Elbe talks about videogames: Mary flanagan's DOMESTIC

Can Video games be art? Some people may think that the appearance of video games is entertainment, and that is it so it is nothing to do with art; while some may think that art is unlimited with the medium, why it can not be a video game? However, I do think video games have their potentials to be art as long as they have it soul differing from other normal games or they bring some new ideas. There are actually four important video games now. DOMESTIC, which was created by Mary flanagan, impressed me the most. According to the description written on the Mary flanagan's website, I recognized that Domestic is a real art work.

First, it does contain contents. It is about a event that happened in the artist's childhood. The artist took us as first person to experience her memory. In this game, we walk ourselves with various but seems messy views. However, we still clearly see the words written on stairs and walls, the setting of domestic,etc. Moreover, when we walked with those picture and words, we gradually provoke some picture of that situation in our mind. Therefore, such method can include something like films to lead us to receive artist's messages. She used the way of 'storytelling' as the web site describing, with picture and animation to arouse our feeling and emotion. Such experience is similar to what we get from normal art work.

By extending the ideas, Mary also raised some question about it to provoke our thinking. This made this art work more meaningful as it has more things to see and think.

Apart from that, prompting new concepts is another element of art. Impressionism, as we all know, is a kind of oil on canvas but present in a new way in terms of light and shadow. It turns out attracts people and successfully become one of  influential art styles. Domestic does the same. Mary produced a new game that the others have never tried, and more importantly mix with some ideas and scenes. It is a really new method to enjoy in a game and enjoy art.

The other thing of being art is surely aesthetic. We can see there are many domestic pictures in the game, although they are not  arranged in order. Nevertheless, the artist intentionally arranged those picture with the purpose of provoking people's emotion and memory of that time and in response, I did get pleasure from it. It is obvious that the artist had judgement on deciding the arrangement of pictures according to what she wanted to present to us. Art does need an kind of art experience or skills, otherwise it could be nothing or the ideas could not convey to the viewers.

There is also an interesting part in this game. As players situate in the room to experience, there are two aspects of things coming out. One is what the artist convey to us through those visual elements that are shown in the game, which the other is what players get from walking throughout the room. It may be a kind of interaction, although those players may think of something differing from Mary's, as player in fact are experiencing the artist's memory.