No, video games are not art

Commercials are fascinating. On Valentine's Day Kay Jewelers ran this commercial to sell - of course - jewelry. The commercial begins with an acoustic ballad version of Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time"; a man proposes to a woman with jewelry and she emphatically responds "Yes!" It proceeds to show the couple going through various life stages and at every stage of life there is more jewelry bought.

The key ideas behind the commercial are "love", "marriage", "memories" and "happiness". The commercial is ambiguous enough to target people who are 1) not in any relationship, 2) in a relationship that may culminate in marriage, and 3) in a married relationship. For 1) and 3), those people want the concepts "love", "memories", and "happiness" in their life, for different reasons; for 2), they want the latter three. And what better way to make memories, specifically memories of love and happiness, by buying someone a diamond?

These commercials work primarily because they evoke in people certain emotions and desires. Every "want" is accompanied by a primal desire, usually biological, whether it's for food, sex, or a monogamous relationship (which sounds crazy to some people, but is indeed ingrained within us). The more a commercial can strike at the foundation of a person, the more it emotionally resonates with them and the more they react to it, for good or for bad. Those silly Geico or Taco Bell commercials, despite giving no information whatsoever, at the very least enter into people's memories and dominate any conversation about car insurance or tacos. This domination is what commercial producers want.

All this goes into the point that video games are not art.

The "emotion" argument

As much as the producer of a TV commercial can mix elements to attract an audience, so too can a video game producer - and that is one of the reasons why video game are not art.

The interesting thing about this argument is that gamers constantly use this statement as a platform upon which their conclusion stands: "If, and only if, it provokes emotions, it is art." For those who have studied propositional logic, you cannot say "If it provokes emotion, it is art" - "it is art" being q, q can be true regardless of p. The emotion-provoking is the sole criteria.

It's all well and good that one feels an emotional connection to something, but having an emotional connection does not make that thing art. Firstly, it is a fact of life that one will feel emotionally connected to things, which means, as far as emotions go, the thing has no objective value. Secondly, emotions don't enlighten people as to anything - it can conclude good and bad things; for example, the Columbine school shooters were enamored with violent video games.

I've always argued that if art's purpose is to evoke emotions, then a funeral is art.

(We can dive deeper into the funeral argument - we can agree that a funeral is artful, as in there is a level of skill and aesthetic to arrange an effective funeral, but I strongly doubt people mean to compare the Mona Lisa to a funeral.)

That's about it

And... that's about it.

One would hope that an actual video game critic would attempt a more complex argument; rather, most of them tend towards this extremely simple argument that puts visiting the Grand Canyon, eating a particularly delicious sandwich and playing video games on the same level. In truth, that's their job - it's the job of a literary critic to embrace the variety of human expression through the written form, as well as the art and music critic. Video game critics seem to fear characterizing the art form, and so hoist their own petards by painting in large brush strokes.

I did indeed intentionally say that video games are an art form.

Creating video games is an art form

It all comes down to words. We differentiate between "high art" and... well, "art". Literature is capable of high art; this I know. It is human expression at its rawest form, being as simple or as complicated as it wants to be; its expression ranges from the Book of the Dead or the Bible, to something as dense as Dante's "Divine Comedy" or primal of James Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", and it all starts with someone staring at a piece of paper and figuring out what words they want on it (or, as John Prine, the country artist, said, it's all a matter of taking the words out of a blank piece of paper). Same as with music and as with visual art, which has been with us for millenia.

Literature, music and visual art are capable of high art; film has proven itself capable of high art; video games have not, but that doesn't mean there is no high amount of skill going into its creation, nor a high reward for playing one. I mean, "art" in its own basic definition means "skill"; Plato refers to the art of the horse tamer or the shipbuilder or the cook. Obviously, what these people do are highly valuable, and anyone who has an inkling on the subjects knows their complexity and how rare great artists in those fields are.

Great video games (which are few) are like artisanal cheese: a great amount of skill and sensibility were put into them, some people will see immediately the complexity of the product and adore it, others will consume it and say "It tastes good".

Of course, there is the fact that huge amounts of money funnel into and out of the video game industry, which is a differentiation... though one could say possibly the same for cheese.

So, what is art?

That's a question for another day. Again, it's just a matter of words - "art" can mean "high art", "low art", or "skill". There's no simple definition for "high art" or """low""" art.

I also don't think video games are incapable of "high art" (whatever that means), but again, that's another article.

Video game critics need to get over it

Video game critics should get over this argument, as a result of everything I have said. It's a technical argument, and you only get over the argument by demonstrating, not reinventing the definition of "art".

Why anyone needs to care that a billion-dollar industry is creating "high art" or not matters little, right?

Film demonstrated that it was art not by exceptional criticism (though critics demonstrated the technique of the art form), but by the films themselves - I can't conceive a world where someone can see Antonioni's "La Notte" or Cocteau's "Orphee" and say film is not art. If those aren't art, then the word "art" itself is a pointless word. So to say a video game is art, one must demonstrate - which will be extremely hard to do with these million-dollar video games that go on for fucking forever.

It's already been demonstrated video games are important because people spend money on them and make memes about them. Accept that fact, accept that we don't have sufficient knowledge about video games yet, and it will set you free.