In my time as a gaming journalist, interacting with developers, publishers, gamers, and other journos like myself, I found a familiar sentiment across the gamut. Every single person, from publisher CEOs to casual gamers, espouses the same belief: namely, that video games are art. It is a belief I agree with wholeheartedly, and find to be self-evident enough that I don’t see any purpose in relitigating the matter, at least not for the kind of audience I wish to accrue.
Video games are art. Roger Ebert1 was wrong. You can tell everyone that your hobby of choice is actually very smart. If that’s all you want to hear, then you’ve got it. There are other discussions that may prove more fruitful for you elsewhere.
I’m less interested in vindication, and more interested in purpose. Why does it matter if games are art? What do we do with that fact?
In other mediums, it means appreciation, absorption, and analysis, in that order, as a matter of course. I believe quite strongly that that is the basis for art; that it is — or, at least, should be — crafted with those intentions in mind. The best art is that which guides its participators through each stage. Not all will make it through each step, but any one of them could, because that is how the art was made. Good art is a trail, and engaged participators are its hikers.
Now, of course, this is not how all art is actually made, nor would I stake my career on the idea that all (or even most) artists would agree with my trail/hiker theory. But I am not alone in thinking this way. Miranda Anderson, in an excellent article in the digital magazine Psyche2 outlines the ways in which “engaging with an artwork leaves you and the art transformed.” The process she describes for this transformation — one of encountering, coupling with, and ultimately being transformed by art — mirrors my sentiments.
So, how does this tie into video games. If video games are art, then they — the good ones, at least — should follow this same progression of all good art, stringing willing players on through appreciation, absorption, and, finally, analysis.
Only… That is not what we see in most games. Sure, we can point to counterexamples; games like Shadow of the Colossus3, Red Dead Redemption 1 & 24, the original Silent Hill 25, or Bioshock6. Most recently, Disco Elysium7 was added to this canon, the only game from the last decade that I can confidently add without much disagreement. But these are the exceptions, and the kinds of games usually cited as truly artistic is staggeringly small when compared to other mediums. The fact that the same games from over a decade ago are still the most often cited examples of games as art — with a new entry being added only once five or six years — is testament to the issue.
For proof, imagine asking a hundred literary fiends for a novel that proves literature is art, that can pull willing readers through the process of appreciation ➜ absorption ➜ analysis. If you do, you are likely to get a hundred and one different answers. The same for art gallery attendees, cinema nerds, theater kids, comic book readers, anime watchers, and music aficionados.
Ask a hundred gamers to do the same, and you’d probably get more duplicates (many from the brief list above) than Elden Ring’s boss roster. Of all the things Roger Ebert got wrong about video games, the idea that “There was no agreement among the thousands of posters about even one current game that was an unassailable masterpiece”8 was his furthest from the mark. There is a list of unassailable masterpieces, only it is woefully scant and makes up only the tiniest portion of games as a whole.
To be clear, there are countless games that are made, and are artistic, that are simply too small or niche to register, or whose merits as a masterpiece are not thought of primarily in terms of artistry (Baldur’s Gate 3 and the Dark Souls trilogy come to mind). My point is not that there are no games being made that are artistic in nature, or even artistic masterpieces: my point is that many games are not made or consumed with art in mind. They are art, but they don’t act like it. This becomes more true the less narrative you get (but I’ll save that topic for another day).
Ebert, as a critic adamant that games aren’t art, had to deny that there were masterpiece video games, because any game being art contradicted his belief that they couldn’t be. And he had reason to think that, in his own way.
But, if you already believe that games are art, if you already operate under that assumption, then this fact should be devastating. Because the consensus is clear: sure, some games are art… But they are a miniscule raft of artistry in a sea of toys, trinkets, and corporate products.
Yes, all art has been subsumed into the monstrous amalgamation of modern capitalism. It’s all corporate. It’s all beholden to monetary interests that care not for it. But no other industry of art is like this. Galleries would shutter if only one in a hundred paintings was called art. Movie studios would vanish overnight. Book publishers would stop publishing anything other than smut immediately.
But games? The biggest artistic medium on the planet? The most lucrative, largest, most expansive wing of the entire entertainment industry writ large? An industry now more than 50 years old (older than movies were when they began claiming artistic legitimacy during the 1910s and 20s9)?
Well, whether they are or are not art doesn’t seem to matter much. Not to consumers. Not to publishers. Not to media. Not even to developers (at least, the largest developers; it is a different story the smaller you go). Yes, they will all say that their medium is art. Creators will claim artistic ambitions, and players will loudly proclaim that their emotions being piqued is a sign of art. And they are not wrong; again, games are art. But, they are currently the weakest, least artistically inclined, most imperfect major kind of art in the modern world.
