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Should Video Games Be Considered Art and Why Does It Matter?

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SHOULD VIDEO GAMES BE CONSIDERED ART AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Meredith Keukelaar
AMC-51000: Research and Scholastic Writing
Dr. Geremy Carnes
December 13, 2019
 1

Abstract

This paper analyzes the discussion on whether video games should be considered art and
answers Roger Ebert’s unaddressed question on why it ultimately matters. Defining what is and
is not art is heavily important to our culture, particularly in order to conclude what it is that art
historians do and do not study when trying to establish contemporary art history. As art gives us
a look into social and political cultures around the world throughout time, declaring video games
as art on both an academically and a socially accepted level will ensure that we do not leave out
a medium that has begun to be widely used for social, political, philosophical, and contemporary
expression. While art and video game critics alike have ultimately concluded that video games
are in one manner or another a form of artistic expression, it is still left to debate if they should
be considered “high art” or “low art.” Using examples from 19th century European art, this essay
will discuss the harm of the separation of high art from low art and racist and classist structures
that have upheld the distinction of art from craft throughout art history. After carefully reviewing
scholarly texts as well as the opinions of leading popular critics on both sides of the video game
art debate, this essay will examine the social and cultural importance of accepting video games
into the modern concept of fine art.
 2

Introduction

What is art? A solid definition for art as an institution is something that has been debated
for centuries1. Art theorist have sometimes wanted to cease looking for a definition all together,
but the importance of narrowing down what can be considered art on at least the very basic of
levels is rarely denied. If we cannot clarify what art is at least academically, what do art
historians have to study? Art historian Anne D’Alleva states that art history “gives us unique
access to the past. […] If you want to know a culture’s ‘truths,’ then look at its art.”2 Defining
what sort of pieces can be included within these studies will help to shape what future art
historians will look back on; they will help to define our own culture’s “truths.” This does not
mean the definition must be concrete or inflexible, of course; since the 19th century, there has
been a long pattern within Western European ideas of art to exclude mediums that are not
considered “high art”, often based in bigotry and an attempt to enforce that the focus remain on
the white, often heterosexual, cisgender3 male artist. D’Alleva explains the problems with this
particular mode of thinking when she states that “[e]xcluding things from a category is often a
way to devalue them and to justify not engaging with them in a serious way” and that “[the
category of] ‘art’ should be flexible, inclusive […] a term and idea that get us looking and
thinking critically about all the different kinds of things people make and do creatively.” 4

In 2005, Roger Ebert made his now somewhat infamous claims that video games were
not art.

I believe the nature of the medium prevents it from moving beyond craftsmanship to the
stature of art. To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a
game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and
composers. That a game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience, I accept.
But for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have

1
David Clowney, “Definitions of Art and Fine Arts Historical Origins.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
69, no. 3 (2011). David Clowney states in the beginning of his essay that the idea of “fine art” originated in the
eighteenth-century Western world and that we have been struggling to narrow a solid definition of what art is since.
While I will go into a brief history and overview of the debate, it is beyond the scope of this paper to try and discuss
all the different ways in which art has ultimately been defined by philosophers, art theorists, art critics, and many
others over the years. A basic definition will be provided for the sake of argument, but it is barely a dent within the
broader discussion of what defines art.
2
Anne D’Allleva, Look! The Fundementals of Art History, 3rd ed. (Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010), 17.
3
Cisgender, commonly referred to as simply “cis”, describes a person whose personal identity and gender aligns
with their birth sex.
4
D’Allleva, The Fundementals of Art History, 13.
 3

available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic.5

Over the years, Ebert received a multitude of responses to his statements, most of which
were in heavy disagreement with his beliefs, and some of which were downright inflammatory.
To his credit, Ebert stayed particularly quiet on the subject for the next two years, short of off-
handed remarks here and there in response to the naysayers. In 2007, horror novelist Clive
Barker’s6 comments on Ebert’s critique of video games at the Hollywood and Games Summit
spurred Ebert to clarify his own statements in his blog entry “Games vs Art: Ebert vs Barker”.
Ebert doubled down on his beliefs, stating that he believed “art is created by an artist. If you
change it, you become the artist.”7 In 2010, after watching Kellee Santiago’s TED talk on how
video games were already a form of art8, Ebert wrote a lengthy response on his own blog,
clarifying that he perhaps should not have said video games could never be art as “never […] is a
long, long time”, but that he believed that no one would ever “survive long enough to experience
the medium as an art form.” After drawing a comparison to the game of chess to support his
reasonings for why all games could not be considered a form of art, Ebert finally posed a
question in his popular blog entry “Video Games Can Never Be Art” that, in my own research,
he never seemed to get a direct answer to: why does it really matter?9

In order to discuss the issue, there are a few key terms that will be necessary to define.
While difficult, Ebert’s own analysis of not categorizing video games as art was significantly
weakened due to missing a solid definition of what he believed art to be. In order to avoid the
same mistake, this essay will use a simplified version of the definition of art backed by current
research. For the purposes of this essay, the definition of art used will echo D’Alleva’s; “any
material or visual thing that is made by a person or persons and that is invented with social,
political, spiritual, and/or aesthetic value by the creator, user, viewer, and/or patron.”10 And

