Samantha
Spreitzer
ART
381
22
February 2017
Game
Paper
Cities and Stories
In our world, cities tell a story.
There are cities that have histories that span thousands of years, and one can
often read that history in the city itself, from ancient ruins to modern
architecture. Even within the past few hundred years, such distinct
architectural styles emerged that one can often date a building by looking at
it—provided, of course, they know their architectural history. Cities are not,
obviously, the only things in this world we live in that tell stories. Books
have been doing so for thousands of years (and people even longer), and so have
movies and TV shows, among other media. But now, one of the most popular forms
the story can take is a video game. They offer endless possibilities, limited
solely by the imagination of whoever is making the game. Some games offer no
story at all, like the classic game Pong, yet others are built around epic
stories, like Mass Effect. While
there are plenty of people who do not particularly care for the stories a game
may offer, I personally am more invested in that than anything else.
That might be why it is interesting
and somewhat surprising to me that, prior to starting to write that, I had
thought little about the story for my city in-game. I had ideas about what
would be there and where things would go that I had even laid out in a way that
made sense for a story, but I had simply not given it one. Now, however, I have
started to see something come together. I envisioned it as a journey from old
to new, with the very oldest being crumbling ruins of something that once was
and the very newest being a somewhat futuristic-looking castle. I now see my
city as a place that stands as a testament to the passage of time. Perhaps, at
one point, everything there was a part of the style of the crumbling ruins,
even up to the castle. But, over time, things have changed. I see the castle as
a sort of ground zero, if you will. With successive periods of time and
architecture, things have been torn down and rebuilt, starting with the castle
and moving outwards, but always leaving something behind of the old at the
edges of the rebuilding. Thus, time seems to move forward if one walks towards
the castle and backwards if one walks away from it. It is, then, like the
ancient cities of the real world, preserving the old whilst still creating and
showcasing the new, often also with important structures. But perhaps, now that
city has left just enough of things behind to lead to the castle, it now acts
as model, like a physical timeline more than a place for people to actually
live. It could very well be a tourist attraction, even, with people that work
there dressed in clothes to match the times of their respective areas and
offering history lessons, like there are today with old attractions. But in the
end, maybe none of that matters at all. Video games can, at least in my own
opinion, often be considered a form of art, and one of the best things about
art is all the different things different people might see in it. The artist
themselves often has an idea of what they are making, but a viewer might look
at it and see something completely different, which is still most often entirely
valid—granted so long as the viewer can take into account the artist’s original
intent if it is important to the piece. So too in video games, where a story
can often be set but the details might not be filled in, or there might be room
to consider something else completely, which players often do. Thus, in this
game and city of my creation, I would welcome the perspective of those who play
it who might see something I had never even considered but that show it in a
whole new light.
Artists, even when given the same
basic outlines or restrictions, will often find such different ways to
represent their ideas that one can see how incredibly different we all think.
These cities will be a testament to that, to what we have learned, to what we
want, and to the stories we wish to tell. I fully expect everyone’s cities to
be, for the most part, entirely distinct from each other, to the point where we
may be able to see a screenshot and know exactly whose city we see. We are all
creating our own little gamespaces, to borrow from McKenzie Wark, our own
versions of utopia and dystopia that come from the things we have each
experienced, our own stories. And I, for one, cannot wait to see the things we
each tell.
Works Cited
Wark,
McKenzie. Gamer Theory 2.0. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 2007. Future
of the Book. 23
Apr. 2007. Web. 20 Feb. 2017.
Lecture Response:
Before this week’s lecture, I hadn’t
given much thought to public art in regards to incorporating it into my city,
at least not consciously I suppose. I had sketched a basic sort of statue idea
that I’ll likely now use for my public art piece in my city. But public art in
general has always sort of fascinated me. I love the idea of creating art for
art’s sake and letting the public get to see it. Being able to interact with it
brings it to a whole new level for me. I love interactivity in almost all
things (and now it makes the learning style test I took in middle school make
more sense, with me being a ‘kinesthetic learner’). Visual arts forms that are
just that are fine and I have no issue with them, but being able to interact
with art makes you feel closer to it, more connected in a way. So when public
art does that, it’s my favorite type of public art.
Public Art:
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