Video Games Are Art; They’re Just Bad at It

1. Foreword
2. Introduction
3. 3 Arguments in Favor of Video Games Being Art and Why They’re Wrong
   3.1. The Definitional Argument: “Art = X, Games = X, so Games = Art!”
   3.2. The Example Argument: “Look at this game!”
   3.3. The External Argument: “Games are a young medium!”
4. Expression Vectors and Interactivity
5. The Cumbersome Medium
6. Conclusion: On Interactive Art

The doer is always conscienceless; no one has a conscience except the spectator.
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Foreword

Back in college, I had a professor in one of my film classes who challenged us to convince him that video games were art. He said we had until the end of the semester to make our case. Some friends and I teamed up and accepted his challenge.

Our attack plan went as follows: my friends would focus on bombarding our teacher with examples of artistic games while I would make a more philosophical case for why games should be considered art.

We spent the entire semester studying and preparing our presentations, which we would deliver one after the other on the last day of school.

The last day of the semester came, and we each got to deliver our long-prepared presentation in front of the class. Sitting in the back of the class with the other students who attended, he stayed silent throughout the whole thing, taking notes. After we finished presenting, he asked us to all gather in front of the class so he could tell us what he thought.
He remained unconvinced. We had failed.

Looking back on it, it is easy to see why we failed: our arguments were bad. However, one part of my perspective that has not changed is that his rebuttals were just as awful if not worse than the arguments we presented.

It would have been quite easy for this professor to show us just how uninformed we were about the history of art. In the end, the biggest problem anyone who wants to answer this question has to reckon with is this: why are video games so aesthetically primitive when compared to other art forms? If our professor had asked us to explain why this is the case, we would have been forced down a philosophical path we were completely unprepared to engage with.

Several years have passed since this incident. Since then, I have worked in the video game industry and have spent a considerable amount of energy learning about literature, philosophy, and the history of art. I now feel ready to engage with the question and make the argument I wish I had made all those years ago.

Introduction

The question of whether video games are art has fallen out of fashion in recent years, mainly because people think the matter is settled. Statements like, “Art is subjective”, “Look at this game!”, and “Video games are still young” are thought to have solved the problem. But, for a supposedly “solved “ debate, things are pretty much just as they were — video games are still not recognized as an art form, co-equal with others.

Can any game compare to any of the cinematic masterpieces of the 20th century? Some will say that this comparison is unfair because video games are still a young medium. But this is an old argument that has lost its basis. Video games are not so young anymore. Video games are over 50 years old now, and they are more mature than their years with all the talent, energy, money, and time we have spent on them. Moreover, video games have had the benefit of inheriting a rich audio-visual tradition from cinema. Video games were born with a small loan of a million dollars ready for them.

With this silver spoon in their mouths, they have accomplished amazing things — both as technical marvels and as works of art. Video games are art; they are creative expressions of pathos that bring people together around works of imagination. That being said, they still seem to exist apart from other aesthetic mediums. The popular theory for why this is the case is that video games are the Rock & Roll of our generation and that, in a generation or two, this reactionary hostility will have disappeared, once again proving that new things are always met with resistance by older generations. This certainly is a historical trend, but why are we so certain that this is what is happening here? Do we really know?

The closer we look at video games, the harder it becomes to blame their aesthetic reputation on the external prejudice of a reactionary generation alone. The problem appears to be internal, and the fact that video games have become more aesthetically mature in so far as they have borrowed from other mediums better suited for the distribution of contemplative material seems to confirm this. To increase their aesthetic value, games compensate for the sterility of interactivity by maximizing the use of their contemplative vectors (narrative, audio, visuals). But putting a movie inside a video game does not make the video game art. The goal is for games to be art “as games”. Is this possible?

Interactivity is not aesthetically barren, but it is reliant upon contemplative content — expression — to deliver art. In other words, video games are like a normal aesthetic medium but with interactivity, heterogeneously put on top of it. Interactivity is better suited to provide play experiences, which in turn incentivizes developers to maximize what their medium is most able to provide. Conversely, artists with something to say will not bother trying to salvage a medium bloated with the non-contemplative burden of games. The result is clear: a stunted medium that few artists bother to uplift.

This may or may not be true, but this debate is due for a new perspective. I do not care if the perspective I provide is true; I only care to shake up the current discourse on the matter. We need new and better arguments, for the ones we currently use to defend video games are old and withered.

