What is Meant By Games-As-Art, and What is the Ontological Geek Really Trying To Do?
When I first started the Ontological Geek, I was looking for a quick way to summarize what this website was about. “It’s a games-criticism blog,” is pretty accurate, I suppose, but what I wanted to convey was that mostly, this website is less invested in whether or not a game is fun (though we like fun, don’t get me wrong), and more invested in whether or not a game is good art, and “games-criticism” didn’t quite convey that for me. I settled on “games-as-art,” and I realized the other day that I’d done a bad thing by not properly defining my terms.
Games-as-art as a phrase is hardly unique to me, but when I first used it, I was thinking of the way philosophers use the Latin word qua. Qua literally translates to “as,” but it’s used in philosophical (and other academic) circles in a slightly more specific manner. Qua, in philosophy, means something more like “in the capacity of,” such that to talk about a chair qua chair is to talk about how a particular chair functions in the capacity of chairness. Thus, to talk about games qua art is to talk about how games function as art– to talk about a particular game qua art is to put aside how it functions as entertainment or escapism, and talk entirely about how it works as art. So when I talk about “games-as-art,” that’s effectively what I mean. I left out the Latin because I figured we were already approaching dangerously high levels of pretension as it was.
Thus, to talk about games-as-art is to talk about games through a filter– a filter which emphasizes games’ artistic qualities and downplays their other qualities. This is why when I talk about Gears of War 2 through the lens of games-as-art, I tend to speak very harshly of it even though it’s one of my favorite games.
This is because there are plenty of other lenses one could use. One can talk about games-as-games, and focus entirely on the functionality of their mechanics and ease of use. One can talk about games-as-rhetorical-devices, and focus on games’ unique abilities to communicate ideas through processes. One can talk about games-as-fun, and focus entirely on how much people tend to enjoy a game. One can talk about games-as-cultural-artifacts, or games-as-microcosms-of-reality or any number of other things.
While I said above that to talk about games-as-art is to talk entirely about how games work as art, the barriers between these lenses are a little vague. Art is frequently rhetorical, and is usually supposed to be at least a little bit of fun, etc. Further, no one of these lenses is the “right way” to look at games. Games are all of these things. But what primarily interests me (though I’m interested in all of the above) is games-as-art, so that’s mostly what we talk about here.
So, what is it to talk about games-as-art? It is to look at games and look for experiences of beauty, for social commentary, or for ideas about the nature of the world. It is to come to games without preconceptions– not “this is what I want to play,” but “what do the artists want to show me?” It is to engage seriously with the ideas behind every facet of gameplay, and generally to evaluate them with criteria similar to those that define the Meaningful Game.
The idea behind the Ontological Geek is that it is a place for people to engage in serious, in-depth, intellectual discussion about video games, while still hopefully remaining legible to the layperson. The questions we want to address here are “How do games work as art?” and “How can we make them better art?”
But those questions, however valuable, raise another question that we have to address before we can deal with them.
Why Do We Care if Games Are Art?
One of the first things you’ll see in any forum discussion about games-as-art is a post questioning why we even care. Why does this matter? Why are we so worked about it? Why does it matter what a bunch of non-gamers think about video games? Can’t games just be fun and still worthwhile without also being some sort of pretentious, “art?”
There are a number of answers to this question, and like most questions, there are normative and descriptive answers. Why folks like me and Matt do, descriptively, care about games-as-art may not be the same as why we should, normatively, do so. So I’ll attempt to give two descriptive answers for why a lot of people probably do care, and then move on to at least one good reason why we should care.
Answer One: We Seek Societal Legitimacy
One of the first reasons many gamers are so quick to leap to the defense of games-as-art is that we feel a psychological need to justify our behavior as somehow mature, worthwhile, and, perhaps most importantly, adult. As the phrase “video games” still, in many folks’ minds, means “childrens’ toys,” those of us who are adult gamers want to distance ourselves away from the image of childishness.
Many of us gamers spend a great deal of time playing video games, and we are not just 15-year-old layabouts or basement-dwelling college dropouts, either. Plenty of happily married mid-30s folks with respectable jobs and 2.3 children play a lot of video games in their spare time, and no one wants to be seen as the weirdo who still plays with toys. We seek legitimacy, the ability to say “I’m a gamer” without being shunned, and so we argue that games aren’t simply toys or entertainment, they are art.
If video games are art, then by playing 25 hours a week of World of Warcraft, I am not just screwing around or playing with imaginary friends. I am engaged in artistic activity. In fact, you should be impressed, just as if I spent 25 hours a week reading literature, or 25 hours a week going to art shows. If games are art, we feel that our behavior, our hobby and our lifestyle can be somehow legitimized.
