Game Studies - Book Review: John Sharp\'s Works of Game

Book Review: John Sharp's Works of Game

by Veli-Matti Karhulahti

In my opinion, a good review

identifies its subject in the context of potential audiences,
recognizes and realizes its subject's contributions, and finally
performs an overly critical scrutiny on the subject's ideas in order to validate its place in the ongoing debates.

This is an attempt to write a good review. It takes about 40 minutes to reach the end. Let's get started.

If one of my art historian colleagues were to ask for a good introduction to the contemporary state of ludic expression, Works of game would be surely on my list. John Sharp's 124-page codex is one of the most time-efficient compilations of text to date for the increasing mass of sophisticated noobs with a healthy interest in artified play. Assuming you're not familiar with the book, let me spoil the plot: Sharp evidences the status of selected ludic phenomena as artworks and then classifies them as instances that thus “became art history” (115).

For Sharp, the question of “whether or not games are 'art' is not that interesting… as the answer is obvious - sometimes” (118). That's a passable position, albeit I don't understand why such dichotomies need to be maintained in the first place. He also recognizes the plurality in the intersecting cultures of gaming and art: “games as creative process; gameplay as performative beauty; game-like rules for purely aesthetic audience experiences; games as toolset and cultural index” (3-4). Essentials in order, check.

Today the first challenge for all historical takes on the topic is Mary Flanagan's Critical play (2009). Flanagan's volume goes through the main points of organized play in the arts context comprehensively, and thus leaves little room for other general surveys. Sharp realizes this and ignores most large-scale concerns, concentrating narrowly on some independent works that were released after 2000 (one exception). To me, that's a reasonable focus (which you bet I'll criticize later).

Sharp's approach is based on a tripartite distinction between “artgames”, “game art”, and “artists' games”. The first ones make use of the “innate properties of games … to create revealing and reflective play experiences” (12). The second are briefly “art made of games” (14), and the third “a work that synthesizes the conventions of both contemporary artistic practice and games” (3). Accordingly, Works of game is divided into three sections by the above three categories. Each section presents and analyses a number of relevant auteurs and their works. Most get mentioned only in passing, a chosen few (Jonathan Blow, Mary Flanagan, Jason Rohrer, and Brenda Romero) are given several openings each.

Typical for the book's publication series, Playful Thinking (MIT Press), the text is accessible to an extreme. Sharp portrays his examples clearly, and when fitting, explains art historical basics on the side (surrealism, Fluxus, John Cage etc.). One doesn't need a BA to read Works of game.

The theoretical frames of the book are few but noteworthy. Gibsonian thoughts are invoked to distinguish between conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances that “identify how the various communities of practice approach games as a cultural form” (7). I cannot recall another publication with this specific application of affordance theory; it's a pity that Sharp leaves it undeveloped and unused after page eight. Another welcome instrument is John Hospers' conceptualization of thin and thick aesthetics: “Thin aesthetics are those that focus solely on the formal values of the work, while thick aesthetics are those that take into account the work's place in more complex cultural contexts” (77). While the ludo-hermeneutic discussions in game and videogame research deal with the same issue, in my opinion, more efficiently, it's always good to have theoretical variety (we haven't made too much use of Hospers thinking anyway).

I could say a few more kind words about the ways in which Sharp treats his objects of study; however, since reviews like the one at hand are not written to promote sales but to provoke intellectual exchange, let's cut to the chase.

This sentence, based on the above-mentioned theory of affordances, makes a nice departure point for my whining: “Two communities therefore see very different things when they consider the game of chess. For game-minded communities, chess is a thing unto itself, whereas for art-minded communities, chess is an idea space and a material from which art can be made” (8). While I do get (and even agree with) the point behind those words, one couldn't have chosen a worse example. As an extremely competitive game and sport, chess stands as one of the ultimate cases of controversy in the longstanding ludo-aesthetic debate.

A question: Could you describe for me what a beautiful chess game looks like? Or let me make this a bit easier: What makes the famous Garry Kasparov versus Veselin Topalov match in 1999 the most beautiful chess game in history? I confess, I don't know, and it's very probable that you (the reader) don't know either.