This essay will be broken down into two sections. In the first section, we will go over the most common arguments in favor of video games being considered art. In the second section, we will investigate the causes behind the aesthetic limitations of games.

The 3 Arguments

We should first engage with the arguments made by those who do believe video games are an art form. We must show why these arguments have never succeeded at convincing anyone. If these arguments were true, then the reputation of video games would have changed, but it has not. To this day, video games are still thought of as an opiate for children. These arguments have failed and we must replace them. Let us first show how they are wrong before moving on to our own explanation.

In my experience, I have found that every argument fits into one of three groups: Definitional, Example, and External. The first type of argument tries to prove that video games are art by using definitions. The second type of argument tries to make its case by showing examples of highly imaginative, beautiful, and intelligent games. The third type of argument tries to blame the public’s reluctance on generational prejudice.

1st Argument: The Definitional Argument

Let us start with the argument I made against my teacher. This argument tries to definitionally prove that video games must be art.

The argument posits that if we can definitionally align both art and video games, then we have solved the problem and proved that games are art. However, if video games really do check every box on the “Is this an art form?” list, then one must seriously wonder why it is the case that they are not treated like an art form.

This is why this kind of argument fails: it argues with words rather than with reality. We can weave whatever definition we want, but at the end of the day, if people do not engage with a given subject matter in the same way they engage with another one they call “art”, it may very well be that what seems definitionally similar is in actuality different.

Art, much like religion, is a thing that cultures do. Basically all human communities — at some point or another — will part take in art-making. Instead of describing art through a handful of words and concluding that art is captured by that description, we should think of art as a phenomenon — as a condition contracted by the organism of culture.

If we think of art in this way, arguments such as, “Art is creative expression; video games are capable of creative expression, thus they are an art form.” lose all their impact. These arguments solve the issue by transforming the condition of culture into semantic blocks, performing operations on these blocks, only to presume that the outputs of these semantic equations are necessarily applicable to the original subject matter. “Creative expression” does not “exist”. It is a semantic block. Whatever the semantic blocks say can echo in the aether of pure reason forever, but the world goes on, unaffected. Still, despite what the sentence says, people are unconvinced.

Definitional Arguments are not “unpersuasive to closed-minded people”, they are invalid. If people’s intuitions are left unchanged by an argument, we must conclude that it does not interact with the source of their belief.

Sentences exist in a separate world. Definitions exist in a separate world. Instead of manipulating semantic equations to give us the answer we want, we should look at art itself and how human beings interact with it in reality. The reality is this: many people “feel” as though video games are not art. Does this not suggest that art is subjective and therefore that games are an art form equal to all others?

The argument, “Art is subjective” suffers from the same problems as the Definitional Argument: both ignore the reality of art.

One has to be severely uninquisitive to look at at a situation where different people disagree on whether A is B and conclude that it must mean everyone is right. Aesthetic taste is subjective, that much is clear, but it is not lawless. There are patterns and causes to people’s interests. But if economic advantages, cultural instincts, or any other deeper factor were at play in determining, conditioning, or limiting the aesthetic experience, the Subjective Argument would not care about them. This argument simply refuses to recognize this level of resolution because it values its own democratically-minded, philosophical apathy more than it does the truth.

It is understandable that some people prefer respecting other people’s tastes to being philosophically discerning, even if the latter does not need to come at the expense of the former. Nowhere in this essay is it my intent to shame people for enjoying video games as an art form. I only care to understand what is happening.

Saying that art is subjective is not enough to understand the real cultural mechanisms at play in why video games suffer from a different aesthetic reputation than other mediums. Rather, it avoids the question, much like the Definitional Argument.

In the face of potentially fascinating knowledge, the Subjective Argument closes the door and declares the matter solved. Yet, despite supposedly being solved by such an air-tight argument, the debate goes on. Do we really believe that people who doubt the aesthetic merit of video games have never thought about art being subjective? Where are those people?

Both arguments (Definitional and Subjective) attempt to solve the problem in a virtual world; definitions do not have the alchemical powers to affect reality and statements like “people like different things” are intellectually insufficient for anyone who cares about understanding. Is it not fascinating that video games — a medium whose aesthetic credentials seem so evident — are this aesthetically deficient when compared to other mediums? Maybe I’m alone in this, but I would like to understand, and these two arguments do nothing other than stall genuine research into the matter.

