8. Are games art? — a revisit

Somesh Yadav
Jul 25, 2017 · 3 min read
Not a defence against the last article but inclusion of ideas from different people that read it.

I am going to address all the grievances that people brought up to me and also a few more that crossed my mind while talking to them

The first point made to me was that: Passivity, the criteria I use to separate art from games, is found in games themselves: They are called walking simulators.
To which my response is — are simulators considered games? They might well be art, and well done art too, but are they game? I myself would not consider them as games. A game by definition is — a form of competitive activity played according to rules to engage players with amusement. There is a start and a defined goal at the end. Cue to God of war with the end goal being to quit rage and revenge thus achieving the prime salvation. A simulator is rendered video that you can walk around in.

To my point of ‘You can not sit through it while it is being played, like music or film’ — Well people have been watching game streams since the inception of the service.
Yes, the videos can still be classified closer to what art is, as the protagonist is the person playing the game and not the user. I will still hold the passivity argument here. Although the artist here is the player/streamer and not the developer, just that there is a major case of blatant sampling.

Another argument was about commercial nature of the games — I never said that using it to earn money is wrong, just that it is not feasible to earn money if you adhere to the point coming in next which is an important aspect of what a piece of art can be. but a game cannot.

“You can’t make your audience hate your game.” Yes. I stand by it and will explain why.
I was given examples of games like Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes & GTA:V which had copious amounts of sexual violence and torture to throw of anyone, but I would say that it does not necessarily makes one hate the game. A lot of us like watching machines of malice clamping craniums and widening cavities in people’s bodies till they scream to death. It is just a different taste that a lot of gamers have. They do not hate it.
But people watch films like ‘Room’ and ‘Gunda’ as cringe inducing unintentional comedies. They are so bad that they are good, but only because they are passive. There is no unintentionally hilarious game. If people hate your game, they will not play it.
**cough**No man’s sky**cough**


Now addressing the elephant in the room. Why the F*** is passivity a criteria for something to be considered art???

Simply put in Roger Ebert’s words — Since players can mess with the game developer’s vision, the games cannot be art.
Contrary to popular belief, art is not subject to what the audience/viewers/players interpret it to be, but what the artist/developer wanted them to see/feel/experience. And that is why PASSIVITY makes art what it is.


In conclusion, I would also say that art in itself, just like all parts of the society, is a human construct and may or may not fit in the rigid definitions under the crushing pressure of times. It can still be defined as a spectrum of things that are ‘more art’ & ‘less art’ based on the attributes we assign to things considered art in unison.

Somesh Yadav

Written by

23 | Co-Founder & Design Lead at Electus | IIT Bombay Graduate

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