The divisiveness of this question is interesting from the get-go as this is a topic meaningful for many people, while others will outright dismiss the question itself as ridiculous even before attempting to answer it.
Personally, I find this thought exercise interesting for different reasons: I’m a 31-year-old male (typical gamer demographic) who played various videogames during adolescence with a fervent passion but was always criticized by family and close friends as “wasting time.” Eventually, life got in the way and I stopped it out of guilt. However, the desire to play never disappeared, as if it was dormant all along and not just a “child’s whim.” This makes me challenge the almost fundamentalist criticism of videogames. Secondly, in this era of endless entertainment where everyone is constantly consuming content, this question quickly turns into an argument of what art is, and what makes some mediums reputable and others not quite as accepted.
Ultimately, it is important to recognize the importance of this topic because whether we like it or not, videogames, virtual reality, streaming or social media are here to stay. They are shaping the way we think and interpret life (particularly younger generations), and there seems to be no legal or moral authority to guide us in our escapism. If you’d like to know how gamers might be shaping the way we consume entertainment check my WoW Classic article.
What is art?
I do not claim to be able to answer this nor do I think anyone is. Still, there is value in the attempt of intellectualizing something that is beyond the intellect. Aesthetics and philosophy of art focus on the concepts of beauty, taste, and artworks themselves. However, I will take on a different perspective and analyse the psychology and ethics of art, and its different mediums. Later, we’ll use these criteria to answer the original question on videogames.
Art Mediums
This refers to the way art is expressed and delivered, such as a poem, an opera performance or a painting. They show different aspects of the same reality in their own way interpreted by different human senses. It should be clear each medium changes the way we look at things. For example, when a book is adapted to the cinema, it becomes a completely different experience. One medium encouraged you to read and create a mental movie of those words. The other, created that movie for you and made everything more real at the expense of your own imagination. Whether you prefer one over the other is subjective and claiming one is superior to the other is absurd – each medium show us different perspectives that would not be possible for others.
One could argue that a movie experience has the potential to be superior to, let’s say, a book since it involves a broader sensorial experience (vision, sound, movement vs reading only). People that have read Lord of the Rings first and then watched the movie will likely claim the book was is superior. But chances are that those who watched the movie and then read the book were severely disappointed by Tolkien’s prose and endless descriptions. Both opinions are fair. For those who enjoyed the books, creating their own mental movies, the time it took to read, and the slower character development made the story’s immersion deeper. Those who preferred the movie enjoyed the beautiful landscapes, the epic action scenes, or the memorable soundtrack. Both mediums enhance different experiences. A single sense can be as good or better than multiple senses, depending on the artist’s vision or consumer’s desire.
Therefore, I will argue that for art the medium is irrelevant. It’s larger than that. What art cares about are things like the source and the intention of the artist. Does the artwork reflect one side of reality that hasn’t been seen before? Do you feel the artist’s need to share his inner world consumed his soul, or was he simply trying to make money? These are the powerful questions that allows us to better evaluate if one’s work is actually art, not how he chose to express it.
Psychology and Ethics of Art
From escapism, ecstasy, empathy or entertainment, art’s influence is clear in our society. Next time you take a public transport, notice how everyone is consuming some type of it: a man listening to his favourite band with headphones on; an old lady reading a romance; or a couple watching a tv show. Even beggars perform in order to receive more tips. What’s not so clear are the effects that this consumption has on us. We are but a reflection of our environment. Art influences the way we see things and shapes our opinions. It’s no coincidence that the press and news media are considered to be the Fourth Estate.
An everyday example: the typical comedy shows like Friends and How I Met Your Mother. What was intended to be harmless entertainment to have a laugh quickly turned into a cultural reference for many young adults and teenagers. Their fans, consciously or unconsciously, may think that the most important thing in the world is to find the love of their life. Or take the The Big Bang Theory – it’s now ok and even cool to be nerdy and socially awkward. Their influence cannot be understated. If you ask someone’s opinion on artificial intelligence and its dangers, most people’s answer will be based on what they saw on a Black Mirror episode, not on a scientific article or expert’s opinion.
