This subject has been on my mind a lot lately, ever since completing my first round of Dead Space. I was invited to play the game by David Boyd, and was subsequently delighted with one of the most incredible gaming experiences of my life. Granted, I am not what is traditionally defined as a gamer; I don’t even own a next-gen gaming system, which is why the aforementioned game of Dead Space was played at David’s house. I provide this information because I hope that it will help you, the reader, understand that this is not some fanatical general devotion that I harbor, by any stretch of the imagination. What I’m trying to say, in so many words, is that I hold no bias toward or against video games.

I suppose that the first step, given the title of this article, is to establish some rough assemblage of what a good definition of art is. Rather than resorting to simply tossing out a canned response from an online dictionary, let’s try to get at the root of it by dissecting that which is commonly referenced as art.

I’d imagine traditional art, in the form of drawings or paintings, is probably the first image that comes to mind when asked to think of what art is. At their core, these are excellent examples of individuals transferring their creative energies into physical form via pencil, pen, or brush. Some idea or experience rests in their minds that is compelled to force its way out into the world and be transferred in some manner into the mind of another. The same can be said of sculpture, music, dance, writing, acting, and film making, just to name a few recognized outlets. These recognized artists/creators use their individual or joint talents to bring forth into the world something they believe special and worth sharing.

Now, even in these established areas of art, things can go awry. If I draw a cruddy stick figure on a napkin, I doubt the majority of people would recognize it as art. If I stuck a bicycle in the middle of a parking lot and attempted to call it a sculpture, I’m not kidding anyone. So there are boundaries. I believe that good indicators are the amounts of genuine thought and skill that are put into the creation of the final product. You need to have both of these factors lined up for something to be considered art.

So, given the above, why should video games be considered as much art as any of the previously noted forms? Let’s break down the core basics of what goes into a video game:

  • Characters/Environments - Someone has to design them. Established artists created these essential elements. Have you ever seen some of the concept art that goes into the creation of a video game’s world? Depending on the picture, without the knowledge of its ultimate purpose, you would have a hard time knowing it was for a game as opposed to a stand-alone piece of art. These are some seriously talented individuals.
  • Music - There’s someone sitting down and composing these scores. In the early days it was simple, given the relatively primitive nature of gaming systems’ sound capabilities, but regardless, someone composed that music. There are games today that have scores which rival (if not surpass) those of movies.
  • Story - What’s the point of a game if nothing happens? Perhaps games like the original Super Mario Bros. don’t have complicated plots, but there’s no denying that there’s storytelling involved in something along the lines of BioShock. In a game like that, you are basically looking at an honest-to-goodness script, no less so than for a Hollywood film.
  • Programming - You can’t just take concept art, music, and a story and throw them into a game as if it were some sort of digital blender. There’s a whole team of programmers working to bring about the presentation of those elements. They build the invisible stage upon which everything else performs.

The first three I believe explain themselves. How are these elements any different from those involved in a traditional film? If the individuals that created these aspects of a game were to do so for a movie, their status as talented creative individuals wouldn’t lie in dispute. However, since they employed their talents toward a video game, their contributions are somehow seen as being inferior to those of their Hollywood counterparts. I say hogwash to that. The medium does not in any way diminish the quality of their work. Good design is good design. Good music is good music. Good writing is good writing. It’s as simple as that.

So were are left with the odd man out: programming. This is ultimately what separates video games from movies. (Especially now that CGI has become increasingly present in the latter.) Whereas a film is completely and solidly predefined by the time it reaches a viewer, a game comes with certain unknowns. Granted, players only have as many options available to them as they are given, but game developers must strike a balance between telling a player what to do (in one manner or another) and letting them have free reign. This is all part of the art of creating a game. The skill comes in letting a player make as many decisions as possible while still providing the desired experience.

As an example, I would like to use the manner in which music is presented in Dead Space. As events happen, the score alters to reflect these changes. The simplest instance of this is the basic interaction with the game’s monsters. There are haunting notes when they stalk you, loud horns while they are attacking, and an elegant transition into the ambient music when you finally kill them. The music remains completely seamless during all of these changes. Never once do you hear one sound file stopping while another begins. To your ears, it is as if the composer knew precisely when and how long your battle would be waged. But he couldn’t have known. I could have killed the creature with two blasts of a plasma cutter or been out of ammunition and had to run, extending the length of the skirmish to well over a minute. Somewhere between the composer’s music and my ears, there is the invisible, yet genius, work of a programmer. Someone (and if I ever find out who, I will write them a love letter) put amazing amounts of effort into designing a sound engine that could dynamically compose the final music you hear as you play. It takes the beautiful compositions that would otherwise be straight sheet music and rearranges them to match the player’s experience, on the fly. Can you even begin to fathom the amount of skill it takes to do that? This is not just some no-talent hack pressing a few buttons on a computer keyboard. This is someone with real skill, putting genuine thought into the final product. One would have to understand the nature of music, be aware of the experience of it, and then (on top of all that) also have the knowledge to pull off the intended result by writing lines of code. I don’t know about you, but that’s an artist to me.

And so all these elements come together to form what we call a video game. Perhaps it is trash. There certainly are horrible games out there, a complete waste of the discs upon which they are stored. But there are also equally bad movies. That’s just the nature of art. However, there are amazing games out there. I defy anyone to come away from BioShock and not contemplate the question of where humanity sits in the shadow of industry. Sure games like this are few and far between, but so are films. And that is ultimately my bottom line: Video games are an art form, which can be executed in any countless number of ways, with varying degrees of quality. They hold the same potential for intrinsic value as any painting, film, or play. All it takes is the desire to see the possibilities. Where some see a blank canvas, another sees a sweeping landscape. Where one sees a video game console, some see an experience ready to come to life.