2nd Argument: “Have you seen this game?”

The second argument in favor of games being considered an art form is the one my friends chose to make to persuade our professor. This argument consists of showing examples of artistic video games to establish the medium’s aesthetic merit. Unfortunately, this is the weakest argument.

What exactly is the argument here? Clearly, the goal is to show someone who disagrees that games can be art a game that will impress the person enough to have them feel as though video games can indeed be artistic. However, let us ask again, what exactly is the argument here?

The idea is that, if this person feels as though a game satisfies their intuitive definition of art, then the debate has been settled: games are art.

There are many reasons why — though this can be persuasive at a personal level — this argument is not conclusive. Let us tackle them one by one.

First, just because someone has been vaguely convinced that a game “is art” does not mean games “are art”. Here we can see that the Example Argument relies on the Subjective Argument: if something feels like it is art — whatever that is — it must be art. Again, this fails to engage with reality.

A game might be impressive, beautiful, interesting, and creative, but if any of this sufficed to qualify something as an art form, then why is it that almost no one treats games like an art form? Think of it this way: how many people have been shown an “artistic video game” and have then gone on to consume video games as one would go about consuming works of great cinema or world literature? It does not happen. People consume video games in a different way than they consume any other art form.

If games are not treated like an art form, then the medium does not exist like an art form. Whatever we are convinced of when persuaded by this argument, our conclusion is either inconsequential or mistaken.

The reason why it is tempting to make this argument is because most people who claim that video games are not art tend to think that every game is just another vapid, commercial First Person Shooter game.

Having both studied video games and worked in the games industry, I am far from unaware of the broad range of games that have been made. When I cast doubt on the full aesthetic potential of video games, I am not doing so from a place of ignorance. Majora’s Mask, Mother 2–3, Undertale, Fallout: New Vegas, and a host of other games have left a mark on my mind, and I would unhesitatingly call them artistic.

But even these works are quite aesthetically primitive when compared to what would be considered “the great works” of other artistic mediums.

I repeat: “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”
— Roger Ebert

Video games appear to not only be different in nature from other artistic mediums but also in degree. Not only do people engage differently with games than they do with other artistic mediums, but games never seem capable of coming anywhere near the aesthetic accomplishments found in any other artistic medium. Can anyone honestly say that a game — any game for that matter — has ever come close to matching the aesthetic caliber of any of the great cinematic achievements of the 20th century? Video games are simply incapable of producing the same aesthetic effect as Stanley Kubrick’s (1928–1999) 2001: a Space Odyssey (1968).

There is no denying that video games are a creative medium, that they offer unique experiences, and that they are capable and often do contain imaginary, intellectual, and aesthetic, but they lack the spark to light the flame of aesthetic inspiration other mediums have no comparable trouble lighting up. Video games clearly possess aesthetic content — that much is unarguable — but something either intrinsic or extrinsic is holding them back. Anyone who says otherwise is not taking this question seriously.

The use of examples might be persuasive, but we must remain vigilant as to what it convinces us of. To prove that games are art, one would have to show examples of people engaging with games as art forms aside from those fringe intellectuals who transpose the methods of aesthetic analysis onto a quite unrewarding — and frankly — undeserving medium.

For an example to be successful at establishing the artistry of games, it must align in nature and degree with other works considered artistic. Remember, the goal is not to show that video games are “creative” or that they can be “intelligent” — that much is clear — the goal is to show that they are an artistic medium on par with other aesthetic mediums.

The Example Argument does no such thing. By relying on the Subjective Argument, it takes advantage of people not having a strong sense of what “art” even is. This argument fails to understand the real problem hiding behind the question, as such, it cannot answer it.

If you were to browse and study over a thousand video games, you would conclude that while many are highly imaginative, expressive, and culturally relevant, they are not sought after to provide aesthetic experiences. In other words, games are different in nature from other artistic mediums. Finally, anyone well-acquainted with the history of artistic achievements will find among those thousand games nothing remotely comparable in aesthetic caliber to any of the great works made in any other medium.
In other words, games are also different in degree from other mediums.

3rd Argument: “Video games are a young medium!”

This third and final argument is the most popular argument I have heard in the public discourse. This argument tries to blame the aesthetic disrepute of games on obstacles extrinsic to the medium. Said differently, the idea is that video games are artistic but that socio-cultural factors are at play in the medium’s aesthetic disrepute. Instead of proving the aesthetic merit of games, this argument claims that those who disagree are unreceptive.

