One Life Left - Video games as art

Warning: this article contains spoilers pertaining to the games BioShock, Braid and Limbo. But honestly they’ve all been out for more than a year, so if you haven’t played them yet you probably don’t have the intention to.

This week, I wanted to do something different — hopefully something that can become a trend. I want to use this space to discuss video games as a whole, and their place in our popular culture. I decided to start things off with one of the oldest video game-related debates right now: “Are video games considered art?” I began to think about the question more recently after a chance conversation with a particular professor of art history. I told the professor that I was writing for the Arts section in the Campus. Excited, the professor had asked me what stories I had written. When I responded with, “I write One Life Left, a video game review column,” the professor responded with a quick chuckle and said, “Oh, I don’t read that,” and left. I just laughed it off and had a desire to explore this side of gaming again.

Almost exactly one year ago, renowned film critic Robert Ebert expressed his opinions on the medium of video games, claiming, “Video games can never be art,” as he picked away at video game producer Kelle Santiago’s side of the argument that she gave during a TED talk.

I’m not here to discuss why I believe Ebert is wrong; I just want to throw in my two cents. Personally, I do believe video games to be art, and they should at least be acknowledged by the general public. But I know this is much easier said than done. I guess this all stems back to what a proper definition of “art” is. I feel that art is such an expansive realm of raw human expression that it is impossible to limit it to any few actions or words. But for the sake of clarity, I feel I would have to point back to the definition of art given by Scott McCloud, author of Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art, in 1993: “Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn’t grow out of either of our species’ two basic instincts: survival and reproduction.” Obviously this is not a perfect definition, but it is the one that resonates most with me.

Video games allow the player to enter a world that could otherwise not be reached. They allow the player to take control of their immediate environment, and depending on the game, allow players to forge their own paths while following an interesting narrative. Video games are capable of storytelling techniques that other mediums, such as literature or film, are just not able to achieve because of their limitations. A prime example of this is BioShock. In BioShock, the player is thrust into an Atlas Shrugged-inspired underwater utopia called “Rapture” where absolute freedom reigns in all realms, from education to scientific development. Of course, by the time you arrive, the entire place has gone to hell. You find a radio and get in contact with Atlas, a man who is just trying to find his family and escape Rapture. He gives you a series of mission objectives that the player completes to progress through the game (always asking you with a “Would you kindly…?”) Once you meet with the city’s founder, Andrew Ryan (who is assumed to be the game’s antagonist), you find out that Atlas had been manipulating you the entire time à la Manchurian Candidate (the phrase that activated his control over you was “would you kindly”). As Andrew Ryan lectures you about the nature of free will, he forces you to kill him with his golf club. As the player is forced to slowly beat him to death, Andrew Ryan only repeats the phrase, “A man chooses, a slave obeys.”

While this may not seem impressive on paper, this moment shook me to my very core. After the scene ended I had to stop playing and go reflect about what had just happened and what it meant to my entire life. For the first time ever I had asked myself, “Who really is in control?” How can something that summoned such a powerful emotional response for me not be art?

Even if we set storytelling aside for a bit, video games are to art mediums as mashups are to music. They’re both collaborations. Video games use visual design for almost every aspect of the game. Level design, set pieces, character models, enemy design and even the more “technical” aspects of a game (health bars, radar, etc.) take artistic prowess to master.

Moving away from the visual and onto to the audio, video games use music to set and/or enhance the mood. It is no longer a rare occurrence for a game to have a full orchestral score. Just look at all the Halo games. There is also the sound design within the game itself. A “witch” enemy in Left 4 Dead cries in a manner that is intrinsically creepy, but at the same time, the sound allows us to infer that these creatures were once human. In addition, the overwhelming explosions and gunfire of the Call of Duty games can elicit tension within the player, among many other examples. Even the distinct lack of music can also be an artistic choice, such as in Limbo, where the only thing the player hears is the character’s footsteps and the rain falling around him to create a sense of hopeless loneliness.

Video games are a collage of almost every major field of artistic expression. In this way, how can they not be art? But that’s not to say the medium isn’t without its garbage. Sure, if one focuses on the moral panic that the media likes to paint video games under with headlines such as “SexxxBox” and “Level in Call of Duty causes airport bombing,” I can see why those who have never been exposed to them can think otherwise. Like any other medium, it has its fair share of trash. But would you seriously consider someone’s opinion about literature as a whole when you know for a fact the only books they’ve ever read are those thick “erotic” romance novels one finds on standees in super markets? I sincerely hope not.

Interestingly enough, the Smithsonian Institute is actually preparing a new major exhibit entitled “The Art of Video Games” that will explore the medium and its various evolutions in the last 40 years. It is set to open March 16, 2012 at the American Art Museum. Surely this will be an accessible way for the general public to get a first glimpse to the world of gaming.

I finish my little spiel with a quote by Penny Arcade author Jerry Holkins: “If one hundred artists are creating art for five years, how can the result not be art?”