With such an important role in our culture and psyche, art, by extension, guides us on how to act ethically and morally. The issue is that these are human concepts while art merely reflects our reality which is quite indifferent to our feelings and suffering. Eminem – one of the most successful artists of all time – has a song called ‘Kim’ in which he talks about killing his wife after discovering that she betrayed him. One person can look at it and appreciate the raw emotion – the pain and suffering on the artist’s heart is palpable and can act as a warning on passionate crimes. On the other hand, another individual may look at it as a justification to commit violence or even murder because “even Eminem did so.” I have no doubt that for the artist itself the song was a form of sublimation, transforming negative emotions into something creative. Point being that art is amoral. And just because society might deem a piece downright evil it won’t make it less artistic.
That is why we should recognize art as an important moral (or immoral) compass and ask ourselves how the content we consume guides our actions. How will the tv show that might nephew is obsessed with shape his view of the world? Does that violent videogame my son is playing make him aggressive?
An Incomplete Definition
For the purpose of this essay, when evaluating a medium, we’ll apply the following definition for art:
- Genuinely represents an objective or subjective reality regardless of one’s beliefs.
- Something that exists in our Universe irrelevant of the medium used.
- However, different mediums make us see the same reality in different ways.
- It follows, then, that the art is not so much about creating but an artist’s channelling of an aspect of his reality.
- Art shapes our thinking, feelings and opinion of things/people. It directly and indirectly influences our actions and behaviour.
- A culture’s building block.
What makes video games different than other mediums?
Fundamentally speaking, videogames have one big difference relative to other types of entertainment: they require an input, an action by the user to progress. In turn, the machine will give back some type of output based on the user’s previous action. This back and forth dynamic is the essence of a videogame.
Take Super Mario Bros, one the earliest iterations of the famous franchise. If you press the button “A” (user input) Mario will jump (machine output) in a vertical line. If I press the button “A” and “Forward” at the same time Mario will jump forward. Now I can jump over these platforms and discover what awaits me on the other side of the map!
From this example, you can easily extrapolate more input/output interactions to make the game interesting. Current games operate in complex environments that allied with stunning visuals help create a realistic experience.
Furthermore, there is something more subtle happening. The creator designs the game in a way to encourage you to perform a certain action and discourage others. If you stand on the edge of the platform and press Forward + A at the correct time you will successfully jump and progress, but if you mistime the inputs or didn’t position correctly you will fall off the platform and Mario “dies.” In a way, the game is always telling you what it wants you to and not to do. The designer is taking you on an adventure and he is the tour guide. For a moment, you are living in a world he envisioned, exploring it at your own pace, test different outcomes, engage with other characters and the more you play, the better you become at it opening up new possibilities. This type of creator-consumer interaction is something that other mediums cannot replicate. Pick your favorite movie. You probably watched it more than once, and chances are that you couldn’t stop yourself but wonder what would happen if certain character acted in a different way. To know the result, your only possibility is to talk directly to the scriptwriter.
As a result of these two properties, input-output dynamic and creator-user interaction, videogames have some differentiated effects on its consumers. We’ll see that its strengths are also its weaknesses as a medium.
Active Entertainment
Videogames encourage you to do something and they reject total passive consumption. Granted there are varying degrees of passiveness in other mediums, nothing comes close to the proactive philosophy of gaming.
For that reason, it opens new ways of immersion and storytelling. One of my favorite games of all time, Knights of the Old Republic from the Star Wars franchise, told me the same story from different perspectives repeatedly until I explored all possibilities. When progressing I am given the choice to be diplomatic (light side) or aggressive (dark side) and by following one of these moral paths characters reactions, allegiances and story developments would differ. I just couldn’t play the game once, I had to know what else was there! I came back to the same world and saw the many sides of it. In the end, there was the light side version, the dark side version, the neutral version, and my personal version of the story. In turn, this put me on the writer’s point of view too. It got me testing the limits of the narrative, the world itself and understand why plots were written in a certain way.
If I am discussing books or movies with others, the conversation is usually about the content: what we liked, what we didn’t, the ideas, execution and so on. But if you search any online forum concerning a game, a significant percentage of posts are about how “the designers should have made the game this way and not that way”. Regardless of the validity of such posts, the interesting fact is that gamers are more opinionated on how the content they consume should have been made, in part because of the inherent proactive nature of videogames.
