A question that has plagued the gaming community for over a decade (maybe more): Are video games art?
The question of whether video games are art has been answered often times in the wrong manner primarily by attempting to explain why video games are art; a question never asked. Why implies causality and that a pro or con has already been established. It has yet to be determined that they’re art at all or simply a manifestation of the arts.
In order for it to be truly answered one must first establish that video games either are or are not art by detailing how and in what sense; an established standard by which to go from.
Are they art? They might be, but it depends on how art is viewed and whether or not the person asking is willing to comply with semantic terms and technical definition. Merriam-Webster defines art as a couple of things:
Art (n): decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter; the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.
Art (adj): produced as an artistic effort or for decorative purposes.
It becomes easy to see how and why people commonly use art interchangeably with what they really mean: artistic; the show of skill in arrangement or execution. Wikipedia lumps the definition, blurring the line between that state of being and act of doing or guashing over the defining principles of the arts and confusing them with art, giving the impression that they are one and the same.
From Wikipedia:
Art is the 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, photography, sculpture, and paintings.
Enter the strange duality that is ‘a definition’. On one hand we have Wikipedia, the web 2.0, “perception is context”, hive mind social source definition that more or less easily argues the pro side of video games are art with a blanketed statement. On the other hand we have the more hardlined semantic, archaic dictionary that could argue no, video games are not art with detailed terms, and as they say ‘the devil is in the details’. The Wikipedia entry more closely relates to the adjective of art rather than the noun; it’s describing what art is as a series of actions not results and when the topic of video games as art comes up it is talked about not as an action but as an end result of the actions. The fact is that Wikipedia’s ‘perception is context’ holds no water because if perception was context then street magicians like David Blaine would truly wield untold power from the great beyond rather than David Blaine being a regular guy with a gaff deck and very adept at slight of hand and illusions.
Kellee Santiago made a fair attempt at trying to convince people in a TEDxUSC lecture that video games were in fact, art. In doing so she relayed that cave paintings were little more than chicken scratch, writing was originally for tallying taxes, and singing originated as something like giving a warning of a wild animal attack. While all of this may be true, what she failed to consider was that she had removed context of the time period while comparing and contrasting past and present technology. In other words, she defined games as art on the idea that evolving technology empowered the object as art rather than the process as art. Perhaps in 30 years when we finally get our flying cars and jetpacks we can look back on Santiago and the ‘art’ game she helped develop (Flower) and remove it from being called ‘art’ on the premise that the tools and technology available had become archaic compared to those of the future. Her point in the end however was that art evolves, and over time things manifest as art that had not previously been art. For this to be true in a logical sense the inverse must also be true and things that are now art can one day not be art. It was a 15 minute lecture that sat opposite the opinion of Roger Ebert: “Games can never be art”.
Another way to look upon this is the art of writing as it pertains to me as a writer. I’ve been asked in both positive and negative contexts whether or not I consider myself a writer (though I know they intend to ask if I feel I’m a good writer). The answer is simply that I do write and in that sense, yes as an adjective I am a writer – I partake in the activity of writing. I wish to engage an audience and move them with the words they read and often times succeed in either making the audience happy, angry, fearful, annoyed, and a number of other planned emotions while also effectively conveying my intended point; therefore when I achieve my goal I feel I have written well or have been a ‘good writer’. As a noun however, I am not. I do not possess the technical skills and training, nor have I held a professional post as one who writes. Another term for the type of writer I can be considered is ‘citizen journalist’. And again, a prime example of the easily transposed definition of terms manifests.
So, the question lingers – Are video games art?
And so there was a tale of four chairs. Apparently the Republic of Fritz Hansen feels their all plastic chair here is worth almost $800 (641 Euros to be exact). Honestly, it’s not much to look at and while I’m sure that someone somewhere spent a great deal of time coordinating certain angles and finally found an excuse to pull out their French Curve for the first time since college. The chair sums up to be simply a cheap looking chair geared towards something that anyone living in this economy can scarcely afford; to sit on their ass . Spacify shares a similar price philosophy with a wooden brace corner chair that looks rather drab and uncomfortable, yet classy and successfully captures the existing monotony of contemporary furniture and as though someone thought “hey, contemporary furniture is getting too dynamic, lets kick it up a notch with a double dose of yawn” . On the other hand, IKEA and Walmart have similarly priced arm chairs that don’t indicate the buyer has money to burn but they’re functional and able to conform to a number of styles; utilitarian ‘light’ if you will. The point is that the justification for the expensive chairs lies within how readily someone accepts them as not a chair but art or how ridiculously stupid someone tends to be with money and disregards the impulse buy warning mechanism of their inner pauper. Irrespective, they’re chairs and will always be chairs. No matter how well designed they are, how much thought and passion went into getting the curves just right or if it embraces an obscure philosophy of a great architect long dead who lived in the golden age of whatever – they’re chairs, end of story.