5
Roger Ebert, “Why Did The Chicken Cross The Genders?” RogerEbert.com, Ebert Digital LLC, November 27,
2005, https://www.rogerebert.com/answer-man/why-did-the-chicken-cross-the-genders.
6
Mark Androvich, “Games are indeed art, says Barker”, Gameindustry.biz, June 27th, 2007,
https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/games-are-indeed-art-says-barker.
7
Roger Ebert, “Games vs. Art: Ebert vs Barker,” RogerEbert.com, Ebert Digital LLC, July 21, 2007,
https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/games-vs-art-ebert-vs-barker.
8
Kellee Santiago, “Stop the Debate! Video Games art Art — What’s Next?” filmed in August 2009 at the
University of Southern California, TED video, 15:34, https://youtu.be/6GjKCnPQlSw .
9
Roger Ebert, “Video Games Can Never Be Art,” RogerEbert.com, Ebert Digital LLC, April 16, 2010,
https://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art.
10
D’Allleva, The Fundementals of Art History, 13
 4

extended version of this definition will also include the Oxford Dictionary’s addition of “works
to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.”11 While this definition may be
considered too broad in general, it covers the vast majority of created artworks without excluding
art from across cultures and historical timelines. Video games have a definition that, while
certainly not as lengthy, is near identical to that of what art is. Theorists have tried to explain
video games as interactive fictions, intense narratives, and goal-oriented or “transmedial games”,
following the same logic and point-based systems as non-digital games.12 While details on such a
debate will be discussed later, for the purposes of this research, a nominal definition will do, and
so video games will be a blanket term for any electronic game played on consoles13, computers,
or mobile devices; any further reference to “games” will specifically mean video games unless
otherwise noted.

Ebert’s idea of video games was far more limiting. He stated that “games cannot be high
art, as I understand it” because “they tend to involve (1) point and shoot in many variations and
plotlines, (2) treasure or scavenger hunts, as in “Myst,” and (3) player control of the outcome. I
don’t think these attributes have much to do with art; they have more in common with sports.”14
He also believed that an “immersive game without points or rules […] ceases to be a game and
becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot
win; you can only experience them.”15 Supporting Ebert, video game critic Edward Smith stated
that “we’ve conflated ‘indie game’ to mean ‘art game.’.”16 Smith also points out the flaws of the
discussion itself and how the discussion lacks the current vocabulary and properly recognized
theory to discuss games as art.

The debate continues to this day, showing that while the law may be on the side of
games17, cultural and societal views haven’t come to an agreement. Beyond the legal protections

11
Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed (1989), s.v. “Dalek.”
12
Grant Tavinor, The Art of Videogames (Wiley-Blackwell, Hoboken, NJ, 2011), Chapter 2.
13
Playstation, X-Box, Nintendo, Sega, etc.
14
Ebert, “Games vs. Art.”
15
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
16
Edward Smith, “Why Games Matter Blog - Indie Games Aren't Art Games,” International Business Times UK,
January 24, 2013, https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/why-games-matter-indie-movie-fez-meat-427544.
17
The Supreme Court disagreed with Ebert and Smith; in June of 2011, it was ruled that video games were in fact
art as they “communicate ideas — and even social messages — through many familiar literary devices […] and
through features distinctive to the medium” and us such fell under the protection of the first amendment. Seth
Schiesel, “Supreme Court Has Ruled; Now Games Have a Duty,” New York Times, The New York Times Company,
 5

offered, it is important to consider video games a form of art for the same reason that it mattered
to include the Impressionists as artists; historians have used art to trace cultural identities, shifts
in social and political atmospheres, and to track the aesthetic and historical significance of
various works of art. By denying video games the potential to be considered “high art” versus
“low art”, we could lose a significant and important cultural shift in modern visual history.

Literature Review

David Clowney’s essay “Defintions of Art and Fine Arts Historical Origins”18 goes into
further detail on how the chronological history provided by art historian Petra ten-Doesschate
Chu19 provides impacted the art world. Clowney argues that there is no real means to define art
in a way that fully captures the differences throughout history and cultures around the world. He
also discusses how the current idea of “fine art” is a Western concept that was established in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and that has its roots in classism, racism, and sexism.
Furthering supporting that point is Hans Abbing’s20 focus on how art is valued and who creates
those values in our society. He applies both art history as well as standard economics theory in
order to back up his points. He provides valuable information to discuss why it is that certain
groups of artists and their (now) highly valued art were original seen as “low art” and how those
who have the power to define what “high art” is have done so using classist, racist, and sexist
standards.

