/agree

superpineapple:

I was five when I got my first video game. I remember the sheer amazement I felt when I saw the advertisements for it on television. “Gotta catch em’ all! Pokemon Red and Blue version!!!” So many cool monsters to catch and train, and such a cool handheld devise to play on; I was in love. I remembered seeing ads for a TV show of a similar title, but  only the game held my interest. I wasn’t content with sitting in front of the tube like some brainless zombie, no, I wanted to be part of the adventure! I wanted to interact with that world myself! And when my birthday finally came, and I unpacked that glorious package, all felt right in the world.

I hate saying this, because it sounds shallow as shallow can be, but playing through that game changed my life. Never before did I realize so much creative potential could be put to actual use. Even at such a young age, I could recognize how much effort had been put into even the smallest details. Each species of Pokemon fit into the environment it was found in, and the music expertly set the atmosphere for each town, cave, and road that the player had to travel through. When I got older, and started to look into the mechanics of my all time favorite game, I became even more impressed. This was complex. The makers had gone so far to make sure that not only every different species had differentiating characteristics, but every individual creature in the game had it’s own unique potential and statistics and depending on the way you played, would turn out completely different than you’re friend’s of the same species. There was really no reason to this far to make the games this intricate, especially in the mid nineteen nineties, when really the only things on the market you had to compete with were Tetris and Mario. Why go through all this trouble to add depth to something that most people are never going to see or even realize is there?

This wasn’t a simple game. It wasn’t mindless brain rotting entertainment like so many like to believe. The moment I stepped into that world, I was more immersed than any film, book, or picture I had ever consumed. I was inspired, I was enthralled, I was enlightened. To me, this was art.

Now, before getting into any kind of dialogue about art, we need to talk about defining art. Unfortunately, this is an issue that has pervaded every corner of the art world possibly since the word was coined. There are a million different ways one could define art, and every person seems to have a slightly different understanding of what art it. That is as it should be, since art is an intimately personal experience for whomever is experiencing it. For the sake of argument though, let us look towards a dictionary. Even then, it is not so easy to find a standard definition. Merriam Webster gives us this:

“the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects.”

And Oxford gives us this:

“the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”

Now, these both seems to be quite blanket definitions, and both certainly cover video games. Video Games place heavy value on aesthetics, and, being such  a form of interactive entertainment, they have the potential to hold a lot of emotional power, whether one realizes it or not. So what’s the argument?   For this, we have to seek out a definition of art that does not include video games. For this we turn to dear Roger Ebert, who singlehandedly brought up the argument in 2005 when he stated matter-of-factly that “Video Games can never be art.” This caused an explosion of rebuttal, and then rebuttal of that rebuttal, from the internet, and it has been a hot topic ever since. When struggling to comie up with a definition or art that excludes video games, Ebert provides us with his own:

“I thought about those works of Art that had moved me most deeply. I found most of them had one thing in common: Through them I was able to learn more about the experiences, thoughts and feelings of other people. My empathy was engaged. I could use such lessons to apply to myself and my relationships with others. They could instruct me about life, love, disease and death, principles and morality, humor and tragedy. They might make my life more deep, full and rewarding.”

Once again, this really leaves the application of the definition up to the individual. Two people can play through the same game and get vastly different experiences out of it. One might find themselves emotionally attached to a game’s story, characters, or underlying themes or messages, while the other might not. It can exclude Video Games, but it is still too vague for a sound argument.

After conceding this point in Okay, Kids, Play on my Lawn, Ebert then tries to argue that the nature of games, in that their entire point is that they can be won, is what keeps Video Games from being art. It is an interesting way to think about it, but I would argue that the fact that you came come to more than one outcome in a game is actually what could cement it’s status as art. The more potential ways someone can finish a game, the more potential ideas, messages, themes, influences, ect. the artist can portray to their audience.

For example, the game InFamous is an award winning open world role playing game (RPG), in which the choices you make while playing affect how you interact with the environment and how the story plays out. And while this seems like it contrasts horribly with the term RPG, this is actually not all that uncommon in video games. Throughout the entire game you are presented with choices on both sides of the morality scale. Should you choose to play the game “immorally” by causing needless harm onto others or make selfish decisions, the main character will to gain a reputation as immoral and the characters in the game will react accordingly, and the ending of the games is vastly different than if you are to play “morally”. This gives the artists working on the game two seperate opportunities to present different ideas, and they do. If you play immorally, the focus of the InFamous tends towards the overall plot of the game, as opposed to if you are to play morally, where the focus is more on character interactions and relationships.

This is only one of the most striaghtforward examples. Many games have similar, if not as integrated into the plot, devices that affect gameplay. The oldest examples come from adventure games, which were extremely popular from the late 1980s to the mid 1990s as they only required a PC to play. One of the most crittically aclaimed, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, based on Harlan Ellison’s short story of the same name, had an extremely sensitive choice system, where even the most insignificant details wieghed heavily in how the game would end. The game had five subplots each dealing with ethical dillemas and issues such as selfishness, insanity, rape, and genocide, and would take the main characters (and therefore, the player) to different conclusions based on how well they completed each subplot.

So Video games most definitely do have the capacity to “instruct [one] about life, love, disease and death, principles and morality, humor and tragedy,” if anything, more so than any other media because of it’s immersiveness. Well what else then, would keep Video Games from being considered art?

I personally feel as though there is a certain stigma to any work of art, no matter what the medium may be, that has more than one or two artists collaborating on it. This was a huge hurdle that kept film and comics from being considered art for decades, and only somewhat recently have those two mediums become considered thus by society without too much argument. The number of people working on even just one Video Game, now- a-days, is enormous. You have producers, publishers, development teams (which can easily be composed of a hundred or more people), designers, conventional artists (Concept artists, game artists, writers, musicians, voice actors), programmers, level designers, sound engineers, and even game testers working together to create a polished and high quality product. Does the amount of people working on Video Games cheapen the end product no matter how “artsy” it may be?

It is one of the main arguments against considering Video Games as art. However, movies are constantly being referred to as such, and their production teams are generally even larger, and are just as focused on financial gain as Video Game Studios.

I wonder if this can be attributed to the fact that Movies are generally accredited as a work made by their Directors, as opposed to Video Games, which are generally thought of in conjunction with their Publisher. It would definitely be easy to see how the general public would be more comfortable using the word “artist” when referring to a person, as opposed to a company.

Either way, Ebert’s argument consistently falls flat. Video Games should be considered art because of their focus on visual and musical aesthetics, their ability to stir emotion and teach us about the world and ourselves, and their similarities with other mediums that are considered art. There are already pioneers in the Art world moving to include this immersive new medium into the fold. The Smithsonian American Art Museum plans on hosting an exhibit on “The Art of Video Games” starting March 2012, and the Supreme Court ruled this June that Video Games officially fall under art, and are protected under the First Amendment just like books, movies, comics, pictures, and plays.

But, as we’ve already established, “art” means something different to each individual.Video Games may not be art to Mr. Ebert, but that’s his loss.

I’ll just be over here,

  playing Pokemon.

(Source: villianousstrawberry)