Video Games As Art - The New Faraci Heresy

Obviously you're anticipating this, but from what I gather, you're saying the experience of playing the game is not art, but that a potential recording of that game could be. Not unlike The King of Kong, correct?

Or The Hustler, or Bang the Drum Slowly, or Cockfighter...

Final Fight's ending was one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Cody + Jessica 4 EVA!

There may be an argument to be made that true art under these definition involves an artist presenting a viewpoint, narrative and ideology.

Wait, I'm not trying to say that. Anybody knows a sporting event can be made into a riveting film. Video games have only recently had a legitimate inroad into that arena, and that's only after a 30+ year history.

Nice peice Devin, excellent job. Very comprehensive, and clearly laid out.

I guess this is a fair point, but you really seem to be splitting hairs in order to declare games not art. I don't think it's quite fair to argue that in some games interactivity is simply a"gimmick," added to cinema. That's the kind of language I would reserve for something like, I don't know, the periodic fad of 3D movies.

Like it or not, Tetris and Half-Life are fundamentally similar, and it's because they're interactive. The added dimension of interactivity is the defining characteristic of all games. In my view, it's much more accurate to describe all narrative games as games with a cinema gimmick. So I think what you describe as a "subset of cinema" is actually pretty clearly distinct from cinema.

I would also submit that the interactivity that is the fundamental feature of games as a category can create an artistic dimension in games that simply can't exist in any of your other forms of cinema. There are all sorts of ways to play with the player's perception of control in order to support a theme - for example, the act of making a player make a moral choice forces them to think about it, and, if done well, feel the consequences in a way that a less interactive piece of art simply can't. It doesn't always get used that way - rarely, in fact - but as you said, the quality of the games in question have no bearing on their being art.

Yeah, can't really argue with it. Very well thought out.

I still think you aren't giving videogames enough credit as amazing storytelling devices, but I understand why videogames may not be art, at least not right now.

But King of Kong at any rate takes its central gaming bits and molds them into a classic "sports competition" frame, which creates drama, and you're much further on your way to "art" than you were before.

I've belaboured this point elsewhere, but I think it bears repeating: in the debate of "but is it art?!?!?", the subject almost always wins out over the critic, historically speaking.

Nice article


I both agree and disagree I think. I agree that yes, a video game can be comprised of artistic components. Yet the sum of those parts is not art?

Like, the old pacman sitdown boxes were artistic, yet the actual playing of the game is not...

I dunno, I think that complex puzzles (and all games are puzzles in some form) are an artform. And by putting your mental facultys to work in solving that puzzle, it then becomes an interactive piece of art.

This is something i'm going to have to mull over for a while. Thanks devin.

Also, to all the nerds that are getting ready to post that games are art because Shadow of the Colossus made you cry: Stop. No. Bad.


Edit: hahahaha I didn't even notice the enormous SOTC thread right next to this one that presumably inspired this column in the first place. You people are so predictable.

That's simply not true. Cinematic narratives aren't strengthened by having a player guide the choices of the protagonist any more than novels are improved by adding a choose your own adventure element to them. You either end up with something completely devoid of authorial intent*, or following one of X amount of preprogrammed stories. And the argument that interactivity makes you feel it more is no different than saying IMAX or 3D is art because shit being huge or in your face makes you feel it more.

* And don't say you making the choices makes you the author. That doesn't make games art either. It would simply make the game the vehicle for telling an animated story in real time.

good article Devin, but I did get a good laugh when you said you where not going to define art, then in the next paragraph you being to define art.
solid argument on this subject matter.

I do believe that a video game can be considered art.
But that is my opinion.

Art? No, but design? Hmmm... (shoot me).

Unless the industry changes drastically, beyond the whole "How fun can we make this?" mindset, I don't think videogames will reach their full potential. There are some filmmakers who set out with the "How fun can we make this?" mentality, and the films they make are summer blockbusters. In the videogame world all there ever seems to be are "summer blockbusters" when is gaming going to get it's Oscar season?

While I actually agree with a lot of what's written, I don't think putting Narrative Game X under the umbrella of cinema helps the situation.

I mean Devin can declare it, and cite Clue as an example, but for the sake of actually discussing things I think interactivity in cinema deserves a unique classification.

But I do think that this article is missing the point, and that's the potential here. Games, audio, video, interactivity, narratives... I don't think people should be bound by what there currently is.

You can use these tools tell stories, challenge the viewer/user, to entertain or express ideas in a number of ways. I think video games show potential for things in the future that may not be known as games at all.

Since I did the long-winded response in the other thread, I'll just say that this certainly seems to be true.