Another property of active entertainment is the proficiency at which you can play the game. The better you play, the more efficient your actions will be, and the designers usually reward you for that. Be it through new abilities in-game, access to new cosmetics or just being able to progress, the incentives will keep you wanting to get better. And when playing with/versus other players, this skill keeps evolving to the point that if you are any good today, the same might not be true six months from now. The environment is so dynamic and alive that it becomes unpredictable (what’s usually called the “meta” of the game). We witness the same in sports but at a much slower pace.
There are even cases where the gamer’s skills surpass the limits of the creator’s original intention for what was possible. My favorite example is a game called Super Smash Brother Melee (SSBM), a fighting game released in 2001 that is still played by many today in 2020 (nineteen years is a ridiculously long time for a non-updated videogame). The game has such nuanced mechanics and variety of playstyles that year after year players come up with new strategies or techniques that even designers didn’t know were possible. Perhaps even more impressive is the fact that new versions keep being released but the popularity of SSBM is unshakeable. It transcended itself and now belongs to a community who immortalized it by their unrelenting passion and devotion. It’s as if the game gained a life of its own and became more than just a game, providing cultural and social meaning for its players and fans.
No matter how much you read a book, it will stay the same. Naturally, every time you do, you’ll pick up new details and dig deeper into the author’s mind, and in a masterpiece’s case it can stay relevant centuries after it was written. But it’s a one-way medium, from the writer to the reader, and the setting is static. This relationship can be applied to most art mediums, from sculpting to cinema. Curiously, performing arts such as opera or drama plays reveal some dynamic elements. For example, a Shakespeare piece performed in the 19th century might look completely different to a 21st century performance because the actors will bring in their personal charisma and cultural background while remaining true to the story. That’s why you might see men wearing sneakers on a Tchaikovsky opera.
Addiction Prone
Sadly, the engagement that videogames provide is also the reason why they have such a bad reputation. They can suck you in and make you forget the real world. One can argue that this is always in the player’s control, and while that is true, it doesn’t make what the industry is doing less wrong. I believe the core of problem lies in the combination of two factors: the creation of games with no defined ending thanks to the internet and the blend of game design with advanced psychology.
Chronological developments in the industry illustrate the unholiness of this marriage. The first videogames were simple but hard. Really hard. Perhaps to compensate the lack of variety in interaction elements, difficulty was a way to keep the game interesting. But as the years went on, worlds got bigger and gameplay more fun, but the technology was mostly confined to a console and a screen. At the time, I played The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time, considered by many the greatest game of all time. In it, you would explore the 3D world of Hyrule, gear up your character, defeat monsters, solve puzzles, and of course save the princess. It was a truly wonderful experience for me to live there until I finished the game. From time to time I play it again, relive those memories and appreciate new elements that I haven’t discovered before. Like a good movie, you appreciate it, get inspired and move on.
Then came the internet and online gaming. From this point on, you had worlds that could be permanently updated, and you wouldn’t live there by yourself but with other players as well. This also meant that, in theory, the adventure never had to end as long the creators kept coming up with new content or/and other players kept playing in this virtual world. This was when the gaming industry understood the true earning potential of such technological advancement. As long as people kept coming back, the world you created was alive and money was to be made from those who “lived” there. The business model changed from selling a game (one-time sale) to selling a world (a subscription fee to get access). And as every business owner knows, this is a very profitable model.
Since the business model changed, the design of games had to change too for it to be as profitable as possible. Questions went from “How can I create a great experience for the players?” to “How can I make the players keep coming back?”. There’s two ways to do it: either keep creating great content (costly and hard) or change the incentive/reward system so that players must keep returning in order to obtain what they want (cheaper and easier). There are many ways to this based on psychology, but the most devious ones include covert manipulation and inclusion of excessive RNG (random number generator) that resemble gambling more than anything else.
