Are Video Games Art?

In a recent blog post, Roger Ebert declares that video games can never be art. Now, I like Ebert, and while I don't always agree with his opinions, I do find his thinking on film to be interesting. This would be one of the times where I have to disagree.

Not only can games be art, but I'd argue that there's been art in video games for quite some time. Go back to some of the classic arcade games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong, both very simple games, but how can you deny the artistry of the design. What about a puzzle game like Tetris, it took a great deal of imagination to create something that addictive. Is archetecture an art? I would say so, and I would argue that game design, both of the video and board/card variety is similarly an art.

I suppose we start to get into the bigger question of 'What is art?' here. Ebert seems to favor a more restrictive definition derived from the Greeks and influenced, I think, by auteur theory. I've always kind of thought auteur theory was bullshit, but that's a longer discussion for another time. At the same time, I have to admit that my definition of art might come across as a bit of a cop out, it's something akin to the old saw about pornography "I can't define it, but I know it when I see." So, while I'm forced to admit that Ebert's perspective, which makes his claim completely understandable, is a more mature and thoughtful conception of art, I can't help but find it a bit too inflexible for my tastes.

So far, I've only been discussing the art found in the mechanics of games. Some games today have strong stories to go along with the game mechanics. Ebert suggests that games that tell stories are no longer really games. This seems like a semantic hand-wave to dismiss counter examples to his argument without actually evaluating them. I would use the examples of the Mass Effect games. Both games have very strong stories, to the extent that I found that they elicited an emotional response (admittedly, I'm a pretty easy mark for emotional manipulation), which to me would seem to be a mark of art. And yet, I don't think that you can argue that they are games. The decisions made by players affect how the story unfolds, and it is certainly possible to "lose" the game by dying (though you are allowed to go back to the last save point).

So, are games art? I'd say yes, but ultimately it is probably more a question of semantics than anything else and as such has no definitive answer.