Richard
Wagner was driven by the motivation to create the Gesamtkunswerk, the Total
Work of Art. To do so, he sought to tie in aesthetic masterpieces of as many mediums
as he could to create his music dramas (he loathed the term “opera”). This
entailed beautifully painted sets, amazing costumes, wondrous music, powerful
dramas, and built on classic, stirring themes. He was an innovator, and was
considered by many to be superhumanly ambitious and a bit of a twat. However,
his name remains with us today as a testament to his success. He came as close
as anyone had ever come to producing this total work of art.
Today,
artists are able to even more fully realize their multidimensional artistic
realities and share them with us in greater numbers than ever before. The
Gesamtkunswerk of today, though some may not see it, is the video game.
Powerful writing, timeless themes, beautiful visual works, moving musical
scores, inspired character designs, and, above all, the involvement of the
beholder come together to develop aesthetic impressions that are impossible to
create otherwise. A video game allows for the character development of a
television series or a novel while sharing the intensity of a film or short
story. A great advantage they have is that the main character often acts as a
surrogate for the player (possibly more deeply than in any other form),
facilitating greater personal involvement in the relationships we see manifest.
In some games, the illusion of choice and sense of genuine repercussions allows
us to feel as if we truly have an impact on the artistic world we are operating
in.
I
truly believe video games can be art. I say “can be,” as not all of them are
art, just as not all books or albums are art. Some are products, churned
out for profit. A painting of a couple of apples next to a bowl is a painting,
not art. A clichéd romance novel hastily congealed via mad lib is a book, not
art. Madden NFL 2012 is a video game, not art, no matter how good it is.
Art
and Products abide by different rules, and people must treat them differently
as such. This blurred line has become quite evident in the controversy over the
ending of Mass Effect 3. The Mass Effect series is widely considered to be art,
and rightly so. It has some pretty wonderful writing, great character
development, beautiful visuals, excellent music, and great game play. The story
is not especially inventive, but few are. It is a compelling version of
Campbell’s monomyth, but too similar to Battlestar Gallactica to be considered wholly
original. However, it is endearing and involves players on a pretty deep
emotional level, which has created a tremendous affection for the series. The
last installment moved me to tears on a few occasions with its portrayals of
heroism, sacrifice, and despair.
Now.
Even some non-gamers have heard of the storm of controversy of the ending of
this series. The game has a few different endings, all equally pretty poor. Many
people have listed assertions, both justified and unjustified, ad nauseum, to
the weakness of the endings. But that is not what I wish to discuss; you didn’t
like the ending, I didn’t like the ending, the horse is dead. What I do have
issue with is the bafflingly self-entitled mentality that compels gamers to
demand a different ending.
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| What happens if artists have to listen to consumers. |
Somehow,
people not liking part of a piece of art has inspired some butthurt basement
dwellers to start a movement to demand a new ending to the game. I
simply can’t even begin to understand the audacity involved in this act.
Frankly, it is comparable to a group of people deciding they don’t like Mona
Lisa’s smile, and gathering to demand da Vinci’s artistic deference. Or, to
take it even further, a vocal minority of fetishists screaming about how the
Mona Lisa doesn’t look natural without a ball gag in her mouth.
The
Mona Lisa is what it is. The picture you see IS the idea from which she was
created, made real by an artist. The Mona Lisa IS what the Mona Lisa is
supposed to be. To proclaim that her smile is too vague and to demand it changed
would be destroying the very nature of the artistic integrity of its creation. If
part of it sucks, part of it sucks. That’s life. In fact, a fair number of
people would say that it is the imperfections of art that define it as art.
There
have been many artistic endeavors that I have been critical of. I adore the
Dark Tower series by Stephen King, but felt let down by the ending. I did not
complain, I just accepted that it was King’s story that I was privileged to follow
and moved on with my life. Despite the fact that I spent roughly $200 and 100+
hours reading it to do so, it never even occurred to me to try to demand a
different ending, possibly because I’m not a spoiled little shit.