By themselves, each element can be fun and virtuous. If a game is so good that I must play the entirety of it one night, that’s because the game is satisfying and not because I’m hooked. If a world is so large and interesting that I must explore all of it and live there for some time, that’s good design. If creators make endless quality content for my satisfaction that’s something to commend them on. It’s the blend of all these elements with dubious intentions by the companies (usually CEO’s or shareholders, not the designers or developers) that make videogames so addictive and dangerous for adults, not to mention children and teenagers.
The timeless J. R. R. Tolkien can provide us valuable guidance as creators and consumers. In his essay On Fairy-Stories, he makes the distinction between enchantment and magic:
“Enchantment [Fantasy aspiration] produces a Secondary World into which both designer and spectator can enter, to the satisfaction of their senses while they are inside; but in its purity it is artistic in desire and purpose. Magic produces, or pretends to produce, an alteration in the Primary World; it is not an art but a technique; its desire is power in this world, domination of things and wills.”
Eerily prophetic. I believe that many designers and engineers in the gaming industry share the goal of creating good Fantasy and enrich the lives of those who enter their realms. Their main desire being existential and financial secondary. But the comparison of magic and technology is uncanny in this context. It’s the use of techniques in the virtual world (Secondary World) to benefit the creator in the real world (Primary World) at the expense of their users (extract money). His main goal is commercial not artistic. The bad reputation videogames have is, then, well deserved but perhaps misplaced. It’s not that videogames are an inferior medium for the creation of good Fantasy, but they are too good of a channel for Magic (Technology).
Source and Intention
Following this train of thought, I will answer the title ‘Are Videogames Art?’ with a not so satisfactory ‘they can be but not necessarily.’ Mediums are used to communicate an idea from a sender to a receiver. And that idea might be artistic or not. When you turn on the television you can use it to appreciate a movie masterpiece such as the The Godfather or simply to watch the news. If we are to take some practical value from this discussion a better question would be ‘Is this specific videogame art?’ Not all games are equal. Some are great and belong to the definition of what we call art, while many of them are terrible and give the medium a bad name. It’s the cases in between that are hard to judge.
When thinking about this subject, two criteria seemed to stand out and be applicable to all art forms: Source and Intention. Source refers to the place where the artist draws inspiration from, and how faithfully he is able represent what he sees. Here, I include concepts such as vision, execution and talent. Intention, in this context, is related to the true motive of the creator. Has the artist brought into existence something because he had no choice but to, as a natural reflection of his being? Did he have a burning desire to simply share what he sees with other human beings, regardless of being seen or not? It will always be difficult to judge the incentives of an artist as even the artist himself might be unaware of his innermost desires. But while motivations are never one-dimensional, there is usually ONE BIG reason for what we do. In masterpieces, we usually witness existential inclinations as the core motive.
Based on this, I created a simple framework to apply these criteria. It is not meant to be rigorously precise and it may be possible to find examples beyond its scope. However, it can still provide value and act as a general guideline.
Pure Art – authentic source and sincere intention
When the source and intention are perfectly aligned, we can categorize the resulting art as pure. Think of a masterpiece such as the Mona Lisa by da Vinci. Leonardo obviously had the talent and skill to execute his vision of the woman he was inspired from. And although commissioned to paint La Gioconda, his main reason for painting was artistic in nature as a man of undeniable culture.
The source is authentic because it is a true representation from one aspect of reality. The second requirement for complete authenticity is the successful execution of that vision, in this case through a painting by a talented artist. Finally, intention is sincere because da Vinci saw in this medium a way to express his gifted instinct of illustrating human anatomy and the mystery of a smile. This work was genuine in its expression of its muse, remaining faithful to her.
Weakened Art – authentic source and adulterated intention
The case where a great idea or artist get lost among other distractions. For example, movies with an excellent script and a cast that would make any director drool, but for some reason make you feel that something is missing. Star power or blockbuster success becomes the goal, not the movie itself. Each part loses its connection with the whole making it a forgettable movie. The art is weakened because the raw materials are all there but could not live up to its full expression.
The word adulterated is purposely used here. Per google: “render (something) poorer in quality by adding another substance.” The substance here can vary greatly. In the above example it could be ego wars, financial greed, or disinterest in the source.
