Do Video Games Need To Be Entertaining To Be Good?
Why some titles can be considered great and not be fun
If we can read James Joyce’s Ulysses or watch Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker, media that isn’t particularly enjoyable, but interesting, creative, profound, powerful, and, above all, good, why can’t we view video games the same way?
It is easy to see that if there is something that video games have provided historically, it’s providing entertainment. After all, some simulation or puzzle software came to be considered video games and sold as such because they were enjoyable, but do video games today have to be objects of entertainment?
Not all games at the beginning fit the perceived mold of video games today. Games like The Oregon Trail, for example, were not designed with the intention to be fun or be objects of entertainment. Rather it became an educational tool, which is why later video games like it came to be called a kind of “serious games” (i.e., games that are not made primarily as objects of entertainment).
I believe that there is another reason why entertainment is not something fundamental for video games, and that is its artistic function, and in this essay, I will argue why you should also think like me.
As Brandon Chinn recently shared, sometimes video games today are still just about pure enjoyment or about making us feel like children or teenagers. There is nothing wrong with that. Some good examples are charismatic family-friendly games, like the Mario Kart series, or fast-paced hack ’n’ slash games, such as the Bayonetta series. However, other games seem to want to lead us to reflection or stir up our feelings much more than offering us pure entertainment.
Thus, it is reasonable to ask ourselves if we can consider some games as excellent even when they are lousy objects of entertainment: boring, purposefully uncomfortable, provocative, and so forth.
Entertainment as Part of the Definition of Videogames
In Philosophy, specifically in Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art, many have discussed much in recent decades about how to define “games” and “video games”. The debate about the definition of video games has divided many among different theoretical currents.
There are, for example, narratological theories, which define video games as specific types of narrative works; ludological theories, which define them as certain mechanisms of interaction; and fictional theories, which define them as interactive fictions. These are just a few of the theories, others being a combination of the above. Most of them, however, aim to capture video games as works of entertainment, even though they could be classified as works of art. Of course, there is a good justification for that.
Consider the definition of video games presented by Grant Tavinor in his article The Definition of Videogames (2008):
X is a videogame if it is a artifact in a visual digital medium, is intended as an object of entertainment, and is intended to provide such entertainment through the employment of one or both of the following modes of engagement: rule and objective gameplay or interactive fiction.
It is not my aim to make this essay into a criticism of Tavinor’s definition, not least because problems have already been raised about it, as well as in all other attempts at definition so far. For an excellent summary of the debate in recent years on the subject, I recommend the article Fifty Years on, What Exactly is a Videogame? An Essentialistic Definitional Approach (2017), by Rafaello Bergonse.
I am only interested in discussing the second necessary condition in the above definition imposed on video games:
X is a videogame if it […] is intended as an object of entertainment, and is intended to provide such entertainment through the employment of one or both of the following modes of engagement: […]
As Tavinor noted, many theories that preceded him confused many narrative, interactive, or fictional everyday artifacts with video games.
Commercial flight simulators, virtual museums, and even some versions of Microsoft Word with its paperclip character have an interactive narrative, interaction with fictional characters, or even rules and objectives for the user. However, it hurts our common sense to be considered as video games.
Tavinor’s solution to this confusion is the addition of the condition that video games, unlike these other artifacts, are necessarily objects made for entertainment.
Yes, it is questionable whether some artifacts (such as virtual museums) are also not, at least in part, designed to provide entertainment. But my point is another. If at least part of video games can be understood as works of art, shouldn’t they be exempt from being made for entertainment?
The Art of Video Games
Interestingly, Grant Tavinor used in 2009 the same definition of video games in his book The Art of Videogames, a work that was of great importance for the formation of a philosophical consensus around the idea that at least part of video games needed to be considered works of art.
Twelve years after that book, there are still doubts about some of the older video games out there, like Pac-Man, and modern video games with a competitive focus. But it is practically a peaceful point that at least a lot of video games, like Limbo, are a kind of art; an opinion recently expressed here also on SUPERJUMP by Austin Harvey.
Grant Tavinor’s strategy to show the artistry of video games is based on Wittgenstein’s concept of “family resemblances” and Gaut’s theory cluster. Generally speaking, Tavinor demonstrates that many games satisfy the following list of properties often associated with works of art:
- Possessing positive aesthetic properties, such as being beautiful, graceful, or elegant (properties which ground a capacity to give sensuous pleasure)
- Being expressive of emotion
- Being intellectually challenging (i.e., questioning received views and modes of thought
- Being formally complex and coherent
- Having a capacity to convey complex meaning
- Exhibiting an individual point of view
- Being an exercise of creative imagination (being original)
- Being an artifact or performance which is the product of high degree of skill
- Belonging to an established artistic form (music, painting, film, etc.)
- Being the product of an intention to make a work of art
Although favorable to the qualification of “art” for video games, Tavinor brought them closer to “popular art”, and recognized that some of these properties were still incipient in the video games of his time and that video game developers rarely dealt with depth and creativity of more serious topics such as those present in literature, for instance.
With rare exceptions in video games, I believe Tavinor was right. But I think that if there’s one thing that has changed during the twelve years that separate us from the book, it’s the growing number of video game design choices based on aesthetic or conceptual factors even if it affects entertainment or fun, especially in the indie video games industry. In the last decade, some of these indie studios have grown up and produced works on a relatively high budget, like The Witness.
Art Games
I believe that for a long time the high demand for entertainment in video games was one of the major factors that limited the artistic expression and daring of the developers of the video game industry.