Most well-known, of course, are Roger Ebert’s blog entries surrounding his dissension on
the topic; while many his most famous quotes are given in the introduction to this research paper,
at least three of the four articles by Ebert go into far more depth on his distaste for video games
being called art and why he believes that they will never be considered such in our life time.
Ebert’s July 1, 2010, blog entry titled “Ok, Kids, Play on my Lawn” finally concedes to the
argument; while he does not state he was ever wrong in his assumption that video games could
never be art, he does acknowledge he should never have entered the debate in the first place due

June 28, 2011. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/29/arts/video-games/what-supreme-court-ruling-on-video-games-

means.html
18
Clowney, “Definitions of Art.”
19
Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 3rd ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education,
Inc, 2012).
20
Hans Abbing, “Why Are Artists Poor?”, in The Exceptional Economy of the Arts by Hans Abbing (Amsterdam:
Amsterdam University Press, 2002.
 6

to his own lack of knowledge on the subject. Felan Parker21 provides his own insight into Roger
Ebert’s remarks over time in his essay “Roger Ebert and the Games-as-Art Debate” as well as
backlash that Ebert faced because of these comments. Parker examines the cultural impact of
digital games and the popular discourse surrounding their legitimacy as an art form. He primarily
focuses on why this debate is important in the history of gaming culture. Parker’s article
strengthened the analysis of Roger Ebert’s criticisms of video games as art and provided
substantial information for the current state of the debate on video games being considered art.

Methodology

In this research paper, a qualitative methodology is used to examine biographical data on

historical artists and art periods from the late 18th century to the present, contemporary
discussion about the status of video games, and observations on pieces of art and video games.
Examples of currently recognized art forms range from interactive art, media art, installation art,
and the traditional mediums of painting, drawing, sculpting, printmaking, etc. The discussion
will be limited to prominent artists within the modern art movements, focusing on those with the
most well-known impacts. Three video games will be used in the discussion of how video games
are art: the Life is Strange franchise22 (Dontnod Entertainment & Decknine), Child of Light
(Ubisoft Montreal, April 2014), and Never Alone (E-Line Media, November 2014). The bulk of
the sources used for this research are peer-reviewed; those that were not peer-reviewed are from
popular blogs that were prominent in the discussion of video games being considered art.
Opinions from both sides of the argument will be used in order to obtain a well-rounded
approach to the topic. In the end, this essay will attempt to answer Ebert’s question from 2010:
“Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?”23

Discussion/Analysis

Redefining Art in the 18th & 19th Century West

21
Felan Parker, “Roger Ebert and the Games-as-Art Debate,” Cinema Journal, 57, no. 3 (2018).
22
As of the date of this paper, this includes Life is Strange (Dontnod Entertainment, January 2015), it’s prequel,
Before the Storm (Decknine, August 2017), The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (Dontnod Entertainment,
June 2018), and Life is Strange 2 (Dontnod Entertainment, September 2018). For the purpose of consistent analysis,
I will keep most of my points to Life is Strange and Before the Storm, as they are the only two games to share
location, prominent characters, and storyline.
23
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
 7

In most parts of the world for most of history, art was primarily created for religious or
historical purposes. This included Western Europe, where “art” was not used the way it was
today until the Renaissance. “Craft” was still something that was separated from the idea of art24,
unlike in non-western cultures such as the Navajo in North America and the Aboriginals of
Australia. Plato used mimesis, “imitation”, to discuss artworks and demiourgos, “one who works
for the people” to refer to what we would now call the artist.25 The paintings and sculptures of
Western Europe had been purchased primarily by religious institutions, the nobility, and the
higher upper class. Artists obtained their education from specific schools or by working under
already accomplished artists; the various academies established what was considered appropriate
subject matter and style of painting. Established academies followed the idea that artists were
built “from the bottom up”26, and they would hold biennial or annual exhibitions in order to give
“the visual arts a place of dignity in the cultural realm”27 and hold the importance of education in
place by giving only approved artists public exposure.

The lives of the people in Western Europe of the late 18th and 19th centuries changed
drastically due to advancements in medical science and technology, changes in political ideals,
the emergence of identity-based politics, a rapid population boom, and the emergence of the
Industrial Revolution. The late 18th century began to push back against the current definitions of
art, through the decorative and more genre-like paintings of Rococo in France, which later
inspired artists down the roads of Neo-Classicism and a focus on the art of Greece and Rome28.
As the 19th century progressed, artists became less worried about the depiction of realism and
focused more on the act of making art itself; the use of color and brushstroke became just as, if
not more important than, subject matter to evoke feeling and a sense of place, such as in J.M.W.
Turner’s Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying (1840)29. In this painting, vibrant
reds and yellow dominate the top half of the painting, indicating a sky that looks as though it’s
on fire. The quick strokes of horizontal, dark line are all that is given to hint at the illusion of a
boat on the ocean. The bottom half of the canvas is covered in choppy, broad, and quick strokes

24
Clowney, “Definitions of Art,” 309.
25
D’Alleva, The Fundamentals of Art History, 11-37.
26
D’Alleva, The Fundamentals of Art History, 12.
27
D’Alleva, The Fundamentals of Art History, 13.
28
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 15-75.
29
Figure 1; J.M.W. Turner, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, 1840. Oil on canvas, 91 cm x 1.38 m.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
 8

of deep browns, blues, and greens which give the hint of the rough waters, with quick strokes
used to sketch out the idea of the hands of the drowning slaves. 30

