Last post, I defined what art is and what art does. I am not trying to get to an ultimate truth here. This is only MY definition. I would expect that yours would be wildly different. Having said this, let’s get back to the question: can video games be considered art? Yes and no.
Video games have a lot of similar elements with other artistic mediums. Just like a painting on a wall, video games have a visual design element that appeals to our emotions. Most games also have a story with embedded themes and messages. I could go into more detail, but I think it is pretty easy to see why these elements could be seen as artistic. The situation gets really sticky when we look at the single element that distinguishes video games from any other artistic medium: Gameplay. Roger Ebert argues this is the thing that disqualifies a video game from being art.
(This is the part where I fight Ebert) Ebert explains:
“One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome.”
This makes sense to a certain degree. We don’t consider football or chess to be art. Of course, there are some gray areas (you could argue that the movement of the football players is similar to the movement of trained dancers). But on the whole, games like these are not intended to communicate anything to us. They don’t raise ethical or social concerns (the firing of Jim Tressel involves these aspects, but no one intentionally constructed that situation to communicate a message about ethics to us). They exist for the purposes mentioned above: rules, points, objectives, and outcome. These purposes are neither better nor worse than the purposes of art…just different. What about video games? I would argue they sometimes can use the element of gameplay in an artistic way. Big emphasis on the “sometimes”. I have seen games that contort the use of rules, points, objectives, and outcomes to affect us like a piece of art does. I’ll talk more about this later.
But why is this idea of gameplay such a problem for Ebert? Clive Barker sums it up nicely:
“I think that Roger Ebert's problem is that he thinks you can't have art if there is that amount of malleability in the narrative.”
Ebert said that he agrees with this view. In other words, you can’t have a person manipulate or change things in a piece of art. The element of game play, however, deliberately creates the opportunity for this to happen in video games. It doesn’t make sense to me why Ebert has a problem with this. Other forms of art explore this option and are still considered art. What about choose your own adventure books? Or have you seen this painting before?
I know, it’s just white. Or is it? What about when someone walks by and a shadow is casted on the canvas? It changes the color. So the visitors in the museum have the power to change this piece of art. The art patron transforms into the artist. So why does Ebert have a problem with this? He says it “devalues” the work of art to allow the option to:
“Go through every emotional journey available…Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of choices. If next time I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their hands, would that be way cool, or what?"
That would be cool, Ebert. And in the process of changing the story around, isn’t there a message you would glean from that? Why would you have them naked and standing on their heads? I wouldn’t do that. Doesn’t that make you raise questions about who you are and how you relate to other people? It does for me, and that is an artistic experience for me. And besides, video games aren’t 100% malleable. Sure you can change things around and do what you want, but you are still operating in the channel of the game developers. They are still ultimately in control of how the video game develops and how they want it to have an effect on you. So there might be many different “emotional journeys” that the player can choose from, but the game developers put them there in the first place. There was a conscious intention at work.
So gameplay in video games breeds participation and malleability. To Ebert, this devalues the art. To me, it only enhances it. I have played many games that have used the element of gameplay to get me to raise questions, self-reflect, and become emotionally affected. I’m going to finish by give three examples from my (very limited) gaming experience below.
1. Portal 1 and Portal 2
You are a test subject trapped in a series of scientific chambers. You are being forced to do this testing by a sadistic, demeaning robot. While playing this game, I get a sickening feeling that I am being forced against my will to play it. I couldn’t get that experience watching a “Portal” movie, because I wouldn’t be the one actually going through the test chambers. There is a particularly jarring scene in Portal 1 where you have to destroy a “weighted companion cube”. It may seem silly, but the game actually gets you to feel remorseful about killing this inanimate object. And yet, you are forced to do it anyways. Does this call to mind the Nuremberg Trials, where Nazi officials blamed senseless killings on “just following orders”? Or how about the Milgram Experiment, a real psychology test in the 1960s where people shocked other people (or so they thought) with 450 volts of electricity, just because someone told them to do it? Here is another example, this time from Portal 2:
This is some of the blackly humorous dialogue from Portal 2. The character is Cave Johnson, the CEO of the large scientific corporation known as Aperture Science (and yes, they are the ones putting you through the test chambers). For me, this dialog is a social commentary on the detachment and insensitivity large corporations can develop. It also makes you wonder: is it ok to sacrifice one test subject (you) for furthering the cause of science (and the greater good)?
2. Elude
This game is incredible. It is a free online game that you can play here (Play Elude). It will only take 10 minutes of your time. I won’t even try and explain it since the website does such a beautiful job of it. Here is an excerpt:
“Elude aims to raise awareness for depression and to inform about this dangerous illness….Modeling what depression feels like by contrasting it with other mood states (normal and happy), Elude portrays depression metaphorically. The various parts of the game-world represent emotional landscapes that correspond to different moods with the gameplay changing according to mood changes.”
3. Killer 7
Not only is this game visually artistic (see the pic below), it is also narratively artistic. The plot is mind bending to follow and is dripping with social commentary about politics and terrorism. Here is the rough idea: you are an assassin with 7 different personalities, fighting a criminal organization that deploys legions of invisible, grotesque, cackling, zombie-looking things. Riiiight. Near the end of the game, a gameplay device is used that is similar to the one used in Elude (and I’ve also heard Bioshock does something similar too).
In the game, you are fighting a final boss. Again, you have 7 different personalities and you can control each of them. It is a given that in every video game bosses can be defeated. This particular one, however, can’t. All that you can do is watch as all 7 of your characters die one by one. Video games usually give the player the illusion that they are in control. They use a controller to move their character and control what happens in the game. In this moment, however, that control is stripped violently from you as the game begins killing your characters. And it is all part of the plot: the multiple personalities are being killed until one remains. Just like the character in the game, you feel incredibly helpless in this moment. When I first played this scene, I wanted to chuck my controller through the wall before I figured out what was happening. Talk about catharsis.
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