoking, and visually beautiful experience in the history of human existence, but since it is, in fact, a video game where the player is allowed control over the events, what's to stop the player from just looking at a trash can throughout the duration of his play time?

I wouldn't have answered this way two years ago, but now I am of the mind that video games can be considered art in the same way that movies can be considered art. Not every title is designed for an artistic experience in the same way that not all films are made for a mentally-enriching or thought-provoking reaction. And, so long as video games are thought of as they were designed to be thought of, not necessarily as what a player would like to make of them, then the experience can be just as intellectual as the most well-done movie -- granted, the industry as a whole has a long way to go before its products are as mature a medium as film, but I think that we, as gamers, are privy to a point in time where the transition of a video game as an art form will be an increasingly more popular and mainstream idea.