This emphasis on brushstroke, color, and light eventually influenced the art of the avant-
garde in the latter half of the 19th century; Claude Monet’s Haystack (1890-91) and Haystack,
Sun in the Mist (1891)31 both show a fairly basic and uninteresting topic that is transformed by
the Monet’s attention to the way changing light alters the perceptions of color and form. Vincent
van Gogh’s paintings rely on the thick application of paint to create texture, putting the realistic
form or the proper use of perspective to the side to instead focus on the way colors and texture
interact to evoke emotion32. The popularity of Japanese woodblock prints brought about the
flattening of objects and the emphasis on line, shown in works such as Henri de Toulouse-
Lautrec’s In the Salon of the Brothel of the Rue des Moulins (1894).33 With this simplification of
figures, Paul Cézanne takes this a step further by creating a three-dimensional surface in a two-
dimensional plane through a series of fractural representations, such as in his piece The Basket of
Apples (1893)34. This change would bring about the foundations of Cubism in the early 20th
century, which eventually led to the surge of abstract arts. Imitation and representation of the real
world failed to be a pre-requisite for art, and a formal education was no longer seen as necessary
in order to become an artist. 35 Salon exhibitions slowly ceased to have purpose as artists began
to open private gallery showings funded by private patrons of the art, and many artists began to
make their wages by taking commissions from the middle and upper-middle classes36. As
Clowney puts it, “The development of the modern system parallels the emergence of the modern
economic class structures in the eighteenth-century, and the two […] are integrally related.”37
With the changes in the funding, the application, the education, and the very alteration of what
art could be or look like, art shifted from the realistic depiction of a very limited number of
subjects to what would be known as “art for art’s sake.”

30
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 15-241.
31
Figure 2; Claude Monet, Haystack, Sun in the Mist, 1891. Oil on canvas, 65 cm x 1 m. Minneapolis Institute of
the Arts.
32
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 430-437.
33
Figure 3; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In the Salon of the Brothel of the Rue des Moulins, 1894. Oil on canvas,
1.11 x 1.32 cm. Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi.
34
Figure 4; Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, 1893. Oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
35
Tavinor, The Art of Videogames, Chapter 9.
36
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 495-510.
37
Clowney, “Definitions of Art”, 310.
 9

“High Art” vs “Low Art”

With these rapidly changing ideas on what art could be, the idea of “high art” versus “low
art” began to become more distinct. While humans have been drawing, painting, dancing, acting,
and carving, for thousands of years, the idea of art as something more refined than simple craft
became more popular in Western Europe as the avant-garde began to make art simply for the
sake of making it., Prior to the Renaissance, the concept of art as something different than craft
did not exist, and thus a distinction had never been required. Clowney discusses more in depth
how this separation emerged, saying that art “was divided” and that western Europe began to
separate “art from artisan, art from craft or entertainment, and aesthetic regard from mere
enjoyment.”38 While starting to view art as being made simply for the sake of being art may have
required “fine art” to become its own category, the question then becomes who decides what is
“high art” and what is “low art”? What social structures, and therefore social oppressions, shape
and define these two distinct categories?

The answer can be relatively simple: the people with the money to purchase the art in the
first place make those decisions. Historically in Western Europe, this has been wealthy, white,
usually heterosexual and cisgender men. It makes sense that the wealthy would be the ones to
determine what art is, given that they are often the patrons of the arts, even to this day. In
western societies, people who hold higher positions have more wealth and honor associated with
them than those in lower positions, and as such, those who wish to “better themselves” in society
would have to climb a social ladder, make more money, and ultimately gain more respect
because of it. People with more money tend to spend their wealth on symbols that show their
cultural awareness—including art and the consumption of art. Because the artwork chosen by the
upper class symbolizes wealth, the lower classes see art as something extraordinary. In contrast,
the art chosen by the lower class is looked down upon by the upper class for not being as
cultured or refined. This is because one in a higher position of power acknowledged it.39 High art
was used to separate Western Europe as being somehow more accomplished and more talented at
art than the rest of the world. Most forms of art that were made by women such as quilts, basket
weaving, and textiles were looked to as a form of “low art”, and sculptures and paintings brought

38
Clowney, ‘Definitions of Art.”, 311.
39
Abbing, “Why Are Artists Poor?”, 17-22.
 10

in from Africa and Asia were looked to as “primitive” and incapable of showcasing true talent
the way the Greeks and Romans had— an ironic statement, considering how heavily African and
Japanese art influenced the avant-garde in their redefinitions of art in the Impressionist and
Cubist movements. These separations of “high” and “low” were rooted in sexism and racism,
making sure that the white male artists were the ones who held the talent to create something
truly artistic.40

