Games as art: a hearty “Yes they are!”

July 23rd, 2007

Games are art. Many may be very bad art, and many gamers may not give one groat about the question. But games are art.

Roger Ebert published an article two days ago following up on the ongoing discussion he kicked off about a year ago on whether games are art. He said “no” a year ago, now he says “not high art.” His main opponent in this debate is Clive Barker, here.

Game bloggers and journalists are continuing to weigh in on the subject (here, for instance, and here).

I figure I’ll just add my own quick opinions.

Games in general and video games in particular are obviously a distinctive kind of art, although arguing about what is and isn’t a game is just as valuable as arguing about what is and isn’t art. (That is, it’s very valuable for trying to understand what a game is, useless if you’re just doing it to make some peripheral point.)

Games may not yet have reached their full potential as art, but they’re an extremely exciting form of it. Like movies, some games experiment with technique and craft more than art. But also like movies, modern video games share something with all other forms of art—visual artistry, music, narrative—while adding the very exciting element of interactivity.

It’s this interactivity which, for some bizarre reason, forms the crux of Ebert’s argument against games as art. The artist’s work is where art begins, but the audience—the players, when the artwork is a game—are where art happens. The Mona Lisa is much more than Da Vinci’s paint spread on poplar wood. It’s the crowds in the Louvre, the great capers and thefts, the doctoral dissertations, the imitations and parodies, the games themselves, and even things like The Da Vinci Code (which inspired a movie, a promotional game like the Bourne game, and endless debates and discussions).

The Mona Lisa is the emergent cultural phenomenon born of the painting, not the painting itself.

No other art genre has ever been so open to audience participation as games. No other art genre has the potential for emergent phenomena. Do games weaken the role of the artist? No more than Hollywood did. And in fact, all Hollywood and feature films really did was make it possible for collaborative art to come into its own. Great movies are the collaboration of directors, writers (too often undervalued), actors, and even suits who sign the checks.

Games are too, but more than anything else, they not only invite their audience to participate, they are art as audience participation.

So get out the chess board, the dice, or the Xbox, and let’s make some art!

Entry Filed under: Theory, Popular Perception