What we have here is a standard illustration of what might be called the ludo-aesthetic dilemma. While it is certainly possible to create museum-qualified artifacts and experiences of popular (commercial) ludic concepts, the aesthetics of those products rarely add much to the existing canons of artistic expression. The paradox is: the truly interesting aesthetics of gaming are often tightly incorporated in their excessive and sometimes highly skill-capped play. To access the most aesthetically satisfying ludic contents, you may need to play a lot and well. Who are the people capable of appreciating the Kasparov versus Topalov game? Hardcore chess players.

One of the most detailed analyses in Sharp's book is on the videogame Braid (2008). It works as an okay example for us too, as all readers should've played it (this is the Game Studies journal after all). What Sharp sees in Braid is a result of cultivated hermeneutic interpretation based on the mechanics and the thematics of the videogame: “Though the player can unwind most of Tim's mistakes, the biggest mistakes cannot be fixed so easily … Through the story and the challenges presented by the game, the player explores both a ludic and a conceptual space within which she can consider the role of time in her life and think about her regrets” (12).

The funny thing with this and most other artgames is that after reading a good interpretation of them, you don't need or want to play them. Sharp's claim that “Games become material through the player's perceptions expressed through performance” (107) holds with some ludo-aesthetic pleasures, but rarely with those of his artgames. In the end, what the excellent interpretations in Works of game confirm is that the ways in which most artgames employ their mechanics and thematics as a means of expression are little more than good-old conceptual art: here's how it works, do it or not. Few do.

Sharp entertains this anti-connection (21), but never really makes use of it. To perceive games and videogames as genuinely exciting from art history's viewpoint would require one to give up the “expressed idea” and its “hermeneutic disclosure” as the fundamental duo of artistic engagement. Art isn't defined solely by the interpretation of meanings (thick aesthetics if you will); it's also about sensual pleasures and formal discovery (thin aesthetics if you will). Although Sharp seems to salute the difference, especially by citing John Dewey's epoch-making reflections (68-69), Works of game is factually a book about searching for elegant meanings from non-elegantly treated cultural artifacts: “in artgames, the systems are more likely to model ideas and concepts: the journey of life, the ethical complicity of the people involved in carrying out atrocities, the helplessness of depression” (51). In other words, making an artgame seems to require a fancy theme.

Back to Braid, which according to Sharp “strives to do more than entertain” (12). I've always had issues with that “more than” rhetoric that is also quite standard in all those “serious games” ads that jazz. In the present context, as indicated by Sharp throughout his book, there is a distinction between “entertainment games” and those that do “more than entertain” - the infamous separation between amusement and art, which to me is an extremely counter-productive dichotomy.

On the best page of his book Sharp narrates how he eventually “quit second-guessing Blow and focused on the game, its logic system, and the challenges it presented” (68). This enabled him to enjoy Braid in a brand-new way: as a hermetically sealed universe with its own peculiar rationality. As scholars like Chris Crawford, James Paul Gee, Claus Pias and so many others have comprehensively shown, this is what happens in videogame play all the time; those are the principal components of aporetic videogame aesthetics. So why do we need to identify ludic expression through “nuance and sophistication” (75) that in Braid's case emerges as “reconsidering the concept of time through gameplay” (70)? Why can't Braid be discussed as art for its kinesthetic and enigmatic aesthetics alone? What if I don't see art in Braid's meaningful themes but in its “entertaining” aspects that enable aesthetically pleasing “meaningless” play - just as chess players find beauty in the game's countless sophisticated strategies? Would Braid be a mere “entertainment” piece without its thematics of time?

It's telling that Sharp doesn't provide a single note about Terry Cavanagh in the book. Unquestionably some of the most revolutionary artgames in contemporary indie circles, Cavanagh's works hardly offer their players themes or meanings to reflect upon; instead, they rely on the kinesthetic discovery of patterns and forms that simply FEEL good. I'm referencing VVVVVV (2010) and Super Hexagon (2012) here in particular. Since this isn't an article but a review I'm not providing an analysis but a question: Would you consider those works “more than entertainment,” John Sharp? (I see a comparable question asked on page 105, but I cannot find an answer.)

