Posted: July 28, 2012

Recently

congress concluded that, yes, video games are an art form; a hotly debated topic the past few years. No more could an organization of outraged mothers be taken seriously when requesting games be censored, games they themselves bought their children. And no longer could arrogant movie reviewers run their mouths, spewing out inaccuracies like games are and “never will be art.” (Cough, cough. Ebert). Soon after the confirmation was made, The Smithsonian Institution, the Collection of collections, known the world over for showcasing the rarest and best, announced it would be opening a new exhibit to showcase The Art of Video Games in The American Art Museum. Proponents for the ‘’games are art debate” rejoiced, as it seemed that not only had Washington agreed with gamers, they were actively supporting them as well.

The museum began an online campaign to get gamers interested in the project with the promise that their input would shape the upcoming exhibit. Game journalism sites leaped into action, promoting the endeavor, urging readers to contribute. Being the team player I am, I jumped into the fray. The Smithsonian website hosted a “which is better” tournament in which readers could choose between two similar games. As a participant you would choose a console, then a genre. You would then be given a choice of two games, then another two, and another two, etc. Scenario: you select Xbox 360, then action. Half Life 2 and Castle Crashers pop up. Then you select adventure. Limbo and Prince of Persia are chosen. Out of thousands of visitors participating in the process, the Museum was able to pick five games from five genres for a selection of consoles. I’m sure you can already see cracks in the decision making here, but I’ll get to that later.

The Exhibit

Upon entering the museum I was greeted with posters, books, hats and other memorabilia for said Video Game exhibit. I was instructed that The Art of Video Games was located “on the third floor, all the way to the left.” I hadn’t asked, mind you. Either so many visitors were going to the exhibit that it warranted its location be given to every guest or I looked so out of place in an art museum, and therefore I was obviously lost. Which I was not.





Taking advantage of this rare opportunity, I decided to forego the direct path to the game exhibit. Some of the country’s greatest works of art as well as The Smithsonian’s trademark oddities of interest call that place home. How could I resist? One new exhibit was devoted to odd 19 th century mechanical inventions ranging from prosthetic legs to a number of strange mousetraps. The room was a good Cracked.com article incarnate. Time, effort, money and love all went into a small room of unique old gadgets, showing that art museums know their trade and have the ability to draw in mainstream audiences, all without pandering.





Finally, on the top floor, tucked away in the corner of the building, techno music could be heard coming from a dark hallway. Greeted by a lime green “The Art of Video Games” painted on a wall, I was pulled into a small room with two display cases full of concept art, a few pieces of memorabilia and another wall filled with yet more concept art. The exhibit was a dimly lit, neon-infused, ‘90s punk-rawk blur, reminiscent of old EB Games or Game Crazy stores.





In the larger adjacent room, four projectors were hooked to a Nintendo Entertainment System, a PS3 and a pair of DVD players. The first video was a looping documentary that, if I could have heard it, would have been discussing video games as an art form. It showcased developer interviews detailing the ideas and ingenuity that went into their games. The film was a genuinely interesting take on games from the people who made them, and even a few people who played them. It’s exactly what I expected when I heard that an art museum was showcasing video games as a whole, as well as a newly confirmed artistic outlet. But that’s where the professionalism ended and the pandering truly began.





The second looped video was a three minute montage of in-game footage featuring everything from Pac-Man to Uncharted; basically what you’d expect from a YouTuber with access to Windows Movie Maker. The other two screens displayed videos from either an NES playing Super Mario Bros. or a PS3 playing Flower, both of which guests were encouraged to play. I was glad to see interactive art actually being featured interactively, but it came off as a cynical attempt to give an audience the bare minimum of what they wanted.

The last room’s walls were lined with display units. Each with a console, transparencies of in-game screenshots, and a television playing video captures of the “winning” games from the online poll with a narrator who provided a summary of each game in question. With all of 15 or so game systems, the room could hardly be considered museum quality, much less representative of gaming as a whole. The final room overwhelmingly showcased not the art of video games, but the cluelessness towards them by the museum curators. Throughout the whole exhibit, the only addition I found to be representative of games as an artistic medium was a short, slapped together documentary one might find on Joystiq.com. The rest would have been better featured in a history of video games exhibit; which it actually did a fair job showcasing.

To accurately showcase games as a true form of art you need interactivity. And not just interactivity that allows the public play Mario Bros. This is the Smithsonian after all. Contact game developers and ask for submissions that show off what games are capable of. Have a dozen or more kiosks that feature games specifically designed for the exhibit by different developers; some meant to make people think, others to scare, and some to bring people to a new understanding of the world around them. It isn’t hard. Simple arcade games have done it for years. Flower is a good example of the power of interactive art, but not if you’re going to play it for three minutes. That game delivers an environmental message from a flower’s perspective. Yes, the game mechanics are fun, but to fully integrate them into the story and theme takes a full two-hour play-through. Limbo would have been a great game to play. Even the demo would convey its loss, despair and helplessness. The spider sequence alone would do the trick. Even better, the moment your character can’t cross a body of water until you, the gamer, realize the child your guiding through the dark game world needs to use nearby corpses for leverage. That one puzzle element takes all of one minute of gameplay yet conveys a story’s worth of information and, above all, the person playing it.