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Maviz Castro

March 9, 2020

Should Video Games Be Considered an Art?

We can see art works almost everywhere in our daily lives. It could be a painting,

sculpture, photograph, music, literature, or film. But, have we even thought that video games can

be considered an art also? When the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York announced

in 2012 that they will include games like SimCity, Minecraft, Portal, and Dwarf Fortress, it

made a few people like Roger Ebert, a film critic and Jonathan Jones, an art critic argue against

the idea that video games should be considered as art. According to Merriam-Webster, art is the

conscious use of skill and imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects. Just

making an effort to make a video game alone uses a lot of skills and imagination already. Video

games should be considered as art because their foundation and social impact is almost similar to

an artwork. Video games could also emerge as a new kind of art that we just haven’t explored

yet.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, digital, graphic, performing, literature, and

architecture are the different categories of art. Each of these categories have one thing in

common and it is their foundation. These foundations are also known as the elements and

principles of art and helps an artist to improve their skills. Going back to the basics, the elements

of art are color, form, line, shape, space, and texture. The principles of art are how we use our

basic elements to create our artwork and these are rhythm, harmony, balance, contrast,

movement, pattern, proportion, and variety. Literally, all of the video games we could see, even

the old ones and the simplest one like Pac-Man, have all these foundations of an art.
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Art could also be a form of communication. An artist’s work could be a way to express

their feelings, thoughts, and observations using the foundation of art (Boundless). The same

thing goes with video games. The creator/s expresses their feelings, thoughts, and observations

through their games. As long as the player is able to understand the story behind the game, the

goal of the creator/s has been achieved. Chris Melissinos, director of corporate strategy for media

and entertainment at Verizon, stated that “If you can observe the work of another and find it in

personal connection, then art has been achieved.”

With these definitions of art that we have, Roger Ebert argued in his blog post “Video

Games Can Never Be Art” that games like chess, football, or mah-jong can also be considered

art. But the players of those games don't even think of themselves as artists. With his

counterargument to the issue, there could be other people that will second guess their perspective

on this issue. I could attest to that because my perspective on this issue to begin with is that video

games should be considered as art. He also mentioned that video games have rules and

regulations, scores, and objectives. As I continued my research, I encountered an article entitled

“Perspective on Video Game as Art” written by Jeroen Bourgonjon, Kris Rutten, and Geert

Vandermeersche, which made me stand on my perspective. Even though there is a common

saying that goes “Everything is art”, we should still assess the work with some guiding questions

to avoid confusion. Some guiding questions that could help us are “What is the aim of the artist

or game designer with this work?” or “What are the qualities of a specific work?” (Bourgonjon et

al. 4).

As I mentioned earlier that Ebert made some good counter arguments in his blog post,

one of them was that video games have rules and regulations, scores, and objectives. Same thing

goes with music and it is also considered as another category of art. In the article “Game as Art:
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The Aesthetics of Play” written by Celia Pearce, she used music as an analogy to video games

having rules and regulations, scores, and objectives. In terms of music, a score is a piece of sheet

that has musical notations in it so the player will know how to play the piece exactly how the

composer/s design it. The musical notations like key signatures, notes, clefs, bar lines, and others

serves as the rules and regulation of the piece. For example, key signature will tell us how fast or

slow the piece should be. Bar lines and clefs help us to distinguish which note we are supposed

to play. Once we are able to play the piece completely according to the music notations, we are

able to achieve the composer/s goal. For the player of the piece, they complete their objective

also.

We should not take video games so lightly and only think that it was made for the gamers

just to have fun, relax, or kill time. Yes, video games are created for those entertaining purposes,

but it could also be more than those things. All video games have their own level of difficulty

and so does music. If we keep on playing, then we are striving to improve our skills-what kind of

skills.

As we spend more of our time playing video games to improve our skills, society views it

as a negative impact for the gamers. But if we spend more time doing other forms of art, it has

more positive impact towards society. It is true that some video games could influence

someone’s mind especially a child to be violent but not only video games have those ability to

influence other people. The influence could also come from movies, books, songs, and other

forms of arts. Other art forms have a positive influence and so does video games which is why

there are some art educators who use it to teach it in an art class. In the article “Game On!

Teaching Video Games Studies in the Art Classroom” written by Stephanie Martyniuk, she

discussed how and why video games should be used to teach in an art class. She stated in her
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article that visual representation is the heart of the game which I agree on since most of the video

games have a background story to it especially role-playing games. Of course, if the game has a

story, it will always have a lesson at the end. One example that Martyniuk used for a good visual

representation is the famous game from Square Enix which is the Final Fantasy series game.

Final Fantasy VII taught us about life and death, Final Fantasy VIII which is about questioning

reality, Final Fantasy X is about understanding the religious and political power influence on

society, Final Fantasy XIII is about fate and free will, and lastly Final Fantasy XV is about

connecting love, friendship, and bonds (Martyniuk 15). With these examples, it shows us that

some video games could also teach us important moral lessons in our life even though video

games are mostly viewed by society as a negative thing to our life or it could be just for fun and

nothing else. So, if a video game has any background story to it, we should pay attention and try

to understand what the creator/s are trying to say to us.

There are also some games that are educational even though some information is still

fictional. It could be games like the Civilization series created by Sid Meier. The game is really

helpful if we’re trying to learn world history and could give us some insight on how the

overview of the world looks like. We could also learn how our livelihood developed and the

different great art works from different great artists worldwide. “Video games hold tremendous

power in their learning potential” (Martyniuk 14).

