Aesthetic evolution need not move from lesser to greater effect. Since 1999, M. Night Shyamalan has practiced his signature brand of filmmaking, in which supernatural situations end in dramatic plot twists. But between The Sixth Sense (1999) and The Last Airbender (2010), Shyamalan's artistic success faltered even as his films continued to perform well at the box office. Decline notwithstanding, all his films were still printed to celluloid and projected onto anamorphic widescreen cinema screens.



In painting, literature, and film the public can see an artist's work evolve (or devolve) because that work is accessible to audiences in their native forms. Archivists or scholars might dig into a creator's sketchbooks or retrieve early works, but such museum work is not required for the ordinary viewer or reader to grasp the changes and refinements of work over time. This perception of creative progress is a part of the pleasure of art, whether through the joy of growth or the schadenfreude of decay.

In videogames, it's far less common to see a creator's work evolve in this way. In part, this is because game makers tend to have less longevity than other sorts of artists. In part, it's because games are more highly industrialized even than film, and aesthetic headway is often curtailed by commercial necessity. And in part, it's because games are so tightly coupled to consumer electronics that technical progress outstrips aesthetic progress in the public imagination.

Where there are game makers with a style, it has often evolved over long durations. Will Wright's discovery and later mastery of the software toy simulation, from SimCity to SimEarth to The Sims; or John Carmack and John Romero's revolutionary exploitation of new powers in real-time 2d and 3d graphics in Commander Keen, Doom, and Quake; or Hideo Kojima's development and refinement of the stealth action games of the Metal Gear series, characterized by solitude, initial weakness, cinematic cut-scenes, and self-referential commentary.

These styles evolved over decades, and they did so in the arms of financial success and corporate underwriting. Structurally speaking, they are more like Shyamalan than like Rothko and Marcus, the latter two artists having struggled to find their respective styles outside of the certainty of commercial success.

In independent games, wherein we must hope that aesthetics drive creators more than commercialism, creative evolution often takes place in tentative ways, in forms far less refined and mature than the videogame console that serves as the medium's equivalent to the cinema or the first-run hardback. Experimental titles may take their first form on a PC or a mobile device as humble experiments. If very fortunate, as have been game makers like Jonathan Blow (Braid), Jonathan Mak (Everyday Shooter), or Kyle Gabler and Ron Carmel (World of Goo), those games might find their way to the Nintendo Wii or the Xbox 360 or the PlayStation 3. But today, the artists who work in game development for its beauty before its profitability typically don't get to choose the most public of venues in which to experiment and come of age artistically.