Can video games be considered an art form?
For as long as the medium existed, the question's had people clamoring on both sides of the argument. On the one hand, video games are often seen solely as a form of entertainment, and I'd be lying if I said I didn't think there were still people out there who thought games were still in the "bleep-bloop 8-bit" era they started from.
On the other, with the kind of technology we have, and with enough time, money, and effort, people end up making stuff like this:
There's no reason for anyone to go this far for the sake of making an already impressive looking game look even more impressive other than
"We want this world and the people in it to look real, feel real, and act real, darn it!"
(unless of course, you count money, which is always a good incentive...)
Having said that, it's pretty easy to show anyone a game like what was shown above these days, and cite that as good evidence in the "Games are art" argument. But what I want to try to establish, and indeed the point of this yarn I'm spinning, is just how far back in the video game era one can go to prove that games are considered art.
Now, everyone can agree that to make a good game that people want to play, it takes time, effort, and money, all of which some developers have a lot more of than others. Those developers that have that kind of investment usually have a vision in mind for their game; a point they want to make, or a sight they want others to see. Even back when game development was an internal, time-consuming affair that didn't always yield the right results, people still had visions for their creations.
To prove this, I'm going to take you guys back a ways, and pick apart a little game by the name of EarthBound, which was released in the US for the Super Nintendo in 1995.
For those who don't know, EarthBound was a role-playing game: You and three other characters travel around the world, fighting monsters, solving quests, going through caves and dungeons, etc. Despite it being made in Japan, the game was created with a very Americanized feel to it (indeed, the game is set in a country called Eagleland...), and much of it's charm lay in it's writing and story (as the main characters are children, they go around defeating monsters with things such as baseball bats, yo-yos, slingshots, and psychokinetic powers. Yes, you read that last part correctly.)
As much good as it's story and script did for EarthBound, it wasn't exactly the most graphic-intensive game, even for the system it was on, and its gameplay and progression didn't do much to set it apart from other games in the same genre.
As a result of this, and poor PR marketing on the Americas' part, the game fell into obscurity until years later, where it resurfaced as a cult hit among gamers.
The reason I bring up EarthBound as an example of whether a game can be considered art, is because the work that went into it was, in fact, part of someone's vision; namely, that of it's developer, Shigesato Itoi.
The kind of details he and the rest of his creative team could match that of the Tomb Raider example above, if the changes were made internally, in the programming of the game itself.
For instance, the battle system, which, contrary to other role-playing games before or after it, featured a life-point counter that could be interacted with in real time, often to recover from serious enemy damage.
The very aesthetic of the game is another example, featuring streets with cars that move as if real cars would on roads, enemies that chase or flee from you depending on how strong your character is, characters with dialogue that changes as you move on in the game, and an item delivery service that works on its own randomized timer system and programming. Even the final boss of the game was inspired directly by a personal (unpleasant, mind you) experience from Itoi's childhood.
Though the game may not look it, and the numbers don't initially account for it, Earthbound was a game that had quite an amount of time poured into it, primarily because Itoi and his team had their own vision for it. It was a game about quirkiness and fantasy, but it had elements to it that made it feel grounded, natural, as if in some twisted way, this might have happened in our own world.
So my overall answer to the question of "Can video games be considered art?" is...
Yes, if you look at it this way:
Art is something that requires time, effort and detail if you want to be good at it. When you show someone art, they need to be able to understand the kind of work that was put into making it.
Video games, by the same token, can be viewed the same way. For a game to be seen as art, one has to consider the kind of work that went into making it, whether it's visible for all to see immediately (as in recent games like Tomb Raider), or slowly revealed throughout the course of the game (such as Earthbound).
~Jalen Xero-J Johnson
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