Many
people have brought up “artists” who caved to public pressure in the past in
order to justify their selfish outrage. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle revived Sherlock
Holmes ten years after he killed the detective off, assumedly in response to a
pissed-off readership, and there is only so much hate mail one can read. Today,
the instantaneous communication that the Internet provides lends itself to a far
greater capability to annoy the shit out of an artist, making for a much faster
turn-around. When Doyle broke down and started writing Holmes again, he became
a whore. To explain the severity of this, let me draw a hypothetical
comparison. As a married man, I sometimes wish to have sex when my wife does
not. If I reacted to her disinterest by demanding her compliance, I would be an
awful person, correct? If I created an internet buzz and donated to charity,
staging a very public shaming of her lack of desire to fuck me, I would be a
phenomenally awful person. If, after all of this, she DID decide to have sex
with me, I would not be able to look past the fact that I coerced her into
giving me what I wanted, despite her wishes. This is what is called coercive
rape, and anyone who could take pleasure from this is a disgusting human being.
The strong-arming of Bioware into submission and compliance is the artistic
parallel. These assholes are demanding that the company create more or better
art for them, whether Bioware wants to or not.
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| ...sexy bitches that they are. |
Simply
put: when you use market pressure to demand a work altered, you have rendered
that work Not Art. “This creation does not suit my needs; change it” only
applies to functional tools. It should NEVER apply to the realized ideal or
experience art acts as. To believe that you deserve a good ending to a
story is so dishearteningly selfish that, well, that I’m disgusted enough to
write an over-long blog entry about it. I could not be more embarrassed to be a
gamer if everyone I have ever known simultaneously walked in on me masturbating
to ToeJam and Earl.
I
wouldn’t be so disappointed if Bioware had not capitulated and announced that
they are looking into creating a better ending in response to customer
complaints. This is a travesty of artistic value that has set the status of
the artistic value of video games back at least a decade. Mass Effect could
have acted as the video game figure of Beethoven, shifting global sentiment of
video game creators from artisans to artists.
This
amazing display of self-entitled, first world problem, Monday morning
quarterbacking is appalling, and Bioware capitulating to the demand of the
populous is to admit that they are selling a product instead of telling a story
that exists wholly in the authors’ minds. Art is not democratic. A novel
creation is a creation that exists as a whole, and to pick it apart and demand
reworking is utterly contrary to the entire mien of artistic character.
An
artist of any medium is not your bitch, as Neil Gaiman rather succinctly puts it. They owe us NOTHING. They develop the vision from their mind into some form
that the populous can witness. Once the creation has left the artist, they can
no longer control it; it is in the world, born and new, and it will do what it
will do. We can then evaluate their
creation any way we choose. We have the right to love it, hate it, be disgusted
by it, rub one out to it, whatever we feel is fine. We even have the right to
bitch about it. We do not have the right to demand anything more from the artist.
To do so is an amazing and disheartening display of arrogance.
For
the record, I accept that it is possible that EA put Bioware into this position
by demanding product readiness at a time that Bioware would be unable to
deliver. However, if this is the case, you are only hurting Bioware, a great
group of artists, by proclaiming loudly to the world that they can’t deliver to
the consumer what their corporate masters demand. Who do you think you are
hurting? (EA is notorious for releasing incomplete games, which I blame on the
rise of DLC usage in today’s gaming, but that’s a rant for another time). If this is the case, I feel desperately for the Bioware team, but to lay blame at their feet is just upsetting to see.
Personally,
I would love to see another ending to the game. I would love for Shepard to
have been indoctrinated or something, changing the effects of the end. However,
I want Bioware to want it. If they had planned a great controversy to
emotionally fuel a greater, real ending that would mimic the initial confusion
of the players, that would be outstanding. Otherwise, I’ll feel like I’m
fucking a limp body that is just allowing me a hole in order to shut me up and
retain access to my bank account.
