Video, Games or Art? That Is The Question.

THE GAME OF ART

In March of this year, Nintendo’s Shigeru Miyamoto was awarded a British Academy of Film and Television Arts fellowship for his work in the video game industry. The fellowship has, in the past, gone to such creative luminaries such as Steven Spielberg, Woody Allen, Alfred Hitchcock and Stanley Kubrick. Miyamoto, possibly recognising the need to be humble at that juncture, then said a phrase that caused relatively large ripples in the critiquing communities: “I have never said that video games [are] an art.”

He may not have, but many others have, and continue to do so. The resulting debate has been one of the most heated, baffling, noisiest that academic theory has ever been a party to.

The fires of the argument were fanned by the somewhat-legendary Chicago film critic Roger Ebert, when he claimed that “in principle, video games can never be art”. The fallout was huge. Everyone with a blog or Twitter account leapt in to add their two cents, an apt metaphor given massive inflation has devalued “two cents” to be as worthless as, for example, random internet comments on whether video games are art. The arguments predictably collapsed into a screeching cat-style cacophony. Valid, well-reasoned points were made on both sides, but they were almost universally drowned out by nonsense, roundabout, superficial arguments that did nothing to further either side of the debate.

But what happens with the noise and the anger are all cleared away? Are video games, in fact, art, and can a compelling argument be made in their favour? Is it an argument that’s even worth having?

ANYTHING TO DECLARE?

The least important question in this debate is, not coincidentally, also the one that is controlling the argument. The question is: “What is your vested interest in all this?”

It’s a largely self-defeating question, because it turns the debate into the shouting matches that controls both internet debate and politics: attack your opponent. Ignore the arguments, just go for the throat. Facts are ignored in favour of easy point scoring.

For the side that is arguing vehemently against video games being considered art, this means asking repeatedly why “spotty, desperate, girlfriendless nerds” are so desperate to have their obsession validated.

For the side that argues video games are art, this means posting “fuk u asshol” a lot.

Both of these arguments are equally useless and idiotic, and have ensured that no real dialogue takes place. Everyone gets awfully defensive, which leads them to be being awfully offensive, and what should have been an interesting academic debate suddenly turns into a hot-collared situation where everyone feels they’ve been personally slighted. Why? I mean, really, why is this? This is a purely academic debate about whether something fits into a certain category or not. Whether or not you feel that academic debates are inherently useless or not is up to you, but this one is as valid as, say, a debate about which films don’t count as French New Wave, or whether Star Wars actually adheres to the rules of science fiction.

Arguments about whether certain video games are good or not is a more worthy subject to get upset about. It’s still ridiculous to do so, but arguments about quality are unresolvable, highly subjective, and can go on forever. Academic debates, however, are in a much better position for resolution. They, too, can reach a stalemate, but it’s less common. Academic debates are 90% about figuring out the ground rules of the topics up for debate. And we’ll get to those ground rules in a moment.

Although I think it’s useless to disclose where you stand on video games in general, it’s easy to assume a bias. So here’s where I stand: I don’t care. Not personally, anyway. I am certainly not what you would call a gamer. My obsession with cinema, books and music precludes me adding another form of media to my already over-crowded shelf. I played the brilliant text-based game Zork: The Great Underground Empire when I was a kid. I played Halo with my friends a few years ago. I partake in the occasional Tetris. Because I am generally a very busy person (a position possibly disprovable by the existence of this article), most video games are enjoyable for about five minutes until I get either bored or anxious because I believe there’s some work I should instead be doing.

But, basically, if you’re looking for an argument fueled largely by bias, you’ve come to the wrong place. I neither love games nor hate them, I am not an expert in them but nor am I a complete dunce. I am interested in this debate purely because I have heard and read an awful lot of opinions on the topic, and 99% of them are inherently faulty. So let’s do this properly.

WHAT IS ART?

Once you get past the name-calling and the personal insults, the biggest problem in this debate has been that nobody can agree on what art is. And few people realise that they’re all dealing with different definitions. (More perversely, some people who should know better do realise that they’re dealing with different definitions, and use that confusion to their advantage. Tut-tut, folks.)

