Project Update: Divided Attention

Yesterday, I actually began creating a prototype of Divided Attention using PowerPoint. Even though I only finished the onscreen rules and sketches of the opening images, I'm pretty excited by how it's going. I've decided that in addition to sound effects and the soundtracks of various video clips I intend to include, the game needs music. I'm going to try to write the music myself. It probably will be minimalistic, but increase in complexity as the visuals get more complicated (i.e. as the screen becomes more divided).

I want the game to be entertaining and playable, but I also intend the game to be an art piece. I want it to address issues outside of the realm of play and to raise questions about group behavior, identity and self-categorization. While I'm hoping it will be fun, I also want it to be an experience that players become emotionally invested in, or at least that produces some kind of lingering emotional response (as well as an intellectual response).

Warning: Useless diatribe below

Regarding our discussion in class Wednesday, I don't think that game design is an art practice in all cases. Certainly a game can be designed to be an art piece, but not every game created is a work of art. That's not to say that a person couldn't have an experience similar to one they might have in viewing a work of art, a feeling of the sublime being one example. But there are many things created by nature or humans that evoke feelings of the sublime that are not art. The key is the intention of the person who creates the game: if the designer intends game to be art, then it's art. How successful it is as a piece of art is an entirely different matter.

I would certainly be the first person to say that board game design, especially as practiced by the best designers today, approaches an artform. But I hestiate to say that the games themselves are artworks. I don't want to sound like a snob, but in order to make sense of what we do as artists, we need to establish some kind of boundary, no matter how fuzzy or changeable. And, of course, there's the perfectly legitimate argument that I am limiting the definition of the word "art" to serve my own purposes, and that those who choose to call a game a work of art are simply using the term more broadly. I would agree and point out that the differences over semantics and "games vs. art" are really the same argument. So there.