One of the reasons why Martyniuk recommended that video games should be used to

teach in an art class is that technology is also growing. So, as an art educator herself, she felt

responsible to teach the students about the developing technology. In this modern day,

technology is the one that is rapidly developing which could be the reason why we don’t notice

the development happening in the art industry.

Going back to the history of art, it was just a drawing in a cave or pyramid. Then it

evolved into different types of paintings such as realism, neoclassical, and impressionism. With

technology developing, cameras were invented then artists used it to capture photographs, then

eventually start filming. With graphics, it used to be just two-dimensional. As it evolves, three-

dimensional was created and various kinds of graphic art were made like optical illusions. With

music, it all started with just writing or speeches. Then it could be turned into a poem, then with

various sounds, music was created. Using all these developments, video games were created. In

the article “Gamer’s Piece: Video Games: A Superior Art Form” written by Alex Sferrazza, he

mentioned that video games can do something that any other art forms can’t do which is why he

titled his article “A Superior Art Form”. In the world of art, it can take our imagination

anywhere. It could be from reading books, looking at paintings, listening to music, watching a

play or a film. As we’re playing video games, our imagination will run also, and the good thing

is we can decide whatever we want to do. If we’re curious about a certain thing, we could just

simply experiment what will happen, and it will suffice our curiosity.

One thing about art also is that artists try to be realistic as they can be. Just like visual or

graphic arts, video games also started with only two-dimensional games and then it went to

three-dimensional. Afterwards, it transcended to virtual reality. The very first virtual technology

created by Morton Heilig in 1957 and it became popular mid-2010 (Proetker). Virtual reality in

video games is way beyond what we can experience in any other art forms. Using virtual reality

in video games literally makes us feel like we are the main character of the game. It feels so

surreal that we thought we are actually close to one of the non-player characters. “For the first

time in human history, stories aren’t witnessed from an outside point of view or told with the aid

of one’s imagination but rather they can be experienced firsthand” (Sferrazza 9).
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When the different types of art were just starting, some of it wasn’t accepted as art in the

first place. Today, there are a lot of things that could be considered art. Novels are widely read

by everyone, impressionism is now considered as a great artwork and photography is now

accepted as another form of art which falls under digital art yet before it was hardly considered

as art. In the article “Are Video Games Art?” written by Nick Gillespie, he mentioned that during

the 18th century, novels were commonly seen as sub-literary works mostly for female readers

and were “foolish, yet dangerous books” told by Samuel Johnson. A century later, it is widely

accepted, and everyone respects it (Gillespie 51). As for impressionism, Claude Monet was one

of the artists that practiced impressionism and received a lot of criticism. As time passed by, we

could see that impressionism is widely accepted as art and we could see it in Van Gogh painting

like the starry night. Lastly is regarding photography. According to Walter Benjamin in his

books “A Short History of Photography”, artists are usually the first one to appreciate newly

invented technologies and try to discover what can they do with it to create their artworks. Once

they discovered how to use a camera as an art medium, it wasn’t really accepted as art in the

beginning (Benjamin). So long as people keep an open mind that everything around us keeps on

developing, there will always be a new kind of innovation in every aspect of industry. Clearly,

video games have been having a hard time to be considered as art due to this controversial topic.

But like I said earlier, we should keep an open mind to every possible development and maybe

video games could be the newest kind of art form that we just never explored.

Even though there has been a lot of opposition on whether video games should be

considered as art, there is also a lot of rebuttal to it. When MoMA in New York put video games

into their exhibit, we could see that more people appreciate and consider that videogames are art

even though there are some people that are against it. It could also mean that a lot of people in
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the art industry first recognize the qualities that a videogame has for it to be called an art and that

art keeps on developing. We should just remember what an art is and the guiding questions, so

we won’t get confused about what is art and what isn’t. Video games should be considered as art

since the foundation and social impact of it are similar to art and it could also emerge as a new

form of art.
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Work Cited

Benjamin, Walter. A Short History of Photography. New Left Books, 1979.

Boundless. “Boundless Art History.” LumenLearning,courses.lumenlearning.com/

boundless-arthistory/chapter/what-is-art/#:~:text=.

Bourgonjon, Jeroen, et al. “Perspectives on Video Games as Art.” CLCWeb: Comparative

Literature and Culture, vol. 19, no. 4, Jan. 2017, doi:10.7771/1481-4374.3024.

Ebert, Roger. “Video Games Can Never Be Art: Roger Ebert's Journal: Roger Ebert.”

RogerEbert.com, www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art.

“The Arts.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 15 Feb. 2018,

www.britannica.com/topic/the-arts.

Gillespie, Nick. “Are Video Games Art?” Reason, vol. 46, no. 2, 2014, pp. 46–51.

Lilley, Ed. “Real Light on Impressionism? An Overlooked Review from 1879.” The Burlington

Magazine, vol. 149, no. 1250, May 2007, pp. 326–329.

Martyniuk, Stephanie Veronica. “Game On! —Teaching Video Game Studies in the Arts

Classroom.” Art Education, vol. 71, no. 3, 2018, pp. 14–19., doi:10.1080/0004312

5.2018.1436325.

Melissinos, Chris. “Video Games Are One of the Most Important Art Forms in History.” Time,

Time, 22 Sept. 2015, time.com/collection-post/4038820/chris-melissinos-are-video-

games-art/.

Pearce, Celia. “Games as Art: The Aesthetics of Play.” Visible Language, vol. 40, no. 1, 2006,

pp. 66–89.

Poetker, Bridget. “The Very Real History of Virtual Reality ( A Look Ahead).” G2,
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learn.g2.com/history-of-virtual-reality#:~:text=.

Sferrazza, Alex. “Gamer's Piece: Videogames: A Superior Art Form.” University Wire, 15 Apr.

2014.