Hello, this is The Gemsbok, and today's topic is FTL: Faster Than Light, a game
developed by Subset Games and originally released in 2012.
The artistic movement of Cubism has had an incalculable influence on the art of
the past century. Its temporal fluidity and spatial rigidity were new and
exciting, and—along with other contemporary movements—Cubism carried
art yet further along its strange journey of influence from Impressionism
toward Abstract Expressionism. Some formal attributes of Cubism, such as
flattened perspective plane, an emphasis on forms and experiences over realistic
minutiae, reduction of realistic complexity to geometric simplicity, and
sharply contrasting regions of intense color, are also present in a much more
recent art form: Pixel Art. One recent game which uses Pixel Art to great
effect is Subset Games' acclaimed strategy roguelike FTL: Faster Than Light.
By taking a quick look at some of the art in FTL, one can acknowledge and
remark upon the meaning it carries, in the hopes that others will go on to do
the same for Pixel Art that interests them.
Before getting into that demonstration of a reading of Pixel Art via FTL, I'd
like to say a bit more about Pixel Art in general. Despite its far-reaching
influence and near constant presence, Pixel Art is very rarely treated as the
movement it is. Indeed, the Wikipedia article for Pixel Art reads more like a
technical glossary than a page of information about a type of art, like the
pages for Pop Art or Impressionism. One does not have to search far and wide for
a reason behind this oversight, and many of you probably already have theories as
to why this is the case. For myself, I would say that the problem is that Pop Art
and Impressionism are movements of, among other things, painting, whereas Pixel Art
is a movement primarily of games. The status of video games as a new art form
is itself a controversial topic, and relies heavily upon the degree to which
do you think art can be (or already is) interactive. But setting aside those
bigger concerns temporarily, it is most assuredly possible to treat Pixel Art as
a legitimate artistic movement, whether this assessment is ultimately
complicated on closer inspection. In a brief demonstration of such a treatment,
the validity of the art can be tentatively demonstrated as well. In my
video on Wizorb, I talked about some ways that the hardware constraints on earlier
video games had fortuitous consequences in terms of gameplay, but Pixel Art is
another, arguably much more significant consequence of the limitations of the
earliest digital projects. And just like those gameplay elements, many indie games
of the past decade have consciously employed what was once only implemented
by necessity, and to great effect.
The denizens of the universe of FTL: Faster Than Light are nothing short of
impressionistic. Their top-down perspective can be accurately
represented by a height-by-width ratio of about 12-by-17 squares, and each
character is usually limited to shades of two or three colors (plus their
outlines). Using that same scale of squares, a human's face is eight squares of flesh
tones. But in these tiny crewmembers, one comprehends a reduction to the essential.
The spare forms of the different species communicate their roles in broad strokes:
power, precision, energy, banality, and more. There is something symbolic, or
inherently inaccurate, to a presentation so utterly sparing and so vibrantly
colored. The communication of this notion to much of FTL: Faster Than Light's
audience is supported by the myriad ways in which different fans have interpreted
more realistic renderings of the characters. Just as in Cubism, what is
captured is not the image as a photographer would capture it, but as a
human could experience it; feelings and impressions inform the art. In fact,
perhaps a study of which gameplay styles and which character forms or even colors
are most strongly correlated to each other would be revealing of cultural
attitudes on subjects like body types and others. Now consider the FTL
characters in their natural habitat, situated among the rest of the art in
the gameplay screen, putting these animated elements back onto their
animated canvas. Notice how each character is little more
than a speck on the screen, nested within a room square, within a room, within a
room layout, within a ship, within a background, within a UI frame. Note too how
the characters, despite being dwarfed by their surroundings, fit naturally into
the insulated rooms which contain them. This tension is emblematic of the basic
tension of the game—between the construction of a secure vessel for
these fragile life forms, and the intrusion of enemies and enemy fire into
that space. Meanwhile, the sharp, clean edges of the indicators, rooms, and menus
signify a degree of control; this clarity of presentation is often present in such
strategy games, where the player is meant to feel that the world before them is as
much their plaything as their responsibility. What you can not see, and
what would have been impossible in those earlier paintings, is the atmospheric
oscillating electronic music that is integral to the work of art that is FTL
(brilliantly composed by Ben Prunty), with its lulls and swells providing a further
implication of expansive unknown realms engulfing the ship, which in turn engulfs
the characters. This matches up well with the way in which, both before and after
every single jump made by the player's ship, the animation on the ship is one
that displays it zoomed out into the background. This is the experience of
sentient adventure and exploration encapsulated, and this theme matches up
perfectly with the threatening, unforgiving, and intimidating difficulty
of the game.
All of the utility and emotive qualities of FTL's characters, and of their world,
are contained within minimal animations of deliberately symbolic art. Artists
operating in this style over the past 40 years, first by necessity and later by
convention or by choice, have been accomplishing this same feat of
communication by similarly minimal resources. Pixel Art shares many of
Cubism's priorities with respect to space, form, color, and light, although it
generally does not share Cubism's emphases on the experience of time, and
on multiple simultaneous perspectives. Perhaps, however, at least the focus on
time is amply provided by any work of art whose experience is itself
noticeably protracted through time—such as a film, game, or work of literature. In
light of all of this, I would venture a (totally unfalsifiable) guess that the
public would not have been as readily able to accept Pixel Art if not for the
foregoing century of artistic experimentation. And above all, I would
earnestly hope that Pixel Art as a movement gets the attention it deserves
in the art world some time before all of its greatest or most influential
practitioners are retired, or dead.