Games as art?

This began as a rambling comment to nobody’s post on games as art, which I decided to cut short so I could share my ideas with the rest of you. I’m not sure where it’s going, so hang on.

I think the main divergence of opinion is how to define Art. nobody’s definition seems to hinge on a monodirectional transmission of ideas:

Art is that stuff that hangs on the walls of capital ‘G’ Galleries (and the small ‘g’ galleries too), when it’s outdoors it’s either a sculpture or an “installation”. People can perform art but they’re not actors. Art can be comics, anime, drawings, paintings and bits of tummy fluff stuck to a wall. It can be made, found and discovered.

Myself, I prefer a broader definition of art. I’ll start by lifting this little gem from the Wikipedia entry on Aesthetics:

The main recent sense of the word “art” is roughly as an abbreviation for creative art or “fine art.” Here we mean that skill is being used to express the artist’s creativity, or to engage the audience’s aesthetic sensibilities, or to draw the audience towards consideration of the “finer” things. Often, if the skill is being used in a functional object, people will consider it a craft instead of art, a suggestion which is highly disputed by many Contemporary Craft thinkers. Likewise, if the skill is being used in a commercial or industrial way it may be considered design instead of art, or contrariwise these may be defended as art forms, perhaps called applied art. Some thinkers, for instance, have argued that the difference between fine art and applied art has more to do with the actual function of the object than any clear definitional difference. Art usually implies no function other than to convey or communicate an idea.

Art is about communicating ideas. While many may view this transmission as a one-way street, I don’t think that this is necessarily the case. Performance is art: music, acting, recitation can all be performed live and (at least in my opinion as somebody who has been both performer and audience) is much richer for the often subtle interplay between audience reaction (and even participation) and the performance.

Which leads me to games. Games are an interactive medium. We are presented with a goal (it may be as concrete as “Save the princess” or as ephemeral as “Manage the lives of your Sims”), and boundaries within which we must operate. The key here is that the onus is on the player to make things happen. Inaction itself is still an action, and it has consequences.

In this context, there is no reason that games cannot convey a meaning or message. Plot, game mechanic, and the outcome of choices made within the context of the boundaries of the game can easily convey a message intended for us by game designers.

One great example of this is Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic II. The most compelling thing about this game is the plot. It is heavily driven by the choices of all the characters in it, from the party members (and not just the main character) to the ones in the preceding game. It stands out as an amazing exploration of the near collapse of society due to inaction of an elite few who had the power (and responsibility) to intervene in a very costly war. Planets, societies, families and individuals were ruined, and the efforts to regenerate the galaxy are not going well. As the main character searches for his identity, he learns that he contributed personally to this mess, and how he handles this responsibility has a direct impact on the rest of the galaxy around him.

How is that not a communication of an idea? It’s done through setting, scene, dialogue and action much like a novel, movie or play, but I don’t think that its artistic merit should be dismissed simply because it’s a video game.