Paul Barnett Speaks, Part Two: Why Games Aren’t Art, and Hardcore MMO Players Are Yesterday’s News

By Steven Crews | May 24, 2009 | | Filed under: Features, Interviews | Tags: Paul Barnett, warhammer online

The MMO Gamer: I should have asked if there was anything you wanted to talk about to begin with.

Paul Barnett: [laughing]

The MMO Gamer: You just brought up some very interesting points…

Paul Barnett: Good!

The MMO Gamer: …Not the least of which is I am apparently a crotchety old man already, because I am one of those hardcore types you spoke of, or I wouldn’t be doing this job.

But, there are two distinct and polar opposite camps within the people I speak to.

One camp, the one I would ascribe you to, says that games are going in the direction of instant-on, always available-at-your-fingertips, mindless entertainment for the masses.

The other group says that games are heading towards more serious subjects, like say, game versions of film noir or a Tolstoy novel. Games that make you cry.

Why is it you feel that we’re moving towards the entertainment model, not the storytelling, emotional-attachment model?

Paul Barnett: Because of chess and poker.

The MMO Gamer: What? Because more people play poker than play chess?

Paul Barnett: No… The Guggenheim does not have a game of poker on the wall as an art exhibit.

There is no movie which is just about a pack of cards. There is no book that talks about poker in any worthy fashion, because poker is a game, that’s what it is. It’s a socializing game.

There’s gambling attached to it, which can be monetary tokenism, but it’s a game.

It’s a huge, money generating, entertainment game. There are loads of ancillary products around it, tables, chips, beer, cigars… it’s got TV coverage, but it’s a game!

It’s not art. It’s not “worthy.” It has things in it that can be exciting, you can watch poker and go, “Wow! Is he going to win, or isn’t he going to win?” You can use it as a conceit, you can use it as a McGuffin in a movie, where the cards turn over and, “Oh! James Bond was better because they actually played Texas Hold’em!”

The upshot is, it’s poker. It’s never going anywhere, it’s never going to anything else than what it is: Poker.

Chess is exactly the same. There isn’t a moment when you walk past and look in a window and see a chess set that’s weird, that you don’t just go, “Oh, it’s a weird looking chess set.” What does it do? Plays chess. That’s what it does, it’s a chess set.

I think all people who go around looking for “worthiness” in computer games need to realize that there is no worthiness other than what they are: Computer games.

If there is worthiness, congratulations! It’s no longer a computer game.

You can take a chess set, and glue all the pieces together in an interesting way, and put a five dimensional board around it, and call it “Conversation with an Immortal.”

Well done. You’ve taken a chess set, and turned it into a piece of art. What you haven’t done, is made chess anything more than chess. It’s still what it was, and if you want to play it, dismantle your crazy art exhibit and play the game.

Because it’s a game. That’s what it is.

The rules can change, although there’s a federation for controlling them, but it’s just a game.

Same with poker. Take a deck of cards and make a great big house of cards out of it. Well done, it’s no longer poker, it’s now a stack of cards.

The MMO Gamer: So no game can ever rise to the level of art, in your opinion?

Paul Barnett: There are no exceptions that I can find, at all. Everyone who sends me a link, and there are endless people who send me links trying to prove to me that they have found a game that is art, always run afoul of the same two tests:

Test number one: This happens to be a piece of art that is pretending to be a game. It is just a chess set stuck together.

So, Passage by Jason Rohrer is not a computer game. It’s a piece of art. And, like most of modern art it only really becomes interesting after you read why he built it, so that you can pretend that you’re very intelligent and you knew that from the beginning, because it’s almost impenetrable when you first play it.

The second test: People who have got a game with an artful thing in it. The art direction of BioShock, while artful, and really interesting, and complete, doesn’t in any way make it more or less a game. It just happens to be a game with an artful thing in it.

Hideo Kojima can do what he likes with Metal Gear Solid, what he’s done is to make a game that every now and then has an hour and a half cut scene. That’s not art, it’s indulgence. It’s interesting indulgence, and worthy of being experienced, but it’s not art. It’s indulgence in a computer game.

So, I believe that the Tolstoy novel people are insane, misguided, and missing the point. I believe that computer game people that are focusing on becoming more mass-market, and getting to more people, are just practical in realizing what it is.

Mobile phones: Are they art? Or are they something that we’re all just going to use?

You could have had that argument ten years ago, but you can’t have it now. They’re just a utility. What’s the most important thing a phone has to do? I don’t know, make phone calls? Well done.

If a phone doesn’t make a phone call and it’s clever, it’s called an iTouch.

Continued on next page…