In the modern era, “low art” in particular became tied to the idea of popular culture; pop
culture influenced art was seen as something created only for amusement or entertainment, yet
somehow inherently lacking, making it “immature, derivative, mass produced, distasteful” and as
such “do not afford the sorts of perceptual and cognitive pleasures that proper artworks do.”41
These arguments were used particularly against film and other forms of media art, placing the
traditional forms of sculpting, painting, and drawing on an untouchable pedestal. These
distinctions of high from low art are still influenced by elevating western art above other
countries as well. In art historian Marie Leduc’s analysis of contemporary art, she states that in
order to be picked up by the algorithms used to make the Kunkstkompass’ 100 Top Living
Artists list42, one must be “recognized in the most significant Western institutions” and that once
this occurred “an artists’ reputation and value is replicated in these different measuring systems
and across the field.”43 Leduc also notes that Kunkstompass’ lists have “significant differences in
gender and ethnicity”, with only 24 female artists on the Living Artist list and 80 male artists44;
28 artists are German, and 25 artists are American, “with the remaining coming from Great
Britain, Switzerland, Italy, and Belgium.” 45 Only one artist, Mona Hatoum (Lebanon), is non-
Caucasian in the top 20.46 While perhaps unintentional, systematic oppression upholds the Euro-
American white male as the most important member of society, and thus gives them the access to
these Western institutions, and thus the power to continue to define what makes art “good” and
what makes art “bad” and what is “high” and what is “low.” This places a problematic spin on

40
Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art.
41
Travinor, The Art of Videogames, Chapter 9.
42
Marie Leduc, “Defining Contemporary Art: What the Kunkstkompass Top 100 Lists Can Tell Us About
Contemporary Art,” Journal of Visual Art Practic, 18, no. 3 (2019).
43
Leduc, “Defining Contemporary Art,” 258.
44
While the title of the list is “Top 100 Living Artists”, there are 104 artists listed; this is due to collaboration pieces
where multiple artists were credited as a group.
45
Leduc, “Defining Contemporary Art”, 260.
46
Leduc, “Defining Contemporary Art”, 261.
 11

Ebert’s comments that video games are only “low brow art”47, particularly when Ebert is a white,
cisgender male in a high position of power.

A Brief History of Video Games

The origins of video games in a business-oriented mindset goes against the idea of “art
for arts sake” that was established by 19th century modern artists and has been the main source of
doubt against video games being considered a form of art. The history of video games starts long
before computers or digital graphics; Fusajiro Yamauchi founded the Marufuku Company, which
would make and distribute Japanese playing cards known as Hanafuda. His grandson, Hirohoshi
Yamauchi, visited the United States Playing Card Company, then the biggest in the world, and
realized that producing cards had little to no long-term potential. He began to experiment with
other forms of business in 1963, and he changed the name of the company to Nintendo Co. Ltd.
and started to venture into the idea of finding a way to produce games. While Nintendo was
being established, Service Games (SEGA) and Rosen Enterprises, merged into Sega Enterprises
and released Periscope, one of the first interactive computer games, and it was such a hit in
Japan that the U.S. and Europe began to import the game, making Periscope Japan’s first
amusement game export. 48

In 1996, games went from 16 or 24-bit to 64-bit49, allowing for much larger games to be
made. This started to take games from the pixelated imagery of Pac-Man50 and The Legend of
Zelda51 and started the venture of creating more 3D oriented games such as the Nintendo 64
release of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time52 or Square Soft’s Final Fantasy VII.53 While
these graphics may seem to be blocky and low-quality in comparison to today’s video games, the
higher processing power allowed for the rapid advancement in graphic quality that would
follow.54

47
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
48
Steven L. Kent, The Ultimate History of Video Games: from Pong to Pokemon and beyond… the story behind the
craze that touched our lives and changed the world (Three Rivers Press: New York, NY, 2010), Chapter 1.
49
Ian Bogost, Persuasive Games: the Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2010, 44. The
bit number in electronics refers to the amount of memory a processor can access from the Computer Processing Unit
(CPU). Video games currently require the most CPU demands of any computational artifacts.
50
Figure 5; Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man, Namco, 1980.
51
Figure 6; Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1986.
52
Figure 7; Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo 64, 1998.
53
Figure 8: Square Soft, Final Fantasy VII, PlayStation, 1997.
54
Kent, The Ultimate History,Chapter 22-24
 12

How Are Video Games Considered Art?

It would be hard to argue that the early iterations of video games are by any stretch of the
imagination a form of art. With basic, pixelated graphics, points-based systems, repetitive
gameplay, and hardly any arrative, there is little to analyze as artistic. It’s hard to imagine
playing Pong, Pac-Man, or Tetris and believing them to be art. These are the sorts of games that
come to mind when Ebert states that games have “rules, points, objectives, and an outcome
[…G]ames without points or rules […] cease to be a game and becomes a representation of a
story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. These are things you cannot win; you can only experience
them.”55 While many would expect those who created these immersive games may disagree,
Ebert did get support from many famous game creators for his comments; Hideo Kojima, creator
of the Metal Gear Solid franchise, stated that he also did not see video games as art. “Art is the
stuff you find in the museum, whether it be a painting or a statue. What I’m doing, is running the
museum.” He also states that “Art is something that radiates the artist” and that “A video game
should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by
that video game. It’s something of a service. It’s not art.”56 Kim Swift, creator of the acclaimed
2007 puzzle game Portal, said “I work on toys. […] Don’t take that away from me. I like that I
make toys.”57

Immersive games, whether Ebert wished to acknowledge it or not, are still a form of
video game, and a highly popular one; despite the popularity of games such as Candy Crush
(King, 2012)58, interactive narratives have begun to “take over” app stores for mobile gaming.
Story-driven games such as Choices: Stories You Play (Pixelberry, 2016) and Episode (Pocket
Games, 2013) are considered market-leading titles by app developers. 59 Even branch off match-
three puzzle games like Candy Crush have begun to include interactive stories in their gameplay,