But at some point, developers felt progressively more free to make design choices that were consciously unpopular, boring, or not very fun, but motivated by artistic reasons. A video game of great importance for this turning point was Ico, by Fumito Ueda.
During Ico’s gameplay, the player rarely heard sounds other than sound effects. There is rarely any music in the game. Ueda knew that this would make the game less fun, but his justification was of an artistic nature. He wanted to provide the player with a more organic and lonely experience.
Similarly, Ueda also knew that it would not be enjoyable to force players to always press a button so that the protagonist holds the hand of another character in order to guide her. But again, his reasons were of an artistic nature, Ueda wanted to provide players with a closer connection to the character. He did not want his character to be seen only as a useful object, but as someone who needed care and attention.
Although there are precedents for artistically daring games, Fumito Ueda’s artistic audacity and freedom in Ico not only influenced his later works but also a large part of the games industry, and gradually a demand for “more artistic” video games.
In the past decade, many developers, mostly from independent studios, have simplified the mechanics of their video games and provide little or no challenge in exchange for being able to execute new artistic ideas. Some studios have even specialized in this approach, such as thatgamecompany.
Abzu, thatgamecompany’s latest release, has very simple mechanics focused on moving under the water and it is impossible to die for any enemy or obstacle. Another game, even simpler, is If Found…, developed by DREAMFEEL, which has practically only a relevant mechanic: using a kind of “eraser” to erase one scene and give way to another.
For the case of video games in which they are considered primarily as objects of art, and only secondarily as objects of entertainment, the term “art game” or “arthouse game” has become a subgenre of serious game (mentioned above in the introduction).
These artistic ideas sometimes came with sacrifices for part of the fun, just like in Ueda’s works. But that didn’t become a big problem anymore, as there was an audience for these artistic video games, as long as they weren’t too boring.
But what happens when artistic games need to be really boring to execute some interesting ideas or to indicate the sensations that have been planned by the developers?
Art Game vs Electronic Entertainment
Evidently, art games are not boring just because they focus on art. Someone may find it amusing to find patterns in Salvador Dali’s surrealist paintings, as well as have fun interpreting the surrealist dreams in Gris. This does not change the fact, however, that neither was initially thought to entertain, or at least not primarily to entertain.
However, it is not always convenient for a work of art that is fun. Think about how many excellent books and films there are that are not fun. We can perceive them as boring because of several factors; among them, you can have, for example, a very slow or fragmented narrative. However, the artist can have good reasons for that and make sense creatively, making the work interesting, passionate, beautiful, among other qualities that are valued in works of art.
I believe we are reaching that point in art games, but the public and few critics seem prepared to deal with it. And I think The Longing has shown that very well.
Originally developed by Studio Seufz under the direction of Anselm Pyta, The Longing took artistic expression in video games to another level by intending to deal, in a conceptual and experimental way, with waiting and loneliness.
As a conceptual game, The Longing allows the player to finish the video game just by having it installed, opened, and then returning to it 400 days later. This form of “gameplay” requires as little interactivity with the work as that needed to open and close a book.
The audacity of making a game capable of finishing without interactivity is comparable to making silent music, with a score with no notes, only pauses, just like John Cage did with 4’33’’. Of course, in both cases, Cage and Pyta are asking “what is music?” or “what is a video game?”
On the other hand, as an experimental game, The Longing is an adventure game with a focus on exploration and very simple point-and-click mechanics. The initial aim in-game is to improve the protagonist’s home so that the 400 days pass faster within the game and then the player can wake up the king, although other endings are possible.
In terms of design, the game is very effective in providing the player with the feeling of loneliness and isolation, with great sound effects from a labyrinthine and uninhabited cave far below the surface. The character’s dialogues are also interesting and come to resemble the tone of Franz Kafka’s characters, as they show resignation and indifference in the face of an apparently absurd and extremely lonely task.
What has become controversial is the fact that the protagonist’s gameplay is purposefully very slow and repetitive. Besides the character walking slowly, to pass certain obstacles you have to wait days and weeks, and even for a door to open it can take minutes or even hours. While waiting, the player can explore various secrets of the cave where he finds himself or reads books. A good deal of books from classics like Iliad by Homer to science fiction, like The Time Machine, by H. G. Wells.
It turns out that, despite the boldness of Anselm Pyta with a project that could never come from the big video game companies, The Longing is not as provocative to others. Many critics, although realizing the artistic character of the game, took points away for its lack of fun, practicality of gameplay etc., something that was never the focus of his work.
As stated at the beginning of this essay, there is no problem in having games focused only on entertainment, but there also seems to be no problem in having games focused only on artistic expression and, of course, each one being evaluated in accordance with what it is proposed to accomplish.
As for us, video game consumers, I feel we need to remember more of how we feel after reading some types of books, going to a museum of modern art, or watching films beyond the mainstream. When we finished with experiences like these, we immediately ask ourselves if it was fun or if it was beautiful, intriguing, creative, etc.? Don’t we sometimes think that these qualities are enough for us to enjoy a work of art?
Video games can also provide us with experiences like these, and it just depends on us. As Jonne Arjoranta (2019) argues in his article How to Define Games and Why We Need to, video game definitions change not only because of a lack of consensus but also because the art of video games itself changes.
What will future video game definitions look like? Will there be a necessary condition of entertainment in them as in Tavinor’s definition? It will all depend on how seriously we take our fun.
