Creativity, a lost art?
Prepare to face my mighty army in glorious combat! …what do you mean ‘the color of that shield looks a bit weird?’ It’s a dwarf’s shield, what would you expect! He probably spilled beer all over it! Okay, can we just move on? Thanks. Now…no, I’m pretty sure if you had one of them slamming you in the face, you wouldn’t really stop to consider what color-tone it is, you’d think about the fact that your head is soon going to be in a world of pain, and…just roll the dice please.
A very recent decision led me pondering further into the meaning of creativity. See, for years I have on and off been thinking about starting to paint Warhammer figurines as a hobby. All the times before however I’ve stopped myself as this is something that requires money, knowledge and time. Now is an ideal time as I have a steady job, longer weekends and an awesome fiancee who has offered herself to teach me (whilst also painting her own figurines).
When we where ordering the necessary things available she was looking at other figurines to paint. None of these really appealed to me, and I started to question why. They where the typical things you would expect to find in fantasy, nothing different from the dwarves I had decided earlier on to paint. And that’s when it struck me.
The reason why I first knew about Warhammer and why it ultimately felt so compelling was simply because it’s part of a game. Now, I guess the mystery of ‘what came first, painting the Warhammer figurines or playing with them’ is something that will ultimately go unsolved, but doesn’t this speak for something?
Recently an esteemed movie critic called Roger Ebert claimed that video games can never be art, or at least not without a significant amount of time (the claim was that no currently living gamer would see this happen), and yet had many steps to evolve. Many people took this to heart and rapidly rallied to defend gaming as a cultural form of art, to be praised in the same way that movies, books or paintings are, almost with a frantic zeal. I wasn’t one of them.
I am the first to call myself a gamer and be proud of it, but I do think that what people might need to start consider is what all these medium has in common: creativity. Now, you can say that creativity plays into a lot of things that aren’t necessarily branded art. Fixing that leak in the bathroom water pipes using only some chewing gum and a collection of old newspapers sure is creative, but it’s not art. If you look up the definition of art, the most blunt one is from wikipedia, stating that ‘Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions’. Now, instantly you will say that games does this, right? So therefore they are art, right?
What I would say is that if anything, games is a construct of things that we have previously mentioned. Although all of this can exist to a lesser or greater degree, a game usually has the reading experience of a book, the sound experience of music and the visual experience of a movie, whilst also having a level of interaction none of the other mediums come close to, and bringing creativity no matter when.
To explain this, things can very bluntly be created into two phases, creation and use. A book, record, movie or piece of art involves a lot of creativity for the creator, but only a limited amount of creativity for the user, whilst games tends to push you into thinking and be creative when experiencing them. Furthermore, I cannot think of any other medium that has brought so much inspiration and creativity to things that are absolutely unrelated to the medium itself. I mean, how many books has inspired a soft drink? Or how many movies has inspired someone to knit a really bad-ass cap? There also exists plenty of evidence of people that has made music videos using in-game visuals, sounds and lyrics based around the actual game. This is only the beginning, and more and more different things are coming. Most of these things might be scoffed at simply because it has something to do with a game, something viewed as ‘childs play’ and therefore not ready to play with the big boys.
This can easily be tied back into the figurines I mentioned as the start, as I am pretty sure that simply the fact that someone being told these are primarily used for a game rather than their artsy value (although this can be contested) instantly devalues them simply due to these ties. It leads to the question however, with society the way it is, with all the stress, focus on being efficient and multitasking, surely these figurines, and gaming, would excel? Compared to other normally painted figurines the Warhammer ones can not only fill one but two roles, both being a simple visual boost to your surroundings, and being used for entertainment. Games would top books, movies and music in the sense that it can provide all of these three to an extent, within a package.
Just as a red mage however, maybe the problem that Mr Ebert tries to aim for is simply that in doing this, it becomes a Jack of all trades, but master in none and as such can’t possibly yet reach the highest quality level of work that currently exists. And it’s a valid point, because surely a medium that managed to at least keep itself on par with the greatest musicians, writers, artists and storytellers in history, all at the same time, would make the world implode.
I think however that what I will take away as a gamer and carry on high is the fact that gaming will hopefully go down into history as the medium that sparked the most random, fun and interesting outbursts of creativity.
Because, let’s face it, a cake shaped as a giant red blob-like monster used as a mount for goblins is just pretty fucking sweet.
I really hope that people likes the new look and feel, made by my wonderful fiancee that I cannot thank enough for it. Also, I decided to go with dwarves because even if you overlook the totally epic beards, the awesome weapons and their general state of drunkeness, they have pirates. FECKIN’ DRUNKEN DWARVEN PIRATES! If that’s not awesome then what is?!