55
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
56
Ellie Gibson, “Games Aren’t Art, Says Kojima,” Eurogamter.net, January 24, 2006,
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/news240106kojimaart.
57
Ryan Rigney, “Portal Designer Kim Swift Won’t Let You Take Her Toys Away,” Wired, Conde Nast, December
22, 2017, https://www.wired.com/2012/06/kim-swift-interview
58
Dean Takahashi, “Candy Crush Saga: 2.73 billion downloads in five years and still counting,” VentureBeat,
November 17, 2017, https://venturebeat.com/2017/11/17/candy-crush-saga-2-73-billion-downloads-in-five-years-
and-still-counting/.
59
Matt Suckley, “The interactive narrative games taking over the App Store,” Pocket Gamer Biz, Steel Media Ltd.,
February 26, 2018. https://www.pocketgamer.biz/the-charticle/67618/the-narrative-games-taking-over/
 13

such as Matchington Mansion.60 In PC and console games, graphics have become as important to
a game as gameplay and a cohesive and important story considered a highly functional element.
The gameplay itself is also a form of the artistic expression; kinesthetic pleasures, as video game
philosopher Grant Tavinor puts it, are “the qualities of physical interaction with the gaming
devise and the physical world” and gameplay that lacks this “might be described as […] jerky.”61
These elements all give an ability to critique and discuss video games as an artistic form,
supplying a language with which to call them art, just as critics have needed to discuss traditional
mediums in the past.

Ebert argues that video games cease to be art due to the addition of a player; that art is
solely created by an artist.62 Brianna Prisco, a Masters of Art Education student at Syracuse
University, reviews several pieces of work in recent galleries that require audience participation:
interactive installation art. Contemporary art is no longer bound by the traditional mediums used
before it, and the interaction of outsides has started to become an important aspect in the
message of the art being created.63 The Swings (Share Vimeo, 2012)64 is an installation piece of
luminescent swings that each create a particular note when controlled. When moving in unison
with multiple swingers, it creates its own unique symphony. “The installation grew out of an
understanding that if we work together, we can create something beautiful and truly
harmonious.”65 This shows that art does not have to only be created by the artist. The interaction
of the community it is presented to can be just as prominent to the outcome of the art as the artist
creating the work itself.

If one were to judge games purely off an aesthetic appeal, there would be no contesting
that they have become art. Tavinor states that games “afford a great deal of pleasure through
their capacity for beauty”66, something that even casual viewers of games have started to see.

60
Firecraft Studios, Matchington Mansion, iOS and Android, September 2017.
61
Travinor, The Art of Videogames, Chapter 9.
62
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
63
Brianna Prisco. “Living Art: An Exploration of Interactive Art Installations,” Art Education, 69, no. 5 (2016).
64
Prisco. “Living Art”, 52.
65
Prisco. “Living Art”, 52-53.
66
Travinor, The Art of Videogames, Chapter 9.
 14

There is the stunning graphics we see in AAA titles67 such as Final Fantasy XV68, but one can
also see this in the simplistic side scroller games that have taken on an artistic style of their own,
such as Child of Light69 and Never Alone70. Child of Light creates a stunning world that imitates
the traditional medium of watercolor, with the flowing hair of the princess mimicking the
bleeding of the paint, and the crisp dark lines providing a striking visual balance in every frame.
Never Alone is particularly unique in its creation, a visual representation of a traditional Iñupiaq
tale; the writing was created by Ishmael Hope, a storyteller and poet of the Iñupiaq and Tlingit
heritage.71 The artwork through the game mimicked the traditional art of the indigenous peoples
of Alaska, and the story incorporates the history and culture of the Iñupiaq tribe between each
chapter of gameplay.72 Both games provide a deep and meaningful story with unique art styles
that would be nothing but an asset to the fine art world.

Ebert claims that there have been no video games that give us the likes of Shakespeare73,
but there have been a multitude of story-driven games that give us powerful and insightful
narratives, with dialogue as strong and insightful as any of the great plays. In Life is Strange:
Before the Storm74, the main character, Chloe Price, is roped into an actual rendition of
Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The player must attempt to get the dialogue right in a series of
choice-based prompts; correct answers earn Chloe applause and incorrect answers provide witty
and hilarious dialogue as Chloe attempts to improvise her way through her misspoken lines. In
the end, regardless of how well the player does, Rachel Amber forces Chloe to go off-script as
she proposes that they run away from their lives in front of an entire audience, improvising
Shakespeare herself in a way that is just as beautiful as the original patterns of the iambic
pentameter script. Chloe’s lines are far more fumbled, but the meaning and emotion in her lines

67
AAA is an informal classification given to video games that are produced and distributed by major publishers,
typically having higher development and marketing budgets. It is similar to the film industry term “blockbuster.”
Scott Steinberg, Videogame Marketing and PR: Vol. 1: Playing to Win, iUniverse Inc., Bloomington, Indiana
(2007).
68
Figure 9; Square Enix, Final Fantasy XV, Playstation 4 & Xbox One, 2016.
69
Figure 10; Ubisoft Montreal, Child of Light, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC, 2014.
70
Figure 11; E-Line Media, Never Alone, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, iOS, PC, Android, 2014.
71
Elizabeth LaPensée, “Video Games Encourage Indigenous Cultural Expression,” NITV, April 20, 2017,
https://www.sbs.com.au/nitv/nitv-news/article/2017/04/20/video-games-encourage-indigenous-cultural-expression.
72
LaPensée, “Indigenous Cultural Expression.”
73
Ebert, “Games Can Never Be Art.”
74
Zak Garriss, Life is Strange: Before the Storm, DeckNine, 2017.
 15

is just as present.

