A talk I delivered as part of a "Games and Art" panel in the Music and Gaming Education Symposium. I specific focused on the concept of metaphor in gaming.

1. GAMES AND METAPHOR
JEREMY PESNER

2. WHAT MAKES A GAME “ART?”
• There will never be a complete answer
• Not going to try and find one here
• Will merely explore one idea/option/component of the
question
• Should hopefully help to understand the lenses
through which we view and understand games
• P.S. I majored in Computer Science, not English lit

3. CERTAIN GAMES ARE
(PROBABLY) ART

4. THE METAPHOR
• A staple of almost every work of fine art
• Arguably responsible for the beauty of life (no big
deal)
• Forms the basis for endless academic pontification
• But how do we understand them in games?

5. PLAYING WITH THE FIGURATIVE
• What are these games about?
• Games are literal with respect to what you’re seeing and
doing (jumping, moving, interacting)…
• But it’s what you don’t see that’s fascinating
• The games aren’t clear - they never provide “the answer”
• Can be frustrating to gamers - we play games to find
answers

6. PROBABLY NOT DESIGNED AS
METAPHORS

7. SOME GAMES HAVE
METAPHORS IN THEIR STORIES

8. BUT…
Which games ARE metaphors (or could be)?
I have some thoughts…

9. ICO/SHADOW OF THE
COLOSSUS
• Almost no dialogue
• Never have a clear sense of ultimate goal
• Significant emphasis on portrayal of the game world
• Few characters

10. OCTODAD
=
• An indie game in which you are a human/octopus creature
• You have a human wife and children
• The challenge of the game is movement-based
• Almost no one realizes you are an octopus
• Perhaps a metaphor for the isolation and difficulty of communicating in
family life?
• Reminds me of another animal father…

11. AN EXERCISE…
WTF is this shit?
• I’m not sure most people took this game literally when it came out
• Confirmed that it heavily borrowed from Alice in Wonderland
• This could be a metaphor for anything (offer your ideas)
• Only later games set this world as the “reality”
• Accompanying theory that SMB3 is a play (ask me if you want to know)

12. HOW TO TELL IF A GAME MAY
BE A METAPHOR
• Minimalist feel
• Little dialogue
• Little backstory (exception: Braid)
• Few characters
• Once the metaphor starts getting too detailed, it
doesn’t work as a metaphor

13. METAPHOR IS ONLY ONE
COMPONENT OF ART
• Plenty of art that is not constructed as a metaphor
• Probably some games taken literally that are
considered art
• Would love to see the Andy Warhol of game art
• Perhaps it’s enough to say that art brings some level
of sophistication to how we see the world