“Art” is frequently used as an expression of quality. As in: “That David Lynch film was pure art!” In these instances, the word “art” is synonymous with the word “good”. Although this usage is entirely valid, it is also entirely subjective and, as such, it is a pointless road to go down. Regardless, much of the debate has focused on mocking video games as not being of a high artistic standard, as if such a thing could be measured.

The other definition of art is an objective one, and it’s this one that we must use. In this objective sense, a film such as Big Momma’s House is as much art as is Blue Velvet. Artistry is in the eye of the beholder, and so anything that is created within a certain spectrum must be counted. I seem to be the only person on the planet who doesn’t exactly know what a “Lady Gaga” is, but were I to refer to its music as “manufactured” or “plastic”, I would be placing an entirely subjective value on it. This value may be justifiable in that subjective sense, but when I step back and apply the objective definition of art, I have no choice but to concede that Lady Gaga’s music must be as much as as Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor. And so, this is the definition we must use.

“Art” is almost impossible to define in a satisfactory way. Given arguments rage to this day about what art actually is, it seems entirely useless to debate whether a certain form of media can be placed into a category when nobody can fully agree on what the category means. I don’t think a normal wooden chair is particularly artistic, but turn it upside down, stick it in the corner of a gallery, and put an absurdly high price tag on it (the higher, the better), and you’ve suddenly got a fight on your hands.

So, let’s come up with our own broadly-acceptable definition (cribbed from various sources and altered slightly) of art for the purposes of this argument: art is a creative expression designed to affect us sensorially, emotionally, or intellectually. This is, I feel, an acceptably broad definition, and it gives us a pretty handy framework for figuring out what must be included and what must be excluded. So where do games fit?

CHECKMATE

If you’re a “gamer” confused about why your games are not considered art when CGI movies with a similar level of computer animation and the same amount of plot and story are ushered in, look at it from a different angle. One of the most popular arguments against games as art usually brings us back to the fact that, in history, games have not been considered art. Chess is not art. Checkers/draughts is not art. Scrabble is not art. The question frequently raised is this: now that games have moved to a slightly-more-sophisticated video format, why are their proponents suddenly so insisted that their habit be counted as art?

Essentially, this argument can be boiled down to: chess is not art.

This is entirely correct. The game of chess is not art, and although one’s performance can be considered “pure artistry” by the beholder, that is the subjective first definition of “art” and is of no use here. But it’s an important point that bears repeating: chess is not art.

There is an enormous problem with that statement, though, and it is this: the act of playing chess and the set itself — the board, the pieces, etc — are entirely different. Chess exists in two separate forms; as a static, physical form, and as a game played by two people. This, to slippery slope even further, make a game significantly different to a sport.

Sport is not art. Once you remove the interactivity from sport, there is no sport. It ceases to exist. And sport therefore becomes a very useful control group in helping us to define the problem. In, say, football, the ball cannot, by definition, be artistic because regulations dictate the shape and colour it must be. The only elements of sport that can contain unique artistry (like, say, the tunics worn by the players) are those elements that are not essential to it.

The artistic flourishes given to sporting fields and players’ tunics are not an inherent necessity the way that the differing shapes of chess pieces are to chess. The game relies entirely on the fact that the chess pieces have noticeably different shapes, and yet there is no regulation dictating the shape of the pieces in chess; there is only tradition. Whereas the size and shape of the objects in sport are in direct proportion to the human body, chess boards/pieces can be pocket-sized, tabled-sized, or, if you happen to be a Renaissance-era monarch, person-sized. It therefore becomes impossible to create a chess piece without the maker introducing an element of artistry. Similarly, the character design of the CGI prostitutes in Grand Theft Auto require similar level of care as the construction of a chess piece, or, on the flip side, a CGI character in an animated movie.

