The Artistry of Videogame Mechanics
Videogame mechanics are artistic endeavors in it of themselves.
I’ve always believed that art lies in the craft of creators and the emotions their work sparks within people. What we see or hear isn’t necessarily “art” so much as it is a product of art itself. Art can be Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night, a celestial sky of dancing shadows and flickering lights, evoking those melancholy feelings when the sun lies absent.
To make myself sound slightly less pretentious, I also consider the waffles my dad makes art — just the right amount of light fluff with a generous helping of rich maple syrup (or tart, fruity jams in my case).
As far as video games are concerned, the tapestry of code, visuals, and music they become may as well be the Sistine Chapel. Only in this case, the Sistine Chapel changes in real time, depending on how I interact with its vast halls and ceilings.
All this to say, without game mechanics, video games as an art form wouldn’t even exist.
A Brief History of Interactivity
Interactivity is the key concept that separates video games from other art forms. Sure, you can pause a movie and song, tilt a painting to see new details, but the very fabric of these art forms is set in stone. A viewer cannot change a finished film, song, or book. They can interpret it to their liking, but they are always the outsider looking in.
In contrast, video games have always had their roots in interactivity. Early computer engineers created electronic versions of childhood games. Josef Kates’ “Bertie the Brain,” a four-meter-tall behemoth of a tic-tac-toe machine, was arguably one of the first digital game machines ever made.
And yet, Kates unceremoniously dismantled Bertie after the 1950 Canadian National Exhibition.
Another significant gaming machine of the time was Ferranti’s “supercomputer” Nimrod in 1951. What struck me about this particular machine is how much awe and terror it inspired in people. BBC Radio journalist Paul Jennings said of Nimrod:
Jennings then went on to describe how the game of Nim was played and even admits it sounded simple. Having seen the machine firsthand, with all of its coiling wires, Jennings realized how complex processes are needed for something as simple as flashing lights. Jokingly, he “predicted” the machine would have steel arms the next time he saw it again.
Much like Bertie, Nimrod met the same fate. Dismantled for parts.
Ultimately, these machines existed solely to show off some trending technology of the era.
Bertie’s purpose was to showcase the additron tube, a technology that would quickly be made obsolete by the transistor. When asked why Bertie was not preserved, Kates stated he was overwhelmed by all the projects he wanted to be a part of, each potentially shaping the course of computer history.
He didn’t have enough time to do everything he wanted.
Persona 3: Reload
Time is one of the core themes of Persona 3 Reload. It is my first and so far, only Persona game. I didn’t get into the series because it didn’t seem like something I’d be into. A group of kids battling monsters after school, in between slice-of-life shenanigans? It was the kind of shonen anime that made my eyes glaze over in its abundance.
But I found myself getting invested in all these different characters, thanks to one of the game’s core mechanics: Social Links. Making friends quite literally enhanced my combat and magic skills, which incentivized me to take in more of the story. Looming over all those events is the ever-forward march of time.
Whether it’s hanging out with friends, studying after school, or exploring Tartarus, your actions in Persona 3 move time forward. Day by day, the school year goes by, and you start to realize something. You might not have enough time to meet everybody. There are so many social links, and there are times when you must choose one over the other.
All of that lost time culminates in an ending that unexpectedly shook me. I found myself regretting all those social links I missed out on. Yet, at the same time, I knew that experience was exactly what the developers intended. Time is precious, and we, as humans, should make every second count. Persona 3 is a game that captures the importance of community, whether that’s saving the world or just having fun with friends.
When Games Became Fun
Slowly, people were changing their perception of what machines could do. Even the creators themselves started to see the potential. Nuclear physicist William Higinbotham of the Brookhaven National Laboratory created Tennis for Two solely for entertainment.
Not a tech showcase, not a hook for more research funds, but purely to give laboratory guests something fun to do.
Hundreds of people, many of whom probably didn’t even know that the same facility housed Cosmotron, a Nobel Prize-winning particle accelerator, lined up for a chance at some electronic tennis. David Potter, a fellow engineer, said something about Higinbotham’s work that stuck out to me:
“I found his work to be beautiful.”
Beautiful is not an adjective most people would associate with a simple tennis game, yet it rings true. So much intelligence, experience, and creativity were needed to create Tennis for Two, despite its ultimate purpose being a novelty for guests. I have no idea if Higinbotham saw his work as art, but I certainly do.
Seriously, just look at how gorgeous this game is.
Despite the game’s simplicity, Tennis for Two showcased an exciting visual rhythm, as the ball bounced back and forth.
That said, most of these games just recreate IRL games. So it came as a surprise when, in 1962, the interstellar hit Spacewar! took gaming to cosmic heights. One of the earliest action multiplayer games, Spacewar! puts two players in spaceships with limited resources while orbiting around a star’s gravitational pull.
The resource scarcity adds a layer of complexity never before seen. Players must decide when to fire and dodge while trying to avoid losing everything. It was through these mechanics that the earliest embers of storytelling in video games began.
While Spacewar! had no story to speak of, it was a game that created stories for its players. These computer nerds didn’t just talk about the tech anymore, but about their skill, their part in whatever incredible play they made. The simple yet striking animations, in tandem with the fast-paced gameplay, showcased how impressive the visual language of games could become.
Hi-Fi Rush
In a sea of franchises, reboots, and live service clones, Hi-Fi Rush was a refreshingly original IP from a major studio. As the dorky yet loveable “rockstar” Chai, the player must battle against CAPITALISM with rip-rockin’ rhymes. Before you even notice it, the catchy music will clue you into the core mechanic of Hi-Fi Rush.
