Thesis

New forms of art are never easily accepted by everybody.  Even photography, considered a popular form of art today, had to fight for acceptance in the art world.  Artists like Alfred Stieglitz helped bring notoriety to photography.  Stieglitz did this by helping to lead the Pictoralism movement.  Pictoralism aimed to validate photography as art by make the artistic hand of a human evident in the photographs.  The content and presentation of these photos often resembled paintings from the impressionist movement which was developing concurrently with Pictoralism.  Photography is one of the success stories of new media, it gained the recognition it deserved and now serves as a major part of artistic culture.  Video games are making a strong running to becoming the newest success story of new art.

Video games started out, as did countless other art movements, with a small community creating for themselves and a small audience.  They have now almost reached the same height of popularity of film.  Those who grew up as video games entered their final stretch into mainstream pop culture consider them as much part of their culture as those before them might consider music or painting a part of their culture.

With recent advancements in technology and the population’s new found love for interactive electronic entertainment, video games have become a huge industry.  It is video games huge economic success that has given them the stigma of being business, not art; as if art isn’t allowed to so lucrative.  Many developers are in it for the quick buck, producing meaningless and simple games to cash in on fads or movies, but these developers can hardly be considered the whole of the game development industry.  The number of games produced along this vein is staggering and they can easily appear to represent video games as a whole, to those who aren’t on the in.  The reality is that all art movements are inevitably taken advantage by at least a few individuals, such as Mr. Brainwash took advantage of the street art craze to make an exuberant amount of money and reputation from essentially meaningless artwork.  The true gems of video games present themselves to those who look past the business, and look for the art.

Indie games (independent games) are perhaps the most artistic form of video game expression.  Indie games are produced by individuals to small groups of people who are making the game for themselves, not any “higher-up”.  Sure, indie game developers hope to make some money, what artist doesn’t, but there isn’t much money in the indie game world.  If the creators of indie games hoped to make the big bucks, they’d seek employment with third party developers like Ubisoft or Mad Dog, or, even better yet, with major game companies like Sony, Nintendo, or Microsoft.  By choosing to work independently, it easy to see that indie game developers are not so much interested in money as they are in producing a new and creative narrative to share with the world.

The video game industry was build in part due to the indie game community who supported the medium in its earliest years by producing work that was easily accessible to the general public.  In the early history of video game development, a couple of indie game developers could put together a game in their garage and distribute it to local retailers themselves.  With new platforms such as the internet, smart phones, and online stores supported by major game companies, indie games are once again taking on a major role in the video game world.

Independent games such as Limbo or Minecraft have found huge popularity amongst gamers and serve as examples of how a few people, working for themselves, can make a living by making the games that they want to make.  This is possible because gamers are recognizing the artistic and creative value of such games; it is easier to claim that a game produced by hundreds of people working for a large company isn’t art as opposed to a game made by these independent developers.  Just as indie games helped lay the foundation of the modern game industry, they now often serve as sparkling gems of creativity and independence amongst the game industry giants.

Indie game development doesn’t require a degree, or any formal education for that matter, to get started.  The hugely popular game Portal, produced by third party developer Valve, started as the indie game Narbacular Drop, produced as a school project by a handful of students at DigiPen Institute of technology.  The students who developed Narbacular Drop were quickly employed by Valve to further develop their idea; Portal was the result of their work.  With students such as these as an example, it is clear that those interested in making video games should not concern themselves with the notion of graduation or any form of certification before they jump into the project of their dreams.

With the help of the creative minds of indie game developers, video games are gaining more and more recognition as art.  Critics can help promote this progression by writing to those who may not be familiar with the artistic value of video games but the responsibility of an artist with an affinity for video games is to further support this progress by producing their own games with focus on artistic expression and narrative.

The number of innovative and interesting game ideas even seems to outnumber those with the resources to turn them in to full fledged games.  Thus, many game ideas, such as Azureus Rising, exists only as proof of concepts, living in the cloud of the internet, waiting for somebody to find them and take them further.  This route of initial game promotion is the one I intend to take and this time in my academic career.  Even without a game going into production, its world can still be established, its content can still be explored, and the concept can still be shared with the world.  That is what I intend to do with my idea for an origami based puzzle adventure game.

Video games are a unique combination of visual art, sound, and computer science.  Game production involves assigning these different aspects to those with the training to execute them.  Indie game developers often take on many role of the game development.  Some roles include, programmer, artistic director, animator, ect.  My focus is on the visual art of the video game production.  This includes concepts drawings, story boards, character development, modeler, and animator.  With that in mind, I intend to produce a website that mimics the Azureus Rising website.  It will feature a proof of a concept video, concept art, character models, and background information of the world of my game.  This is my first foray into the video game world and it will hopefully capture the attention and imagination of the community.