January 29th, 2021
I received an email from Mr. Abdenour Bennani asking a penetrating question:
Do you think video games can be made an art form without "people"? The best example I can think of is emotions that the universe makes us feel, like a sense of awe or insignificance. Can't games explore the depths of the relationship between humans and the universe around them instead of the relationship with other humans? And can't that be art?
There’s certainly lots of art that lacks overt characters. In cinema, we have “Koyaanisqatsi”
A truly magnificent movie, but absolutely unique. It has no characters and no dialogue, but it’s about humankind as a whole.
Music has lots of characters in the lyrics, but a great deal of music has absolutely no lyrics, and some of that music is glorious. Here’s the end of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony, the “Pastorale”; it’s about nature:
Sculpture is another art form; most sculptures are of people, but there are plenty of sculptures that are not people:
Painting, like sculpture, is mostly about people, but landscapes have always been an important element of painting:
But such examples are uncommon: almost all movies are about people; most sculpture and painting represents people, and a great deal of popular music is fundamentally about people. The vast majority of fiction is entirely about people.
Three themes are fundamental to all stories: man versus man, man versus society, and man versus nature. All three themes are fundamentally about people. The third theme is the only one that permits any distance from people, but this usually requires abstracting people or humanity.
I draw three conclusions from these considerations. First, art need not be about people, but stories must be about people. Even Koyaanisqatsi, without a single character or line of dialogue, is about how we, all of humanity, relate to our world.
Second, even non-story art usually includes people. Consider these examples of non-story art that ARE about people:
Third, avoiding people requires abstraction. Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony doesn’t include any characters or dialogue, but most assuredly refers to humanity at a highly abstract level. See, for example, Disney’s visualization of Beethoven’s Pastorale in the movie “Fantasia”. The movie teems with characters:
So my answer to Mr. Bennani is this: Yes, it is theoretically possible to have art without characters, but it can’t be in the context of a story; it must instead be presented at a high level of abstraction. At present such a high level of abstraction is far beyond the reach of game design. I believe that it will take several decades before we achieve any kind of interactive storytelling art, and many more decades before we are able to create interactive art that does not utilize storytelling.