Can Video Games Be Considered Art?

Video games have come a long way since their development in the 1970s. Games have developed from basic games like PONG (Atari, 1972), with only three moving objects, to games such as Mass Effect 3 (BioWare, 2012), with millions of lines of code, where every decision you make changes the story. Have the advances in video games mean that they can be considered art?

The recent decision by the Smithsonian American Art Museum to open an exhibition called The Art of Video Games may be the first major exhibition of video game art, but it is not the first time a major institution has classified video game content as art. In 2006, the British Academy of Film and Television Awards (BAFTA) announced that video games are to be given “equal status with film and television”, placing video games on equal status with film or television in regards to art of the moving image.

It’s not hard to find examples the five classical forms of art (painting, sculpture, architecture, music, and poetry) if you know where to look. BioShock’s (2K Boston, 2007) 1940s Art Deco underwater dystopian city environment Rapture (pictured) is nothing less than visually and architecturally stunning. This opinion is reflected in the positive critical reviews that the game received; the game won Best Art Direction from IGN Awards and Best Visual Art at the Game Developers Choice Awards. As a result, BioShock is being considered for The Art of Video Games exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum.

Dead Space (Visceral Games, 2008) received positive reviews for the way developers used music to create a consistent atmosphere of suspense throughout the game  -winning the BAFTA Game Award for Best Use of Audio and Best Original Score in 2008. Flower (Thatgamecompany, 2009) earned awards for its design and its music, scooping Best Use of Audio and the Artistic Achievement award from the BAFTA Game Awards.

Video games themselves are developed with the help of artists from a wide range of media; music direction, cinematic and environment design. Game developers will produce hundreds of music tracks and pieces of concept art that may eventually find their way into the finished product. In a sense, it is an art that is made by art; video games would simply not exist in their current form if there were no artists to help developers make them.

However I don’t think video game art is limited to just its graphics and music, there is so much more to it than that. Just as some poetry, film and other works of fiction can be considered a form of art, I would make the case that a cohesive, compelling and complex story such as that found in Heavy Rain (Quantic Dream, 2010) or the Portal franchise (Valve, 2007 – 2011) could be held on a similar platform. In the words of Game designer Greg Costikyan “Storytelling is fundamental to what it is to be human.”

So yes, I would consider video games a form of art. They have many of the same qualities that what we traditionally think art has, they certainly take as long to produce and require as much effort. True, there are some games that are clearly not art, games such as I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!!1 (Independent Ska Studios, 2009) spring to mind, but just because some video games are not art does not mean the select few that are can be ignored.