For some reason I've encountered few high-level debates on “art paintings vs. entertainment paintings” or “art sculptures vs. entertainment sculptures;” whereas commercially successful popular culture like film, music, and videogames fight with such oppositions year after year. If the pop art movement taught us something, it's the fact that aesthetic brilliance and artistic creativity are everywhere - a premise repeated especially by German philosophers since the Enlightenment. Instead of simply stating that videogames are art “sometimes” (188), I would've expected Sharp to more carefully conceptualize his notion of artistic expression; respecting his own words on ludo-aesthetic plurality (3-4) and not dichotomizing between art (thematic reflection) and entertainment (sensual delight).

If we assume, for a moment, that the art of gaming is first and foremost about meanings, themes, and their reflection, I'm left wondering what Sharp (with reference to Jason Rohrer) really means by those “artgames” that make use of the “innate properties of games … to create revealing and reflective play experiences” (12). It might be possible to distinguish those ludic artifacts that are most interesting from the perspective of “reflective play,” sure, but why does Sharp not give even a single non-indie artgame example? Works like Shadow of the Colossus (Team Ico, 2005) do not seem to fit in Sharp's notion of art because they are big and make big money, i.e. they are, again, “entertainment.” If one has played any of the paramount titles of the present or previous centuries (Grand Theft Auto, Elder Scrolls, Halo, Metal Gear, Walking Dead etc.), one knows that the indie phenomenon is a very marginal part of today's computerized ludic expression, even in the limited scope of thematic reflection.

While I certainly don't mind the indie scene getting academic attention (they deserve it), what Sharp implies by disregarding the most prominent ludic productions is the romantic blunder of art being the outcome of a quixotic auteur who struggles to express with little or no commercial motivations (my exaggeration). I wouldn't be picking on this if the subtitle of the book had been “On the Aesthetics of Indie Games,” but since the book is still dealing generally with “Aesthetics of Games and Art” the flaw is critical. Like it would be in a book “Aesthetics of Film” that didn't make a single reference to Chaplin, Hitchcock, or Kubrick because they were… entertaining?

Talking about missing names (still), they are many. And in all truth I mean many. I do sympathize with the limitations of 124 pages (which, by the way, include 43 picture pages), but an academic study of Critical play in the 2000s which makes no mention of Gonzalo Frasca's founding theoretical and artistic efforts is guildy of a severe sin of omission (this is an art historical book after all). While Ian Bogost receives a sentence-long footnote (“how games generate meaning is based on the ideas of procedural rhetoric,” 120) and Pippin Barr is mentioned in passing in the conclusion (“it gives me hope to see more artists cross-fertilizing games and art,” 115), pioneers such as Tiffany Holmes, who coined the word “art game” around 2003, and --not Rohrer two years later as Sharp claims-- have been left out entirely. Needless to say, the auteurs and theorists of electronic literature, digital poetry, and interactive fiction are en masse.

Granted, the choice of examples for analysis is mostly a matter of taste, but now and in future I don't accept that the page limits of the Playful Thinking series are an excuse to neglect all related scholarly dialogues. I am thinking of people such as Chris Bateman (play aesthetics), Marcel Danesi (puzzle aesthetics), Andrew Darley (spectacle aesthetics), Graeme Kirkpatrick (aesthetic form), Olli Leino (playable art), David Myers (procedural aesthetics), Sebastian Möring (ludic metaphors), Angela Ndalianis (neo-baroque aesthetics), Miguel Sicart (against proceduralism), Melanie Swalwell (kinesthetic play) and dozens of others whose contributions to the study of gaming and art Sharp has decided to skip altogether, for one reason or another. I dont't expect the author go through them all, but ignoring them all is a declaration of independence that isn't the mark of quality research.

Good science adds information, better destroys it; both manifest in collegial conversation. From the perspectives of play, game, and videogame research, Works of game is a monologue.

