Games as Artforms

By BloxMaster

I’d like to quickly state that this is my first ‘article’ and it’s a bit of a departure from SiamJai’s articles so I’d like to say that if you are not into intellectual or opinional essays, some of my articles might not be for you, and you have my permission to skip them freely.

There are people who like to play games, and then there are those who like games as an art form. Naturally, you can be somewhere in-between. I think sometimes people get confused as to what people actually mean when they say ‘Games as an art form’. What does it mean? Why are games art? Do they have to have nice graphics to be artsy? And most of all, should I really care if games are an art-form? Let me explain it from my point of view.

Firstly, the expression ‘games as an art form’ indicates that like more typically thought of art forms, games are also art. The most basic answer I can give to express that games are art in the same way music can be art, or a painting, is that in nearly all cases, a game is made with an expression in mind. This is similar to how one may make a drawing for a friend as an expression of their bond; someone can make a game to express many things as well.

Game: a collection of art forms
If you want to go further, I would argue that games are actually a large collection of art forms. They can be one of the most elaborate pieces of art. In addition to this, they are actively enjoyed by many people. They are rare in that they engage with viewer, in this case, a player. Although from the outside games may or may not seem like art, when you pull them apart, you can understand why most of them are in fact art.

Art in the visuals
Many games have amazing graphics these days. With the power of graphical processing units on the rise, this makes it quite clear that amazing visuals are here to stay. Every detail in every area of your game was made by a graphic artist. And they were aiming for a certain expression with that art.

Let’s take two examples. An old 8bit game (think Super Nintendo) has very primitive graphics. The artist was limited by not only size of each graphic, but also the color and placement of these on the screen. The reality is that although some may think such graphics are primitive, and perhaps they are by a literal technical term, they are still art. The artist used to be limited by the palette given to them (quite literally), but they managed to make art that conveyed an expression, a feeling. You should be able to tell just by the way the coloring is used; it is a happy mood, a sad mood or even a scary mood? Another example can be any “next gen” First Person Shooter-type game. Even if you haven’t played one, you probably know what they look like. The graphics might be dirty or dark, and the overall style may be menacing. The ability for artists to express this has improved, but the effect has remained just as powerful.

Art in the sound
But I don’t think art expression stops there in games. Sound is just as important as any amount of graphics. And like graphics, the ability to make better sound has grown, but the overall tone and feeling you get from the sounds remains universal. Everyone can recognize the happy-go-lucky tune of the Mario brothers, just to make an obvious example. A composer (or in those olden days, a ‘sound programmer’) made this tune to express a certain mood for the game. Nearly all games have sound, but sometimes in a few games there’s a noticeable lack of sound. These moments are also just as powerful, usually used for suspense.

There’s the two major senses used for understanding art: Sight and hearing. But I truly think that if you dig a little deeper there’s even more to games.  All of the text in the game, which while visually displayed, is of course, a lot like a book. It is not for pleasing the eye, it is for intellectual stimulation. It usually tells a story. And once again, someone made that story like a book; to convey emotions and thoughts as an expression. There are some games that actually have minimal text, relying only on the setting or small bits of dialog to tell the story.

Art in the code
And then there’s something to be said about the technical side of things. Someone had to design all (or at least many) of these things to work together in a playable form. Although the expression itself for the code is probably only to make all the other expressions work flawlessly, I find this in itself a work of art. Similar to how a building’s structure is merely made to keep it from collapsing, the entire code of a game is also used for the same purpose. While you can say that unlike a building’s structure, which we can see clearly in some form, you cannot see a game’s code, I disagree. Bugs, glitches, errors. They give you insight as to how good the structure of the code is. In most games you can’t see it at all, and I find that an indication that it was very well made.

This, I think, is what people might mean when they try to explain why games are art-forms. Like all art, some are better than others, and for completely various reasons. It doesn’t mean they have good graphics, or a nice story (although it could!). It’s really about the amazing amount of expressions put into one piece of media.

Art or not: in the eye of the beholder
To wrap up, whether you need to care if games are art or not is up to the individual. You don’t have to think about the technical aspects of a game anymore than you do about how this brush-stroke on a painting makes it look calming. If you like games just so you can play them, there’s no harm in that. Movies are pieces of art too, but many people just watch them as a form of entertainment, and that’s part of the reason they exist. Games are no exception. So I don’t think there’s any right or wrong on how you think about games, or any other art-form. What’s important to remember with nearly everything is that it probably has some artistic value. Many people speak out about a game being terrible without realizing that it has artistic value; and this offends the developers. If you focus on the graphics or the gameplay alone as your enjoyment, you may miss out on the amount of hard work in other areas. So remember that games are an art-form and that you might be surprised if you think about the expression and work that went into it.