Videogame art

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Videogame art involves the use of patched or modified computer and video games or the repurposing of existing games or game structures. Often this modification is through the use of level editors, though other techniques exist. Some artists make use of machinima applications to produce non-interactive animated artworks, though it is a mistake, however, to regard artistic modification as being synonymous with machinima as these form only a small proportion of artistic modifications.

Videogame art relies on a broader range of artistic techniques and outcomes than artistic modification. These can include painting, sculpture, appropriation, in-game intervention and performance, sampling, etc. Videogame art also includes creating art games from scratch, rather than by modifying existing games. It is useful to regard these as distinct from art mods as they rely on different tools, though naturally there are many similarities with some art mods.

Like games, artistic game mods may be single player or multiplayer. Multiplayer works make use of networked environments to develop new models of interactivity and collaborative production.

1 Techniques
2 See also
3 References

[edit] Techniques

[edit] Machinima

Main article: Machinima

Machinima are screen-based narratives made using pre-existing computer games (which are usually, but not always, modified). Genres of work include narrative works such as Red vs Blue and non-narrative, abstract machinima.

Usually machinima is a time-based media (like film), but other related works involve using in-game screenshots to create sequential artworks (like cartoons or graphic novels.

[edit] In-game Intervention and Performance

Artistic interventions in online games, often designed to disrupt in-game norms in order to expose the underlying conventions and functions of game play. Well-known examples of this include Velvet-Strike and Dead in Iraq.

[edit] Site-specific Installations and site-relative mods

These artworks replicate real-world places (often the gallery they are in) to explore similarities and differences between real and virtual worlds.

[edit] Real time performance instruments

This is the practice of using games in live audio and visual performance. See also chiptune and the Fijuu project.

[edit] Generative Art Mods

These exploit the real-time capabilities of game technologies to produce ever-renewing autonomous artworks. Examples include Julian Oliver's ioq3apaint, a generative painting system that uses the actions of software agents in combat to drive the painting process, Alison Mealy's UnrealArt which takes the movements of game entities and uses them to control a drawing process in an external program and RetroYou's R/C Racer a modification of the graphic elements of a racing game which results in rich fields of colour and shape.