Image: Portrait of Edmond Belamy (detail) created by GAN (Generative Adversarial Network)
Much debate has been made about whether video games are art. Mostly, the calling of video games art is an attempt to defend their cultural validity by associating them with more respected cultural forms like cinema, art galleries and so on. But mostly video games are not art, as their primary purpose is to entertain and engage the player. Art is not made to be useful in this way, it’s goals are self-contained. Games hold your hand, teach you to understand through play and offer up gently sloping curves of difficulty, hoping not to alienate the paying customers. Mostly, video games are entertainment. They do not seek to challenge us, but instead pull us into the beloved flow state, that floating effortless/effortful balance and gently hold us there. Some games break this and introduce flavors of bitterness, struggle, loss but always in a framework of ‘fairness’.
In this sense, in their tail wagging eagerness to delight and entertain their players, I would say very clearly, video games are not art. They’re games, entertainments, engaging cultural works. Importantly, they should not be seen as less culturally valid or important for this. Video games do not need a Citizen Kane moment, do not need to become respected. They’re loved, and important to many of us and that should be enough. This striving desire for respectability is a neutering force that seeks approval from the dominant arbiters of culture. Fuck them and their patronizing pat on the head.
A similar process of attempted cooptation is going on in another globally beloved artistic culture, hiphop. The awarding of the Pullitzer Prize to Kendrick Lamar is an attempt to pull hiphop into the realm of respectable artistic expression, and to some degree no doubt it will be successful. Already we see a second middle aged generation of hiphop fans seeking to erect a respectable and artistic boom bap purism, in contrast to the raunchy, decadent materialism of the current 808 and autotune generation. Lamar deserves the Pullitzer for his brilliance, and the recognition of hiphop as one of the most culturally relevant forms of our generation has real value, economically and otherwise. But we as partisans of previously maligned subcultures should reject this infusion of seriousness and respectability. In both forms we should seek to continue to exist on our own terms, to be great and notable for the reasons that we have chosen not those that others would seek to impose from outside. In both forms the public votes with their dollars and attention massively in our favor. Both are culturally important forms, worthy of study, serious engagement and thought. But hiphop should never be respectable and neither should video games.
