Are Video Games Art?

This is the central question of this blog, as well as for world's game critics, journalists, producers and developers. These people have built their careers around the biggest entertainment business out there. But the casual relationship between art and entertainment continues to blur thanks to online distribution, filesharing, dying models of journalism, and other factors that have pushed the world into a severely liminal information age. So the most obvious question, when asking if video games should be considered part of 'the arts' after so much has already been declared art, is 'why not'?

And that is why I am starting this blog. My earliest memories are of watching my older brother play video games. I remember the insane rituals my twin brother and I invented to grant my brother success in his quest to slay Ganon. Whether it was standing on our heads in deadly silence or singing the repetitive, inspirational chants, video games have always been an interactive affair for those with and without the controller), grand adventures played out without leaving the living room.

But I have fallen away from video games. Leaving high school, I was convinced to give programming a try, to work my way into the industry. But I quickly became discourage when I realized that a) I hate programming, and b) my goal of creating video games that were "art" (ah, the pretentiousness of my youth) was deeply flawed.

I don't doubt that video games can be a platform to present breathtaking aethetics, or tackle complex issues, or deconstruct major political ideologies, or be used in altruistic ways.

What I doubt is that video games are anywhere near being their own medium. If video games are going to be accepted into the canon of 'the arts', the medium cannot just be a patchwork of other medium. The term 'interactive art' gets thrown around a lot, but I challenge what exactly have video games offered that truly relies on that interactive component?

This blog will look at video games as art through this lens, seeking to deconstruct where the industry is at now and how it can move forward. My definition of art is simple: Anything that can invoke an emotion as well as discussion and description of it is art (A view I got from film, once itself considered to be less than art in its infancy). I will show those that maybe turn their noses up at video games that they are culturally relevant at many different levels. But unlike other video game art blogs, I will challenge how the medium has attempted to evolve itself. Central to that is what makes video games an artistic medium different from (and not just a patchwork of) film, writing, music, and dance.