Are Video Games Art?

This post was created in response to the following video, for a University module CIM402:

(Puschak, 2014)

The question that this video poses is “Can Video Games Be Art?”

I was responding to another video, but Christopher Stojkos thoughtful response helped me to reconsider this idea from two perspectives. The first was because the answer seems obvious to me, from a critical perspective, but the second is because the larger question of whether we culturally express ourselves through any games as a medium seems culturally conflicted.

Asking if video games are “art” seems like a clear answer of “yes” to me, but as Puschak (2014) points out, this view may be a fairly recent development. The Frankfurt School of Critical Inquiry (Adorno & Horkheimer, 1993) heavily influenced the ideas of Western “high” art, claiming that pop culture cannot be art at all. It was only in 2011 that America acknowledged that they should be covered under First Amendment laws (Brown, Governor of California, et al. v. Entertainment Merchants Association et Al, 2010). Furthermore, according to Adorno & Horkheimer (1993), because pop-cultural artworks most often seek to distract from “suffering”, and offer a false view of “enlightenment”, they are never truly “art”, and America further delayed the artistic merit of video games as art by classifying them as a “sport” and compedative.

But why is this deeply-held belief that anything that is competitive isn’t art? Does art have to work only with individuals to be art? Is art always cooperative? Must a game include a narrative to be distinctly recognizable as art?

France acknowledged video games as a “cultural activity” through funding in 2003, formalizing this with the wider European Commission in 2008, acknowledging that they are “a cultural expression where art and artists are attached to video games as they are to music and movies”(Boissière, 2008). Indeed, France even knighted the creator of Mario with an Order of Arts and Literature medal in 2006 (Boissière, 2008).

Despite these accolades, we still seem to be citing United States legislation as the main legal standard by which we determine whether something is artistic (Boissière, 2008). This is baffling, considering the huge number of production companies that exist outside the United State’s paradigm (“The 50 Top Video Game Design Companies in The World,” 2018).

According to the United States, video games didn’t contain “expression” until the 2002 Interactive Digital Software Association v. St. Louis County ruling, which strongly I disagree with. Even early games, such as Missile Command, were designed to emulate the fears of the Cold War (Melissinos, 2016) . By including something of the creator’s intended aesthetics and effect in the tension and frustration of that game.

So why can games be art now, but were not in the past? Does complexity equal art? Does having narrative, competitiveness or economics inside the game reduce its artistry, or does it make it a distinct art-form?

Is it that some games simply have subtlety and beauty, and that “aura” of authenticity and earnestness, that we look for in high art, and others .

One of the works cited by Puschek is Journey, a beautiful cooperative game that limits communication between players to some simple gestures. I haven’t played Journey, so can’t speak to its emotional state, but I can talk about a different game. Horizon Zero Dawn, a gorgeous game with sweeping narrative, compelling message (of the potential for hope after the ruination and rebuilding of civilization) and characterisation that has been voted some of the best of all time.

Let’s also consider for a second whether something that is competitive can also be Art. Smuts (2005) actually draws upon the classification of certain sports as being artforms in his argument that the video games should be considered aesthetic art.

Let’s consider one of the most popular, and arguably the worst, board game of all time.

Let’s consider Monopoly in all its derivations, fan mixes and works, the family feuds that its spawned, the flipped boards and frustration. The deep, dark, satirical lesson at its core — that there’s only one winner under capitalism (Pilon, 2015). Everyone else loses.

Isn’t that, right there, an example of pop-art? Accessible, ubiquitous, teaching us something about our own world, but selling out along the way? An old-school version of Banksy, hiding in a box, infiltrating practically every household in the western world at some stage or another.

So why would even Ebert (one of the strongest critics of games as art), continue to oppose or dismiss games as art, or later on only consider them “low art” (Deardorff, 2015)? Is it the line between commercial entities of distribution and creation (a factor that every piece of cinema still contends with)?

Honestly, at this point, who knows? Maybe he’s just tired.

And maybe we need to stop listening to the United States about what constitutes “art”.

References

Adorno, T., & Horkheimer, M. (1993). The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception. In Dialectic of Enlightenment. Continuum.

Boissière, F. B. de la. (2008). Video Games: Officially Art, In Europe. https://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/131929/video_games_officially_art_in_.php

Brown, Governor of California, et al. v. Entertainment Merchants Association et al: (548122013–001). (2010). [Data set]. American Psychological Association. https://doi.org/10.1037/e548122013-001

Deardorff, N. (2015). An Argument That Video Games Are, Indeed, High Art. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2015/10/13/an-argument-that-video-games-are-indeed-high-art/

Griepp, M. (2019). Hobby Game Sales Total $1.5 Billion in 2018. https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/43024/hobby-game-sales-total-1-5-billion-2018

Melissinos, C. (2016, October 21). Finally, video games for adults. CNN Style. https://www.cnn.com/style/article/video-games-highest-form-of-art/index.html

Pilon, M. (2015). Monopoly Was Designed to Teach the 99% About Income Inequality. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/monopoly-was-designed-teach-99-about-income-inequality-180953630/

Puschak, E. (2014). The Unique Art of Video Games. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=333&v=ZHs2n0XTxlo

Smuts, A. (2005). Are Video Games Art? Contemporary Aesthetics, 3. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.7523862.0003.006

The 50 Top Video Game Design Companies in The World. (2018). The Ultimate Resource for Video Game Design. https://www.gamedesigning.org/game-development-studios/