Two Rail - Shooters - Game Invaders: The Theory and Understanding of Computer Games - page 51

works directly with the gameplay aesthetics. In other words, the synthesis is intended
to coordinate all aesthetic pleasures of the game resulting in the synthesised plea-
sures of agency, of realizing narrative potential, of stunning imagery, and of entranc-
ing music. This is why Rez manages to be both the reiteration of a well known game
genre from the past and a revolutionary new game experience. Mizuguchi is delib-
erately trying to raise computer gaming from mass entertainment to an art form to
rival painting and music.
These references to fi ne art work in a number of other ways. The visual imagery
of Rez is directly evocative of the work of the twentieth-century painter Wassily
Kandinsky. Compare the paintings of Kandinsky with screen shots of Rez and you
will see what I mean. This is a deliberate decision on the part of Mizuguchi and it
is almost as if we are fl ying through and, in part, creating a new Kandinsky for
ourselves when we play Rez. In a sense we have become a video jockey (VJ). But
aren't we also something of a DJ in Rez as well? We are making music, trance music,
at the same time as creating animated Kandinskys.
This suggests to me that we reconsider transformation. Remember, we noted
that Star Fox offered transformation by making us a star fi ghter pilot and a fox to
boot. Rez doesn't offer transformation on this level but it does offer us transforma-
tion on a higher level: the transformation of becoming painter and composer, of
becoming a creator of art and music and synesthetic art at that. Once again—
remember how we lost our sense of self in the previous chapter— this demonstrates
how central and yet multifaceted transformation is to computer games.
SUMMARY
Perhaps this is why Rez attracts such diverse responses. People who want the pure
gameplaying experience might miss or deliberately ignore the connotations of the
computer game as fi ne art form. There is nothing wrong with this. Not everyone
wants their game playing entertainment to resemble an art gallery gone wild. But
many do. Or rather, many want this option open to them. It is surely one of the issues
that computer game designers will have to address as game player demographics
begin to invade the later years of life. Game players will grow up and do all sorts
of grown up things. They might well want something more sophisticated out of
games, all or just some of the time. Some of us like going to art galleries, some like
intelligent fi lms that Hollywood so rarely makes, some like all sorts of music that
never gets in the pop charts. Some want and others will increasingly want the choice
of games on that level as well.
A question remains here, though. If Rez does indeed incorporate the aesthetics
of art and music then do we have to extend our computer game aesthetics to cope
with this? The answer is yes but there are problems in how to do this without clut-
tering up and even obscuring the particular aesthetic pleasures of interactive media
that have been developed and applied successfully in this and the previous chapter.
We leave this as a question for now but it will be one of a number of issues dealt
with in Part II of this topic.