Against Art Games

I have something to get off of my chest. I hate the term “art games.” I’ve felt this for a long time, but I just keep mulling it over in my head since we read “Countergaming” and now Bogost’s “Art” and played Braid. Considering games as art or using the lens of art criticism to discuss games is often very productive. But there is a tendency in doing so to distinguish “art games” as a distinct class of games, saying (without saying) that the rest of games are “just games.”

Let’s ask a useful question. What makes Braid an art game that is lacking in Super Mario games (Braid’s obvious influence)? Sure, Mario games have sometimes made it to museums, or their aesthetics transformed into art (Cory Arcangel’s work, for example), but I’d be very surprised if anybody classified Super Mario Bros for NES as an “art game.” Is it Braid’s mechanics? Its platforming mechanics are sourced almost exactly from Mario games, its World 3 mechanic (where time moves forward as you do) is a deconstruction of the side-scroll mechanic present in Mario games, and the rest of its time travel mechanics, while not present in Mario, have clear analogues in games that would certainly not be called “art games.” Let’s ask the same question another way. What makes Braid an art game, but not Blinx: the Time Sweeper? Both are platformers with complex time travel mechanics, though I’d be very surprised to find someone calling Blinx an “art game.” Is it that Braid is gorgeous? 1982’s Tron is gorgeous but I’d be surprised if “art game” was applied to any of the 80’s arcade games. Is it that Braid has a complex and symbolic plot? So does Fire Emblem, but again. None of the games I have mentioned as parallels to Braid make it onto Wikipedia’s convenient and problematic “List of Art Games,” though some do make it onto Wikipedia’s far more confusing and problematic “List of Games Considered Artistic.”

Forgive my repetitiveness, I’m trying to get somewhere. It seems to me that often the definition of “art game” is treated the way pornography is treated; “I know it when I see it” as Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said. “Art” as Bogost explains in the beginning of his essay is not defined, but instead a category that media move through over time. We have seen games become art, and we have seen games considered art fall out of that category. Consider here the way Psychonauts was received upon release and how it is thought of now, or conversely the way the Xeno series has aged. Games being considered art tends to come with some of a few characteristics 1) a recognizable auteur (here be the Hideo Kojimas, Jonathan Blows, and Anna Anthropy’s of the world), 2) an explicit or implicit commentary on sociopolitical circumstances, 3) a characteristic and developed visual aesthetic 4) a twist on goal-oriented play, even to the degree of rendering it obsolete. I’m not pulling these qualities from thin air, they are part of some of the earliest definitions of “art games,” by people like Tiffany Holmes and Rebecca Cannon in 2003. My issue is that “I know it when I see it” is actually a massive blindspot that allows for a game, like Braid, to wave a flag that says “I’m art!” at a player, without particular evidence for it being more art than another game.

My point is not to be dense and ignore the fact that there is a lived movement of game makers purposefully attempting to make things that are called “art games.” But instead to note 1) that the category is untenable and imaginary, and 2) that the creation of this category leads to a situation where critics prefer to “read” these games over mainstream games. This is not exclusive to games, Porn Studies favors discussing the Golden Age and experimental films, literary studies has always favored the canon over pulp, art critics will always pick to discuss Warhol over the actual designer for the Campbell’s soup can. The problem is that this situation is unfair to games in general. We end up foregrounding the same tools of critical analysis we use to engage “high art” in talking about games, which often leads to a situation where your average student has little to no critical roadmap for engaging something like Call of Duty, Tetris, or The Sims. The common complaint about “art games” producing a high/low division in gaming where there never was before is one I hold, but I’d develop it further by saying that the category of “art games” enacts and widens that division at all levels of game design, game reception, game criticism, and game play.

Tomorrow, we’re going to discuss Braid, later Gone Home, and later Journey. Our discussions will certainly be productive. But I want us to keep in mind a question: could we have the same productive discussions about similar games Prince of Persia, Portopia Serial Murder Case, and Dungeon Explorer? Or how about Pong, QWOP, and Minesweeper? Candy Crush will be an interesting test for this question.

PS: if anybody is interested in how you can do some really amazing critical analysis on games that are certainly NOT art, Racing the Beam by Ian Bogost and Nick Monfort has more than a few great examples.