The argument goes something like this:

The reason why people do not interact with games as they interact with other art forms is because the medium is young and new. In time, people will learn how to engage with it as they do other aesthetic mediums. In the same way, the reason why there are so few artistic games today is because the medium is still young and learning its language.

Here, we are not denying that video games are different in nature and degree from other art forms, rather we are saying that the medium is not inherently broken — as some claim — only that it is still in its infancy stage.

I think this argument is outrageously bad. The truth is that it did not take this long for movies to be seen as an art form.

The first Academy Awards (Oscars) were held on May 16th, 1929, 30 or so years after the release of the first commercial movies in the 1890s, and the first Cannes Film Festival was held during the fall of 1946, 50 years or so after that same date. Thus, we can see it only took a few decades for cinema to be recognized for its aesthetic accomplishments in wider culture.

Conversely, the first serious and enduring video game award ceremony (the BAFTA Game Awards) was held in February 2004, 30 or so years after the release of the first commercial games in the early 1970s, and the first Game Awards ceremony (hosted and founded by Geoff Keighley) was held on December 5th, 2014, 40 years or so after that same date. Maybe a few more years will make all the difference, but despite being comparable in age, industry, and reach to cinema, the reputation of video games as being inescapably oriented toward leisure persists.

We cannot explain the reputation of video games by using their age as an excuse anymore; both cinema and games have their respective award ceremonies meant to acknowledge high creative achievements in their respective mediums.

But is that really what is happening during those award ceremonies? When it comes to cinema, its respective ceremonies treat it as though it is an art form, but video game award ceremonies only ever seem to pretend games are art. It is as though they are trying to manufacture the aesthetic significance of video games by impersonating those other ceremonies. In doing so, they only reveal how little we think of games; we do not know how to celebrate the aesthetics of games as games.

Game awards give off the feeling of an industry having fun, and most of the runtime of these award shows consists of advertisements for upcoming releases. Game award ceremonies themselves do not even treat their own medium as though it is artistic; they treat it as a creative, technological, and cultural extravagance that gets developers paid and players entertained. These ceremonies are fun, popularity contests/retrospectives on those products that a particular community purchased and enjoyed during the previous year — it is by no means a celebration of a medium’s aesthetic accomplishments. The game industry does not treat games as an art form.

Gamers themselves do not treat their medium of choice as though it is a serious art form. They buy new games and throw away the old. The only time old games are replayed is for nostalgia’s sake or to look at how far the medium has come. Movies made 40 or so years ago are regularly watched for their aesthetic merit or reputation.

There is no market whatsoever for games that challenge or capture our cultural neuroses in any way comparable to what cinema, literature, or music has done. Think of how vivid the aesthetic experience you can get from watching a good movie, listening to a good song, or reading a good book; games only ever get close to that by borrowing from those other art forms. Gamers do not get together to intellectually contemplate a game in any similar fashion to what enthusiasts of other artistic mediums do. Whatever people do when they interact with an art form, gamers do something else. This should be seen as suspicious.

In conclusion, I think time has revealed that the Infancy argument is bad. Video games were once a young, immature medium — this argument was plausible back then — but years have gone by, and the circumstances that justified this argument have disappeared. Even with all the time, budget, and talent in the world, games cannot seem to shed their reputation and transcend to the level of an art form.

Infancy Arguments aside, the point is that all Extrinsic Arguments fall flat when we see how large the industry is. Even if we said that 50 was still young, the games industry more than makes up for its age with its size.

According to recent data, the gaming industry is now making more money than the music and movie industries combined. According to a report by SuperData Research, the global gaming market was valued at $159.3 billion in 2020.

Extrinsic Arguments lose credibility when we see all the opportunities video games had over the course of their lifetime. With all the resources any medium could ever ask for, they still cannot make it as an art form.
Despite their age, their budget, the size of their market, and the pool of talent involved in the creation of video games, they still cannot overcome their reputation as recreation for children.

If the problem truly was extrinsic, games would be considered art by now.
Mediums with extrinsic problems do not have these kinds of opportunities. Maybe the problem is more intrinsic than we are willing to admit.

Expression Vectors and Interactivity

Now that these arguments have hopefully been persuasively dismantled, we can move on to theorizing about what might be behind the aesthetic disrepute of video games.