Rachel: […] why, I pray you, wish you to be free?

Chloe: Excitement ages quickly… and I fear, if we set out in search of new…uh, fun,
you’ll tire of me, and… and then I’ll be alone.
Rachel: I have thee in my grasp; I will not bend. I will not see thee flying forth alone.
The envy would be more than I could bear.
Chloe: So come with me! Is that not in thy power?
Rachel: Spirit, take my hands, most faithful friend. For but a little longer I beseech:
continue in thy service to my schemes. And when they are complete, I swear to thee: we
shall fly beyond this isle, the corners of the world our mere prologue. I'll seek to make
thy happiness so great that e'en the name of liberty's forgot. What sayest thou to my most
hopeful wish?
[…]
Chloe: Yes.75

The rest of the story ends up in similar tragedy to most of Shakespeare’s plays, with
Chloe and Rachel’s plans interrupted by a series of unfortunate and painful events that culminate
in the original game of Life is Strange76 with Rachel’s murder and Chloe’s traumatic discovery
of her body. After following their love through the prequel, the original game’s depressing
content becomes that much more of a metaphorical punch to the gut, one that would have had
Elizabethan citizens crying in their seats. Tavinor argues that “The ability of videogames to
construct visual representations of a fictional world that can be appreciated as a character within
that world is another principal reason why videogames should be seen as art.”77 Life is Strange
shows that the narrative of games has as much strength as that of most literature and the aesthetic
qualities only further strengthen their placement within the art world.

Why It Ultimately Matters

Ebert posed a few rhetorical questions during his attempt to “rest his case” on the matter

of video games being incapable of being an art form in any reader’s lifetime; “Why are gamers

75
Garriss, Before the Storm, Episode 2.
76
Dontnod Entertainment, Life is Strange, Square Enix,
77
Travinor, The Art of Videogames, Chapter 9.
 16

so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? […] Why aren’t gamers content to

play their games and simply enjoy themselves? […] Do they require validation?” He implied

that gamers are inherently embarrassed of their hobbies or not taken seriously for loving games,

and that the only reason that people could want to define games as art is in order to get their

families and peers to stop criticizing their hobbies. If this were the only reason to define anything

as art, perhaps his examples of basketball player Michael Jordan or Mah Jong champion Shi Hua

Chen would have wanted to define their games as art forms as well. 78 However, the argument for

defining video games as art is far more complex than Ebert would have liked to believe.

So why does it matter what is considered fine art? After all, if art is only made for art’s

sake, then having the legal protections of the First Amendment should be more than sufficient. If

this were the case, though, several forms of art would not have had to fight for their own

recognition in the fine art world, including Ebert’s deeply loved category of films. On a surface

driven level of recognition, the artists who put their time and energy into their work, from the

writers who craft the emotionally moving dialogue and actions of the characters, to the

composers who provide intense and dynamic scores to accompany the stories, to the concept

artists who turn these stories into visually stunning worlds, to the 3D animators who render them

into playable forms, all deserve to have their hard work and artistic dedications recognized, not

to have them dismissed as useless time wasters or simplistic point system games. As discussed

above, they have evolved beyond the days of Pac-Man and have become interactive fictions with

stunning visual aesthetics. It’s unsurprising that their validity as an art form has been so heavily

debated over the years; media art on a whole has been criticized as a lesser form of art since the

1960s, has been seen as “antithetical” to the ideas that contemporary art wanted to establish

78
Ebert, “Games Will Never Be Art.”
 17

within itself, and has been seen as an “aesthetic gimmick” that added no artistic value to art as an

institution. However, as media art has grown and expanded from static video feed, it has begun

to overlap with the techniques of fine art (animated paintings, virtual immersion) and redefine

contemporary art on a whole.79 Art philosopher and historian Catherine Abell states that “Every

artwork that performs one or more of the functions characteristic of art institutions improves the

effectiveness with which the institution that produced it performs those functions. [… Art which]

introduces a new technique that can be used to produce artifacts with positive aesthetic properties

[…] may have much greater artistic value.” 80 Video games offer a new technique to make

artistic artifacts; a new art form that can expand institutions of artwork all together.

Video games as an art form offers a new way to connect to the younger generations of

blossoming artists as well; artist, designer and teacher Stephanie Veronica Martyniuk discusses

the importance of using modern technology and its incorporation into the art world when

educating students.