In a blog post that I highly disagree with (descended from that same Roger Ebert article that this conversation always comes back to), Douglas Bonneville of bonfx draws a distinction between lower-case “art” and upper-case “Fine Art.”10 And… well, I’ll allow him to speak for himself:
“Fine Art, especially the best that the cultures of the world have created, preserved, and handed down to us as our legacy, is about the human condition, the state of our souls, our place in the world, and our place in eternity. Video games are about our place on the couch where we don’t think about those kinds of things — except in the most trivial and trite kinds of ways.“
-Douglas Bonneville, “Why Video Games Are Still Not Fine Art (Yet Have Art in Them)”
Now, I find Bonneville’s arguments in this article to be flawed, based on an assumption that art is only art if it is engaged with to the maximal cultural extent in most cases (he might argue that something flatly is not art if it fails to bring a participator to the “Analysis” stage, rather than being content with it being flawed art). Even how he uses the above quote — to assert that video games can’t be art because of the escapist tendencies of their consumers — is petty and dismissive of the games that have spoken to their players about “the human condition, the state of our souls, our place in the world, and our place in eternity.” I would know; I’ve played dozens of such games.
But, he is not wrong that that is how games are engaged with. Despite being the most active, interactive medium, its participators are often shockingly passive outside the raw mechanics, and its creators are often perfectly happy to produce an experience that does just serve to give players a “place on the couch where [they] don’t think about those kinds of things — except in the most trivial and trite kinds of ways.”
Where’s the lie? Where’s the thing that proves him wrong? Are you, dear reader, one who says video games are art, going to say that most players and most developers don’t play and make games for the primary purpose of escapism? You could, but then you’d be wrong.
Or maybe you’d argue that escapism does not invalidate a piece of art from fulfilling its transformational promise11? But then you’d need to explain how, exactly, that kind of escapist relaxation — almost always based in raw mechanics — becomes the process of appreciation ➜ absorption ➜ analysis I speak about (something numerous video essays about FromSoft titles attempt12). And then, you’d need to explain how that is the intended experience of those mechanics that most players are meant to experience, and not a happy byproduct (which none of those aforementioned video essays attempt, because it would be needless and false).
No, reader, I think not. At least, not for me. I’ll put it very bluntly:
If video games are art, then we are producing, marketing, and consuming them wrong. And, worse, we are denying the fundamental truth: that if video games are art, then ALL video games are art.
They are not all necessarily good art. They are not necessarily edifying, or transformational, or a catalyst for the process of art that I’ve spoken about above13. Early iterations of an art form rarely are, when compared with what comes later. But, nonetheless, they are all art.
But most developers do not produce games that reify elements of art.
Most media outlets do not write about games the way that they would about art.
Most publishers do not market games on their artistic power.
And most gamers do not play games to absorb them as they would art.
In essence, to quote leading scholars Daniel Goldberg and Linus Larsson from the introduction to their seminal anthology The State of Play: Creators and Critics on Video Game Culture, games are “engaged with and discussed as products of technology rather than products of culture, which is why most game criticism still tends to read a lot like a review of a mobile phone or a car.”14
There are exceptions in each of those categories. Indie devs on Itch.io might make a game for the art of it, specialist publications might highlight the artistry of games, and a subsect of gamers make or consume video essays that do aim to analyze games deeper (though I do have a bone to pick with them, for a later time). But, by and large, gaming is the one branch of the entertainment industry with the least engagement in artistic discussion. For all the talk of “Games as Art,” we sure don’t act like it. It is no wonder, then, that “…deep down, the industry is still fighting to convince itself of its worthiness.”15 I’d be unconvinced, too, if I wasn’t so well-acquainted.
I will leave you with one final quote, from Celia Wagar’s masterfully-written article on her blog CritPoints16. In it, she is responding post-hoc to the many commenters below Ebert’s infamous 2010 posts.
“Why these games? Why not Mario 64? Why not Tetris? Why not Chess? Why not Soccer? It’s obvious, these games have stories and meaning. Bioshock centered on a city under the sea, built by an Ayn Randian objectivist, where capitalism could exist unfettered. Shadow of the Colossus had a beautiful art style and cinematic camera framing, along with a miyazaki-esque story about attempting to return the dead at the cost of your own soul, by attacking seemingly innocent giants. Paper’s Please modeled the way authoritarianism could override the humanity of common people… All of these stories are artistic. Most of these games had beautiful visual art directions that hold up a decade later, but it’s pretty clear that the reason people lean on examples like this is because it’s easy to compare them to cinema and literature.
…“Apart from all of that, are we actually arguing that Games are art here? If this is what we resort to in order to prove games are art, weak and facile corporatized stories that regurgitate philosophy as set dressing, why are we not surprised when people with a serious appreciation for literature or cinema don’t take us seriously? *WE* don’t believe games are art, and we weren’t brave enough to tell Ebert that Tetris is art.“
-Celia Wagar, Roger Ebert was Right About Video Games and We Have Failed Him
Well, reader, let that be your wake-up call: call Tetris art, and demand artistry from Tetris. If you make games, make them as art. If you talk about games at all, do so as art. And if you just play games, then — by St. Mario — play them as art! Let them transform you! Analyze them, and when they refuse to be analyzed, demand games that let you! You want games to be art? Stop treating them like a meaningless hobby, and treat them like art.
Or, just keep hoping that you can have your cake and eat it to; that you get to call video games art while acting like they are just a toy. Most of the industry will, as it always has.
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