Back to Braid, which according to Sharp “strives to do more than entertain” (12). I've always had issues with that “more than” rhetoric that is also quite standard in all those “serious games” ads that jazz. In the present context, as indicted by Sharp throughout his book, there is a distinction between “entertainment games” and those that do “more than entertain” - the infamous separation between amusement and art, which to me is an extremely counter-productive dichotomy.

On the best page of his book Sharp narrates how he eventually “quit second-guessing Blow and focused on the game, its logic system, and the challenges it presented” (68). This enabled him to enjoy Braid in a brand-new way: as an hermetically sealed universe with its own peculiar rationality. As scholars like Chris Crawford, James Paul Gee, Claus Pias and so many others have comprehensively shown, this is what happens in videogame play all the time; those are the principal components of aporetic videogame aesthetics. So why do we need to identify ludic expression through “nuance and sophistication” (75) that in Braid's case emerges as “reconsidering the concept of time through gameplay” (70)? Why cannot Braid be discussed as art by its kinesthetic and enigmatic aesthetics alone? What if I don't see art in Braid's meaningful themes but in its “entertaining” aspects that enable aesthetically pleasing “meaningless” play - just as chess players find beauty in the game's countless sophisticated strategies? Would Braid be a mere “entertainment” piece without its thematics of time?

It's telling that Sharp doesn't provide a single note about Terry Cavanagh in the book. Unquestionably some the most revolutionary artgames in the contemporary indie circles, Cavanagh's works hardy offer their players themes or meanings to reflect; instead, they rely on the kinesthetic discovery of patterns and forms that simply FEEL good. I'm referencing VVVVVV (2010) and Super Hexagon (2012) here in particular. Since this isn't an article but a review I'm not providing an analysis but a question: Would you consider those works “more than entertainment,” John Sharp? (I see a comparable question asked on page 105, but I cannot find an answer.)

For some reason I've encountered few high-level debates on “art paintings vs. entertainment paintings” or “art sculptures vs. entertainment sculptures;” whereas commercially successful popular culture like film, music, and videogames fight with such oppositions year after year. If the pop art movement taught us something, it's the fact that aesthetic brilliance and artistic creativity are everywhere - a premise repeated especially by German philosophers since the Enlightenment. Instead of simply stating that videogames are art “sometimes” (188), I would've expected Sharp to more carefully conceptualize his notion artistic expression; respecting his own words on ludo-aesthetic plurality (3-4) and not dichotomizing between art (thematic reflection) and entertainment (sensual delight).

This sentence, based on the above-mentioned theory of affordances, makes a nice departure point for my whining: “Two communities therefore see very different things when they consider the game of chess. For game-minded communities, chess is a thing unto itself, whereas for art-minded communities, chess is an idea space and a material from which art can be made” (8). While I do get (and even agree with) the point behind those words, one couldn't have chosen a worse example. As an extremely competitive game and sport, chess stands as one of the ultimate cases of controversy in the longstanding ludo-aesthetic debate.

A question: Could you describe me how a beautiful chess game looks like? Or let me make this a bit easier: What makes the famous Garry Kasparov versus Veselin Topalov match in 1999 the most beautiful chess game in history? I confess, I don't know, and it's very probable that you (the reader) don't know either.

What we have here is a standard illustration of what might be called the ludo-aesthetic dilemma. While it is certainly possible to create museum-qualified artifacts and experiences of popular (commercial) ludic concepts, the aesthetics of those products rarely add much to the existing canons of artistic expression. The paradox is: the truly interesting aesthetics of gaming are often tightly incorporated in their excessive and sometimes highly skill-capped play. To access the most aesthetically satisfying ludic contents, you may need to play a lot and well. Who are the people capable of appreciating the Kasparov versus Topalov game? Hardcore chess players.

One of the most detailed analyses in Sharp's book is on the videogame Braid (2008). It works as an okay example for us too, as all readers should've played it (this is the Game Studies journal after all). What Sharp sees in Braid is a result of cultivated hermeneutic interpretation based on the mechanics and the thematics of the videogame: “Though the player can unwind most of Tim's mistakes, the biggest mistakes cannot be fixed so easily … Through the story and the challenges presented by the game, the player explores both a ludic and a conceptual space within which she can consider the role of time in her life and think about her regrets” (12).

The funny thing with this and most other artgames is that after reading a good interpretation on them, you don't need nor want to play them. Sharp's claim that “Games become material through the player's perceptions expressed through performance” (107) holds with some ludo-aesthetic pleasures, but rarely with those of his artgames. In the end, what the excellent interpretations in Works of game confirm is that the ways in which most artgames employ their mechanics and thematics as a means of expression are little more than good-old conceptual art: here's how it works, do it or not. Few do.

Sharp entertains this anti-connection (21), but never really makes use of it. To perceive games and videogames genuinely exciting from art history's viewpoint would require one to give up the “expressed idea” and its “hermeneutic disclosure” as the fundamental duo of artistic engagement. Art isn't defined solely by the interpretation of meanings (thick aesthetics if you will); it's also about sensual pleasures and formal discovery (thin aesthetics if you will). Although Sharp seems to salute the difference, especially by citing John Dewey's epoch-making reflections (68-69), Works of game is factually a book about searching elegant meanings from non-elegantly treated cultural artifacts: “in artgames, the systems are more likely to model ideas and concepts: the journey of life, the ethical complicity of the people involved in carrying out atrocities, the helplessness of depression” (51). In other words, making an artgame seems to require a fancy theme.

If one of my art historian colleagues would ask for a good introduction to the contemporary state of ludic expression, Works of game would be surely on my list. Up to now, John Sharp's 124-page codex is one of the most time-efficient compilations of text for the increasing mass of sophisticated noobs with healthy interest in artified play. Assuming you're not familiar the book, let me spoil the plot: Sharp evidences the status of selected ludic phenomena as artworks and then classifies them as instances that thus “became art history” (115).

For Sharp, the question “whether or not games are 'art' is not that interesting of a question … as the answer is obvious - sometimes” (118). That's a passable position, albeit I don't understand why such dichotomies need to be maintained in the first place. He also recognizes the plurality in the intersecting cultures of gaming and art: “games as creative process; gameplay as performative beauty; game-like rules for purely aesthetic audience experiences; games as toolset and cultural index” (3-4). Essentials in order, check.

Today the first challenge for all historical takes on the topic is Mary Flanagan's Critical play (2009). Flanagan's volume goes through the main points of organized play in the arts context comprehensively, and thus leaves little room for other general surveys. Sharp realizes this and ignores most large-scale concerns, concentrating narrowly on some independent works that were released after 2000 (one exception). To me, that's a reasonable focus (which you bet I'll criticize later).

Sharp's approach is based on a tripartite distinction between artgames, game art, and artists' games. The first ones make use of the “innate properties of games … to create revealing and reflective play experiences” (12). The second are briefly “art made of games” (14), and the third “a work that synthesizes the conventions of both contemporary artistic practice and games” (3). Accordingly, Works of game is divided in three sections by the above three categories. Each section presents and analyses a number of relevant auteurs and their works. Most get mentioned only in passing, a chosen few (Jonathan Blow, Mary Flanagan, Jason Rohrer, and Brenda Romero) are given several openings each.

Typical to the book's publication series, Playful Thinking (MIT Press), the text is accessible to an extreme. Sharp portrays his examples clearly, and when fitting, explains art historical basics on the side (surrealism, Fluxus, John Cage etc.). One doesn't need a BA to read Works of game.

The theoretical frames of the book are few but noteworthy. Gibsonian thoughts are invoked to distinguish between conceptual, formal, and experiential affordances that “identify how the various communities of practice approach games as a cultural form” (7). I cannot recall another publication with this specific application of affordance theory; it's a pity that Sharp leaves it undeveloped and unused after page eight. Another welcome instrument is John Hospers' conceptualization of thin and thick aesthetics: “Thin aesthetics are those that focus solely on the formal values of the work, while thick aesthetics are those that take into account the work's place in more complex cultural contexts” (77). While the ludo-hermeneutic discussions in game and videogame research deal with the same issue, in my opinion, more efficiently, it's always good to have theoretical variety (we haven't made too much use of Hospers thinking anyway).

I could say a few more kind words about the ways in which Sharp treats his objects of study; however, since reviews like the one at hand are not written to promote sales but to provoke intellectual exchange, let's cut to the chase.

Game art is the most useful of the three concepts that Sharp uses to arrange his art history. The definition “art made of games” (14) is simple, yet surprisingly practical when it comes to organizing our cultural artifacts (as artifacts). It's important to remark that game art is not a category of games, but a category of artworks that use games (or their technologies) as raw crafting material. Julian Oliver's auto-generative software ioq3aPaint (2010), based on Quake3 (1999), is one of Sharp's favorite examples and it works as an illustrative case indeed: “In the end, ioq3aPaint is a series of images and films.” (29) However, the fact that it's based on a videogame is “as relevant to the experience as knowing the kind of brush used by Pollock would be to appreciating his drip painting” (ibid.). As much as I approve of, and agree with Sharp's position here, I find it inexcusable that, again, historically fundamental institutions do not receive a mention. Can an art-historical account of (video) game art that doesn't recognize the existence of demos or machinima be taken seriously? Maybe somebody would like to defend Sharp here by claiming that demos and machinima have their own “communities of practice” that have nothing to do with art; if so, please make yourself known so that I can prove you wrong.

Frankly, I don't know what Sharp means by an artists' game. To recap, for him it's “a work that synthesizes the conventions of both contemporary artistic practice and games” (3), and more specifically, “combines the thick aesthetics of both communities to produce an artists' game” (78). Central examples come from Flanagan's artistic career: [giantJoystick] (2006) and [pile of secrets] (2011). While Sharp himself admits that the former, a ten-foot-tall controller statue, “is not a game in the strict sense” (92) and the latter simply “catalogues gameplay footage of videogames” (95), the puzzle of “artists' games” remains unsolved. Why is [pile of secrets] an artist's game and not game art? It clearly uses videogames as its material and it is not even a game but a video, right? While designating “artist” status to artifacts might sometimes be useful - like when Flanagan (2009) uses the terms “artists' dolls” and “artists' games” to identify such objects historically from their mass-produced peers (and yet showing how Critical play practices in both have remained ultimately the same) - I don't find artists' games a very efficient conceptual solution for the study of ludic artworks in the company of artgames and game art

Frankly, I don't know what Sharp means by an ARTISTS' GAME. To recap, for him it's “a work that synthesizes the conventions of both contemporary artistic practice and games” (3), and more specifically, “combines the thick aesthetics of both communities to produce an artists' game” (78). Central examples come from Flanagan's artistic career: [giantJoystick] (2006) and [pile of secrets] (2011). While Sharp himself admits that the former, a ten-foot-tall controller statue, “is not a game in the strict sense” (92) and the latter simply “catalogues gameplay footage of videogames” (95), the puzzle of “artists' games” remains unsolved. Why [pile of secrets] is an artist's game and not game art? It does clearly use videogames as its material and it's not even a game but a video, right? While designating “artist” status to artifacts might sometimes be useful - like when Flanagan (2009) uses the terms “artists' dolls” and “artists' games” to identify such objects historically from their mass-produced peers (and yet showing how Critical play practices in both have remained ultimately the same) - I don't find artists' games a very efficient conceptual solution for the study of ludic artworks in the company of artgames and game art

I was probably a bit too harsh previously on the way in which Sharp uses the notion of ARTGAMES. He doesn't, in fact, treat his artgames as simple expressive products but also as objects that we engage with a specific attitude: “The materiality of games arises from gameplay itself and not from the objects used to play the game” (82). This brings us back to the affordances that I cited earlier, and more precisely, to the expectations that people have about those artifacts that Sharp classifies under artgames: “Art and games are not anything unto themselves. The experience of an artifact is contingent on so many factors outside the control of the object itself, let alone the designer” (106). Thus, in the case of artgames, “the act of comprehension and experience is made material in new, exciting ways” (109). I guess we could re-interpret Sharp's notion of an artgame as a mindset that people take toward a group of videogames that haven't had accurate genre identity until just recently.

GAME ART is the most useful of the three concepts that Sharp uses to arrange his art history. The definition “art made of games” (14) is simple, yet surprisingly practical when it comes to organizing our cultural artifacts (as artifacts). It's important to remark that game art is not a category of games, but a category of artworks that use games (or their technologies) as raw crafting material. Julian Oliver's auto-generative software ioq3aPaint (2010), based on Quake3 (1999), is one of Sharp's favorite examples and it works as an illustrative case indeed: “In the end, ioq3aPaint is a series of images and films.” (29) However, the fact that it's based on a videogame is “as relevant to the experience as knowing the kind of brush used by Pollock would be to appreciating his drip painting” (ibid.). As much as I approve and agree with Sharp's position here, I find it inexcusable that, again, historically fundamental institutions don't even get mentioned. Can you take seriously an art historical account of (video) game art that doesn't recognize the existence of demos or machinima? Maybe one would like to defend Sharp here by claiming that demos and machinima have their own “communities of practice” that have nothing to do with art; if so, please say that aloud so that I can prove you wrong.

GAME ART is the most useful of the three concepts that Sharp uses to arrange his art history. The definition “art made of games” (14) is simple, yet surprisingly practical when it comes to organizing our cultural artifacts (as artifacts). It's important to remark that game art is not a category of games, but a category of artworks that use games (or their technologies) as raw crafting material. Julian Oliver's auto-generative software ioq3aPaint (2010), based on Quake3 (1999), is one of Sharp's favorite examples and it works as an illustrative case indeed: “In the end, ioq3aPaint is a series of images and films.” (29) However, the fact that it's based on a videogame is “as relevant to the experience as knowing the kind of brush used by Pollock would be to appreciating his drip painting” (ibid.). As much as I approve and agree with Sharp's position here, I find it inexcusable that, again, historically fundamental institutions don't even get mentioned. Can you take seriously an art historical account of (video) game art that doesn't recognize the existence of demos or machinima? Maybe one would like to defend Sharp here by claiming that demos and machinima have their own “communities of practice” that have nothing to do with art; if so, please say that aloud so that I can prove you wrong.

I was probably a bit too harsh previously on the way in which Sharp uses the notion of ARTGAMES. He doesn't, in fact, treat his artgames as simple expressive products but also as objects that we engage with a specific attitude: “The materiality of games arises from gameplay itself and not from the objects used to play the game” (82). This brings us back to the affordances that I cited earlier, and more precisely, to the expectations that people have about those artifacts that Sharp classifies under artgames: “Art and games are not anything unto themselves. The experience of an artifact is contingent on so many factors outside the control of the object itself, let alone the designer” (106). Thus, in the case of artgames, “the act of comprehension and experience is made material in new, exciting ways” (109). I guess we could re-interpret Sharp's notion of an artgame as a mindset that people take toward a group of videogames that haven't had accurate genre identity until just recently.

The discussion of puzzle aesthetics is one of the most successful and delighting surprises in Works of game. Following one of Greg Costikyan's early articles - Sharp calls it “seminal” for the field; sure, but let's keep in mind that most of it is borrowed from Chris Crawford's volume a decade earlier - Sharp distinguishes puzzles from games and looks at the structures of Blow's work from the viewpoint of the former: “puzzles are an instrument of measurement, a means of ensuring a certain level of understanding is obtained by the player” (71). This is an important observation in terms of artgame analysis, in which the processes of ludic learning and thematic interpretation easily blend with thematic learning and ludic interpretation.

After the above it's a bit disappointing to read Sharp's footnote that overlooks the potential of puzzles in thematic development: “This [puzzle solving] is of course only measuring players' mechanical understanding within their performed play and not the meanings beneath the systemic metaphor” (122). A not insubstantial amount of research e.g. in the fields of folklore and discourse studies indicate that the ways in which people solve puzzles and riddles corresponds nicely with the ways in which they untangle themes in various social situations and artworks. These ideas were brought to videogame research in the mid-80s especially by Mary Ann Buckles' study of storygames: if the reader doesn't “understand the story ... the story simply stops” (Buckles 1985, 180). Of course, later scholars such as Ragnhild Tronstad and Nick Montfort pushed these thoughts much further in their explorations of theme-rich adventure gaming.

