Video game software has evolved relentlessly in the past two decades. The science of coding computer-animated graphics has reached a level of photorealism never seen on home gaming consoles before. This new level of graphical clarity allows stories to be told in unexplored ways.
Writers for the development companies are no longer constricted by electronic limitations. The technology that forms the foundation of the gaming industry has reached a level where moving pixels on a screen can relay any genre of story with the fervor necessary to evoke an emotional response from the player.
Despite the evolution of the industry, there are people who refuse to label video games as “art.”
Critics define art in many different ways. One of the most common definitions is that art combines form and function. Form is the visible elements of an object – its color, depth, shape, etc. Function refers to the ideas that inspired the object – what it is meant to portray as well as what the viewer’s reaction to it is.
Critics that subscribe to these boundaries generally agree that while video games have an abundance of form (high concept art direction, advanced graphics, quality voice acting, etc), they lack substantial function (inspiration and the ability to stir up emotion from the player/viewer).
To test the validity of this opinion, Mike Musgrove, technology columnist for the Washington Post, took a copy of the recently released sci-fi game BioShock to the home of Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michael Dirda.
After playing the game for two weeks unassisted, Dirda wrote that while BioShock definitely had “artistic value” in the art deco design and moody atmosphere of its underwater world, called Rapture, he wouldn’t go so far as to call it a work of art. He went on to say that the key threshold for games to cross before they become an art form is the ability to evict emotion from the viewer – depression, happiness, jealousy, hatred, etc.
It’s one thing to say that BioShock did not evict a response from the reviewer. It’s quite another to say that there has never been a game that has evicted an emotional response.
In 2005, a 13-year-old Chinese boy jumped to his death from a 24-story building. The boy’s parents claim the reason for the suicide was because their son wanted to meet and join his his heros from the Warcraft video game series.
Article comments
1 - Meg
Gorgeous article, Ben!
I definitely agree that some video games can be classified as works of art - I personally sobbed all through the final cutscene of FFX, and I still get misty-eyed when I hear the music.
2 - tiny
Each art form has specific rules, history, and formal aesthetics. Many people are trying to use methods of criticism from other forms (mainly from film or literature) and apply it to video games. I think this is where the problem lies. I mean how can one use literary or film theory to talk about Tetris? It's useless. Conversely, I think many video game makers also suffer from this mistake. They try to make video games more like literature or more like film... making the gaming element of the game secondary. Video games should establish its own terms: from specific rigorous critiques (with its own video game vocabulary) and formal aesthetics--- all of which have emerged already, but no one has been willing to write about. It would take this type of seriousness in discourse to elevate "video games as art" in the main stream mindset.
3 - gonzo marx
"Well, Art is Art, isn't it? Still, on the other hand, water is water. And east is east and west is west and if you take cranberries and stew them like applesauce they taste much more like prunes than rhubarb does. Now you tell me what you know."
Groucho Marx
Painters and Sculptors of another Age would have scoffed that Photography, much less moving Pictures, would ever be considered as Art...
evolution takes Time...Recognition of such can sometimes take longer
Excelsior?
4 - AmniPata.com
Video game is art to many
5 - hameat
me like games
6 - fluffhat
dude, i cried in mario 3 when you get a game over. the musics like, "duh nuh nuh nuh nuh duh nuh nuh". it's so emotional
7 - Michael Prince
I have never been as creeped out as I was playing System Shock 2, not freaked out or surprised like Resident Evil games or shock movies, but creeped out. I specifically played it at night with the lights out and I was literally edging from area to area, no movie/book/story has ever given me that same feeling of suspense. If that is not an evoked emotion I do not know what is.
Great article