Where does that leave us? Assuming you’re following me this far and have nodded in passive agreement with everything I’ve said, it is undeniable that games contain art. But do elements of art make the whole art? If chess pieces and CGI prostitutes (god, I wish I’d picked a different example, but I’m stuck with it now) are art, does that make the arguably-mundane creation of, say, the base of the chess board or the computer code that tells the game how to interact with its mouse/controllers, craft? Do the elements of the game necessary to its functionality, elements that can reasonably be dismissed as not-artistic, mean that the game as a whole ceases to be art? Which side do we err on?

INTERACTIVE ARTISTRY

Considering the above examples, I believe we err on the side of games as art. The base of the chess board and the computer coding of the video game cannot cancel out the artistry, in the same way that a painting’s backing that allows it to be hung on a wall does not cancel out the the painting’s merit.

So, where in games does the artistry lie? The creation of an immersive world in, say, Halo requires artistic choices in regards to music, to landscape design, to performance by actors… but this is not a new development that has come with advanced technology. The afore-mentioned text-based Zork game became popular largely because of its clever, funny descriptions. The game does not just inform you that you have walked into a strange room: it tells you what it feels like, succinctly but creatively describing the environment. It is, essentially, a story, albeit a disjointed story told in present-tense second person. Unusual, yes, but the fact that the user chooses which order the story is told does not make it less of a story than, say, a Choose Your Own Adventure book. And Choose Your Own Adventure books are no less stories than, to glance randomly up at my shelf, Jonathan Franzen’s The Corrections or Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policeman’s Union, both of which unfold in a relatively traditional, chronological manner.

The issue of story and narrative is an important one, as neither are inherently essential. It’s not just the story Zork tells that makes it art, but the creativity that goes into its descriptions, the same creativity that, when placed in book form, makes it art. A game of football has a narrative, but it is an imposed one, not an inherent one. This does not make it art. The same is true of a game of Tetris. I can apply a narrative to my last game, in which I got off to a strong start, then realised I’d put a pot of coffee on fifteen minutes earlier, and rushed off to see to that whilst my pieces terminally stacked themselves up. Inferred narratives do not for art make, but I think we must still consider Tetris to be a work of art.

When games like Tetris and Pong kicked off the video game revolution, the lack of technology meant that functionality was not just key, but the only element that could conceivably exist. Aesthetics was not an option. (For the record, I am not arguing that the first iteration of Pong counts as art, nor am I arguing that it doesn’t: first generation Pong sits precisely that grey area where the definition of art becomes impossibly fuzzy.)

To play Tetris today, however, you have colours and shading that gives the impression of three dimensions. You have explosive graphics when a line is cleared, accompanying sound effects, interesting backgrounds, and that classic Tetris music, these days seemingly arranged with an eighty-piece orchestra. The gameplay remains the same, but artistic choices are made within that in order to — and we return to our original objective definition of art — affect us sensorially, emotionally, or intellectually. Most likely just the first one, though, although I wouldn’t look down my nose at anyone who claimed the Tetris music stirs their emotions.

ARE SUMMARIES ART?

The argument that video games are not art because they are interactive is largely unsupportable. Springing to mind is the example of American installation artist Emily Gobeille, who in 2007 created a project called “Funky Forest”, a work of art in which people could interact with the video projected onto the walls. It opened at the Cinekid Festival in Amsterdam, and few would argue that the work was not art, despite the fact that it hinges on its interactivity. But — and this is the most important point — the interactivity is not why it was art.

Of course the act of playing a game is not art. But neither is the act of reading a book, the act of watching a movie, or the act of listening to music. The judgment of the art lies in what the piece is before it is observed; unavoidably antithetical given art has no inherent merit until it is observed. Sports are defined purely by the user’s interactivity. Video games, however, are defined well in advance. Games may be necessarily less interesting if you’re not playing them, but our objective definition of art demands that “interesting” is an irrelevant value.

You do not have to like computer games, nor must you personally see any inherent artistic quality in them. You cannot, however, ignore that the manner in which the elements are constructed — be it the sweeping camera movements of Prince of Persia or the coloured blocks in Tetris or the humourously-creative descriptions in thirty-year-old text-only games — is inherently artistic. And once you acknowledge that, it is impossible to deny that video games are, indeed, art.