Hanging games on the wall challenges our engagement with them.
Recently, while lying on a legs-shaped pillow, to gentle guitar music and ceiling high moving images of human hands slowly caressing various objects, I fell asleep. The installation I was inside of, at Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art, did specifically aim to be relaxing. I feel extremely comfortable in art galleries, generally. They’re all about engaging your imagination and intellect, rather than overwhelming you with sensory information. Well, unless overwhelmingness is a piece’s specific aim.
Last week, I also took my older son to Game Masters in Sydney. It was actually for the second time, the first being in Melbourne two years ago. I strongly believe in games being treated as art and it is interesting to see them presented as an exhibition this way. Despite knowing a lot more about games than I do about art, however, I can’t say I felt very comfortable there. Thankfully, being a woman/mum wasn’t a problem. Probably 40% of the crowds were female; lots of girls, too.
I did say “crowds” deliberately, though. We had booked tickets for a staggered system of entry but it was still absolutely packed. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never played Day of the Tentacle with six random strangers offering suggestions over my shoulder before. Well, maybe once in High School, at a party. Not that it was entirely unpleasant having people notice how proficient I was at Capy’s Critter Crunch, of course. I may never have played it before, but the regurgitation mechanic is highly intuitive.
When I noticed my son eyeing the lengthy queue for Lego Star Wars, however, which we most definitely own, and which he has thoroughly completed, I wondered if the kids, for starters, might be doing it wrong. When I visited the Guggenheim Museum in New York, did I stare overlong at the Chagall painting we have a print of in the kitchen at home? No. Did I reminisce about all the paintings I’ve seen as prints before, like the oldies were doing around Ultima Underworld at GameMasters? Also no. (Don’t worry, I’m hassling. I can always appreciate game related nostalgia.)
For me the joy of art, specifically, is in being challenged to think differently, or to see things in new ways. I don’t own a PlayStation 3, for example, so I only ever experienced Journey through the enthusiasm of others. At Game Masters, I played it. I didn’t play it enough to get a sense of its apparent amazingness beyond flying around a bit, however, due to the queue of people forming behind me, but it was an important discovery. Though I may know games well, I don’t know every game and I don’t know everything about every game, after all.
Further, and as in an art gallery, each game had some information printed next to it, mounted to the wall. I always read these because I want to know if the artist’s intention matches my interpretation. At Game Masters, these included explicit controls, even when the game was designed for experimentation. I found little features I had no idea existed, here and there. My son even discovered, to his glee, that the little creatures in Botanicula have names. “Mr Poppy Head?” prompted most joyful giggles.
Another game I was really pleased to find was Blueberry Garden, by Erik Svedang. It comprises a strange collection of foods/objects to manipulate, collect and arrange into a pile. It is a case of negotiating your way around a level that is gradually being flooded by rising waters to sad piano music. It was a really enigmatic experience and I started to wish the designer had been in attendance so I could ask questions. I had a lucky opportunity recently, at La Lune light festival, when an artist told me the sad story of his glowy green balloon installation.
Video commentary with designers was interspersed around the exhibition, but people weren’t really listening. I have to admit to being more focused on the games myself and after an hour of wandering, playing, watching and musing, I’d noticed an incongruous, overriding theme. Although Game Masters had been running for eight months with every controller passing through countless hands, many of the games were still on their early levels. Can one reasonably expect successive players to blunder through more than the first few puzzles in Botanicula if they haven’t experienced the prior story and objectives?
I don’t know, but there is something very sad about Guybrush marching endlessly around Woodtick in Monkey Island 2 without the conscientious guidance of an adventure fan. Of course, the curators may simply have reset the games periodically. I started trying to find an employee to ask if this was the case. What stopped me was enough of an answer; SimCity 2000 featuring a monstrous metropolis, spanning every tile and almost entirely either on fire or rubble. Unsurprisingly, no-one was playing it. MEGHANN O’NEILL