This is silly and dishonest. Games don’t have to be art to be worthwhile. Plenty of art isn’t very worthwhile, and plenty of games that don’t much seem to be art are still widely regarded as excellent uses of one’s time. Furthermore, the same person who disapproves of your 25-hour part-time job playing World of Warcraft isn’t likely to be impressed by the distinction. He or she would probably find you “weird” if you spent 25 hours a week reading high literature, too. An argument for games’ legitimacy as valuable and worthwhile expenses of time and money does not require that games can be art, and the two discussions ought to be kept wholly separate.
Answer Two: We Want to be Different From Those People
The blood of a great many pixels has been spilled of late to power discussion surrounding the term “gamer.” Some folks think the term should go away, arguing that it serves as an artificial line dividing “normal people,” from “gamers,” and these folks argue that the word perpetuates negative stereotypes about people who play games. The stereotype to which they refer is that of the socially-inept, violent, aggressive, younger guy who does naught but play video games all day, who will never amount to anything or contribute anything to society.
There are many of us who play a lot of video games who would really prefer not to be associated with that stereotype, the more so because there are a lot of very vocal people who seem to fit it to a T. Anyone who has ever spent much time on the Internet or in an actual online game, knows that there are a myriad of obnoxious, foul-mouthed, apparently violently racist and/or homophobic and/or sexist folks out there that call themselves gamers. These are the sorts of folks that threatened Courtney Stanton’s life when she went after Penny Arcade, the sort of folks that have gamertags like xXl337FagKillerXx. These are the sorts of folks that try as hard as they can to alienate and harass every single other person in the chatroom or server.
And those of us who aren’t that obnoxious really, really, really want nothing to do with them.
So, we try to use every tool at our disposal to draw a line between us and those people. We try to get rid of the word “gamer.” We try to create places for intelligent discourse of games, where rampant trolling and hate speech isn’t allowed. We try to openly and vocally behave like decent human beings. And we try to use games-as-art to act as a dividing line.
See, xX1337FagKillerXx up there isn’t terribly likely to care about games-as-art. He plays games for any number of reasons, but they usually are more about dominance or aggression or escapism, and not so much about mature narrative or beauty. So, we try to talk about games-as-art to draw a line in the sand, and to hopefully identify ourselves as the sort of people who care about that sort of thing. We’re mandarins, we say, as we sip Chardonnay, read sections of Dostoyevsky and then play BioShock. We play games as art, not as entertainment.
This is understandable. But there are two problems with this: in the first place, the way to deal with xXL337FagKillerXx is to ban him from your forums and ignore him when you can’t do that. Actively trying to wall off an area for him and his ilk is bad because there is simply no place where behaving like a childish brat is acceptable. This leads me to the second problem: there is nothing wrong with playing games for reasons other than their artistic merit.
To suggest that the smart people play games-as-art is to suggest that only the imbeciles play games-as-entertainment or games-as-whatever, which is a problem, because there’s nothing wrong with playing games for entertainment purposes. The same person who can truly understand and appreciate the complex narrative of Torment or the philosophical questions raised by BioShock can also really enjoy playing a round of Super Smash Brothers or Gears of War. And that’s how it should be, for the same reason that a real cinephile can truly appreciate the great works of film while still enjoying a good old summer blockbuster. To draw random lines in the sand is pointless and more than a little elitist. The point about games-as-art is not that it gives mature gamers something to talk about, it’s that games can be art.
Answer Three: We Want To Experience Better Art
We ought to care about games-as-art not so we can feel better about ourselves or disassociate ourselves from reprobates, but so we can foster the development and growth of a new artistic medium.
Stripped of all the criticism, all the fandom, all the sociological studies, art is beautiful, fascinating, and worth our time. We want to experience art, and to encourage its creation and development. We should care about societal recognition of games-as-art because it will allow game-developers the resources and respectability necessary to produce truly great works of art. The development of art does not happen in a vacuum, and the development of video games tends to be very, very expensive.
It is very hard to convince a company to sink an extra $5 million into a game to make it better art unless there is good reason to believe that the community cares about the quality of a game’s art. This isn’t selfishness or vice or greed, it’s perfectly reasonable. The best way to show companies and artists that we want them to make more and better art is by talking about games-as-art.
Art needs criticism and discussion to flourish. Some have suggested that the whole purpose of art is the changes it makes in the observer, the discussions that it engenders between friends and colleagues. So, why should we keep caring about video games as art? Why should we talk about them so much?
Because we want to encourage the artists to make better works of art. Because we want to experience good art. Because we have seen in video games the opportunity for new and exciting ways to communicate beauty and enrich our knowledge of the human condition.
Conclusion
Games can be art, and discussion of games-as-art will help both the medium and ourselves. If we criticize, poke, prod, investigate, talk about and think about games, we will help the medium develop, help it flourish and grow into something truly wonderful and truly respectable. This, in turn, will allow us to experience better and better art, enriching our own lives and making us better people.