Inferior Art – distorted source and sincere intention
Simply put, an instance where someone is expressing oneself through an artistic medium but does not have the vision or skill to execute it. In other words, he/she lacks the talent. When I play the guitar, I do it because I enjoy the fingerpicking and the sound of my favorite songs. But my covers are not at the same level of the originals. And when I play my own material, I am quick to recognize I don’t possess neither the proficiency nor the musical vision to produce pure art. The source is distorted because it is unskillfully being represented and therefore it cannot achieve a higher art form.
That is why everyone wants to be a rock star but only a few can make it. However, despite the gap in talent, their passion for music is genuine and their intentions to be appreciated and commended on.
Persuasion – distorted source and adulterated intention
According to the framework, this is the type of work that cannot be considered art, thus the color red. While the other three possessed one or all artistic elements, Persuasion has neither. For example, advertising: despite using artistic elements (writing, visual, sound, etc.), it is not concerned in showing a true side of reality (only their side of the product), nor are they sincere in wanting to share them with the world, but rather wanting you do something for them (buy their products).
Assuming Responsibility
As mentioned earlier, I do consider that videogames are capable of being a pure art form and such games do exist. However, they are the minority. And while it is unreasonable to ask for all videogames to be placed in the PURE quadrant, it is only fair for the consumer that current videogames be placed in the blue quadrants. In other words, they may lack a right Source or a sincere Intention, but they may never lack both.
This isn’t about free markets as much as it is about regulating the market. Because videogames, and in the future Virtual Reality, are such powerful media immersion-wise, this is about protecting players against themselves and their own minds. If you visit the FDA’s about page, their mission states that it “is responsible for protecting the public health by ensuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, and medical devices.” We are quick to recognize the need for protecting ourselves from our physical environment, including what we eat (as we should), but we have a harder time recognizing the need to do the same regarding our mental environment. Its effects are hidden and difficult to analyze but they are as powerful, nonetheless.
There’s also a vicious circle in effect in the gaming industry. Due to its bad reputation, creating and consuming videogames isn’t as “respectable” as, let’s say, producing and watching a movie. It follows that the moral and intellectual scrutiny that the gaming industry is subjected to cannot be compared to what the movie industry must go through, further reinforcing its bad reputation. If we start to respect videogames as a legit art form and the people that create them as artists, this downward trend could be inverted, and the industry would be subject to higher standards.
Lastly, collectively, as consumers, we should be more selective. Reward quality over quantity. Ultimately, the gaming industry will be what the gamers make out of it as companies will only produce games that are played. If you constantly complain about a certain company on how their games “suck” but are the first to buy their new content, nothing will change (this a trend prevalent in MMOs where people are notoriously hooked).
All this gives room for giant companies to sell videogames with incredible design and engineering but suspicious motives. This is where the big danger lies, in the intersection between the WEAKENED and PERSUASION quadrants. If I’m a greedy CEO that has access to billions of dollars, nothing stops me from hiring the best designers, psychologists, artists and engineers to create a stunning virtual world and ‘force’ my customers to stay there by the ingenuity of my employees. It’s a corrupted form of art. Something that should have been used to enrich peoples’ lives has turned into a leeching colossus that won’t stop until their victims are empty and dry.
The Future of Videogames and Art
To better protect ourselves and let different art mediums flourish, it’s useful to distinguish between a medium and technology. Quoting Merriam-Webster: a medium is “a means of effecting or conveying something”; and technology is “a manner of accomplishing a task especially using technical processes, methods or knowledge.” In the 21st century, these two terms have become so intertwined that we use them interchangeably, but there are differences relevant to our discussion. In the videogame’s context, the communication between designer and player through a digital interactive system is the medium, while the machine, screen, controllers, etc. are the technologies that allows for such type of communication to exist in the first place.
New Technologies
The essence of media tends to stay the same, but their power can be greatly amplified by the technology behind them. For example, writing existed for millennia before Gutenberg’s printing press, but it was only after this invention that it became widespread and popular among all classes. Those who could write saw their power rise because they could now communicate with more people (since populations wanted to learn how to read too) and obtain a bigger influence. However, the principle stayed the same, you write some words and your reader interprets them.