Being utilitarian is possibly the biggest detriment to the case of video games being art, and an aspect that everyone tends to overlook. Are video games utilitarian? Of course they are. When a player loses at a game and throws a tantrum, they’re reminded to keep calm, that it’s what? only a game. Time and time again gamers profess how games are a much needed item in their lives, how they cannot wait for a title to release or express how without video games an aspect of their lives would be empty.
But can something be both a utensil and art? That largely depends upon if one believes that Uncharted and Gears of War should cost more than Dark Void. Look at the Wii, whose games run $10 less than titles on XB360 and PS3. They don’t cost less because they’re not as ‘good’ or less of a work of ‘art’. They’re less expensive because they cost less to produce, manufacture, distribute and because the technological capabilities of the system for which they are deployed is subpar compared to other consoles of the same generation. Which brings us to the next point of how games are not art.
Born in 1977, I clearly remember the evolution of gaming from the Atari 2600 and ColecoVision consoles onward, so in the past they were needed in the same way that methadone clinics are ‘needed’ to junkies. Today its a different story, video games generate a lot of revenue, bring groups of people closer together by successfully integrating into the day to day lives of a growing global majority, and have become a staple manner of spending quality time with members of one’s family. They are the essential new media of a modern evolving world that have untold potential as well as valid and proven usefulness in a high functioning society.
One can easily find a number of opinion articles written arguing the value of video games as tools with more factual evidence to back the opinion than can be had to back the argument that video games as art. Video games have been used as training tools for the military and as learning aids in schools for people of all ages and as a prime example of the latter titles like Oregon Trail, Reader Rabbit and Math Blaster were staple installed programs at elementary schools as far back as the late 80′s. Even websites like starfall.com and abcya.com incorporate a video game like environment to encourage learning among young children. Even in Santiago’s lecture she shows video of a game used as a tool to explore the mechanics of game design and other core concepts.
What is a fork with 20 tines? a fork. What is a fork with 2 tines? a fork. What is a fork with 0 tines? useless. Art like the fork, isn’t greater than the sum of its parts.
Kazimir Malevic - Black Square, 1913
Pablo Picasso - Suzanne Bloch, 1904
Kazimir Malevic painted Black Square, an example of minimalism, abstraction and in some cases cubism in 1913. Conversely Pablo Picasso painted a portrait of Suzanne Bloch, considered the last important work of ‘The Blue Period” in 1904. Picasso’s work is easily identifiable as a person, probably someone specific if one had lived in the time and location. Is one of these more art than the other or are they equally but separately art? They’re equally art of different forms using the same process, methods and tools so stating that one is art and the other isn’t doesn’t work because the end result is the same.
Bonsai Tree
"Halo" game
Taking it a step further and with focus on not the end result but the process we see a Bonsai Tree, which takes many years to shape, train, and condition. In a moment it can all be undone by a sloppy cut, ill-timed prune, or momentary neglect. The end result isn’t ‘art’ but the process to achieve the desired goal is an art. Likewise we see the video game Halo. Neglect misses deadlines, ill-timed content pruning leaves story holes, sloppy programming results in glitches. The process of creation is an art and the end result is even artistic in nature, but not technically art.
Most arts have subject matter (the Art of Bonsai has bonsai as its subject, for example), a nature of working, and a goal. Design, however, is an art that has no subject matter. Designers make their own subject matter, or are given it. We tend to treat subject matter too seriously and it prevents us from seeing the art or enables us to misinterpret an art as art.
With that it becomes important to understand the difference between art and an art, and to some degree of art. The Oxford dictionary, the self described foremost authority on the English language reads:
An art is a habit of thinking, doing, or making that demonstrates systematic discipline based on principles.
This then becomes tied directly to ‘the arts’.
The arts are the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, and drama.
An art is not just a series or procedures or methods and there can be many methods inside an art, but art gives strategic purpose to methods.
Going back the the Bonsai tree, one wouldn’t consider the tree itself ‘art’, but would consider the cultivation of it artistic, the methods of cultivation an art, or work of art (which is not itself art but a produced from it). How then are video games any different? They’re not, therefore - not art.
NOTE:
This isn’t meant to open a elitist debate to trash art work or artistic efforts. If you’re compelled to do that then stick to places like humhum and certain sections of theroot42 – you’ll get your elitist fix there. This was written with the intended gamer audience in mind, not to be some elitist manifesto directed at art students too proud to admit that not everything is art or judge only a small handful of what snobbish arbitrary abstraction ‘they‘ do is art nor is it my way of stating that I decide what is and is not art – that’s just silly.
