If the key factor that is keeping critics from calling video games art is emotional response, I would point them to such titles as Metal Gear Solid 3, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princes, and Final Fantasy VII and X. These titles are notorious for forcing a response from the player that involves more than mashing buttons and killing bad guys – they force emotional involvement.
Not all video games are works of art. Similarly not all films, or music, or paintings are works of art. There is a big difference between the artistic value of Casablanca and From Justin To Kelly, or The Beatles and Sisqo, just like there is a difference between Half-Life and Superman 64.
Critics that base their opinion of video games on prejudiced notions, like all first-person games are point and shoot, are basing their opinions on rusty knowledge and choosing to be ignorant as to the true formal and functional value of games (like Roger Ebert, who wrote that "the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the stature of art... [Video games] are inherently inferior to film and literature.").
In 1997, the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA – the equivalent of the Oscars in the UK) introduced an award section specifically dedicated to honoring video games and the development teams responsible for their creation.
Nine years later, in 2006, the Academy promoted the video game section to the distinguished equivalency of the film and TV awards. Afterward, the Academy issued a press release stating, “[games are] one of the principle contemporary art forms.”
I truly believe the reason critics will not label games as art is because many of them don’t have a complete understanding of the definition of art. Art lacks a satisfactory definition. It’s not the same as it was centuries ago, and how it is defined now will be different from how it is defined in the future.
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