Video Games Are Art Philosophy Essay

Drones of prepubescent kids swarm around their video game machines in mindlessness. We see on the television set the firing of machine gun rounds, and as we hear the spray of bullets fly across the screen, the kids shout: “Boom, headshot!” For many parents and non-gamers, this is the image that forms in their heads the moment they hear the words “video games.” How then, dare I say that video games are art? Is it not a mindless activity that shits upon a child’s personal growth? As Roger Ebert has gone on the record and stated: “video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.” With all due respect, dear Roger Ebert, you are a film critic, can you really comment on something you know next to nothing about? You cannot pass judgment on a whole medium without ever experiencing a single title, without being bothered to look into so much as a video of a game in motion, and basing your opinion on initial impressions of games from 25 years ago. On April 16 2010, when you revisited the question of whether video games can be art, directly opposite to game designer Kellee Santiago, you asked: “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art… Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, I’m studying a great form of art?” Now, this statement is just arrogant and ignorant. The reason why I would say video games are art is simply because it deserves to be called so! This is not about forcing a point of view on you. Art is subjective, and when I say Video Games are art, all I truly want is for people such as you to remove your ignorance and preconceived notions, and to give video games the credit it deserves and remove its stigma as “mindless entertainment.”

There is no hidden agenda when people say Video Games are art. Art is defined as a process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings – heck, even cooking. Should game developers not command the same level of respect as film makers based on the fact that they use video games as an outlet for creative expression? Video Games as an art are not about kids justifying a lengthened play time. In fact, it is not a matter of games being recognized as “art” at all, but much more for the public in recognizing that games, like movies, can affect emotions and the senses in a unique way. If video games are art, then we would have rightfully recognized them as a legitimate medium for creative expression.

The only reason why video games are currently not recognized as art is because it is misunderstood. As had been said, the image that forms in people’s heads the moment they hear the word “video games”, involves shooting, killing, sports, kids, and driving. To the common folk, there is nothing artistic about that. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.” Video Games however, are not simply entertainment of this caliber; it can be used for much more than the said genres of games. Interactive art and storytelling that match those of Hollywood have already been created. Games like “Heavy Rain”, “Grim Fandango”, “Braid”, and “Flower” invokes extraordinary emotions as well as tells a memorable story. These are not games that are about “winning”; they are not made for 10 year old kids; no, they are about the experience of the interactive art as a whole, packaged into the form of a video game. If we were to restrict what we know about video games and think of them as arcade games intended to suck in quarters and earn a profit, then I dare say we should do the same for film, and only look at the porn industry? Even then, the debate has moved past “Is film art?” and has now settled on “Is this film art?” both of which end up being exercises in frivolity because art, like food, is a matter of taste. Roger Ebert, your rationale for justifying video games as “non-art” even though you have never played it, is thus: “One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. I don’t think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.” I’ll concede to that point, that most games are more like entertainment than like art, but condemning the few because of the many is faulty reasoning – if we were to do this, isn’t porn and commercials the most prevalent use of film? Would anyone take me seriously if I began to argue against the nature of cinema as an art form by making a point that, at least by volume, most of film comes as surveillance recordings, amateur home movies, and commercials?

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Video games are a pretty recent medium, and it has only been around for twenty-five years. This is another reason why it is misunderstood to be not art. It has not been around long enough to be considered appealing to the sense. When writing was conceived, it was not used as a literary medium nor was it considered art. Writing was birthed in the need of keeping accounts of taxation and records – nothing else. But look at it now! We have a whole plethora of literary works that we call the “great arts”. To say that “Video games can never be art”, is just blasphemous. Surely over time, is it not possible that people will warm up to video games as a potential art form?

Even in a game which was an epitome of shooting and explosions, art could be seen. In the game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, we controlled a character that was engaged in a war. After hours of blissful gameplay with the killing of people, a scene that you cannot control happens. A nuclear bomb goes off, and suddenly, you are not playing the super-soldier that could defeat countless enemies, you’re suddenly playing the part of the dead. Here, you are not winning or earning points, and there is only one eventual outcome. In this moment – you die and you do not come back. Up till now, you as a video gamer have been conditioned to believe that death was only a momentary setback, and that you can make a comeback, be it by redoing the last mission or by putting quarters into the arcade machine. Up to this point, games had never abruptly killed off a main character as you played him. In this moment, the game was an art. Our perceptions had been impacted as we realize that there truly is death in war.

As a point to challenge video games as an art form, you state: “One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome.” So by this definition, a game must have rules; must have objectives; must have an outcome. I assume that by stating this, you are implicitly stating the following: If you take any of these things away, you say, something can no longer be a game. You also have gone and stated that if the media that supports a game mechanism is artistic (for example, artful storytelling or unique art direction in a video game), it is, as a whole, not art because those pieces exist to serve the mechanics of the game. Though all of this can be argued, I am willing to accept these premises. What happens, however, when instead of the artistic elements of a game existing to serve or dress up the gameplay (the rules, the objectives, and the outcomes), the gameplay itself helps to serve an artistic vision? If a game designer designs a game as an interactive way to present a story or provoke thought and emotion, and the gameplay mechanics serve that purpose rather than being the “point” of the game, could that not be considered an art form? Video games can have rules, objectives, and outcomes that are means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. “Braid” was an example of a game which you simply dismissed as “mindless”. You called it simply a game about time travel. If you played the game however, you would find out that Braid only used time travel as a hook to tell a disturbing story about obsession, domination, violence, and possible rape. Since you have not played the game, you have missed why exactly the game mechanic of reversing time is relevant. You say: “You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.” The gameplay mechanic (from a pure gameplay perspective, and not examining the further purpose it serves) is less about “taking back a move” and more about the implications of being able to take back the move. The game takes that one idea and innovatively plays with it in a way that is engaging and challenging, rather than negating discipline. This is difficult to describe to someone who has not experienced it for themselves, but suffice it to say that it is done very well, which is why the game is so highly critically reviewed. But Roger Ebert! Looking at the game as a whole, which includes the “wordy fortune cookie” prose, the gameplay mechanics, the graphics, the music, and the completion of the story, only then would you realize that the gameplay mechanic of reversing time is itself serving a higher artistic vision. The last level of the game, your character is trying to save the princess from a monster. But when you finally reach her, time reverses and you discover that she is actually running away from you -and was, all along. This last piece of the puzzle creates a much clearer picture and puts everything else into context. There is much left up to interpretation and it invokes both an intellectual and an emotional response in many people, similar to the experience of watching the movie “Memento”.

So when you asked: “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form….Why aren’t gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves?” you have already answered your own question: “do we as their consumers become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, and philosophical by experiencing them?” Well, anybody who’s ever felt even an inkling of something like that from a game is going to be understandably “concerned” when you insist that they’re lying. With the greatest of admiration for your work, I have to applaud you for the willingness to step out of your comfort zone and inciting a debate about video games. As I write this, your column on “Video games can never be art” have sparked over three thousand comments. The mere fact that there is emotion, discussion and contention of whether “games are art or not” prove that they are indeed art. One of the major points of art is to stimulate thought and encourage discussion as to what a particular piece is about. Plus the fact that it takes so many of the world’s top artists from so many mediums to make a modern game how could a game be anything else but a work of art?

Works Cited Source

Ebert, Roger. “Video Games Can Never Be Art – Roger Ebert’s Journal.” Chicago Sun-Times: Blogs. 16 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. .