In Defense of Art Games

by Piyoz on May 21st, 2013

I’ve always held the belief that video games are art. Others may argue that some games are a business, designed only to sell a product. To me, that doesn’t mean a game does not have some artistry involved in its creation. Someone has to render the world. Someone has to compose a soundtrack. Someone has to write a story and dialogue. And are drawing, composing, and writing not art forms? What I want to talk about is not what exactly qualifies as art. That is a question that philosophers have dissected for centuries and is way too big for me to answer here.

Suffice it to say that art in all its forms is entirely subjective. One can look at a child’s finger paintings and see it as the work of Jackson Pollock. Anything can become art with the right mindset, including a virtual world rendered by a computer with which a player or players can interact.

For the sake of this article, let us assume that all video games are art. (Roger Ebert may have disagreed, but who cares what he had to say?) Even within the game industry, there are some games that people designate as “art games”. “Art games” are usually very simple independent games that offer a story or psychological purpose in lieu of engaging or exciting game play. Often, art games can be entirely story-driven, or they can lack any sort of story entirely. They can be a simulation of daily life (Everyday the Same Dream), a mind-bending puzzle platformer (the Bridge), or something original entirely (Bientot L’été). When a game abandons all conventions of normal video game design in favor of something unique that makes you think, that’s considered an art game.

Take my recent review, To the Moon. It’s a fun game with an interesting story and well-written characters. When I did my research for that review, I was surprised to see a strong reaction in the Steam game hub against this game. People argued that To the Moon lacked sufficient game play, was too story-heavy, and didn’t have enough RPG elements to make it worth playing. I disagree with these opinions, but I think I see where they’re coming from.

To the Moon haters aren’t thinking of that game as art, which is the designer’s purpose. And you cannot apply rules to art. You cannot point to a Van Gogh painting and say “oh, what with all of those weird angles and colors? Why couldn’t he have made his painting more realistic?” You can’t walk up to Lewis Carroll and say “your stories make no sense and you make words up! Are you on drugs or something?”

The fact is there is no right or wrong way to make a work of art. Similarly, there is no right or wrong way to design a video game. A thing like Journey can have no story, dialogue, or characters, but because you pick up the controller and feel drawn into the beautiful desert world, it still meets the criteria for a video game. Contrast this with Dear Esther. In Dr. Worm’s review, he explains how this game lacks the basics of game design in an attempt to be artistic. While I’ve never played Dear Esther, I can understand that this title’s noble attempts at being original were thwarted by the absence of the single requirement of video games: game play.

If a piece of software has no means of interacting with its environment, then I can hardly say that it’s a video game at all. You can interact with the worlds of To the Moon, Journey, and Flower. From there, there are no limits (philosophically) to what can be done. Go ahead and focus on story over mechanics. Go ahead and give us a huge world to explore in lieu of a storyline. Just don’t forget that a video game is a game. It needs a player to function.

What games like Dear Esther teach us is that art games for the sake of being artsy are pointless. If there’s nothing about a game that makes me want to play/watch/explore/shoot/jump on turtles/solve murders then why I am playing it? Art for the sake of being art borders on pretentious. Don’t be pretentious. Be awesome.

What do you think? What are art games to you? Are they innovation in an era of stifled creativity, or just the musings of wayward college dropouts? Feel free to continue the discussion by posting in the forums!

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