“Is It Art?”: Checking behind the curtain

In back-to-back days at Arisia, I confronted the questions “What is interactive fiction?” and “What is art?”

caelyn and carolyn smaller

Pre-panel photo with Caelyn! We’re colorful.

In both cases, I shared the panel with Caelyn Sandel. It’s an interesting experience: I react to this kind of question by resting my elbows on the table and saying, “Well, let’s talk about that….” while she announces “THIS IS THE MOST BANAL QUESTION EVER”, even when it’s just been asked by her Choice of Games editor.

Caelyn has also been known to hide under the table. Occasionally, it feels like sharing a panel with my id. But she’s certainly not a boring panelist.

I don’t have an easy definition of interactive fiction, but I do have a yardstick. It works like this:

  • Take a game. Convert all of the graphics and sound into text.
  • Did you lose any of the gameplay experience?
  • If so, then the original game was not interactive fiction.

You may immediately notice that this is a very broad definition. To which I say:

…yes, yes it is.

But it’s a useful yardstick. I can use it to show that Tetris is not IF, that “Galatea” is, and that Mass Effect is a non-IF series containing IF sequences.

And while it can also be used to show that some unexpected things are interactive fiction (visual novels, for example), I use this particular yardstick because I have no reason to narrow the definition.

We moved rapidly off the topic of definitions at the interactive fiction panel, but definitions appeared again in “Video Games as Art” 1. And over the course of the panel, we started answering that question with another question.

“Are video games art?”
“Why do you want to know?”

The legal definition of art

William Frank (aka scifantasy) was also on the panel. He’s a lawyer specializing in intellectual property law, and he brought along a copy of the 2005 United States Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association, in which the Supreme Court declared that video games are art.

Since video games are art, this means (for the purposes of Brown v.) that the United States government cannot ban the sale of violent video games from minors. More importantly, it means that video games are protected free speech under the Constitution, which was a critical win from the perspective of the games industry.

A brief detour here – what about the ESRB? The ESRB will issue a Mature or Adult Only rating to games with extreme depictions of violence, and most merchants won’t sell those games to minors. How does that jibe with the Supreme Court decision?

The difference is that the ESRB is not a government body. Neither is the MPAA, which adminsters film ratings in the United States. In both cases, studios voluntarily submit their games for ratings, and then distributors (stores, consoles, movie theaters, etc) agree to abide by certain conduct related to those ratings. None of it is enforced by law.

The protection of art and free speech is not universal. One well-known exception is in Australia, where the laws and constitution do not include freedom of speech (with the exception of political speech). The associated governmental body is the Australian Classification Board, which is responsible for classifying films, computer games, and publications. Any media marked RC (Refused Classification) is legally banned for sale, hire, and public exhibition, with penalties ranging up to a fine of $275,000 and/or 10 years in jail.

Back in the United States, all video games are legally art. This is a good thing.

But moving out of legal territory, people often want to divide games into “games that are art” and “games that are not art”. Their approaches fall into two major categories, which are surprisingly similar upon inspection.

Approach 1: “Art” is synonymous with “good”.

A good game is art. A bad game is not art.

This is the highbrow approach. The separation of “games that are art” from “games that are not art” often involves whether or not the game has an explicit message. “Serious games” are generally considered art where other games are not.

Gone_HomeGames that are often considered art by people using this approach:
Gone Home. Depression Quest. Dear Esther. Proteus.

Games that are rarely considered art by people using this approach:
Super Mario Bros. Halo. Pokemon. Call of Duty.

Why this approach is broken:

If you can judge the artistic merit of something, then it’s already art.

And there is such a thing as bad art. This is why cakewrecks exists. This is why the Museum of Bad Art in Somerville exists. This is why the entire field of art criticism exists.

Approach 2: “Art” is synonymous with “bad”.

A good game is fun. Art is not fun. Therefore, games that are art are bad.

This is the approach most exemplified in the Steam comments section, where “trying to be art” is an insult. The separation of “games that are art” from “games that are not art” often involves whether or not the game has an explicit message. “Serious games” are generally considered art where other games are not.

NES_Super_Mario_BrosGames that are often considered art by people using this approach:
Gone Home. Depression Quest. Dear Esther. Proteus.

Games that are rarely considered art by people using this approach:
Super Mario Bros. Halo. Pokemon. Call of Duty.

Why this approach is broken:

If you can judge the artistic merit of something, then it’s already art.

I could write thousands of words about the art displayed in any of the “not art” games above. I could also write thousands of words about the art displayed in Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, or The Lies of Locke Lamora, or Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, or any album by the popular artist of your choice. Most sufficiently inspired liberal arts graduates could do the same.

Both approaches boil down to: Do I like this game?

If so, then it [is/is not] art. If not, then it [is not/is] art. And the divide is directly related to whether or not people like artistic things.

What does it mean to be artistic? It means everything that is encompassed by the two approaches above – an awareness of medium, structure, aesthetic, and context, in the eyes of the creator or the audience or both. It’s the difference between something that people want to read on the bus and something that sterotypical professors want to assign in lit class.

You may have picked up by now that I have zero interest in drawing a quality distinction between “high art” and “low art”. That’s true, in video games or any other medium. People like what they like, and they don’t like what they don’t like, and the definition of “high art” shifts every year.

The peasants shouted back at Shakespeare’s actors. Franz Liszt’s fans experienced Lisztomania about a hundred years before Beatlemania hit New York. Passage, generally considered an art game, is on display at the Museum of Modern Art – but so are Eve Online, Portal, Animal Crossing, and Minecraft.

Therefore:

“Are video games art?”
“Yes.
…Why do you want to know?”


Thank you to everyone supporting Sibyl Moon through Patreon!
If you found this post interesting, entertaining, or thought-provoking, please consider becoming a patron.


 

Notes:

  1. “Hey, you didn’t say you were going to be on this panel! What gives?”

    I didn’t know I was going to be on this panel! I walked in the door, the moderator beckoned me over, I did the cartoonish thing where I looked to see if he was waving at someone behind me (no), he asked if I wanted to be on the panel. Sure!

    This happened twice (I also got recruited for “Does the Real World Belong in Games?”) And then I went home sick, which meant I wasn’t at the Indie Expo and didn’t get to be on “Worldbuilding in Games.” My apologies to anyone looking for me in either place. By choice, I would have been there.

Bookmark the permalink.

2 Comments

  1. “Why do you want to know?” Isn’t the answer obvious? A potential player wants to know what sort of game it is so it will help them decide whether or not they want to play it.

    But personally, I have to agree that asking “it is art?” in the first place isn’t a very useful question for this purpose. If I had to list game types in order from yes-please-gimme-that to no-no-no-take-it-away, and if I wanted to know whereabouts on my preference-o-meter that a new game ranked, I’d be asking different questions than “is it art?”

  2. Some people got very offended by the suggestion that under this definition, a game like Sunless Sea wouldn’t count as IF. I feel that there’s sometimes this sense that if it’s good and it’s related/similar, then it should count as IF, but to me… I loved Sunless Sea. I think it’s a disservice to the game to zero in on only the StoryNexus parts and say that’s what really counts, the rest can go hang. And I can love multiple kinds of interconversant things, without grouping them all as one kind.

Leave a Reply to Egg Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *