Art and the Pixels of Life and Death

Oct 14, 2013 by bganter

Whether or not Video Games can be art is a just a minor question that begets the provocative centuries old debate on what should and should not be considered Art. Roger Ebert maintains that video games cannot be art due to the fact that “the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art.” He even goes on to say that “no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.” However, many critics have pointed out that the medium on which videos games are built upon is still at its infancy; todays video games are the cave drawings from prehistoric times.

In my eyes, I consider art as anything made or created by an individual or a group of people with the intent to evoke emotion or to draw awareness to some idea or movement. For example, many people may question whether or not Yoko Ono’s avant-garde performances should be considered art (personally, I feel that her work is rather distasteful), but one cannot argue against the fact that there is a certain level of intention in her work, whatever it may be.

And with the game called Passage, Jason Rohrer’s intent was very clear: the fact that death is inevitable. As you soldier on through the game, you find that there is some beyond going in a straight line, deviations and explorations may lead you to find surprise and treasure, and you may also find that getting attached to another person may put certain areas out of reach. Rohrer’s simple details also lends to the unavoidable facts of life: as you move forward, your character visibly ages and that the back drops of the distant past and future get compressed, blurry and hard to see. The intention of recreating the inescapable aspects of life and death through a 100 pixel by 16 pixel image is a wildly ambitious and Rohrer does so by providing us with powerful, yet subtle emotions.