Everything, and I do mean everything, bops to the beat. Chai, his friends, his enemies, and the very world jam to the rhythm of Chai’s musical heart. The combat is an innovative blend of rhythm game and character action. Hit robots on cue, and you do more damage. Go off-tune, and you might get kicked off stage.
Adding to that experience is the dynamic soundtrack. Much like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance before it, the music matches the intensity of your actions. You unlock new parts of the song to hear as your combos go higher and higher. It’s the perfect trilogy of skill, production, and mechanics, creating a beautiful experience.
Pair that with tracks from awesome bands such as Nine Inch Nails, and it’s a game that I’ve not seen, heard, or felt like anything before.
The Guiding Hand of Creativity
Over a decade after Spacewar!, Dungeons and Dragons launched in 1974. With it came a brand new way to tell stories on the tabletop. Players would create their characters, guided along with strict rules to balance the experience. High INT and low STR meant you were fit to be a classically frail Wizard. The reverse would be the woefully brutish Fighter.
Ultima and Dragon Quest adapted these same concepts in the 1980s, the grandparents of Western and Eastern RPGs, respectively. The transition from tabletop to transistors didn’t bother the RPG genre much. After all, electronic games had rules of their own to function.
But how could rules inspire art, you might ask?
Imagine you’re told to “draw something.” Without any other direction, most people would have a tough time drawing “something.” What is something, and why are they asking me for it? What if I draw the wrong thing instead? But tell someone to “draw a car,” and they will more eagerly put pen to paper. They draw their dream car, or a funny car, or even a bicycle for laughs.
Players could shape stories not just from personal experience, but within the worlds created by the developers.
Silent Hill: Shattered Memories
Horror games have some of the most clever and sadistically specific mechanics for messing with players. Eternal Darkness: Sanity’s Requirement would “mess with” your TV, only to reveal it as a delusion of your character. The indie game IMSCARED would seemingly crash, only to jumpscare the player by re-opening the game.
Shattered Memories is one of the most ambitious examples of this. A reimagining of the original Silent Hill, Shattered Memories starts the game by making you fill out a “psychological profile.” Your answers in these surveys will influence your playthrough’s aesthetic, the characters you meet, and even the endings themselves.
But here’s the twist: the “profile” never stops analyzing you. Depending on what you do throughout the game, your initial answers may get overshadowed. Even if you answer morally, making mistakes and intentionally going down darker paths will change your psyche profile.
The players can then try to influence themselves back into certain mindsets with the recurring therapy sessions. But again, it will never stop. The psyche mechanic was the evolution I wanted from a franchise. Instead of simply changing the endings, your actions now change the entire game.
Games Never Stop Evolving
As I jump between modern day and the past, one thing becomes exceedingly clear. More than any other art form, video games have evolved so quickly. Technology gets better, and so do video games.
As such, artists have an ever-changing toolkit in every generation. Great mechanics give players open-ended directions on how to engage with the game. It’s a creative outlet for the developers to showcase their work and create stories that can’t be recreated in any other artform.
Even as the state of modern gaming has fallen victim to corporate greed, the creatives stay strong. Indie games continue to innovate when so many AAA franchises choose to rest on their laurels. At gaming’s very core, it’s still a bunch of charming nerds looking for cool ways to make technology speak to the player.
And there’s one game that perfectly captures that for me.
Before Your Eyes
My favorite game of all time, bar none, is Before Your Eyes. The game explores the very experience of life, seen through the eyes of a life that has already ended. You must go through the major milestones of this person’s life to discover what they meant to the people around them, and what purpose they ultimately found.
Only one problem: you can’t close your eyes. Before the game starts, it requests access to your webcam so it can track your eye movements. As you go through each memory, you must take in as much as you can before you inevitably blink. If your eyes close before then, whether by fatigue or some dust in your eye, the story moves forward.
Seems simple, right?
But this game is an emotional journey, and it WILL try to get you to blink. Even as it crafts this compelling story, visualized with gorgeous 3D art and serenaded with gentle music, it’s ready to betray you. Or more accurately, your own eyes will betray you. And with every blink, you have no idea how much time will pass.
A few seconds.
Days later.
A year from now.
Over a decade.
You don’t know how much life you’ll miss.
“No matter how much you like it, you’re not gonna be able to stay.”
As you get captivated by these characters, you start to actively fight the mechanic that makes it so compelling. Through tears, you force yourself to keep your eyes open, hoping for some answer to the lost soul’s plight. Before Your Eyes is an experience that truly cannot be recreated in any other art form.
The mechanics aren’t just happenstance, but the very center of the game’s themes of life. Life goes by so fast, and once you blink, you realize just how much has changed. It’s simple, and yet it remains the absolute peak of what I love about video games. No other art form can immerse me so deeply into the lives of its characters. To see everything, quite literally, through their eyes.
Final Thoughts
Game mechanics are a unique art form in that you never really “see” it. While there are representations of it, be it through a game over or a special cutscene, it’s an art form that takes place entirely unseen. Yet, without these walls of code, video games would not be what they are.
Video games are an amalgamation of so many art forms put together, music, cinematography, animation, and writing, woven together by a fabric of code that too often remains unappreciated. But while that may be true for many, it’s certainly not for me. Because video games have always been art, and the artists behind them deserve every credit in the world.
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