I'm obviously playing devil's advocate here, to some extent. It's not impossible to read Works of game as a fine attempt to expand ludo-aesthetic values with Dewey's perceptive standpoint: “Coming back around to Dewey and modes of knowledge, Blow takes games as a place where a different form of understanding can happen and that draws on, yet is distinct from, language, images, science, and mathematics” (Sharp 75). In Dewey's philosophy, “art” doesn't exist as an object-label but rather as a behavioral indicator: “meaning of an object is the changes it requires in our attitude” (Dewey 1916, 3141). While we can surely identify activities related to (institutionally pre-recognized) artifacts with the word “art,” the experiences they provide are, in the end, the same experiences that humanity has enjoyed day after day throughout history. What separates ARTifacts and ARTworks today is the latters' intrinsic user manual generated by linguistic development - ”to hold an idea contemplatively and esthetically is a late achievement in civilization” (Dewey 1929, 290). The way in which Sharp entertains the notion of “experiential meaning” (105) can, accordingly, be read as a solid extension of Deweyan thinking that enables us to theorize modern play culture (mobile games, LAPRs, indie creations, large productions and puzzles) from less orthodox art-historical perspectives. Regrettably, however, that's exactly the opposite of the “more than entertainment” methodology that comprises some 90% of the book.

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Go back.

Congrats, you've just found an easter egg. Nothing to see here. Sorry, I didn't have the time.
Press the "back" button on your browser to continue with the review. Or you can just press the shortcut in this sentence to return to the large productions and puzzles page. (Thanks for fixing this, Michal.)

I was thinking of throwing in a few more critical paragraphs about Sharp's choice to treat mainstream gaming (and art) cultures as “communities of practice” (see 106, cf. 117), but I'm too aware of the over-negative bias that this review has already established. I feel most of my complaints don't really target Sharp's ideas as such but rather the fact that they haven't had the time to get polished and developed.

Works of game is a relaxing addition to the not-yet-crowded catalogue of esseys that take ludo-aesthetics as a clear object of their study. It doesn't contribute notably to any ongoing discussions within game and videogame research, but stands as a self-supporting introduction for those who wish to take a glance at what those discussions are about.

Sharp closes Works of game with the following: “The artgames movement has more or less ended, and game art is even more a cul-de-sac inside the marginalized world of media art than it was before. Indeed, as I have worked on this book [they] became art history” (115). As it seems to have become my habit, I disagree (sigh). I see artgames and game art, per Sharp's definition, as phenomena that have finally managed to find their identities as cultural “forms” (perhaps game art comes closer to “style”). Art history has shown that the identification of such forms (installation art, land art, video art etc.) rarely results in their death but rather in artistic creativity within newly recognized limits. While some auteurs unquestionably end up abandoning those limits, breaking them, and pursuing new ones, others will keep on exploring them.

Artgames and game art will stay as long as novel technologies redefine gaming. And when that happens, I hope to be reading Sharp's second edition, which is more ambitious, far-reaching, and longer.

In my opinion, a good review

a) identifies its subject in the context of potential audiences,
b) recognizes and realizes its subject's contributions, and finally
c) performs an overly critical scrutiny on the subject's ideas in order to validate its place in the ongoing debates.

This was an attempt to write a good review. You've reached the end.

References

Buckles, M. A. (1985) INTERACTIVE FICTION: THE COMPUTER STORYGAME 'ADVENTURE.' Doctoral Dissertation. University of California.
Dewey, J. (1916/2012) ESSAYS IN EXPERIMENTAL LOGIC. EBook. Project Gutenberg.
Dewey, J. (1929) EXPERIENCE AND NATURE. George Allen & Unwin.
Flanagan, M. (2009) Critical play. MIT Press.
Holmes, T. (2003) Arcade Classics Spawn Art? Current Trends in the Art Game Genre. Electronic version. In PROCEEDINGS OF MELBOURNEDAC, 46-52.