The Idea
Not long ago, I mentioned that I thought Mirror’s Edge and Prince of Persia 2008 might have more in common with ballet than with Asteroids, and, indeed, the more time I’ve spent with this idea, the more I like it.
In case you’ve never seen either of these played, here are gameplay trailers for both games: Mirror’s Edge, and Prince of Persia.
I found myself in the awkward position of really, really enjoying Prince of Persia even though most of the video game community seemed to regard it with a sort of ambivalent apathy– most people liked the visual style, but found the characters largely forgettable and the platforming too easy. Much was made of the fact that it is impossible to die in the game, as any time the Prince would fall to his death or be murdered by an enemy, he is rescued by his partner, Elika. Critics derided this gameplay mechanic as making the game “too easy,” and lessening the impact of the combat and platforming sections.
Yahtzee Croshaw disagreed with this point in his Zero Punctuation review of the game (for those unfamiliar with Zero Punctuation, it’s a lot of fun, but quite vulgar, so don’t play that link around children or those easily offended). He defends the mechanic, stating that while in other games, instant recovery from death would defang any possible threat, freerunning games are all about flow, which this mechanic helps maintain.
I happen to agree with Yahtzee on this point, but the reason I bring this up is found in the statement that freerunning games are all about flow. This statement got me to thinking about the fact that different games are, fundamentally, about different things. Left 4 Dead is about cooperation, Torment is about writing, Assassin’s Creed is about immersion, and Prince of Persia and Mirror’s Edge are, indeed, about flow.
Games as Dance
In thinking about what makes these games enjoyable, I came to an odd realization. Most games are compared to movies as their most similar analogue. Some games even use this as a marketing tool: “This game is so darn pretty and immersive that it’s almost like a movie. It’s cinematic.” This is fine, and in most cases, it makes sense. Games are substantially different from movies, but most probably have more in common with movies than, say, books, (though there are exceptions) or plays.
But I realized that in the case of games like Prince of Persia or Mirror’s Edge, it might almost make more sense to compare the games to ballet than to a film. After all, if Prince of Persia and Mirror’s Edge are any good, they are not enjoyable because of their writing or plot (harmless but uninspiring in the first and laughable in the second), but because of the beauty and grace found in the way the player can control the movements of the player characters.
Both of these trailers contain what makes these games art, completely removed from whatever plot or characters the games contain. In these games, the plot and characters serve only as a way to explain why the player is experiencing these beautiful platforming sequences. (This is not necessarily the case– there’s no reason a dance-like game couldn’t have good writing, but neither of these games seemed to find it important). Furthermore, simply having this “dance-like” component is enough to make a game art– most art does not require a plot.
What I think of when I think of playing Prince of Persia or Mirror’s Edge is of executing a series of deft and beautiful acrobatic maneuvers which not only look beautiful on the screen, but have a certain rhythm to them, and which require a certain kind of skill from me as the player. This is particularly the case in Mirror’s Edge, which is a much harder game. It requires some skill to move about the City with enough grace to make the game look beautiful– otherwise you simply end up falling to the ground and/or getting shot a great deal. In fact, it could be argued that without some degree of skill, Mirror’s Edge is not very beautiful– the “flow” of the game is often interrupted if the player continually makes mistakes. One might say that to the average player, Mirror’s Edge is not particularly beautiful– that it requires the player to have a certain buy-in of skill in order to unlock the game’s artistic potential.
This is the primary reason why these games remind me of dance– a movie can show a beautifully-executed parkour sequence or a well-choreographed musical number, but while the actors may be participating in a dance, the audience is merely watching. In the case of these games, however, only with the input of the player does the game take on its dance-like qualities. Thus, while movies might contain elements of dance, Prince of Persia is something like dance in its entirety.
The Location of Art
In this case, I wonder if the player isn’t actually producing the art in concert with the game’s engine in a way he or she usually does not. I generally think that, in a video game, the player is experiencing the art, and not actually creating it. But in the case of these games, I’m not so sure. Neither Prince of Persia or Mirror’s Edge are particularly difficult games to complete, but to play them beautifully requires skill and some aesthetic sense.
This is reminiscent of a school of literary theory called Reader-response criticism, which, in what is probably a criminal truncation, generally thinks that a work does not gain “real existence” until it is read. One might, then, from a reader-response perspective, argue that art is created not when an artist puts pen to paper or paintbrush to canvas, but when an observer interacts with the completed paper or canvas.
I don’t generally go much for reader-response criticism, for a variety of reasons which are more or less irrelevant to the point at hand, but in the field of video games criticism, I feel it may have a proper place. I think that in most video games, the player is experiencing art (albeit in an unusually active manner) rather than creating it. I would generally hold that Myst and Portal are explored as artistic experiences, rather than created through the player’s interaction with the game.
But in the case of these dance-like games, while I would certainly suggest that the games also contain art in themselves, it seems that the player has a hand in producing something like art while he or she plays the game. The games in and of themselves are very well-crafted, but it takes a skilled player to really show off the beauty and artistic quality of one of these games. In this case, when a skilled player meets a well-constructed dance-like game, the result is something like art in and of itself, and I would suggest that this is a quality at least mostly unique to this kind of game.
In Conclusion
Neither of these games are remotely perfect. Both would have been improved by better writing (or, in Mirror’s Edge’s case, a complete removal of its writing) and are rather clumsy at integrating combat into the rest of the game. But these games seem to occupy an unusual place in the gaming canon– they actively involve the player in the production of beauty more than other games.
I spend a great deal of my time discussing writing in games, and as it my area of quasi-expertise, I’ll probably keep that focus in my own essays here. But it’s worth remembering that not all games gain their artistic merit through plot and characterization– some are artistically valuable because of their graphical finesse and excellent movement engines– the sort of thing that allows a player to feel as though he or she is actively engaged in aesthetic activity simply by playing the game.
This is a relatively new idea for me, and, as such, I have not had time to ferret out all the possible ramifications of such thought. As a result, I’m definitely interested in hearing discussion on this point– are there other kinds of games which require a skilled player to produce art, rather than simply being art in and of themselves? Perhaps a roleplaying game, if played by a serious roleplayer, might qualify. I’m not sure, and I would love to hear your thoughts. I would love to use this post as a jumping-off point for a discussion– I am quite certain there is more to this idea than I have laid out here!