On Games & Art

There's a statement I keep seeing, which I would very much like to dissect:

"Games are art."

I find it fascinating, because "games are art" is a false statement, but also "games are art" isn't what people actually mean when they say "games are art," and the (true) statement they actually mean isn't as benevolent as they intend it to be. So let's unpack all that.

Let's start with the approximate intent of the statement. Generally, it's a response to a perceived slight against the intrinsic value of one or more games; the speaker stands up in defense of the medium to assert its value by calling it "art." There are two very important assumptions here.

First, this response is built on the idea that the way to establish that a game has value is for it to be art. In other words, "art" has intrinsic value, but "game" does not. The speaker makes no attempt to justify the value of art; they assume that art's value is a given, that any person listening knows that if something is art, then it has worth. But they do bother to justify the game, and do so by associating it with art. They presume that being a game doesn't give it value intrinsically, it only has value because it's art—in other words, a game's worth is dependent on its artistry.

Second—and this highlights a problem with the first—the speaker is only referring to certain types of games. They're thinking of video games. They're thinking of tabletop games. They're not thinking of hopscotch. They're not thinking of "I bet I could hit that tree with this rock from way over here." They're thinking of products. They're thinking of objects. They're only talking about games which you can behold without playing. They're only talking about games you can possess. The kinds of games where you might say, "Oh, I have that one!" when it's mentioned, and not the kinds of games where that statement wouldn't make sense.

A "game," in the truest sense, is a set of rules. It establishes an objective ("go there," "be first," "touch that," etc), provides one or more obstacles ("your opponent tries to do it first," "it's hard to do this on one leg," etc), and specifies limits to how you can go about overcoming those obstacles to reach your goal ("you have to stay behind this line," "you can only move forward and jump," etc). A game need not be an object, or bundle of objects, or digital object. A game is its rules, and gameplay is the recreational enactment of those rules. But when people say "games are art," they only mean the games that are integrated into objects. These game-objects are the only things being called "art," while non-object games are left out of that assertion of value.

In other words, when people say "games are art," what they mean is that a piece of artistic media does not cease being art when you also integrate a game into it. Doesn't sound quite so complimentary toward games when you put it like that, does it?

I can point to a wood carving and say "this is art," and be correct. But to extrapolate from there that "wood is art" would be obviously wrong. That's not a defense of wood's value, it's a diminishment of wood's value. It fails to comprehend the worth of a tree as something with a whole existence independent of art, reducing it to only the use we can get out of it for artistic purposes.

It's the same with games. Games are a foundational aspect of the human experience, whether we involve art or not. Games are not art. Games can be repurposed for art, but art is not their nature, nor do they depend on art for their own value. Games have worth because they're games.

But that's not the point of this blog post. That's the preamble.

While it's true that one effect of the "games are art" error is the devaluing of the kinds of games it's not talking about, it also has the effect of degrading our discussions of the game-objects that are art. In other words, it's impossible to properly discuss—productively, intelligently discuss—these artistic game-objects if we don't even know the difference between games and art, or if we only place value on one half of what they are.

Consider two video games: Disco Elysium, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV—Turtles In Time. I haven't played DE, but I've heard that it's really, really good. I have played TMNT4, and thus know first-hand that it is also really, really good. So we have two video games that are both very good, but they're also very different.

TMNT4 is a side-scrolling beat-em-up, so you won't be surprised that it's more play-focused than art-focused. You've already read more words in this blog post than exist in the entire game, and the extent of the narrative is "beat up Shredder because he stole the Statue of Liberty." That's not to say it's not art at all—consider how different it might feel if you replaced the turtles and goons with various other parties in conflict—but artistry isn't the main thing making it a good game. The actual game part, the gameplay, is highly compelling and satisfying. TMNT4 takes less than half an hour to finish and there's nothing to unlock or collect on additional playthroughs, but it's still something worth replaying just for the experience of it.

Meanwhile, Disco Elysium is famous for its artistry. Even without having played it, I've absorbed from nerd osmosis that its strength is in its writing: narrative, character dialogue, and so forth. I've seen people call it life-changing. Ironically, I have no idea what kind of actual game it is. For all the people I've seen praise it, none of them have talked about it in ways from which I can infer the nature of gameplay. If I'd heard slightly less about it, I could have mistaken it for a movie or TV series. If you modded the game to blank all the dialogue, I suspect it wouldn't be worth playing anymore (whereas if you did the same to TMNT4 you'd barely notice the difference).

The two objects could hardly be more different from each other, yet the main way we think of them both is that they're "good games," and that seems wildly insufficient to me. It gets worse when someone's tastes heavily favor one or the other: someone who likes playing games but is indifferent to narrative art might be (I presume?) disappointed with Disco Elysium, while someone with little interest in gameplay but a passion for narrative art will be equally disappointed with TMNT4.

"Games are art" becomes a problem here. It frames artistry—the arena in which DE excels—as being the source of worth, as being the point of game-objects as a medium. "Games are art" would (very wrongly) assert that Disco Elysium is a better game than TMNT4, rather than just a very different one, simply because DE is more artistically strong. This is unacceptable, because games have intrinsic human worth as games, whether there's artistry involved or not. "Games are art" functionally (if not consciously) denies this fact.

To be clear, this devaluing of game-ness isn't just theoretical; it has practical consequences as well. For example, I don't have a ton of money, but I occasionally find myself with a bit of discretionary funds and think of buying a new video game. Unfortunately, my Switch is now filled with games I never play anymore, because I would buy something that was highly praised as a "good game" and discover that what they really meant was that it was good art, and failed to inform me—and perhaps didn't even realize themselves—that it was a bad game. I've basically stopped buying games on recommendations or reviews because this happens so consistently.

I've often said on social media that gaming spaces are increasingly filled with people who "don't actually like playing games," and this is what I mean. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with someone having little or no interest in actual gameplay, nor anything wrong with such a person liking a game-object primarily for its artistry, nor anything wrong with us sharing such an object's fandom despite opposite interests.

But better communication, better comprehension, will make us better neighbors in these spaces.

I'm happy to share the TTRPG space with the folks who repurpose them for improv theater, but I do need them to stop telling me that my own (literal) roleplay-gaming is actually just a primitive attempt at their collaborative storytelling. I don't need my fellow Pokémon fans to enjoy the old-school, attrition-based JRPG gameplay of Red/Blue, but I do need them to stop telling me that all the changes since then are just quality-of-life improvements on what's otherwise the same play experience. I don't need publishers to make every game to my own tastes, but I do need there to be a way to tell how much game is in their game before I buy it.

I could keep going and going on this forever, but at some point I'm just making the argument for the value of good communication, which for any given reader is either unnecessary or hopeless, so I'll not belabor the point. In any case, this post is long enough as it is.

So yeah, games and art are two separate things. The main way many of us engage with games is through objects that are simultaneously games and art, but we do a disservice to games when we fail to differentiate the two. 

Games matter.

Thanks for reading.