If you even have to ask (and answer) the question, does the question even matter any more?

The more I think about this whole argument the more I get partial to the definition of pornography. "I'll know it when I see it." I've been playing games since the Atari 2600 and I still haven't seen it.

And you know what? I follow game development pretty closely and I'll bet you anything that even the huge majority of game developers can't emphatically tell you that games are indeed art. I don't even see how their challenge/reward structure can lend itself to art. Art may be used as a reward, for example completing a puzzle to listen to a great piece of music or see a copy of The Night Watch, but I think that the very act of playing the game should qualify as art if we are to term the game itself as art.

I've seen plenty of developers go public with 'Game is art'. I don't know if they actually believe it but they are the first to hype the product as the next stage of human evolution (or whatever).

On the topic of challenge/reward I think you have a good point. Shadow of the Colossus (which restarted this debatre) subverts that by the 'reward' being morally questionable.

The other aspect that may work is identification with the character who has gone through the various challenges. In the final level of a video game, the sense that the character has gone through 'trials' is quite palpable. At the risk of making a film comparison, it reminds me of watching Frodo crawl up the side of Mount Doom. Of course it also limits the stories that can can be told quite severly. 95% of all video games are the story of one individual overcoming adversity.

Jeez, this discussion is still going? While I disagree on some points, Devin's analysis gets it completely right on the most important argument: the definition of 'art' is largely a game of semantics, and those have become so convoluted (art=craft, art=economy, art=like, it moved me dude) that this is largely a moot discussion.
I would argue however, that I've recently seen some, let's call it digital interactive installations that use game mechanisms to communicate an idea or feeling. But then the question becomes whether these are games or an installation, which gets us right back to discussing semantics.
Case in point: http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
It's barely a game, though it has been classified as that, but I urge you to 'play' it, doesn't take long. However, I don't see this kind of communication through interactivity seep through in any commercial product soon... and I fully agree that the level of storytelling in even the most acclaimed games up till now (many of which I love for a lot of different reasons) has not reached a quality on par with important books or movies. And even if they do, they will be a derivative of one of these art forms within the larger structure of a game, not the game (ie. it's 'interactive mechanics') itself.

What I don't understand, is the need for validation. Is Devin proclaiming video games an art form going to make the next God of War game that much more enjoyable for someone? Will it erase the embarrassment of crying at the end of Shadow of the Colossus? Will it make Metal Gear Solid anything more than an endless stream of bullshit cut scenes with minimal gameplay?

If you consider your favorite game a work of art, or you simply enjoy it for what it is (a video game), great! Enjoy it. Enjoy it with a glass of wine. Enjoy it with your pants off. Why would anyone else's opinions on the matter change that? I think video game fans (and I game my ass off) are the most insecure of all the "geek" factions, or in close competition with Otaku anyway.

Is there any game where the act of pressing buttons involves the viewer/gamer on a level beyond just hitting buttons at the right moment?

Adventure games, I'd think, because you actually had to think your way through. They are still not art.

The technical answer is that games involve timing and/or strategy. Pressing a button represents a decision, so any game involving a strategy involves making the right decision, not just at the right time.

The complexities involve the decision to make. Do you help the slavers in Fallout 3 or do you help the slaves? Why do you make that decision? To see 'what happens' or because your choice seems the right thing to do*?


While your question was intentionally simplistic, the key catch is deciding between the right decision and the wrong decision. In a really provocative game/interactive-cinema... that depends.


*Full disclosure: I always play the good character. I can't bring myself to be evil in these sorts of games (Fallout 3, Kotor). I don't know what that says about me, but I find it interesting the way different players approach this.

I like how everyone abruptly left the Colossus thread just in time to completely ignore several substantial, well articulated posts.

I think what they are driving at, is - sure, making story decisions that affect the gameplay can be cinematic, or involving, but that's not the literal interaction that defines video gaming as a format. You might as well be watching Fallout: The Movie with branching scenes. When does the act of spinning an analog stick in a quarter circle and pressing buttons labeled X and B at the same time become an artistic experience? Pressing left trigger because left trigger makes you shoot the evil slaver in the head doesn't mean pulling left trigger creates art. Pressing A to select an anwser in a conversation tree that results in a profound (I know..) cut-scene of a character dying doesn't make pressing A artistic, it just triggered something that was. Yes, pushing a button makes a decision that in turn affects gameplay, but is making the decision stab a giant colossus in the head artistic, or necessary to continue the game?


Simply put: the seperate elements of video games can be artistic, the literal act of mashing buttons to achieve them is not. Semantics.

