I've written a little bit before about games as art, but my previous examples have all been games that comment on some aspect of life or literature. This is not to imply that all art needs to make commentary, or that games written for the primary purpose of entertainment or education are not art. There are some people who say that games are never art, though personally I agree with the other side of the argument.

It is easier, however, to argue that games that do have something important to say are art. As a game designer I find it particularly interesting when games are used to comment on the nature of games.

I'm going to talk about three of these games, but you should probably play them first if you don't want my biased dissection of the games' messages to interfere with your personal experience of them. So play them first, and I'll put my commentary after the break.

Play You Have to Burn the Rope.
Play Achievement Unlocked.
Play Upgrade Complete.

You Have to Burn the Rope.

The reception of You Have to Burn the Rope was amazing. A few people didn't "get it", but many people acted like they were in on the "joke". They commented on how "hard" it was and some people even released walkthrough videos and speed runs. The game was adapted to a text adventure, and was even novelized! Part of the appeal of the game is its brevity. Part of the appeal is the wonderful song, Now You're a Hero, that lauds your great accomplishment and treats the whole short game like some kind of epic ballad.

I do wonder what You Have to Burn the Rope is trying to say. I don't think it's actually a joke. Is its brevity a comment on games that are too long? Is it a counter-comment to some people's criticism of Portal as being incredibly fun, but too short. (The counter argument usually being that Portal is exactly as long as it needs to be.) Is the fact that the game clearly spells out how to beat the Grinning Colossus in both the title and in text as you walk through the first part of the game some commentary on the ludology vs narrative debate? Is the fact that you have weapons, but they are useless against the boss a commentary on boss fights in other games? What do you think?

Achievement Unlocked

In contrast to You Have to Burn the Rope, Achievement Unlocked has a clear and explicit message. It's a commentary that applies to the achievement systems in many modern games and game services. For those of you unfamiliar with achievements, think of them like merit badges for video games. You might earn them for meeting straightforward goals like saving the princess, for completing difficult extra challenges like beating a level in under a minute, or for totally arbitrary and even counter-productive behavior, like beating a level without collecting any coins. Completing an achievement usually earns you a little badge, and maybe also some "points" related to how difficult the achievement is estimated to be.

The XBox has a single achievement system for all games that you play on that console. The game download-and-buy system Steam, and the Flash Game Portal Kongregate also have their own systems. These social systems use achievements as badges of honor and bragging rights. Look at all my Kongregate Badges! Some games, such as Steam's Team Fortress 2, give additional awards for earning achievements.

On top of that, many individual flash games have a sort of internal achievement system. In fact many of the badges on Kongregate are now earned by earning a certain number of achievements in a game's internal achievement system!

The purpose on achievements is to create a kind of meta-game around a game system or site. I tend to play new flash games on Kongregate instead of other sites because I get to earn badges and raise my "level". I'm playing the website as if it was a game filled with smaller games! It also serves as a way of creating new challenges and types of play within a given game.

There is a downside to the new achievement craze, however. Many people will play games on Kongregate that they don't really enjoy in order to earn the badge. This turns something that is supposed to be fun into work, and games that support the achievement system often suffer in ratings because of this. The "if you don't like this kind of game, why are you playing it" argument is fruitless against obsessive badge-collectors. Even if you do enjoy a game,achievements can keep you playing long after the game has ceased to be new and fun. What starts out as an advantageous way of increasing replay value, can sometimes turn a fun game into a chore. The secret is to treatachievements as optional bonus rewards. You should only try to earn a badge if the challenge you have to face is going to be a fun one, because this is a game!

Since some people consider a game to be unfinished until all achievements are earned, Jmtb02 of Armor Games decided to make a game that had absolutely no goals, except to earn achievements! All of the challenges in the game are totally arbitrary. Some of the are impossible not to earn (You get an achievement for preloading the game). Others are very obscure, since there are no clear instructions on how to change color. Your elephant has infinite lives, and there's no way out of the little screen you start it. All you can do is read the list of achievements and experiment until you earn them all.

At which point the game admonishes you for wasting your time. It tells you there was no point to the game, which was sort of the point.

Upgrade Complete

Upgrade Complete claims to be inspired by Achievement Unlocked, and it's easy to see. Instead of taking on achievements, it's commentary is directed at the upgrade systems implemented in many modern casual games. Upgrades are sort of an extension of the older video game concept of powerups. Powerups like Mario's "fire flower" or the twin-ships in Galaga are temporary. You might lose them if you are damages, or even after a certain time limit runs out. They come from the era where an arcade game didn't want you to stay too powerful, so they could keep earning your quarters. In contrast, upgrades are permanentpowerups that you have to buy using an in-game economy. You earn "money" or some other resource by playing the game, and between levels you have to wisely invest in upgrades in order to be able to stay alive as the levels get harder. Like achievements, the upgrade system becomes a meta-game that you play in parallelwith the "real" game. This time it's a resource management game, instead of a collecting game. Many games even have an "investment" as one of the upgrades, meaning that instead of buying better weapons, you're increasing the amount of money you'll earn in the long-term by spending money in the short-term. Again like achievements it can be a way of adding value and depth, but it can also overshadow the coregameplay.

Upgrade Complete takes the idea of upgrades to an extreme level. Not only can you totally customize and upgrade your spaceship, but you also have to spend your money to upgrade the graphics of the game (which start out asblocky Atari-2600 style sprites), the graphic design of the title screen! On top of that, the game makes you purchase essential options, and buttons. You even have to buy theachievement system!

The game itself is pretty spare. The enemy ships can't hurt you. Your goal is to destroy them all, and collect as many of the coins they drop as possible. There is no penalty for failure, unlike most upgrade-heavy games, which are impossible to win if you buy things in an unwise order. The ability to totally customize your ship is actually very fun, which makes up for all of the arbitrary things you have to buy. Upgrade Complete follows the lead ofAchievement Unlocked making an explicit statement about players over-valuing upgrade systems in games.

That brings me to what I consider to be the fatal flaw in the arguments of Upgrade Complete and Achievement Unlocked. Both games seek to prove how arbitrary these meta-game systems are by de-emphasising traditional gameplay, and emphasizing the meta-game. But the games they made ARE ACTUALLY FUN! Both of these games have convinced me that meta-games are games worth playing!

What was your reaction to these games?