Last week, in my attempt to explain why games were art, I had to come up with a definition that I liked for art.
Apparently nobody else liked it.
However, I stick by it, but your mileage may vary. The only common ground josh0rfz and I could find about our definition of art involved guide’s sausages and pirates. I’m afraid that we’ll all just have to settle for “there still is no good definition of art.”
I may be missing my next two Friday columns (and some other columns in between.) Why’s that you may wonder? I’ll be in sunny Columbus Ohio attending the Gathering of Friends game convention. What’s that you may wonder? Well, stop wondering about everything, and I’ll explain a bit…
The Gathering of Friends is a small annual convention put on by game designer extraordinaire Alan Moon. The con is invite-only, which leads to a certain amount of grumbling from those who haven’t been invited. This will be my third GoF, and I feel extremely fortunate to have gotten an invitation.
Years ago, I went to a game designer convention at the urging of Kory called Protospiel. At the time I was living in Indiana, squeezing out a living working at Staples while I tried to get back into school. Now, Protospiel was (and still is) completely open to the public. The idea of the convention was simply: a bunch of wannabe and not so wannabe game designers hang out in a room for a couple days, playing each other’s prototypes. That way, plenty of feedback is offered by people who supposedly know what they are talking about. (And to all you wannabe game designers, attend Protospiel or Protospiel West if at all possible. There is no way that you won’t learn something.)
So there, I met a number of other game designers who nowadays I consider friends. Among them was Stephen Glenn, coming fresh off his nomination of Spiel Des Jahres for Balloon Cup. Well, it turns out that Stephen was from Virginia Beach, and actually rode through Maryland to get to Protospiel. The next year, he came up with the idea to hold a game designer con modeled after Protospiel a little closer to home. Thus, Pow Wow was born.
After that, I was back in Maryland, and so going to Pow Wow was a no-brainer. After signing up, I found out that the con would have a special guest: Alan Moon. I was incredibly nervous to meet him, despite the fact that I hobnob with big name game designers all the time. It was also surprising and very, very cool: here’s a guy who had just designed a certified mega-hit who is willing to sit in a room helping amateurs test their games.
It turned out that he was a very cool and friendly guy. I presented my prototype of a game called “Turtler” to a table of him and a few other PowWow-ites, and he laughed when he figured out that it was a Can’t Stop/Frogger hybrid. I wish that I could say that the playtest turned out well, but to this day, I haven’t been able to figure out how to get that game to work. Oh well, out of 10 prototypes, only 1 is worth publishing!
During the course of the con, Alan pulled Kory and I aside to say that he wanted to invite us to his convention. I was floored to say the least. I was surprised since my playtests had fallen flat, and said so to Stephen. He said, “Maybe he just thinks you’re a cool guy.”
I ran into Alan a few months later at the World Boardgaming Championships, where he handed off the paperwork, and thus began my journey into The Gathering of Friends.
So, that’s how I got the invite. What’s the con about? It’s 300 or so people there for 10 days playing games. Some are game designers looking to sell their work. Some are game publishers scouting out new games. Many are just there to play the newest or their old favorite eurogames. All of them love boardgames. Oh, and there are tournaments every day, selected yearly. One of the tournaments that is there every year is the spectacle that is the Loopin’ Louie tournament, and responsible for my addiction to a decade old mechanical kid’s game.
Can you see why I love this convention?
I will try very hard to do some sort of live blogging for part of the event. It may be as boring as “I played this game, I didn’t like it” or it may be a bit more exciting like “And he’s used the 270 degree shot to knock off his last chicken! The match is over!” So tune in a little over a week to see which it is, as TheGame reports from The Gathering of Friends 2007!
I remember the one year I went to the World Boardgame Championships, I only went for an evening and most of it was playing Texas Hold Em. TheGame introduced me to everyone, including Alan Moon, who was playing in the game. I’ve kicked myself ever since because, at the time, I had no idea who he was. Regardless, I agree with TheGame, he is a friendly, class-act guy.
If nothing else, you have to agree that ‘art’ is difficult to define. Even the good dictionary folks have trouble with it. Don’t believe me? Here’s 16 definitions to start:
–noun
1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection.
3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.
4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.
5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.
6. (in printed matter) illustrative or decorative material: Is there any art with the copy for this story?
7. the principles or methods governing any craft or branch of learning: the art of baking; the art of selling.
8. the craft or trade using these principles or methods.
9. skill in conducting any human activity: a master at the art of conversation.
10. a branch of learning or university study, esp. one of the fine arts or the humanities, as music, philosophy, or literature.
11. arts,
a. (used with a singular verb) the humanities: a college of arts and sciences.
b. (used with a plural verb) liberal arts.
12. skilled workmanship, execution, or agency, as distinguished from nature.
13. trickery; cunning: glib and devious art.
14. studied action; artificiality in behavior.
15. an artifice or artful device: the innumerable arts and wiles of politics.
16. Archaic. science, learning, or scholarship.
No, art is easy to define. It’s getting people to agree on a definition so the definition becomes useful that is the hard part. 🙂
Well, if people won’t agree on a definition, then by definition it is difficult to define.
… Especially since defining a term includes coming to agreement over the boundaries or extent of a term.
Want to know another word that’s hard to define: Quality.*
*See Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenence.
Especially in comparison to last week, I’m not getting involved in an argument about the definition of definition, especially when I think we’re saying the same thing 🙂
Sure. Besides, once you get to the philosophical point of any argument there really is no correct answer.
I think we are saying the same thing too, just in different ways.
Wait, I thought this article was about gaming, not art!?
I’m sure it was, but not anymore! Hijacked!
Scotto: the Dictionary has a difficult job, no matter how hard a word is to define, because in order to be useable and clear it has to include many/all of the ways a word is used.
Also, just because there is no correct answer, doesn’t mean there isn’t an answer that is closer to correct.