Gesamtkunstwerk – A discussion about Wagner and games

A while ago I had an interesting discussion with Florian Bodenschatz, our Audio Director.
We sat down and shared some thoughts about storytelling and the Gesamtkunstwerk.

In short, with the term "Gesamtkunstwerk" or "Total Art" Wagner described his idea of blending all or many art forms into one, unique piece of art.

During our discussion we came to the conclusion that games are without doubt a form of
art, which has the potential to fulfill this idea, because it combines graphic, music, writing, architecture and many other art forms.

But games can, in our mind, not only be a Gesamtkunstwerk, they also have the power to bring the idea of Total Art even further, because they can include the audience in the artwork.

So far only very few games made use of this power, but hopefully soon we’ll see more titles, which will use the combined power of art and interactivity.

One thing that really stood out for me as a Content Designer (aka Narrative Designer,
Level Designer, Quest Designer etc.) was the term:

Writing without words

Probably the most cited sentence in screenwriting is: “Show, don’t tell!”. For games we should go even further and our sentence should be "Play, don't tell", because gameplay is, to put it in a nutshell, everything that matters.

Only a story that is communicated through gameplay and all the tools a game gives us is a good one. Unfortunately, we still rely way too often on telling and unnatural dialogue. Why don't we use all the tools we have? Why don't we use the gameplay?

A perfect example for writing without words, are the last seconds of the StarCraft 2 cinematic “Betrayal”. In this cutscene we can see the last seconds of Kerrigan as a human and how she is betrayed by Arcturus Mengsk. The last seconds of this cutscene perfectly show how she feels in this moment. Without words we can feel her desperation, her disappointed, her anger, her betrayal. Also we can experience what this moment meant for Jim Raynor within the game, while we play through the missions.

The combination of the gameplay experience in StarCraft 2 with all the story parts that are revealed during the missions is what I understand under the term Gesamtkunstwerk. That's something what our goal as game developers should be.

Creating fun entertainment in a perfect piece of art, but to achieve this, we need to overcome our classic model of sorting our teams in categories like programmer, artist, writer etc. We need to understand that we’re all storytellers with our own special gifts and that no matter what we do within the team is important for the stories we tell and the games we create. Only a team that works together like one, similar to the Borg, and that puts gameplay in the first place, will be able to create a Gesamtkunstwerk.

We’ve come a long way, let’s not stop here, but strive for great entertaining games and
meaningful stories.

Thanks for reading my blog and I hope you have a great day.

God bless you.