Enric Llagostera
Aug 8, 2017 · 2 min read

I agree with Thais that much of the games and art thing is really not that productive at all and that art as a goal for games as a medium is a fucked up model and aim. I also noticed while reading her article that I’ve been thinking about some of the significance of games on a different key lately, and I thought it would be interesting to try to flesh it out. I haven’t been writing opinions in a while, so I’ll keep it short. Bear with me.

There’s a significance to games as objects and activities of the everyday. They can be part of daily (or weekly or yearly or 4-yearly) magical moments, like little glimpses of imagination and mystery for us to mess with. Things grandiose and small. These can be diverse and can mix escapist dreams (and nightmares) and re-imaginings of actual events and situations. Sports can do this: even the most epic and grandiose match carries on much of their meaning in the affective memories and stories those involved create around them. They fade too.

I think some of the need to declare games as art also comes from an invisibility and lower attention to this ritual component, besides the whole status / history / medium-craft discussion Thais talks about. Some games might be made with the intent to inhabit art contexts and creators hope being in that dialogue / tradition / circulation mode will be relevant. Many are something else and the little (or great) meaning they bring comes from the noisy and messy way they engage with our everyday life. Do they serve as markers / instigators for different moments? Do they connect me to others in ways that I care about? Do they provoke me to move and act in unusual ways? Do they inform some part of my identity or tradition? As a maker of games, these questions seem much more relevant than those usually brought up by the games as arts debate.

Finally, just a somewhat unrelated note: the games as arts debate is many times just a smokescreen for a toxic “this is a game, this is not” rhetoric and gate-keeping. This is a constantly employed discourse to shut out and silence those that do not conform to very strict ideas about what are games and who should be allowed to make them. So, let’s beware! If the art & games discussion can somehow (and in some situations) bring more power to oppressed creators and players, then it must definitely be considered. As anything else, it has to be seen in this political key too.

    Enric Llagostera

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