Are Video games an art form of expression?

When I receive the topic for this article, I feel philosophic because I really, I had never sat down to think about this issue, but also because to me, it is an art form of expression. So, to me, it is hard to understand why exist as commonly debated topic within the entertainment industry.

According to Chris Melissinos, a director of corporate strategy for media and entertainment at Verizon, “Technology has expanded the canvas upon which artists are able to paint and tell their stories”. And if you think, the video games are truly a collision or mix of art and science. They include many forms of traditional artistic expression: such as sculpture in the form of 3D modeling, illustration, narrative arcs, and dynamic music that combine to create something that transcends anyone type.

What is more, now keep in mind that video games have been afforded legal protection as creative works by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2011. How is it possible that it even continues to generate arguments. Even when considering the contribution of expressive elements such as acting, visuals, stories, interaction, and music.

Earliest History 

We could say that the first action came in the late 1980s, when art museums began retrospective displays of then outdated first and second-generation games. In exhibitions such as the Museum of the Moving Image’s 1989 “Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade”, video games were highlighted as preformed works whose quality as art came from the intent of the curator to display them as art. And so, they continued to make more exhibitions over the years.

Professor Tiffany Holmes noted that a significant emerging trend was made video game pieces referencing or paying homage to earlier classic works like Breakout, Asteroids, Pac-Man, and Burgertime. They were doing this, modifying the code of simplistic early games or by creating art mods for more complex games like Quake, in this way, the art game genre emerged from the intersection of commercial games and contemporary digital art.

Arguments for video games as art

The philosopher Aaron Smuts argued that “by any major definition of art, many modern video games should be considered art”. In the other hand, a paper Tavinor also argues that despite ontological differences to other examples in the category, video games are a perfect example of what the philosopher Noël Carroll has referred to as “mass art”. The next writer Dominic McIver Lopes, a philosopher at the University of British Columbia, writing in a book on computer art, gives similar reasons to consider video games as a form of art, though also noting that their characteristic interactivity may mean that in comparison with established forms of art such as architecture and music, each “realizes positive aesthetic properties in its own way”. 

People who it is not agree with the premise

In doing some research to get ideas on how to develop the article, I was surprised how there were even people who were focused on proving that it was not art, as if their life depended on it. For example, the famous film critic Roger Ebert. He publicly battled against the perception of video games becoming art from 2006 to his death in 2013. In a piece on his blog titled “Video Games Can Never Be Art,” he states, “No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”

What qualifies that it is o no art?

I do not know, but for me video games fall completely under the description of art. It comes from human creativity, it shows the imagination in a visual form, which causes a reaction, either by its beauty (graphics) or emotional impact, it considers in its development a story, social context, etc. And you, what do you think?