Gamertell

In the October 15, 2008, issue of Wine Spectator magazine (p. 44), contributor Matt Kramer wrote an opinion piece tiled “Why Wine isn’t art - and why that matters.“

Inspired by a party argument where someone suggests that wine is art, Kramer argues that “fine wine is, at best, a high craft” and that, to call it art is “self-aggrandizing.“ He suggests that by getting people to accept that wine is art, winemakers’ “salaries will rise, and producers, for their part, will start pricing wine as ‘art.‘“ Instead, wine is simply an “amplification” and “refinement” of the existing attributes of the grape that happens to include the grape’s upbringing (“all the forces that create ta particularity of the site”). Lafite Rothschild, for example, is not created, but the result of craftily refining grapes grown in a specific area in a specific way.

Using wine-lover Kamer’s argument, videogames are then a creation from a blank slate, which makes any game art. Even if you have a pre-made game engine, at some point that engine was produced from a blank screen, with nary a pixel performing any action until it was told to do so. Grapes were there, simply waiting to have the goodness extracted. A blank programing screen was not there to be a game - it can be a desktop publishing app, porn, digital music synthesizer, etc. From nothing comes something, be it a playable masterpiece or a piece of barely playable videogame garbage. In either case, whether you enjoy it, appreciate it or even like it or not, it’s art (according to Kramer’s logic).

A point alluded to by Kramer but not specifically mentioned is aging. While all wines require some amount aging, not all wines improve while uncorked. Each has a point of diminishing return, where the flavor will cease to improve or - gasp - actually get worse if left in a sealed bottle for too long. Even when opened, a wine’s flavor changes over time (often within minutes).

Likewise, games do not always improve with age. Go back and play Pong and see if it’s fun for more than ten minutes. While regarded as the break-through classic, it’s probably not going to be fun for anyone to play for more than five or ten minutes. There will certainly be the nostalgic few who will give it a longer go but, even to them, the game has likely lost much of its luster when played next to even the worst of modern generation games. Try it will some older games - the first Grand Theft Auto, the original Breakout and even the early Tomb Raider games.

This also brings up the matter of taste. In wine and games, tastes and expectations change. Winemakers has been using sweeter grapes (in part by manipulating growing factors and using different grape types) to bump up the sweetness to get a higher alcohol content to appease consumers. Likewise, the beefiest graphics card will produce the most minute particle effects, explosion plumes and lifelike graphics, which are attractive to many gamers. Again, the grapes exist and the flavors are extruded whereas, with games, the effects and the avatars would never exist unless someone put them there.

Even if you argue that the pixel exists before it becomes a game, that pixel is still blank. I has not color, no shape and no purpose other than being a non-functioning bit.

Of course, Kramer’s argument also suggests at the possible downside of considering a video game art - the price. Take, for example, the three editions (Standard, Limited and Legendary) of Halo 3 . Same game, three iterations with different price levels. You could compare it to box wine, common wine and fine wine except that the game is the same, only the packaging has changed.

Certainly, games can be considered art on many levels and for many reasons. Let’s hope this does not go to publishers’ heads and leave us economically strapped gamers few good games to afford.

Read [Wine Spectator] Read [Gamertell]

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