Here is our thesis as it stands: video games clearly contain aesthetic material, but they are different in nature and degree to other art forms, thus resulting in their seeming disadvantage in the aesthetic market.

The arguments we have looked at try to establish the aesthetic credibility of games through definitions, examples, and the blaming of extrinsic causes. However, we have yet to tackle the problem from an internal perspective. Let us take a look at the medium itself and see what we can find.

The example I chose for the definitional argument is the closest we have to an internal argument: the Compound-Medium Argument. Instead of using this argument as a definitional proof, let us examine it internally.

If video games are made up of other mediums that are each considered artistic in their own right, where exactly do games go wrong? Games seemingly possess everything they need to be an artistic medium, but could it be that they have more than what they need?

Let us be philosophical for a moment and try to imagine what that “extra” thing might be.

Each art form has — if you will — its own expression vectors — music uses audio, movies use audio and visuals, etc. Video games share the same expression vectors as movies but add one of their own: interactivity.

However, “interactivity” is not comparable to the other expression vectors. While the usual expression vector transmits aesthetic content, interaction can only change the content being transmitted by another vector. In itself, interactivity does not convey anything. Interactivity is always a gimmick or a way for the user to move from content to content. It is never the content itself. Pressing on a button might show a work of art, but the interactivity only serves as a doorway for the real artwork to proceed.

When compared to other expression vectors, we come to realize that every expression vector is by design contemplative. Interactivity is not an expression vector — it cannot convey aesthetic substance on its own.

We are looking for an “extra” thing that the medium has and that other artistic mediums do not have so we can identify what might impede its aesthetic functions. Interactivity, it seems, is an “extra” feature that no other artistic medium possesses and — upon closer inspection — it seems like interactivity is a first-class antagonist of what every other medium uses as its primary mode of aesthetic distribution/consumption: contemplation.

When we think about it, all other art forms rely on contemplation to be consumed. Movies, paintings, dance, music, theater, literature, etc. are all art forms in which the audience assumes a contemplative role.

Imagine that while in the middle of watching a play, the actors walk into the crowd to select a random audience member to join them on stage. It is possible to imagine an enthusiastic participant being selected, and the ensuing improvisation might leave the audience’s contemplative distance intact — perhaps it might even make the play more enjoyable. However, if you were to imagine the entire audience being selected at the same time, the whole situation would turn into a participatory “rave” rather than remaining a contemplative concert. The audience’s contemplative distance would be permanently injured, and though the experience might be more enjoyable, the play would no longer operate as a work of art; it would lose its discourse. Contemplative distance is essential if we want to experience what we intuitively feel is deserving of the label “art”.

It is only through aesthetic contemplation that a work can communicate a message and deploy that message at a pace, controlled by authorial design. A work’s expressive vectors are free when they are under a contemplative regime: music will play and images will be shown sequentially at the pace of an authorial design. However, if the pace is tied to user participation, then aesthetic sequences lose their capacity to transmit aesthetic content.

In contemplative contexts, audiences are forced to follow the pace of the work — the movie/song will play at its own pace, not the audience’s pace.

Video games must be understood as a collection of mediums coerced by an interactive regime: for a game’s expressive vectors to be used, they must either be independent of interactivity (music, cutscene, etc.) or dependent on interaction (requiring interaction by the user, thus coercing the vectors). Interactivity is not homogeneously integrated with the aggregate of mediums that comprise video games — it coerces and limits them.

A video game can contain contemplative content (music, story, world, visuals, characters, ideas, cutscenes, etc.) but this content belongs to the medium’s subordinate mediums. To engage with the contemplative content of video games, you have to consume the game as though it were one of its sub-mediums (as a movie, as a book, etc.).

Thus, while video games are made up of other artistic mediums, their interactive frame coerces and limits their contemplative powers. In doing so, the medium is peculiarly inconvenienced: either a given game relies on contemplative content and thus stops being a game or it doubles down on interactive content, eschewing contemplation in the process.

The two cannot be homogeneously combined. When I am watching a cutscene (movie), looking at the scenery (visual arts), taking a step back and contemplating the narrative (book), or listening to the music, I am enjoying art forms independently of the game’s interactivity. The video game is simply a means of getting those other art forms, which may lead to interesting results, but it is an insane heterogeneous and unavoidable distraction we have to awkwardly reckon with if we choose to engage with it as a piece of aesthetic content.

