纸镜

Words by: Ceci

Recently, for reasons that no sane person would truly understand, the discussion of whether or not video games (hereafter referred to as games) are art started up again on Twitter. People complaining in solo spiraling into virality pumping dead blood through an age old argument started anew, and I became somewhat enthralled in it as I read through posts that felt like they were rehashing, at this point, decades old arguments over and over again.

Thankfully nobody explicitly (to my knowledge) attempted to define what art is, or else I would have to talk about a branch of philosophy that I am woefully undereducated in (aesthetics, I can't even argue for why music is art from a purely formal sense), but fortunately (or, honestly, probably not-so-fortunately) people implicitly outlined what art is via assumptions about the nature of art.

There is a sort of underlying assumption here, that because games are comprised of art (or at least artistic objects) they are therefore an art via composite components. Of course this argument is kind of absurd, as it very quickly devolves into scaling mediums against each other, as we see here with the argument that games are "more" art than literature is.

I'm not going to define what art is, for the most part, I am going to work under the understanding/assumption that art either isn't exactly definable, nor that it is particularly "useful" to give a clear definition here. There is, of course, the belief that art is in the eye of it's beholder, but then that only naturally leads to more questions then; why are certain pieces universally considered "art"? What qualities do they share? Can these be qualities be extended to the frontier? Thereby drawing a solid line between what is and isn't art, returning back to the original issue of needing to clearly delineate what is and isn't art.

It's a little uncharitable to throw that away, but I also don't wish to simplify away things that I think we are missing, and thus the socio-cultural aspects of art as implied above is what is core here. As many have pointed out, before games, movies were initially considered "not art", and before that (long long ago) novels were also considered to not be art. It is natural then to assume then, with time and further developments, someday culturally, games will be de facto art, rather than arguably art. As an aside, we must avoid being too distracted by the obvious question of whether or not corporate produced games are art. Games are getting more expensive and more difficult to produce, their budgets are ballooning and thereby needing more support (in many cases at least), the people making games need to be able to afford to live (let's avoid discussing the implications of capital here as well as the compromised state of the games industry), thus, the corporatization of games is obviously going to happen. The involvement of such money and executives with performance targets muddies the water far too much and distracts from whether or not games are "art", and is a dangerous pithole that should be avoided at all costs. The last word that I have on this, is that I think that any form of art reaching the wider populace that involves a large group of people to create (ie. movies (most at least), music, games) involve some corporate involvement, and that some of the corporate involved creations are, in fact, art(re: Drive My Car, To Pimp a Butterfly etc.). The metric of commercial success of the product is wholly unnecessary and will not be considered at all.

Perhaps then, the easier definition (that will spare me from needing to read the entire western and eastern canon regarding beauty) is that it is sort of an "you know it when you see it" to substitute the millenia of human experience involved. Then, naturally, it can be assumed that what I say may not apply to all, but that is also part of why defining art is so hard and unuseful. Not everyone considers супремати́зм (suprematism) art, but I do, and I wish to make my case, selfishly, from exclusively my perspective.

Then, what is left for us to work with to build towards this future understanding? All that remains is the game itself; an object, oft comprised of visuals, music, a script guiding the players experience, and some form of controlling the game (otherwise known as gameplay). The earliest forms of games often excluded "visuals" (in terms of being purely text based, which I am separating somewhat from visuals), and art, so the core obviously lies in this "script" and "gameplay".

Thus, we have somehow, in some way, hearkened back to a discussion of ludology and narratology (notably here, not in conflict with one another). While, traditionally, these concepts (study of games as purely games, and study of stories) were in conflict, they aren't necessarily opposing concepts, to my understanding at least.

Determining whether or not they are art individually isn't important, narratology is obviously art (exercise left to the reader), and ludology is less obviously art (excercise left to the reader), but rather how they intersect in the creation of video games. Then, more abstractly, the intersection is concerned with the crafting of experiences; with a shifting focus as some games having the gameplay service the story, and in others the story motivating the gameplay. This obviously intersects with other objects commonly determined to be art, but it isn't sufficient for me to consider it conceptually art as something I "know" it upon seeing it.

Then is it about feelings? Does art for me have to evoke certain feelings? Games certainly do, I have experienced the full spectrum of human emotion (though honestly, mostly despair against 66l(tangent: please nerf this button.)) while playing Granblue Versus: Rising. Yet, I would hesitate to consider it art upon first glance.

Upon further consideration, it is, in some senses, the rules carving out a play-space for the participants to craft tools (BnBs, neutral skips, etc.) to interact with one another, and the emergent nature of people trying to explore what is possible. It is less obvious now, but the "space" carved out by both developers, and even the players (with their process of discovery) belies a form of art, of what the possible experiences one can have are. In this case, the "ludo" is obvious, while the "narrare" component is emergent and dynamic; a component picked out of the possibility space that the game was crafted with, that is dependent on the individual.

Of course this is subjective, as I am arguing from my own personal perspective, but also that I understand people will disagree; I also purposefully chose to talk from a less obvious area of a more "gameplay" focused example to argue for games as art.

Also, Merry Christmas,
Cecilia

Some additional readings:

P.S. I really wish I could have talked a little bit about insecurity and how the the discussion on games as art has been totally derailed, but I couldn't find a way to fit it in. It also felt a bit mean, but I feel I have the right to express my view even if it is somewhat mean.