Surrealism, Expressionism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism. Dali, Kandinsky, Klimt, Monet. These are the genres and virtuosos who have defined craftsmanship and imagination for their respective generations and beyond.
Many artists to this day still refer to these renowned painters with great reverence, citing enormous influence on their own works of art. The above-named artists pioneered and developed their singular genre, or artistic movement, yet remained within a series of set but flexible guidelines that allowed them to bend the rules of their art in compelling ways. The digital canvas of today allows for much greater flexibility when developing artists stimulate their imaginations, while still respecting the modernized guidelines of particular genres as a whole.
Take for example Cinematech 330, which airs on Tuesday, August 24. Four different and distinct video game genres are represented, per segment, throughout the show: Shooters, fighting games, platform games, and action RPGs. One can always look back to the origins of specific categories, but it is the rare game that can prominently stand forth as a seminal piece of work—one that, while it may not have been the first to cement a certain design dynamic, stands firm as the pre-eminent work of digital art of its’ era.
As Monet is tied most memorably to his lily-pad and haystack paintings, each of the genres epitomized in Cinematech 330 can likewise be attached to an equally notable game. The geriatric Galaga is often perceived by many as the principal beginnings of the shooter genre, while Capcoms’ Street Fighter II embodies all that made successive games in the fighter field evolve in the manner they did. Pitfall for the Atari 2600 is usually considered the father of platformers, while The Legend of Zelda on the NES filled similar shoes in the action RPG arena.
The central disparity between classic works of art painted on canvas years ago by geniuses of their medium, and classic video games that molded genres for years after (and probably years to come), is the fact that usually more than one person was involved in the conception and creation of those games. Today, popular titles such as Dead or Alive 3, Metroid Prime, and R-Type Final require large teams of individuals, all collating as one, to develop and complete the singular vision that will eventually become a final product. Now it has become incumbent upon the new generation of game artists to stretch boundaries—bend the rules of the standard genres—in order to create their own classic works of art.
On Tuesday, August 24, viewers will have the opportunity to see some of the genre defining games that have shaped today’s video game landscape. Tune in to Cinematech at 10:30pm ET / 7:30pm PT to catch the “Art as Game.”