Or am I missing more of the picture?

What are you even asking? Is there any film where the act of watching the screen involves more than just staring at a screen? You can always necessarily reduce it to that but that doesn't tell you a thing; whether or not there's a higher level of engagement depends on the individual.

It seems that in these threads, the "not art" proponents are always intent on reducing games down to a "challenge/reward structure", ignoring that that's not how all games are structured. That's just one common way of engaging the audience, but plenty of others have been devised over the years.

But beyond that, I don't think presenting a challenge to the audience is even unusual in acknowledged art. How else would you describe your basic whodunnit, whether it's on the screen or in print?

Who said anything about it strengthening narrative? It's just a different technique, that engages the audience in a different way than previous techniques. It opens up new possibilities.

Save from Braid's creator Jonathan Blow and a couple of indy developers I don't remember any argument on this coming to a conclusion. You could easily see the state of the industry in this year's GDC where a big part of the talks was about finding a way to tell a story and convey a message that's unique to games.

It is games' stubborn insistence on using cinematic language that's mostly to blame for this, in my opinion. In large part because of CD Rom gaming game makers suddenly found themselves with the technical ability to incorporate cinema's tools in their games. So instead of gaming's narrative language having to evolve organically and in a different path everyone tried shoehorning cinematic techniques in their design as a shortcut. But in a medium as interactive as games cinematic tools can only get you so far. Imagine where cinema would have been as an art if it insisted of mimicking theater instead of going off on its own.

I pretty much completely agree with you, but I'll just point out that A.) there are movies that are essentially stage productions on a screen, and I don't think anyone would contest that these aren't art, and B.) if you do make a film out of a stage production, I don't think you can claim that the film aspect isn't art for having utilized a theater element, or the theater element isn't art for having been utilized in a film. It just can't be broken down like that, and yet people insist on it in the case of video games.

More generally, just to be clear, I don't feel passionately about games being art or not - I'm not trying to defend my playing of Empire: Total War as an artistic experience. I just think it's impossible to carefully excise them from a consistent definition of art without creating bizarre, arbitrary, and narrow conditions that also excludes all sorts of commonly accepted artwork. The reasoning behind the argument seems blinkered, and that does bother me. Rather than bending over backwards to redefine video games as cinema (but not the parts where you physically touch the buttons!), it seems like it would be easier to just admit that, for example, The Sims provides a unique - if not exactly profound - viewpoint on modern suburban life, and that it should be acknowledged as a potential work of art for doing so, just like a book, poem, painting, film, television show, song, or stage performance would be.

I've always thought this was a pretty simple distinction. Video games, no matter how "artfully" designed, are still GAMES. Would you call the game of chess, or basketball, or Candy Land or AD&D pieces of art? They all can utilize different elements of different mediums, but no, in total, these things are not art. They're games, and it's a completely different "thing". The purpose is to play, to win (however the particular game defines winning) and in the few times when it's more "toy" than "game", the point is still to successfully manipulate the game to its designed purpose. You can say these games can be played and designed artfully, but, again, this is not the same thing and commenting more on the the beauty and intelligence of the play and design.

Devin makes a good point of reiterating that this is not a value judgment. It isn't. They're just two different entities.

Here's something to think about: are games a mechanism that can create art?

It seems like people around here are really into this so I'm sure I'll be in the minority but...is there a more worthless argument in the history of the internet?

Very well written article.

Full disclosure: I used to be a videogame programmer, and I got very into game design, including trying to kind of create my own program around it in university. It was years ago, a chapter of my life that's to some extent closed now, but I was actually going to not read the editorial or this thread because the issue is one I can get overly emotional about.

I am glad I changed my mind. I give you credit for a very rational tone in an editorial that was just begging to be snarky, given the piss-poor arguments and examples most people on the games-are-art side produce (and which I'm sure were the bulk of what you were inundated with). That was without question the best thought-out and written piece on either side of the debate that I've seen.

That being said, I think you're completely wrong, and I can explain why by discussing just one sentence from the piece:

This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue - the game of chess versus a game of chess. Whether a game of chess can be art or not, and I think your argument against that is sound, the game of chess is not any one play-through any more than it's the aesthetic qualities of the pieces. The game of chess is the rules of chess, which shape every game played, and which are the medium through which a game conveys ideas or, in some cases, feelings. Many games are explicitly designed to teach a particular lesson or kind of thinking (and I'm not talking about those stupid math-quiz "adventures", I mean even some of the oldest board games), or even to convey social values. I would actually argue that some ideas may be best expressed through this medium, but that's neither here nor there.