Video games that follow excellent narratives are rich in learning potential and themes
that teachers can explore with their students. […] Popular, but not just limited to, games
like Square Enix’s Final Fantasy titles easily provide excellent content for students to
explore; Final Fantasy 7 for coming to terms with life and death; Final Fantasy 8 for
questioning reality; Final Fantasy 10 for the power of political and religious influence on
society; Final Fantasy 13 for exploring the role of fate and free well; Final Fantasy 15
for connection the human experience of love, bonds, and friendship. 81

Martyniuk gives credible examples of the ways that video games can teach students about using

visual imagery to communicate theme and emotions, about the way that they can help teenagers

79
Brogan Bunt, “Media Art, Mediality and Art Generally,” Leonardo, vol 45, 1 (2012).
80
Catherine Abell, “Art: What it Is and Why it Matters”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol 85, 3,
(2012), 689.
81
Stephanie Veronica Martyniuk, “Game On!—Teaching Video Game Studies in the Arts Classroom,” Art
Education, 71, no. 3 (2018), 15.
 18

to learn about consequences for actions, how everything we say and choose to do can have vast

impacts on the rest of society around us, and how by digging deeper than the surface of video

games, we can teach the new generation the same moral lessons they achieve from George

Orwell’s novels or Shakespeare’s tragedies.82

Only accepting video games as a form of “low brow art” as Ebert suggests83 would give

validity to the idea of “high” and “low” art as previously discussed. While not all video games

need to be considered art, those that fall into the definition of art discussed within this paper

should not be considered a lower form of artistic expression than the great paintings or sculptures

of the Renaissance. Encouraging separation gives credit to the idea that there is a right type of art

to make, a more important artistic expression that is tied to the idea of the superiority of Western

art, particularly that made by educated white men. The decision to keep video games out of the

art world entirely because they do not fit the Western constraints on what art should be holds up

these same institutions that have kept “lesser” forms of art from being recognized for their

cultural contributions for centuries.

Results

By looking in to the history of art in the 18th and 19th centuries, reviewing the definitions
of art and applying them to the expectations of video games, the research more than upholds the
idea that games should be considered a viable form of contemporary art. The narrative qualities
of the scripts and the aesthetic advancements of the graphics have created a more than
appropriate tool for expressing political, cultural, spiritual, and aesthetic qualities. By examining
three games (Never Alone, Child of Light and Life is Strange) in particular, it’s evident how
games can provide unique and artistic styles and powerful narratives. Analyzing games even
further shows how many recent game franchises have provided stories that teach valuable moral

82
Martyniuk, “Game On!”
83
REbert, “Games Will Never Be Art.”
 19

lessons through meaningful, emotionally driven scripts, taking place in an immersive and (in the
case of many console and PC games) high-definition world that modern technology has allowed
3D animators to create. The popularity of interactive art installation such as The Swings counters
Ebert’s claims that art ceases to be art when outside participation is required or changes the
aspect of an artist’s original piece. Art does not have to be created by only an artist in order to be
considered artistically valuable. Smith’s claims that we have no specific analytic language in
order to discuss video games as a form of art, but Travinor’s deep analysis of video games gives
us plenty of ways to analyze game mechanics as their own unique art form.

Conclusion

By applying the results of the research to video games, it is clear how they have the
potential to improve the institution of art, to provide artifacts worthy of historical study, and to
expand the possibilities of the current interactive contemporary art world; it makes defining
video games as art important for both academically and socially impacting reasons. By not
allowing video games to be considered part of the art world, society would uphold the belief that
certain forms of art are more valuable than others, and run the risk of continuing racist, classist
patterns that the study of Western art has been riddled with for centuries and, as Leduc states,
still impacts the art world today. While not all video games must be considered art, as not all
games fit into the most commonly accepted notions of what art is, the definitive statement that
all games will never be art limits the ideas of what contemporary art can be.

Illustrations
 20

Figure 1; J.M.W. Turner, Slavers Throwing Overboard the Dead and Dying, 1840. Oil on canvas, 91 cm x 1.38 m.
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Figure 2; Claude Monet, Haystack, Sun in the Mist, 1891. Oil on canvas, 65 cm x 1 m. Minneapolis Institute of the
Arts.
 21

Figure 3; Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, In the Salon of the Brothel of the Rue des Moulins, 1894. Oil on canvas, 1.11
x 1.32 cm. Musée Toulouse-Lautrec, Albi.
 22

Figure 4; Paul Cézanne, The Basket of Apples, 1893. Oil on canvas, 65 x 80 cm (Art Institute of Chicago)
 23

Figure 5; Toru Iwatani, Pac-Man, Namco, 1980.

Figure 6; Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda, Nintendo Entertainment System, 1986.

 24

Figure 7; Nintendo, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Nintendo 64, 1998.

Figure 8: Square Soft, Final Fantasy VII, PlayStation, 1997.

 25

Figure 9; Square Enix, Final Fantasy XV, Playstation 4 & Xbox One, 2016.

Figure 10; Ubisoft Montreal, Child of Light, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, PC, 2014.
 26

Figure 11; E-Line Media, Never Alone, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo, iOS, PC, Android, 2014.
 27

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