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Art goes Computergame

Art on computers. Hmmm. We all know about "multimedia" CD-ROMs. While these are able to present diverse subjects and previously non-digital art quite well, only computer games allow the viewer to take a first-person standpoint within the world the artist created, facilitating an immersive experience of the story, music, visuals or other forms of artistic expression (see also: Immersive Games ). Good books, movies or artworks have always done so, in a way; one could even say that an artwork is completed only when the viewer does indeed immerse himself in it, perceive it, as it were.


Myst with its empty worlds fraught with secret meaning is an outstanding example of computer game art. It uses visuals and sound effects to set a mood, but unlike a movie, there is no continuous motion, no dialogue to carry the action, no off-screen commentary on the things we see. We could compare it to a nature documenary if the "nature" of Myst were not completely fictitious. It uses text to hint at meanings that the player will construct in his head as in a novel, related to fictitious exchanges of correspondence published as novels. It presents us recent ruins of worlds, painfully lifeless as we find many traces of the life that seems just shortly gone, and makes us understand that this loss of life is the effect of the evil passions of two brothers having overpowered their father and misusing his inventions. Myst speaks of the fascinations of machinery. Does this fascination have a bearing on the storyline? Were we given to schalarly explanations, we would talk about the anonymity of this machinery, lending itself to the good father's works, the evil brothers usurping him, and the player to discover the affair, in the end forcing him to decide whom to help and make a personal decision on the issue. Such is not the intent of the story. The machinery is just there, serving all those passions whilst being harmlessly fascinating...


A computer game is art. It can be good art, or bad. We know of trivial literature and movies as well.

Ideas change form. It probably started even before legends were put on stage in ancient greek theatres. Whenever a crossover happens, those who see both usually have strong opinions on it. "Which did you like better, the book or the movie?" Often we find something "lost" in the transition, sometimes we see something gained, and we always hope the two treatments would complement each other in a meaningful way, else we wouldn't have gone to see both.

An incomplete List

Games that exist(ed) but I can't remember much about: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Jurassic Park (Spielberg movie), Lion King (Disney), Space Jam, Tekwar (SciFi book by William Shatner), Yoda Stories (Star Wars).

Did you notice? The literary genre that has made first and foremost use of all things related to computers was Science Fiction; nowadays computer game developers take many of their ideas from it and the related fantasy genre.

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Created by Michael Mendelsohn 7. Sep 98