For years now, as the gaming community has grown larger and larger, seeing the profits bigger than Hollywood, there has been more signs of desperation from the art community – claiming that games aren’t art, but merely a shallow medium for entertainment. Wikipedia defines art as this:

Yeah… that sounds pretty doesn’t it? Let’s take a closer look at the parts of the very definition of art.

How does this not portray a game? If any deliberately arranged elements that appeal to my emotions, it would be when Aro plummeted to his death in  SotC… when Aeris got slain by Sephiroth and let’s not forget when Manny Calavera gets betrayed in the end of Grim Fandango. This is the most prime  example of why video games are art, if not even more. Have you ever felt the intense rush of being chased by zombies in Left 4 Dead, the tremendous sense of achievement of taking down a boss whose toenails are the size of houses in World of Warcraft or the sheer excitement of making an improvised getaway from a crime scene as the you lose the  cops by drifting into a nearby alley, boxes and news papers flying around like crazy in Grand Theft Auto?

I’d say that we can tick that first box. Emotion – CHECK.

Sort of non-explanatory, this one. Human creation… How about 100 people working for three YEARS on something which expresses something that  reaches millions of people? And for the examples of “expressions”… I wonder if the artistic community has ever heard the Halo soundtrack, or the MGS one. How about the Final  Fantasy soundtrack – that has successfully stirred up emotions of several million people with its ingenious mix of ecstatic joyfulness to make ones  heart skip a beat only to bring you down to a level of haunting loneliness, making you feel deserted and hopeless.

How about the artistic style of Okami? Is that not art? The epic battles of God of War, making me think if Fraps wasn’t invented by the Greek… I’ve  already mentioned Grim Fandango, but how about BioShock, Half-Life 2 or Crysis? Ever heard of a game called Lair? That game looked great! Moving  on… Check, by the way.

This last point is sort of hard to define, so imagine that I just told a hilarious joke about a Brazilian woman and a nuclear missile silo.

And who really wants to be part of a group that you’re obviously superior to, anyway? It would be like House (Hugh Laurie) signing a contract to participate in “The Hills” (Fucking Morons)… which brings me to this question:

Why the fuck should we care about games not being art?

I know that it might seem pretty hypocritical to ask that question after writing about 550 words about the subject of why it IS art, but bare with me here. Does something as powerful as video games really NEED the world to see it as art? I know, I know… it’s nice to have other people see things as we see them, but that doesn’t always happen, does it? Why not elevate it to a level above art? Books don’t interact with you, films don’t charge you in a snarling blur – unless you are really into this 3D thing and music doesn’t require you to press X to avoid your wife’s bitching.

Games are so much more than movies and books, you can’t tell a movie what to do (other than start and stop, that is) nor can you communicate with a book – well obviously you can scream at it but that won’t make any sense. It sure would be hilarious, though.

Right, where was I… Oh yeah. Games – good, movies – also good, but not as much. Unless we’re talking Pixar. Those guys are the shit!

Feel free to comment on what you think about games being art or not.

Bookmark to: