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Video Games are Art on Par with Motion Pictures.

According to Pro, films and video games have to meet three criteria to be considred "art": aesthetic appeal, a coherent plot, and philosophical depth. Pro's case 1. The game Journey may be beautiful according to some people, but I doubt artists would find it beautiful, or art historians, or art scholars. When Pro claims it is "as beautiful" as Malick's The Tree of Life, Pro is making an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary proof. A quick look at revies of Malick's film shows that it is considered by artists, art critics, art historians, curators, public intellectuals, in short, anyone qualified to make the claim that it is art. Who says Journey is beautiful (no claim of it being art yet)? Pro cites Entertainment Weekly, IGN, and various video game companies. But that is hardly a sign of beauty, as these sources are not authorities on the matter. In fact, these sources are entertainment sources, suggesting Journey is entertainment, not art. Beautiful entertainment, but entertainment nonetheless. Pro claims the Smithsonian held an exhibit on early video games. This tells us that, as a historical phenomenon, video games are art. As a historical fact, many things are considered art that ordinarily are not considered art. You can go to museums and plausibly find the Throne chair of some medieval king. Is that chair art? You can rest assured it was never intended to be art. Hence the question: are video games art in and of themselves? Pro provides no evidence as such. Moreover, Pro provides no reason to think beauty is necessary. For example, atonal music is considered modernist art, but atonal music is clearly not "beautiful." Saying video games are beautiful does not mean they are art. 2. Coherence is a not a factor in determining whether something is a work of art or not. Many of the greatest works of art, including literary, filmic, visual, and musical, are not coherent or representational. In other words, they don't tell a story, they don't represent or mirror reality in any way. Jackson Pollock's paintings are fully abstract. Examples of art films without a coherent plot include David Lynch's Inland Empire or Godard's Weekend. Many of the greatest films are non-linear, telling a story without spatial or temporal coherence. There are more radical examples, such as the films of Stan Brakhage, that eschew narrative altogether. 3. I agree that Bioshock is one of the truly great games ever made, but does this mean it is on par with Fellini's 8 1/2 or Godard's Breathless as art? Well, the game offers various moral decisions, which force the player to undergo various moral reflections. But does this make the game art? Vladimir Nabokov, the writer of Lolita, one of the greatest aesthetic works of fiction in the 20th century, stated that art is about pure aesthetic sensation, not moral reflection or philosophical pedagogy. Gilles Deleuze, french philosopher, wrote a book called "Logic of Sensation" in which he argues that art is affective or aesthetically conceptual, but not moral or philosophical. What is art? Kant argues that the aesthetic faculties are set in motion when confronted with beauty, say that of a flower. He called the motion of the falcuties "free play," and it was a persistent free play that Kant relates with the aesthetic. Per Pro's definition in Round 1, art is two things: the expression or communication of emotions/ideas, and the reader's aesthetic reception. There is a theory (reader-response theory) that says the meaning of all art lies in the viewer, because without the viewer, the art does not in actuality manifest itself phenomenlogically. In the case of a game, the game does not exist without the gamer assuming the guise of a player-character. The player-character is the player's fictional proxy in the world of the game, allowing them to perceive facts and to perform actions in the game-world. Games require players interact with the world itself. Whereas art can be the passive reception of affect or concept, games require players to interact actively. This is a good thing, because it makes games what they are: fun. But it makes games less artistic, in that it requires the viewer to engage it before the game can affect the viewer. It requires commitment, which is not required by art. Art allows indifference as an aesthetic response, games do not. What are video games? According to recent scholarship, games are formal systems of rules and objectives set within a framework of behavioral norms. Gameplay is determined by specific rules, objectives, and norms, which are, in the best games, brought together in a formal interactive fiction. Bioshock is an excellent example of a game, offering space for players to move and kill mutants with weapons. The objective is to kill Andrew Ryan and escape Rapture. The gameplay involves competition with a number of computer controlled opponents. If all the fictive elements are stripped away, the game would not be a game. Likewise, if all the gameplay mechanics were stripped away, it would also not be a game. So the key factors in a game are the interactive fiction, and the formal system of rules. Video games are not art Why are video games, as a medium, not art? Because art has nothing to do with formal systems of rules and objectives or with a framework for interactive fiction. Do you know what a formal system of rules, objectives, and interactive fiction sounds like? Two things: langauge and life. There is a long history of art, tracing its relation to life, going all the way back to Plato. Plato censors art from the ideal city because art is one step removed from life, and therefore, two steps removed from truth. Consider: video games offer a formal system which can be populated by aesthetic objects, but populating a formal system with aesthetic objects does not automatically make it art. For example, consider a film about Picasso, and the film is filled with representations of Picasso's artworks. The film captures in one scene Picass's Guernica, a work of art shown in museums Does this automatically make the film art? No. Representing art objects within a formal system does not make something art. This brings me to my next point: Is a language art? Video games are like a langauge, providing a logical system in which players can move around and do things. People can create art with langauge, but language itself is not a work of art. Poets create art with words, but language, their medium of communication, is just that, a medium of communication. Video games, as an interactive formal system, is a medium that provides the possibility of creating art. Video games are a medium of communication. This means video games do not actually communicate or express anything themselves. They provide a framework, a formal system, in which players can express or communicate things. But the game itself? Does it communicate anything? Consider Chess. No one would consider Chess, as a game itself, a work of art. But players who play amazing chess games, and create incredibly aesthetic tactical and strategic combinations and moves, are considered artful. Hence, I want to emphasize the distinction in games between the game itself, Bioshock, and the way players play the game: the player's use of the game as a formal system. It is possible that a player use a game artfully to create an artful trajectory through the game, but the game itself is not generally considered a work of art. Video games and films Does the existence of games like Bioshock, aesthetic and philosophical in content, make some games art? This would amount to the following argument: because games have aesthetic fictions (which is to say, they contain aesthetic objects) they are art. No, as my example of a film populated with aesthetic objects already showed, representing aesthetic objects does not make something art. Hence, just because games have aesthetic features, beautiful environments, or interesting moral or philosophical concepts, does not make the game art. Out of time...