This argument may seem abstract and trivial, but let us show how consequential it truly is.

The main criticism that games receive from those who do not think they should be considered an art form is that games are nothing more than entertainment — creative entertainment, but leisure nonetheless. While it is not difficult to find games that try and be more than entertainment, we should ask why entertainment is so popular that it seems to consume the medium’s entire library of content at a far higher proportion than it does in any other artistic medium.

Some may say that the games industry was born at a very consumeristic point in history, which endowed the medium from birth with codes and conventions that reflect its birth date more than any intrinsic shortcomings on its end. I disagree. I do think that interactivity is hostile to aesthetic content. Interactivity, I believe, is the reason why games are less aesthetic than other more artistic mediums in both nature and degree.

The Cumbersome Medium

In the previous section, we talked about how interactivity interferes with authorial design and pacing. Then, we talked about how much of the medium’s library of content is made up of entertainment. This begs the question of why the medium has seen so few artists use video games as their medium of choice.

While video games are quite cumbersome to make, movies are just as if not more difficult to make. While cinema has a longstanding artistic tradition behind it, both movies and games can be made by a single person, so the staggeringly low number of artists who have taken up video games as their medium of choice cannot be explained by saying that the medium is too difficult to create works for.

The main issue is that video games are not very good at making contemplative content. For a game to contain contemplative content, it must disengage the player. As an artist with something to say, why would you bother working with a medium whose main feature (interactivity) you have to completely ignore 99% of the time if you want to say something?

So much of art consists of artists formalizing their soul and putting it out there for other people to behold contemplatively. The only way such content can exist in a video game is if a given sequence is non-interactive. Why would an artist bother tailoring their work for a medium whose main channel of consumption runs counter to contemplative content by design?

The medium favors interaction rather than contemplation, and though the two can be homogeneously integrated in some rare cases, these cases are few and far between. It is no wonder then that leisure is so prevalent in the medium’s library.

The medium seems to natively favor certain products we later decry as not representative of what the medium can do. In reality, it may be that the medium’s interactivity is most effective at gratifying active pleasures over passive, contemplative pleasures, thereby incentivizing the medium to cater to what it can best provide. Contemplative content — which is the norm for other art forms — is not well suited for a medium that forces content to be created with a player in mind. Every cutscene or player restriction proves that interactivity is the enemy of design, pacing, and authorial expression. Contemplation is essential to art.

Putting a Shakespeare play in a video game just sounds like a bad idea. Those who would enjoy Shakespeare would rather witness it passively and those who would rather have more interactive options would rather be in a state of play. If your medium is technologically bound to “play”, then it is cumbersome to use this medium to convey contemplative content. Artists who want to make something contemplative will not bother with it and artists who want to make something interactive will play into the medium’s strength and make gameplay-filled experiences.

Note that this is unavoidable for a medium designed with a controller in mind. For the aesthetic content to reach me, I must interact with it, thus putting myself in a state of non-contemplation. This is not trivial — either I sit back and consume the game like a movie, a picture, a book, or a song, or I interact with it. I can receive a game’s artistic content through all of its expression vectors, except its most characteristic one: interactivity.

This is the invisible obstacle games face as candidates who wish to join the pantheon of artistic mediums. Passive contemplation is essential to the experience of art, and interactivity loudly wakes the aesthetic judgment from its aesthetic slumber. I have noticed that the most aesthetic experiences I have had with video games have occurred when I took a step back and contemplated the game. I might be struck with creative brilliance while I am playing, but more often than not it is because I am reflecting on the game’s content contemplatively. I must detach myself from the object for aesthetic contemplation to occur.

I cannot imagine myself being in a contemplative experience while actively playing a sport — for example. I might witness an amazing play, but at this point, I am in a state of momentary contemplation. I might find a mathematical visualization beautiful, but I will not experience its beauty while in the middle of doing the calculations myself — unless I contemplate it in my mind as I am doing the task. Once again, this would be a state of momentary contemplation. While I am an active participant, I am experiencing a kind of pleasure, but not aesthetic pleasure.

While in contemplation, we are with art; while in interaction, we are separate from art. Interactivity is the enemy of art.

