The following is reprinted from bard xy, where it originally appeared on 28 September, 2005. Although the weekly feature idea never really took off, I still feel strongly about this piece, which finds successful game design in a work of net.art.
I’m hoping to start a new weekly feature on xy, entitled “The Game/Art Problem.” Each week, I’ll be posting links to examples of the synthesis of art and video games, and discussing the issues demonstrated by these pieces. This week, I’m presenting Natalie Bookchin’s “The Intruder”, a hypertext/game interpretation of the same-named story by Jorge Luis Borges.
Bookchin, an L.A. artist and professor at the California Institute of the Arts, executed “The Intruder” in January of 1999. By visiting the site, the user (slash reader, slash player) is confronted with a series of simplistic video games, which he or she must complete in order to progress through the narrative. Each of the ten games unfurls a portion of Borges’s original story (translated into English from the Spanish original), with the unveiling of the text dependent upon the user successfully playing through the game (or, in the case of one game, failing to play). Though mostly modeled after classic Atari 2600 titles, each game is visually related to the portion of text it covers. For example, as Borges’s story talks about a woman who is shared sexually between two brothers, the user plays a version of Pong, where a female avatar replaces the ball.
In hypertext and net.art communities, this piece is heralded for its use of video games to affect one’s read of the classic story. This sort of view, however, strictly looks at game as assisting the read of the text. A description of the piece on Rhizome.org exemplifies this view of game as supplementary to story: “Playing transforms former readers into participants who are placed inside of and implicated in the story—-Borges’s short tale of a tragic love triangle.”
I refer to this issue as the Game/Art Problem, or specifically the issue of discerning whether – in a specific instance – a game is art, or whether art is using game: Game as Art, or Art as Game?
In the case of Bookchin’s “The Intruder,” the standpoint of the literary community is that art utilizes game in order to convey meaning. Instead, however, let us look at “The Intruder” as game before art. Consider, in a series of ten different games, how the inclusion of Borges’s story alters the goals of gameplay. Without the element of story, each game is played with the goal of defeating a computer opponent, or avoiding obstacles. When narrative is introduced, however, each game is played specifically with the purpose of furthering narrative, of completing story.
A player strives to complete each game in order to further the narrative. At the same time, the player is aware of their activity in relation to the narrative. The game is no longer game for game’s sake, but an extension of story. Players can not help but be made aware of the symbolic relevance of their actions in gameplay, whether they be participating in a series of duels over possession of the girl, controlling the girl and forcing her to fall repeatedly to her death, or simply holding a targeting reticule over her floating image in order to hear the entirety of the tale’s horrific conclusion. Bookchin’s piece draws distinct parallels between the importance of gameplay and the progression of story, while gaining popularity over the years not as an example of game utilizing story, but as story utilizing game. How has the gaming community passed over this work for so many years?
The Game/Art Problem presents: “The Intruder”