Videogames as art

The whole subject of whether videogames can be considered art is a fascinating one, and one which has only recently begun to be taken seriously. The problem is, however, that it has not yet been taken anywhere near seriously enough, on either side of the divide.

Be under no illusion. No videogame has reached the near-unassailable heights of King Lear or Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling. No videogame has come close. But that does not mean that there is no value in taking the matter seriously. Even if we were to conclude that videogames are not art, then that may give us a better understanding of what art is.

To take a typical example of the kind of writing that is produced on the artistic status of videogames, take this controversial article by Jack Kroll, written in 2000. It is almost painful in its one-sidedness and comical in its blindness. His essential thesis can be distilled into the following: “games can be fun and rewarding in many ways, but they can’t transmit the emotional complexity that is the root of art. Even the most advanced games lack the shimmering web of nuances that makes human life different from mechanical process.” This is typical of the lazy videogames-are-not-art position. To deny that human complexity is intimately tied to the nature of art would be foolish, but it is equally foolish to opine that emotional complexity is somehow identical to art, which is what Kroll’s statement amounts to. Much better to investigate more fully how exactly emotional complexity is tied to art, and, more specifically, why videogames cannot have this in principle rather than simply observe that no current videogame has it. The counter to this position is simple: if architecture is to be considered art—as most people consider it—then it does not conform to Kroll’s Emotional Complexity Rule, and Kroll happens to differ with the general consensus. If he were to say that the complex interplay of shapes and colours and composition that goes to produce great architecture can be interpreted as emotionally complex on some abstract level, a level which would be very difficult to reduce and explain scientifically, then he would have to concede a similar possibility for videogames.

He goes on to say:

Moviemakers don’t have to simulate human beings; they are right there, to be recorded and orchestrated. The digitally created medieval Japanese warriors in Kessen (one of the first titles made for PlayStation 2) have none of the breathing presence, the epic gallantry, of the knights in Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 film Ran. The top-heavy titillation of Tomb Raider‘s Lara Croft falls flat next to the face of Sharon Stone, smiling with challenging sensuality at some haplessly macho male in Basic Instinct. Any player who’s moved to tumescence by digibimbo Lara is in big trouble.

Here Kroll makes the all too common mistake of conflating the aesthetics of the visual with the very different aesthetics of videogames. If Kroll seriously thinks that videogame graphics won’t reach a convincing level of realism, then he really is in denial. Granted, the article was written in 2000, but even then the rapid upward trend of graphics was evident for all to see. Furthermore, the “challenging sensuality” of Sharon Stone is due in large part to acting, and not to anything inherent in the medium of film: there is an art to portraying this, just like there is an art to portraying it by chipping away at a block of marble—just like there is an art to portraying it by sculpting a three dimensional model with software. I should think that recreating Sharon Stone’s “challenging sensuality” virtually will soon be seen as an impressive but pretty commonplace achievement.

Many of those who take the view that videogames are art make the same mistake, summoning up visually opulent games and using that as proof that they must be art. It goes without saying that visuals from a game can be as good as any painting—after all, one can simply use a painting in a game. But we would not think a bad play any better if the Mona Lisa were on stage. So the visual quality of a game should not affect in any considerable way the status of videogames generally as art.

Given that it is clearly erroneous to claim that the artfulness of a videogame is the same as the quality of its visuals or brilliance of its music or even depth of its writing, where then lies the art in the videogame? Central to this question is the problem of interactivity, and in what way this adds to or detracts from artistic status.

To enlighten our quest further, we might consider the question, “is chess art?”. I think it likely that most people would say “no”. However, it is easy to see that it does share some qualities with art, namely: individual chess games can be very dramatic, matches are almost always enlightening in some way, and lastly, it makes you think. Granted, not every game is dramatic, but chess at least provides the framework for a near-infinite supply of drama. And granted, as much as it might make you think, it certainly does not make you feel on the same level as a War & Peace does; but if a game can make us think, why can another game not make us feel? The framework of chess is an inherently military-logical one, and as such it would be absurd to expect it to teach us anything about love or jealousy or any of the great themes of art, at least not directly. However, it is not too much of a leap to see that, if the framework of a videogame were sufficiently well thought out, it could indeed teach us about those things. And just as chess has stood the test of time, it is not unthinkable that a videogame should do so too.

But there are problems. And these problems, I think, are unlikely to be solved by anyone other than a genius. One of the most difficult is the seeming arbitrariness of plot in relation to the player. In other words, while in fiction it is perfectly acceptable to believe that a certain character is in love with another, in videogames, given that you are that character, this whole setup seems much less natural. Certainly, no videogame should tell you “your character is in love with so-and-so”. Since you are supposed to be that character, this would seem just as arbitrary as someone telling you the same thing in real life. “Umm, no I’m not”, you’d probably say.

But on the other hand, to give the player complete freedom rips the virtual world of any meaning. If the player has no restrictions, and can do absolutely anything she wants, she will either aimlessly go about doing everything, or be overwhelmed by choice and end up doing nothing. So it is clear that some balance must be struck between enforcing the designer’s vision upon the player and giving the player free reign. Or to put it another way, the balance must be struck between predestination and freedom of will.

Even with the limitations that chess imposes, it is impossible to exhaust its possibilities in thousands of lifetimes. This probably cannot—and should not—be the case with the videogames of the future. Rather, if a videogame is to be so inexhaustible, this should come from the way in which it puts you into the shoes of the “protagonist”, and the multitude of ways in which the player can interpret the nature of the game’s situation. This is true of other fiction, and I cannot see why videogames cannot achieve this, given enough time and thought.

It seems to me unlikely that this will be achieved for quite some time, though. At the moment it’s quite a vague and abstract design philosophy, and as such difficult to know how to implement. But perhaps more importantly, the videogame world suffers from an immense inferiority complex which may be difficult to overcome.  One 17-year-old who was mortally offended by Jack Kroll’s article wrote that, “for every typical shoot-’em-up game there are just as many games full of characters more complex than Shakespeare’s and plot twists more wrenching than Clancy’s.” There are no videogame characters as complex as Shakespeare’s, of course. But if this is the view taken by the game designers of the future, we may have to wait a very long time for videogames and Shakespeare to be meaningfully uttered in the same sentence.