The reason why most video games fall under the category of entertainment is because — by design — interactive media is better suited to those active and participatory pleasures rather than to contemplative ones. Games appeal to a population that desires play. People who like “play” would rather buy things that let them “play” than things that do not, thereby actively incentivizing content that lacks the contemplative substance required for art. Attempts to change this run against the medium’s design. Contemplation is rarely used because it is alien to the medium and “play” is used most often because the medium inherently supports it.

That being said, video games are far from incapable of containing artistic content. A game can be replete with imagery, narrative, beauty, music, imagination, and anything conventionally associated with other art forms, but I have to actively not play the game if I want to appreciate this content.

As such, I can only ever appreciate a video game’s aesthetic content when I consume it as something other than a video game. Games contain artistic material fit for deployment by a different medium; they contain art, but the medium’s unique expression vector forbids the consumption of art. Aesthetic content must be consumed contemplatively, which games admittedly allow, but contemplative content is disincentivized by the medium’s strengths. Contemplative content is better in any other medium.

This is where it all comes together. Video games are art, they’re just not that great at it. For a piece of content to provide an aesthetic experience, it has to be contemplative — video games discourage this. Play takes center stage and thus shapes the content to optimize leisure. Games simply are better at being fun/interesting experiences than they are at being art. They can be aesthetic, but they will be so against their medium’s best interests.

But if a game insists on being a game, it will have to cater to “play” at some point or another — at which point, it will cease to serve a contemplative function and lose the name of art. And because the medium is so well suited to cater to “play”, any game — no matter how replete it is with aesthetic material — will necessarily have the equivalent of a jumping puzzle at some point. Whether it be a mission, a puzzle, a boss battle, or any sort of interactive sequence whatsoever, aesthetic content will necessarily be heterogeneously submerged underneath — out of focus.

Games contain art, but they are not art insofar as they are games — they are something else, and that’s fine.

The medium is unwieldy for artists and it is natively skilled at providing entertainment experiences. In other words, the medium is ridden with anti-aesthetic incentives. The result is an aesthetically impotent medium customarily associated with its strengths — creating commercial works of leisure for a market that prefers play over serious aesthetic contemplation. This explains both its reputation and why this reputation has not and will never change.

Conclusion: On Interactive Art

The question “Are video games art?” can be answered in many ways, but I believe our analysis was more interesting than answering either “yes” or “no” and calling it a day. Insofar as we tried to answer a question at all, the question was not so much “Are video games art?”, but more like “Why is it that video games are still not recognized as an art form?” This is a more productive question.

Here are the conclusions we have reached:

1. The Argument of Nature: People treat video games differently than they do other art forms, and we concluded that this was due to the medium’s native incapacity to contain and deploy contemplative content. Artists with something to say will rarely choose a medium that prioritizes interaction over contemplation. If art is intrinsically contemplative, why would an artist bother with the overwhelming and burdensome interactive shell of video games when they could just choose a medium better suited for expressive content? Those who want to create contemplative content must compromise their work and turn it into a game and those who want to consume contemplative content are forced to alienate their aesthetic cortex in interactivity. This is a unique failure of video games, which no definitional, example, or external argument can overcome. Video games are different in nature to other mediums.
2. The Argument of Degree: Beyond these internal incentives of the medium, the medium excels at the production of play experiences.
   The medium is optimized for the creation of interactive works, which means that profit, success, and consumer satisfaction are more likely to be achieved by taking advantage of the medium’s unique abilities. This results in a library of content that is not so much aesthetically deficient as it is interactively proficient. Both oppose each other, but the absence of one promotes the other. It is no surprise then that — though the medium’s library contains examples of contemplative content — its library of content is so aesthetically primitive when compared to that of other mediums. Video games are different in degree to other mediums.

Every medium is incentivized to create entertainment, but video games are technologically obstructed from making much of anything else, unlike movies, books, music, or any other art form. Games can only make themselves more artistic by becoming more like one of their sub-mediums and thus making themselves less like themselves. Games are only art where they are not games — where they are contemplative. However, since the medium is comparatively hostile to contemplation and intrinsically skilled at interactivity, “play” is more prevalent and “contemplation” rarer. Video games are art, but their reputation as a lesser art form is warranted.

But, a conversation about the aesthetic merit of games is incomplete unless we talk about their genus: interactive art. Instead of limiting our analysis to video games, we should carry our debate to fruition and investigate the nature and possibilities of all interactive art.