The fact that games viewed in this way, as the product of their rulesets, do not readily lend themselves to analysis in the same language as film, literature, or painting doesn't deny them the ability to be art, nor does the fact that to make a game you use art in other media, any more than the fact that a film involves writing and visual design denies the film status as art in its own right.

Okay, I've said my piece, I'll go now.

I think Devin's position on this is probably the only serious position we can take, except that Devin seems comfortable creating these distinctions as if they are rules for good and all. I'm not as comfortable, and though he may turn out right (ie: inherently, games can't be art), I think we can remain open-minded to the possibility that this position may be overturned.

The reason why Devin is "more right" than the view he is opposing is because up until this point, videogames as a whole have not been able to bring an argument for their being works of art as opposed to works of artistry (the employment of art to a purpose other than a larger, coherent work of art).

There are games which explore themes and try to be more sophisticated than the Resident Evils or the Kane and Lynchs of the world. Games like Bioshock or Shadow of the Colossus, maybe even MGS in its own fucked up way, are thematically sophisticated and it does them a disservice to reduce them to the mechanics of their interactivity, or a simplistic win/lose binary we'd normally associate with games in general.

For example, Bioshock is a literate game. Some people went ape for it because it is so well done in terms of concept, setting, etc. Others appreciate it for its innovative use of rote gameplay gimmicks (morality system, psychic powers and weapon upgrades to break up FPS monotony). But there's a bunch of people who like Bioshock because it's probably one of the best executed "literate games" ever made. The whole thing is basically a critique of objectivism, so basically a philosophical commentary on a set of ideas and principles which exist independantly from what you're actually doing in the game, but express themselves in interesting ways.

But does this make Bioshock art? I don't think so. It just happens to be one of the very few games that seem to be trying for something more profound than XBL achievements and gold-plated AK-47's in Multiplayer mode.

The games industry doesn't reward "prestige" games the way the film industry rewards "prestige" movies. If that were ever to change, the elements of videogame design that have the potential to make a game a work of art may be developed to the extent that something like Devin's editing example could emerge. This is a possibility that we shouldn't ignore, but it's up to the games industry and the gamers that fuel it to change the paradigm enough to promote this kind of work.

For now, most gamers are satisfied declaring any game which seems to rise above the adolescent power-fantasy backbone of their hobby to be "art" and it really is, I agree, a search for validation. Having said that, I think this is a reaction more to the potential of videogames than the reality.

I thought much of this article up to the line "I guess we have to begin with discussing what art is" read as deeply snarky. The use of repetition, intended for comedic effect as well as clarity, for example. Also, the reappearance of the "comic/games fans, call a spade a spade" point.

I'm not here to plead one side's case either.

This is way better than what Ebert wrote and what he wrote was great.

My argument against games-as-art is that there can never be full artistic intent. Even games up held as paragons like "Bioshock" or "Braid" I can still get fucked by a gamer by just throwing my character into a corner or or spinning him around in circles or have him try to hump an enemy before dying horribly. I'm now the author of the story but only within the set parameter of that world. Now maybe you can argue that the world is art. But if my character is part of that world and part of the narrative, then I can effectively ruin it.

With that variable in place, how can I effectively judge it? If it's only under pre-set conditions, then you've removed the interactive element, so then how is it a game?

And yes, you can argue that someone MST3K-ing a movie ruins that experience but I would counter that the movie remains the same no matter what you do. You could then argue that you could re-edit a movie, but I would counter that that physically requires tools to do. And that's not to say that you couldn't create art doing both those things but they're both inherent to the skill of editing which is unique to movies. What I'm arguing is interactivity and whereas a finished film would require you to seek out the tools to engage in that interactivity, a videogame can't exist without it and that removes original artistic intent.

This is not to say that all art must be predictable or pre-defined. Devin mentioned improv but even under those conditions, improv is a performance art. As an audience member, you're really not as crucial as you think. You can shout out a suggestion but just as a musician can change chords, find a new rhythm, or even play a cover, it's his artistic intent and not yours that is at work and there's nothing you can do to fuck with it. Furthermore, neither is reliant on your participation.

Define "wins"? Do you mean it's eventually accepted as "art"? It's possible, but it's going to require a technological innovation (like editing) that hasn't happened yet.

Does the button pressing have to be involving for the entirety of a game to be considered artistic? This seems like saying books can't be art because there's no involvement in physically turning the pages.

But then it's just a movie with a chore.

Ah, this old chestnut. I loved the level-headed nature of the article as well, and I pretty much agree with the whole argument. But in response to this:
I expect someone will bring up Half-Life 2? It loads, but only due to programming/hardware limitations. And there are no screens depicting the load, it just freezes. You could compare them to reel changes, I suppose.

