Can certain video games be considered a form of art?

The past five years have brought us significant new arguments for the three decades long philosophical debate on whether video games should be considered an art form.

I want to emphasize that this is only a philosophical discussion since video games have already been afforded legal status as creative works in the vast majority of developed countries, which legally sets them side-by-side with works such as paintings, drawings, sculptures, literature, music, dance, and movies.

Most of the philosophical definitions agree that art is the expression or application of human creativity and imagination for the creation of works that are meant to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

Two to three decades ago, I would certainly be on the side of criticizers of the idea that video games are a form of art, since back then none of the video games had beautiful, artistic graphics, engaging stories, or the ability to evoke emotions other than pure amusement, excitement, or fear.

However, over the last ten years, the line between art games and indie games (games with a focus on artistic design and engaging storytelling) on one side and digital art and interactive art (such as digital images and performances that involve the participation of viewers) was becoming thinner and thinner.

I haven’t played many video games since I graduated from university, but out of those that I did, the ones from a company Telltale have made the biggest impression on me. The company started publishing its most successful titles about five years ago.

Unlike the vast majority of video games in which the focus is on the player doing something (shooting, driving, buying, building, making moves…), Telltale produces games that put a very strong focus on the story. Nothing in the game is really challenging to do, there are no set goals, points, scores, you cannot win or lose a game.

The feeling when playing their games is very similar to watching a movie – you are watching the story uncover and your interaction with the game is mostly restricted to making dialog decisions, which impact the relations between characters and gives flavor to some events within the story. Telltale stories are quite deep and evoke complex emotions, characters are very well written and voice-acted, graphics have an artistic style. Thus, it’s like watching a Disney or a Ghibli movie with which you can interact.

Despite the appearance of such games, some still challenge their artistic value because they target wide audiences instead of small niches. Excuse me, but if everyone would suddenly start to appreciate painting, should painting lose its status as an art form?

Emerging art forms depend upon existing communities for recognition and legitimization, and video games are facing suspicion from critics of established artists just as movies and comics were once doubted. I think that there are two main reasons why some people still refuse to agree that some types of video games have become art indeed: prejudice (they have tried only a couple of video games in their life and classify them all the same) and elitism (they take pride in being connoisseurs of a certain traditional art form and they want as few other people as possible to have a similar status).

If I have interested you in Telltale games, I recommend the following two issues:

1. Telltale: Game of Thrones (especially if you have seen and liked the TV show)
2. Telltale: The Walking Dead (if you don't mind some cartoon-style gore)

Please let me know:

• Do you think that some video games are works of art?
• Do you have any other reasons for or against?

Disclaimer: I don't own any rights to the images used in this article. I just found them online and wanted to share them with you.