Background and Thesis
Chrono Trigger is a J-RPG originally made in 1995 for the SNES. It follows the story of the silent protagonist Crono. He attends the Millenial Fair in celebration of the year AD 1000. During the Fair, his friend Lucca demonstrates a teleporter that malfunctions while teleporting someone and inadvertently creates a time gate. Since the person being teleported fell into the time gate, Crono takes it upon himself to save and bring that person back.
However, after travelling through multiple different time periods, including the future, he finds out that an Apocalypse occurs in AD 1999 in which the world is destroyed by a being known as Lavos. As a result, it is up to him whether or not he can prevent that future from ever occurring.
The Museum of Modern Art currently holds a selection of twenty-one items that consists of video games and consoles, along with a number of other games on their wish list. As it turns out, Chrono Trigger, a game that I believe deserves to be in the MoMA, is included in this wish list of considerable games. If it has yet to be added because of certain doubts of it meeting the criteria for aesthetics, space, time, or behavior, I am here to solidify the reasons as to why it deserves to be included.
For this blog, I will be speaking specifically about the PlayStation edition of Chrono Trigger that was made in 1999.
Aesthetics
Aesthetics – Visual intention is an important consideration, especially when it comes to the selection of design for an art museum collection. As in other forms of design, formal elegance has different manifestations that vary according to the technology available. The dry and pixilated grace of early games like M.U.L.E. and Tempest can thus be compared to the fluid seamlessness of flOw and vib-ribbon. Just like in the real world, particularly inventive and innovative designers have excelled at using technology’s limitations to enhance a game’s identity–for instance in Yars’ Revenge (2).
According to Paola Antonelli, the elegance and graphics of a game are judged differently according to when it was made. As a result, Chrono Trigger can be considered to have very impressive aesthetics at the time. Still employing pixel art, the game is able to display vast worlds and characters that the player is able to easily distinguish.
In addition to this, the game draws parallels to our own planet earth in order to allow it more of an identity, as compared to it being just an unknown world. This is done through the different time periods that the game allows the player to travel through. These periods include the prehistoric age that was inhabited by dinosaurs and cavemen, the middle ages that was filled with knights and castles, and the future that is taken over by sentient robots. Even without knowing these periods, the aesthetics of the game itself allows the player to distinguish the setting that he or she is in. This is further advocated by Simon Niedenthal in “What We Talk About When We Talk About Game Aethetics”. He states:
“Game aesthetics refers to the sensory phenomena that the player encounters in the game” (3).
Therefore, if a game is designed in a way that the player perceives the visual, aural, haptic, and embodied phenomena intended by the designer, it has achieved the game aesthetics criteria.
The PlayStation version of the game furthered these aesthetics by including animated cut scenes into the game. These cut scenes were made by the game’s artist Akira Toriyama, therefore they display how well the game’s aesthetics do at portraying the original art, despite the limitations in technology.
Space
Space – The space in which the game exists and evolves-built with code rather than brick and mortar-is an architecture that is planned, designed, and constructed according to a precise program, sometimes pushing technology to its limits in order to create brand new degrees of expressive and spatial freedom. As in reality, this space can be occupied individually or in groups. Unlike physical constructs, however, video games can defy spatial logic and gravity, and provide brand new experiences like teleportation and ubiquity (2).
Similar to how I explained the aesthetics, the space in the game reflects our own planet through the similar time periods. However, it goes beyond that with the elements of time traveling technology and magic. Both these elements add a new layer of depth to the game that goes beyond what the real world has to offer. In addition to the spatial defying world that the game takes place in, the unique battle system also offered new perspectives in spatial design. The battles in the game are designed in an Active Time Battle (ATB) system. That means that each character has a timer gauge that when filled up allows the character to make a move. This has been implemented previously in Final Fantasy IV.
However it differs from it, as well as other turn based RPGs, because this game has battles take place directly in the field map where they are encountered, as opposed to on a separate battle screen. The game also adds a unique layer of space by allowing the player to attack enemies according to their positions rather than a simple point and press attack. Therefore, the game advocates that the player take into account the surrounding enemies, how they are positioned on the map, and then choose a method of attack. This game introduced this immersive method of battle that allows the player more options in accordance to spatial freedom as opposed to other battle screens in previous RPGs.
Time
Time – How long is the experience? Is it a quick five minutes, as in Passage? Or will it entail several painstaking years of bliss, as in Dwarf Fortress? And whose time is it anyway, the real world’s or the game’s own, as in Animal Crossing? Interaction design if quintessentially dynamic, and the way in which the dimension of time is expressed and incorporated into the game—through linear or multi-level progressions, burning time crushing obstacles and seeking rewards and goals, or simple wasting it—is a crucial design choice (2).
Time is the main focus in Chrono Trigger. Changes throughout time have understandable effects. For example, the Grandfather paradox is a concept that is apparent within the game. By travelling back in time and preventing an ancestor from meeting their significant
other, they never have children, erasing their existence in the future. This can be accomplished in the game, but at the same time, it can be prevented. Therefore, every action through time in the game has a respectable cause and an effect. This idea is prevalent in the game. The dimension of time is clear, allowing the player free roam of the time periods. John Maeda states:
“As a genre, videogames take our minds on journeys, and we can control and experience them much more interactively than passively – especially when they are well designed” (1).
Physically, this game is around a thirty hour experience, but by giving the player the power to control how and when they spend that time is what makes this game’s quality of time unique.
This leads me to the final criteria.
Behavior
Behavior – The scenarios, rules, stimuli, incentives, and narratives envisioned by the designers come alive in the behaviors they encourage and elicit from the players, whether individual or social. A purposefully designed video game can be used to train and educate, to induce emotions, to test new experiences, or to question the way things are and envision how they might be. Game controllers are extensions and enablers of behavior, providing in some cases (i.e. Marble Madness) an uncanny level of tactility (2).
Any game can elicit some sort of emotion from the player, whether that be confusion, boredom, rage, or happiness. But it takes a well designed game to elicit a specific behavior onto the player. The behavior that Chrono Trigger induces onto the player is the realization of a changing future. Although influenced through the concept of time travel, Crono performs a multitude of events in order to change the future for the better. Since the player is in control of Crono, he is a reflection of what the player could do. In reality, he or she is not on a predetermined path. The players have
control of their own lives, holding the ability to forge their futures into whatever one they desire. This idea is supported by the fact that the world in Chrono Trigger parallels the one we live in. Therefore, it is easier to draw the connection between the player and game. The game itself also has several different endings, depending on what decisions the player makes. Which ending the player chooses will reflect their outlook on their future, whether that ending be a stop to the Apocalypse, or an acceptance of the ‘inevitable’.
Conclusion
Chrono Trigger serves to meet all of Paola Antonelli’s criteria for aesthetics, space, time, and behavior through its unique and innovative additions in game design. These elements contributed to the game becoming one of the greatest video games of all time. They should also be what gets it into the Museum of Modern Art.
References
- John Maeda. (2012). “Videogames Do Belong in the Museum of Modern Art.” Wired Online. December 4.
- Paola Antonelli. (2013). “Why I Brought Pac-Man to MoMA.” TEDSalon NY2013.
- Simon Niedenthal. (2009). “What We Talk About When We Talk About Game Aesthetics.” In DiGRA 2009: Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory.
Video Games and/as Art 