I believe our analysis carries over to interactive art more generally. All interactive art is distinct in nature and lesser in degree than other art forms. Video games are perhaps the most aesthetically capable interactive medium out there simply due to how many contemplative mediums they can make use of. As I have argued, games have to rely on other mediums for their contemplative content (cutscenes, narrative, visuals, music), but these avenues of aesthetic distribution are not inherent to all interactive mediums. The most barebones interactive installation would rely on a single contemplative medium, thus aesthetically incapacitating itself without realizing that its interactivity is aesthetically impotent.

Not understanding the aesthetic limitations of interactivity, artists vainly try to create forgettable, gimmicky, awkward, didactic, unwieldy, shallow works that never seem capable of rising to the aesthetic level of other artworks. We should not be surprised. Interactivity is an obstacle to art. Interactive art is possible insofar as it can communicate a message, which interactivity is capable of doing, but not as well as a screen.

VR experiences and interactive installations showcased in museums are all gimmicky, kitsch/cliché-ridden, or in essence contemplative. This seems to be inescapable. In order to justify their medium, they must create works that can gratify the user through non-contemplative content. They are forced to rely on Interactive Vectors to provide the user with an experience. Meanwhile, cinema, music, and literature get to rely on Contemplative Vectors, which seem to be intrinsically tied with the aesthetic instinct. When this instinct is solicited, people begin to act like art enthusiasts.
For games and interactive works to be thought of as art, they have to be turned into contemplative objects.

Interactivity as a mode of digesting aesthetic content is crude and too involved to be aesthetic. Interactivity has a lot of potential in pedagogical contexts, but it is utterly hostile to the processes of our aesthetic cortex. There exist contexts where interactivity can quite potently express something that contemplation would have had to express differently — perhaps even less well — but these cases are either rare or more so didactic and educational, not aesthetic. Cases where interactivity expands an artistic experience better than contemplation could have are rare, but they exist. Odds are, however, that interactivity simply contains fewer opportunities as well as incentives to explore them.

The only instance I can think of where interactivity alone adds to a narrative better than contemplation could have is in the game Undertale. During a boss fight with a maternally protective character called Toriel, the player comes to realize — through interaction — that Toriel is intentionally missing her attacks — she does not want to hurt you. In order to experience the intentions of the character, you must interactively engage in the battle sequence to observe how her attacks conspicuously avoid landing.

There surely are other examples where interactivity alone serves an aesthetic rather than a didactic function, but I have not encountered them. As a field of aesthetic possibilities, interactivity is a desert with a few oases.

I see no other way of explaining why — despite all the energy, talent, and money that has been put into video games and interactive art — they have yet to produce something even remotely close to the aesthetic standards of any other artistic medium whatsoever. Something is severely wrong here. Surely, it must be that the medium itself is broken in some essential way. Interactivity is — in my estimation — this essential flaw. The more something is interactive the less it is contemplative.

This problem is pervasive in all works of interactive art. Wherever we see interactivity, contemplation has been pushed to the side. We can think of every work of interactive art as an arbitrarily sliced, two-sector pie chart: the more interactivity, the less contemplation.

One can certainly compromise, but interaction is just not that great of an aesthetic substitute for contemplation. It may sometimes be instructive to replace vegetables with candy, but we should not be surprised if most of the plates that balance both vegetables and candy end up simply less nutritious and more juvenile than what would have been if the plate of vegetables had been left untouched. Similarly, a bowl filled with candy fulfills a function that is only obstructed if one adds in it a few vegetables. Play is better when it is left to be play — the same goes for contemplation.

That is what interactivity is: candy. There is nothing wrong with candy, but it serves a completely different function than that of nutritious food. Interactivity is quite useful for pedagogical or didactic demonstrations, but it is quite lacking when it comes to aesthetic demonstrations. This is because its form is antagonistic to a hidden but essential feature of all aesthetic experiences: contemplation.

Purely interactive art is always either didactic, experimental, or shallow.
It cannot and will never transcend this level because of what interactivity itself — by definition — favors and impedes. Wherever it does seem to transcend this level, it does so by diluting its purity with contemplative content (visuals, audio, narrative) — by making itself less interactive.

Wherever we find interactivity, some contemplative blood had to be sucked out to make room for it. The result may be interesting, impressive, creative, intelligent, beautiful, touching, fun, culturally significant, and even artistic, but it will always be at an aesthetic disadvantage — both in nature and degree — when compared to other, fully contemplative mediums.

Video games are art. They’re just not that great at it.