Are video games fine art? What makes them art or not art?

Video games have come a long way to get where they are now, but have they come far enough to be considered alongside other great works of art? I dont believe that they have, and I do not think that is a bad thing. Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry and they did not get there on artistic merit. The audience that games cater to do not care about or want art, they want fun. There are definitely artistic games out there; games like Flo or Outland come to mind. Games come in many varieties from casual games like Angry Birds or Flower; all the way to the ultra-hardcore games like Counterstrike, and EVE Online. Games are made that have the sole purpose of creating art. Some games have intricate plot lines and branching stories while others have no story at all. Some have 2D gameplay some have 3D. This huge scope of games makes it hard to draw a line where games become an art form. There are some schools of thought that believe anything and everything can be/is art, however, I do not think that appropriation or re-naming can justify something as art in this argument, I only want to critique the artistic merit of a game at face value (i.e. if someone used a video game disc as a coaster like Duchamp used a urinal as a fountain that could not justify all video games as art). The art world is so vast and varied that it becomes hard to define art in any sense so I will use Webster's definition: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also: works so produced. In this definition all games clearly are art. Games are even now listed in the National Endowment for the Arts so clearly they are art. The next logical question is: Are they GOOD art, on par with the great painters and poets, or is it just a branch of media that has to be art by default because it is something built upon aesthetic principals? Lets look at

an example that makes a good case for games as fine art. PORTAL

Valve has come the closest to making a game that can be considered high art with a small game they released a few years ago called Portal. In the game you traverse the Aperture science laboratories trying to solve puzzles, listening to motivational dialogue from GlaDos, the Aperture A.I., along the way. This game has received great critical acclaim (8.2/10 from IGN.com, A from 1up.com) and is even required reading at Wabash College. You solve puzzles with an Aperture Science Handheld Portal Device, or the portal gun for short. With the gun you are able to create a seamless door between two points in the game world. These doors can be looked through, jumped through, or can be used to move objects and solve puzzles. There is a great emotional response that the player feels throughout, whether you just figured out a new aspect of the portal device or earn a hilarious tidbit from GlaDos. That fact is why I consider this game the closest thing to a masterpiece that any

game has come.

So if Valve can make a game that can come close to being considered a masterpiece why cant it be fully realized as one? The problem arises when you consider the timeless nature of masterpieces. Video games have simply not been around for long enough to stand the test of time. While we already have games that have been deemed classics (i.e. Mario, Galaga, Centipede, etc) we do not have a full scope of this new medium. We would not be able to judge the cave paintings in Lascaux on a scale of painting without including the work done in the modern time and through history. Video games have only been around for around 30 to 40 years, a fraction of time when considering the history of art. We have no way of being able to see if games like Mario will be remembered in the future. What we do know is how renowned Mario is in the world today, people from the U.S. all the way to Japan and many places in between know and love that little Italian plumber. What is needed for a video game to achieve the status of masterpiece or high art is for our definition of high art to change. We can no longer use an archaic definition for new media. The great cannon of art has always been a topic of dispute in the art community. And I believe that it is a dated means of judgment, in our day and age more people know about

these games than the old works of renaissance masters or the great poets. For example, I asked my girlfriend if she knew whom George de La Tour, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, and Caravaggio were. She had heard of some of these artists but could not think of any specific works except for those of Michelangelo. I then asked her if she knew whom Mario (Mario series), Link (Legend of Zelda series), Samus (Metroid series), Isaac Clark (Dead Space 1, and 2), Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic series), and Gordon Freeman (Half Life series) are. She knew who most of these characters are and where they are from, she even knew some of the developers of these games. Why then are these games not viewed in the same light as classical masterpieces, I can think of a few reasons. They are made by more than one individual, have not stood the test of time, are made to be marketed as products, and no one can say that it is the best work of the respective artists career (most great game developers from the seventies and eighties are still making games). So if games are not on par with masterpieces why are they more popular or widely known than the masterpiece painters of the renaissance? Theyre FUN. This is where video games and art have a critical difference. Games are designed from the ground up to be enjoyable and rewarding. Art is not (always). This is where the people who make and play games enter the equation. The average gamer does not think about the artistic merit of a game when they decide to buy it, they only think about what they want from it. A gamer cares less about the lighting choices and the meaning of what the characters are doing, then they do about what guns are included or where they stand on the leaderboards. This is where I think game developers, critics, and fans stop caring about the artistic merit of a game and focus on what is important to gamers: FUN. Visceral Games Dead Space 2 is a great example of this.

DEAD SPACE 2

Dead Space 2 is a game that follows Isaac Clarke through his journey into the Sprawl (a space station above Saturn) and into madness. The object of the game is to shoot and smash your way through hordes of necromorphs (mutant space zombies). The main mechanic at work in the game is the fact that you cannot simply shoot enemies in the head; you have to dismember them limb by limb as they struggle to kill you. You accomplish this with weapons made from futuristic power tools. Speaking for the gaming community I could care less if a game like Dead Space 2 has merit in the art world, all I care about is the fact that I get to dismember necromorphs with a plasma cutter. This game came out to great reviews (A- from 1up.com, 9/10 from IGN.com), and is one of my personal favorites. The developer Visceral Games made this point clear with their ad campaign for the game: Youre mom hates this game. This is a very strange tactic in the marketing world, telling people that other people hate their product, and that the aforementioned hate, is a good reason to buy it. However, in the gaming world a mothers disapproval can be viewed in a positive light. I personally remember my mom telling me things like: This is too violent, You are not going to play this in my house, or This is garbage. These quotes are from games that I loved and played for hours, in short games that I considered great.

This is the main difference that video games should embrace. As video games are created as products it is logical to look at the games that sell better than all the rest: the Call of Duty series. These games hold the title of largest entertainment release in history with the most recent selling 5.6 million copies and grossing over $360 million in its first 24 hours, and has since broken the $1 billion mark (ign.com). These games are not art, nor are they meant to be art. They are built for online multiplayer, which is closer to competitive sports than anything else, but they sell like mad anyway. The people who buy these games are not looking to have their perspectives on the art world shattered they just want the newest, coolest way to shoot other people in the face over the internet.

-Hugh McFall