Are video games art?

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Official ICO boxart for Japan

If you are a so-called "hardcore" gamer, you probably have heard about this discussion. The recent matter in the USA Congress in which games were decided to be protected under the First Amendment just made the topic even more popular. You may not just heard about it, but participated in the debate through forums, with your family or friends, or even at some school debates. Also, there is a high chance that you are a gamer who hates internet trolls and fanboys of certain consoles (either Nintendo, Microsoft or Sony). Still, I have found that almost ALL gamers are fanboys of the industry itself and behave in a trolly way (yeah, you too) when it comes to call games art.

Why oh why do you gamer fellas want games to be art so desperately? Forget Roger Ebert's infamous declaration about games not being art, in which he also stated that he doesn't know a thing our most beloved form of entertainment. Forget what art curators have said. Forget the Smithsonian exposition. Forget all that and just answer this: Why the heck do you want games to be considered as art?

What is art?

I've seen lots of pseudo wannabe hipster-snob dudes and dudettes thinking they know all about art, while they obviously don't even have a clue of what "obnoxious" means. I have seen that stupid attitude in lots of gamers. Could it be that those hours we've put into gaming would feel like an investment if we could say they were used in some kind of interactive art? Maybe we want to consider ourselves somewhat more educated than other people because "we can understand and play games and you cannot". Or maybe it is because the pretentious attitude towards the definition of art that mankind has, in which art seems to be something deep for just a selected few.


There are as many definitions of art as Lady Gaga fans out there. According to de Saussure and Barthes, we could say that art pieces are those which try to NOT be signs. So think a little more about it before you hate and troll me. Is every single movie artistic? Is every song ever created a great piece of art? All existing books perhaps? No they're not, so we cannot say "video games are/aren't art", we should talk about specific games.


How to define artistic games?


Here is where the problem gets bigger. What are the most cited examples? Team ICO games, Braid, Alan Wake, Okami and Limbo... see what's going on here... see the problem? All the "artistic" thing here is mostly the visual and narrative aspects. I say we got to start thinking beyond that to know if music, sound effects and over all of these the gameplay itself and the story (not just narrative techiques) 


I'm not saying these games have some art within them or nor, I'm not even able to, but I can definitely say that generally games are NOT art and discussing over it is dumb because we ALSO love gaming for a bunch other reasons than artistic ones. Why aren't games art? Because they are a mass-produced mass-copied product made to get money. I will say that it'll be awesome to get games defined as art, I'm a gamer and it would make some annoying people take video games more seriously and not just like "kids crap", but apart from that I love the creativeness behind games, the stories, the graphics, the gameplay, the reality they give us BUT I really hate stupid discussions which get us nowhere.


So next time you are about to fight over the artisticness of games, think twice, maybe you won't get anywhere not convince anyone, so do not argue and enjoy your games and the sweet satisfaction of knowing that maybe those people talking to you, will never understand the greatness of a sweet old haduken, a clean headshot, saving your village/world/universe, eating the ghosts or just jumping on top of enemies' heads, reaching the monkey and saving the girl. After all, we know for sure that plumbers can get the rich princess by the end.