It clearly sets you on a linear narrative path, though, with multiple geographic bottlenecks that force you to witness events (you can move and look around, but a deliberate interval of time must pass). An unprecedented level of immersion, perhaps, but I'd say that is a clear example of editing at work (and not even "behind-the-scenes").

Would it be incorrect to say that, at the coding level, we are still dealing with a tapestry of "if/then" statements? This is a genuine question, and I'm not satisfied with the crutch of AI.

Ooh, that's interesting. The Painstation came up on one of the older threads, but that seems to me that it would fall under the reductive category of theater. Perhaps something genuine could be assembled from an aggregate of user input. Noby Noby Boy is super creepy, but the space travel concept taken from the meta-data could be expounded on in another game to allow for something more substantial and grand. I'm sure someone somewhere is programming images or sounds to arise from such data, but you're still working with a limited set of tools. On the other hand, something procedurally-generated runs the risk of being no more compelling than fractals. And once people start to get mathematics too mixed-up in Art, all bets are off (refers again to my earlier conditional query).

God, I hate that I'm about to dredge up this example, but Final Fantasy VII has a sequence right before Aeris famously biting the dust where Cloud, under Sephiroth's influence, nearly does the deed himself. You walk up to her, screen flashes red, and while most button presses won't do anything, the only ones that work are the ones that force you to slowly take out your sword, raise it, and nearly lop off her head. Kind of a slick way of conveying the lack of free will for Cloud, but it's one interesting interactive sequence in an oh-so-very linear game, and it still doesn't raise the game itself to any level beyond interactive cinema.

However you wanna pick apart my phrasing, however you wanna put it-- it's simply not true. You're still either a) pressing buttons to unlock a preset narrative, or b) creating the narrative yourself. In neither case is the playing of the game art-- because somebody sitting next to the guy playing it would be perceiving the story in the exact same way.

Ah, it seems that I should have read the SOtC thread that led to this Advocate first.

You're pressing buttons to affect the situation you're involved with on the screen. It might be as simple an involvement as "I don't want this man to die and have to start the level over again", but you're not simply sitting there pressing buttons for no good reason.

I don't think there's been a game yet that could truly be considered art, but I don't think it can never happen either. It would have to be one with an incredibly involving story that can handle a variety of actions by a player without losing sight of that story, while still making the player's involvement integral to telling it. I don't think that's possible with the current mindset in game development though.

Games can help to create art and art can be created through games.

For the latter, there are a number of people who earn a decent living in Second Life selling artistic products. The former might seem counterintuitive, but it is possible. Consider the text based adventures produced by Infocom years ago. Leaving aside the thorny question of whether they are art, the Infocom environments were highly immersive, well constructed and written. But they did not exist as discrete entities. The act of creative reading transforms marks on the screen into a living, breathing - and totally unique - backdrop. In such cases the reader becomes the artist inside his own imagination.

While I fundamentally agree with Devin, I'm seeing some pretty shortsighted and romanticized ideas about what constitutes art in this thread. What makes videogames not art has very little to do with the level of participation involved. Art is not art by virtue of an all-powerful author figure. In fact, we've had at least a century or so of aesthetic and social scientific thinking that will tell you quite the opposite.

No matter whether we're talking about film criticism, literary criticism, cultural criticism, or even communication theory, it's been repeatedly (and quite reasonably and successfully) argued that authorial intention is absolutely not what constitutes the whole of an artistic work*. The receiver of the information that the author seeks to communicate in his/her work is constantly active in interpreting it, and is as central to the work, itself, as the artist. Art, like all forms of communication, is inherently participatory even when the participation happens to be strictly internalized.

If anything, much of the best art, narrative and otherwise, requires a level of participation that most videogames can't touch. Deciding whether or not to fire a virtual gun (okay, the link was a cheap shot) has nothing on the interaction required to form meaning about something like this.

* Or any other work, actually. Which might lead to the question whether a physics textbook is art. I'd argue that it's probably not despite the fact that reader interpretation is absolutely necessary. This further makes the point that level of participation (whether the participation is internal - interpretation - or external - decision making) isn't a good basis for determining whether something qualifies as "art."

I also can't help but think that a huge part of what really annoys me, and most intelligent people about the subject is that one day, an entire generation will look at their beloved medium, and know with abject certainty that there was a game that touched them, shook them to the core, enriched their lives, and stands to that very day as a shining example of artistry and forethought, and that game's going to be Halo 3.