Video Game Design and Art

This blog will be dedicated to video games and it’s design as an art-form. Much like how film making used to be disapproved as a form of art and expression, video games as a relatively new medium is dismissed as an art form just like how movies, television, or even plays before it. The late and famous film critic Roger Ebert has disagreed with the idea that video games are an art form. There are also quite a few people like Forbes’ Nathan Deardorff who advocate for video games to be recognized as a medium for art.

Much of this diatribe is going to be a rant on definitions as that is the crux of the argument, whether whatever is defined as video games fits into the definition of art.

In all seriousness, art can be a variety of things and if someone were to ask ten different people what it was, they would probably get ten different responses. The oxford dictionary gives, “The expression or application of creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting, drawing, or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” as a formal definition of art, but there have been other ways people have defined art. Art could be a work that reveals hidden truths as Picasso put it “We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.” Perhaps it is thought or creativity expressed through form “To give a body and a perfect form to one’s thought, this — and only this — is to be an artist.” — Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825). Art could also be completely arbitrarily decided on by a few elites with whatever is on display at a museum or gallery. There are so many more ways that art could be defined that it is rather disingenuous to just lock it in as one thing. Any number of things can be art and I believe it is up to the person viewing a piece to decide whether something is art or not, just as the saying goes “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”.

What are video games though? Games are a much less abstract concept than art, generally it is a finite state system based on rules that allows for user inputs to change the state of the system. What makes a game is it’s set of rules that define a game, no matter how loosely defined and enforced those rules are. Games have been around for a long time from tag to chess; with the advent of computers and video displays we have allowed for quick feedback to the player. So video games are in essence a rule based system that is played through a console that gives video feedback to the player.

Are games art though? If games are a form of art, why do people criticize against it as one; if it’s not a form of art why do people want it recognized as one? Video games are a young medium and hasn’t been entrenched in our culture enough for it to be recognized as a form of art, and one of the reasons I believe that so many people wish for games to be recognized as art is that they want their hobby, their livelihood, and their passion to be legitimized in the eyes of others and not just seen as something children do. On the other side of the coin, we have people that don’t believe that games can be art as it calls into question what can and can’t be art and might lead to a slippery slope where literally everything can be considered “art”. People have to draw the line somewhere on what is considered art, and some believe that the line is drawn where the an artist can impose a vision of their beliefs to a piece, where the creators cede that responsibility to the player.

Like Tim Schafer, game designer and head of Double Fine productions, says in his interview with Gamasutra, games are likely to check off a lot of arbitrary definitions of what art is, the question of whether games is a form of art would be more productive as “what are the consequences of games being art?” That question is a whole different can of worms and is best left for another time as the topic for this is whether games are art. I personally believe that games are a form of art as I believe that art can elicit an emotional and thought provoking response.