That is a case of technology being put to good use, but as we know all too well that is not always the case. Personally, I am concerned with the technology that’s being developed under the videogame’s medium – Virtual Reality (VR). It is becoming so developed and realistic that one can’t help but feel a sense of awe and dread. If current media is already enough to keep us hooked and engaged for most of our waking hours, what will VR do to our brains? Will we even want to get out of it? Will our senses be atrophied from playing too much? Its effects are unclear, and the technology needs to mature before it becomes widespread, but its advancement is inexorable. Like in the movie The Matrix, is there a realistic possibility that we won’t be able to distinguish between the Primary World and the Secondary World? And who will oversee those virtual words? If the same companies that produce videogames today will be the ones to do it, I can see them working towards such a dystopian reality.
We Are Not Ready
The fact is that society as it stands is not prepared to deal with these problems. Two important institutions that have the power to help internally and externally through these shifting realities are severely lagging: Nation-state governments and religious entities. The threat that governments face is related to the regulation of the virtual space. All kinds of legitimate concerns can be raised:
- Who will regulate the virtual space? Companies who created these worlds will reclaim their authority over what they created but is it really theirs to rule? When technology becomes so powerful that leisure time and work must be spent inside VR, influencing economic and social stability, the State will have to intervene to protect its citizens. But at that point, they may not have the power or legitimacy to do so.
- If the Virtual World is world-wide, how will countries that are based on physical frontiers cooperate to control VR? Transactions made within virtual worlds might be impossible to tax; crimes committed within them may be impossible to trace and punish due to anonymity; evil organizations can easily create and erase spaces revealing no trace of their actions. This type of problems is nothing new since the internet appeared and security agencies are already having difficulties. Multiply it 10x, at least, with the advent of VR. Rules of today that make sense in the physical world could be made totally ineffective.
On the other end, religion who should help us from within, to deal with these new realities might end up as irrelevant. Entertainment is so ubiquitous and alluring that questions that used to keep us awake at night can be ignored. If I’m feeling sad or depressed, I just need to change worlds. Incarnate a mighty warrior to save the universe from the incoming galactic aliens or be an NBA player competing for a championship ring. Part of why religion is losing power, especially amongst younger generations, is that we have more ways to escape our painful world and run away from deep questions. We live an increasingly superficial existence that dreads boredom.
But let’s assume that somehow, someway I ask myself these questions in an existential crisis. To whom am I talking to? To the mighty warrior or the NBA player? Or maybe you are referring to the boring me who only brings me pain and suffering? I’d rather deal with him when my VR sensors tell me I need to eat and sleep. I feel like I’m only bound to him because of physical constraints. I wish I could forget about him as I have so much better personas to worry about.
It’s my own sense of self that’s in danger with enhanced VR. How can religion reach somebody who is permanently disconnected from base reality and that cares less and less about the individual that lives in it? This could be the final nail in the coffin to completely replace moral values with technocratic ones, rendering religion as a relic from the past or an esoteric practice.
Flight of the Deserter or Escape of the Prisoner
These are all nightmarish scenarios that might never come to be. The point of such extreme examples is to make us realize how powerful and pervasive entertainment is in our society – especially dishonest one through corrupted art. For now, the way we entertain ourselves is still ours to control but it’s already under assault. Daily and surreptitiously, companies are trying to manipulate our unconscious mind (the real decision-maker), and with better technology, namely virtual reality, they will gradually be more and more effective.
Ultimately, we live a in a society that loves to consume art and entertainment. In fact, it is addicted to it. It begs the question why: does this addiction reflect a sickness in our civilization which makes us run away from it, or is it that our escapism is becoming so exceptional that we are irresistibly attracted to it? As with most chicken or the egg questions, it’s likely both. Collectively, we should ask ourselves the reasons why we let ourselves drown in endless entertainment.
There is nothing wrong with escapism. It is in fact a great conductor of creative thought and if used correctly, it can positively influence our experience in the Primary World. Many great inventions have been influenced by science fiction for example. The dilemma is that we can use escapism for very different purposes: Do we want to be deserters who forsake their own human condition and pretend nothing’s wrong? Or will we be the prisoners who transcend their own limitations by imagining what’s possible beyond everyday jailers and walls?
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