Roundtable: Videogames are NOT Art?

Question: Why would anyone believe that games are not art? What is some of the value in or purpose of labeling games as an art form?

Blake: I think the reason games are easily dismissed from the assumed higher cultures of art stems from mistaken or ignorant social assumptions about other groups.  In the same regrettable way that many people in America associate rap music with illicit behaviors, so too do people – usually older generations – associate gaming with degeneracy. Think of how often games are slandered and tarnished by the media as causes of sexism, social abnormality, and violence. Not to dismiss those often salient problems, but its always harder to make an argument for why something is good than why it’s bad. This doubles in truth when you know less about the specific examples and stories of the thing you’re judging.

And then I think about the question of utility: does art have to be socially useful?

Preston: Gaming also has business practices behind it. I think gaming and the literary merit games have gets conflated with the “larger” economic aspect surrounding games. In contrast, literature is easily placed in the art camp because it functions as primarily expression and intellectualism, where as games sit in multiple camps, economics, movie, entertainment, gaming, social media, sports, art, intellectualism, expression, etc.

Andy: I would also like to think that there’s a fundamental argument out there that says that arts are a part of our education, and as such putting games into that category of art may make for an easier transition from something that has been largely ostracized to a mainstream element of learning opportunities (not to mention developing a career from it, which many, many people have). In this regard, there may be more avenues for funding projects through scholarships, giving rise to serious development of games as anything other than just games due to the inherent nature of projects in higher education. This is not to dismiss games as only art, but to say that this is yet another potential avenue. As Preston mentioned, there’s a lot more to games than just art.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine about the recent gaming disorder diagnosis and his take on it was that they needed to term it officially so that they could add a sort of gravitas to the concept that would open avenues of funding for the appropriate research. My previous statements are a direct reflection of that same idea.

Blake: I do wonder to what extent our cultural conversation about art has shifted/is shifting. Art has traditionally belonged to the elite social classes, whereas in contemporary society we are so saturated in it that the term “art” has almost lost its meaning. Now we throw around the term “media” instead. I feel like the contrast between these two terms is primarily with regard to process. I certainly don’t want to force games into the “art” category merely to feel like my hobby is more respectable. I think we still have some work to do in order to figure out where we draw the line between games as art, and games as media.

To me, Art feels very personal and long lasting, like something that one person makes to express a idea, image, or emotion. Media feels very impersonal and rapidly consumed, like something that a large team of people make with or without deep expression. Games seem to fall more easily into the “media” category, because the games that tend to be successful enough to make it into the popular conversation – e.g. Fortnite, Call of Duty, World of Warcraft – aren’t always “art” in that personal, traditional, long-lasting sense. I think appealing to institutions like the national videogame museum in Texas is a way to build that sort of traditional legitimacy that games still lack – if that is indeed what we intend to do.

Preston: I have a difficult time accepting games as art. I think games can be artful, but not art in and of themselves.

There was a debate on r/truegames recently speaking about spatial and temporal regions in AAA and indie games. Shortening the discussion, a player moves around in a world, specifically AAA games, with gorgeous vistas, weather, life like scenery, etc. Yet a player can’t be expected to move around the world with it taking hours of “on the road” travel it would take in real life. So video games concede something, time and movement speed. The ability for a player to move around in a game is massively expanded, yet this also has to be balanced with making the player feel like they have “space” and “place” in the world. The setting and scenery, in this respect, becomes a box to hold a player’s imagination, the story a place to entice and captivate through interactions, the characters to keep the player engaged. Most things a game does is reduce and repackage “quasi-real life experience” into a manageable and completable ecosystem for a player to exist in. This functions more closely to what we experience in respect to media.

I’d even push to call these experiences closer to the boutique stores, similar to Copper Closet or Etsy, which sell artful merchandise, yet toe the line just in front of being mass produced. I suggest this since these stores capture fringe art scenes and repackage them into purchasable, reproducible items.

Similar things can be said for metroidvanias.

Take for example Hollow Knight. The city and outside scapes you walk through in this game are mostly hand drawn, with gorgeous detail.  That same time and space concept from the AAA’s factors in here. The beauty of the scenery and a players movement among it needs to be expanded and extended somehow to meet the players expectations of being in a “space.” to solve this, metroidvanias function on a backtrack methodology, which forces the player back and forth across a map to reach new levels and powers. This tends to make the games feel much larger than they are. This backtrack model is extremely similar to the Fallout quest giver method. A player who receives a quest in fallout is usually forced to walk across the map then back to complete a quest. Metroidvanias do similar things that AAA’s do to expand the scope of the game.

Blake: If I read you right, Preston, I think you just clarified something important for me. That is, video games might not be “art,” per se. They are spaces – containers, if you will – for art to exist within. Your example of Hollow Knight reminded me of the distinction between the process of games and the object of games. Playing is not art – or at least not formally. Someone who thought games might aren’t art could say that you’re playing with art, but the playing isn’t the art itself. Am I getting you right?

Preston: In all of these examples the main focus isn’t the beauty of the scenery, the vistas, or the detailed hand drawn scapes, but a focus on creating place for players to exist in. To create place it might take artful creation, but the focus isn’t on the art of the game, it is on the participation the game can afford the player. Maybe that is an art, but for me it is closer to what media or social media does where people feel like they have a place to exist online or amongst a virtual world.

I can’t see this as art. Art tends to made to bend perception or at least tug on it and games are mostly made to bend to fit a player’s expectations.

Andy: I think there’s a ton of validity in comparing art and media in games, or games as media vs games as art. It’s a very interesting idea to compare the functions of games vs what makes them, but I think you miss the critical aspect of art in those places/spaces. Without those specific things to sell, neither Etsy nor Copper Closet would sell anything and would be an empty space. I think it’s safe to say that the art absolutely contributes to the space, but I’d be lying if I said I felt like what I’m saying is as powerful as your observation of games as media considering the function of spaces/places and player expectations. I think that’s a really deep subject worth far more than a tangential roundtable discussion.

Ben: I’m late to the party, but I feel inclined to chime in: it’s important that we label video games as “art” because we do the same with other narrative mediums. Perhaps I’m not doing the conversation justice because, yes, there is a lot to consider here. Preston makes an excellent point: video games. as a collective whole, aren’t art. Art moves people, and it’s hard for me to argue that “Pepsiman” moved anyone in a direction that wasn’t further away from the television. All the same, they must be considered for such. When we pick up a game, assuming that it has something artful to say is giving it the same benefit of the doubt as we give a film before we sit in the theater.

This Roundtable was written by Blake Andrea, Preston Johnston, Ben Vollmer and Andy Webb. Check back every other week for the latest Epilogue Gaming Roundtable. This roundtable was edited by Blake Andrea. Follow us and our thoughts on @EpilogueGames or @LudonarrativeFM on Twitter. If you’d like, consider supporting our work on Patreon for as little as $1 a month.