Are Games 'Art'?

I read a post by @galenkp last night, whose first line was essentially 'Video games a fat waste of time and are little more than just winning points for no reason'.

After commenting a wall of text in defense, I thought it might be interesting for me to write a big butt-hurt retort expanding on that defense lol. Nothing personal - I'll explain at the end why I think such an opinion is totally fine regarding any form of art - I just love to justify my passions.

I am not actually what you might call 'a gamer' by any stretch. I probably play one game every year, if that, these days. But I know value when I see it, and games defined a large part of my upbringing despite generally being too poor to even own any.

I hear Galen's opinion all the time - not everyone has that kind of time in life. But that's just it; I think it comes from a point of view of somebody who either hasn't played games, or has played all the wrong games (Minecraft or whatever).

To me, this is common in a lot of misunderstood mediums. Japanese anime is one victim of mockery, Hell, there are people out there who say 'I don't like music'. This sentence makes literally zero sense to me. The grammar seems all twisted and the letters look foreign.

Probably due to all the blood building up in my eyes after trying to read it.

And although music obviously holds a special place in my heart, mind and soul, there is something games offer that simply does not and cannot exist in any other form of art. And let me clarify that:

Games are art

There's your answer to the Title. You may leave.

If not, consider the comment I left @Galenkp (abridged, paraphrased):

There are deep philosophies carved into the landscape and characters within, and they may...leave you feeling empty and fully introspective for days after completion, practically mourning the end of a journey.

I don't see how this is any different, any more a waste of time than the recreation found in music, movies, TV, art, literature, or anything else - in fact, it is often a brilliant blend of the lot.

In Final Fantasy 9, each character is described by a quote...their narrative stories unfolding, teaching the player values of virtue, despair, sorrow, dilemma, arrogance, solitude, indulgence, and devotion:

• To be forgotten is worse than death
• How do you prove that you exist?
• I don't want to be alone anymore
• You don't need a reason to help people
• Having sword fealty, must I spend my life in servitude?
• The only dependable thing about the future is uncertainty

These, to any young adult or adolescent, are potentially life-changing concepts to ponder when fully explored. Games, unlike other media, give you the time and space to reflect upon these philosophies far more than any book or movie. When you complete the game and 'mourn' the ending of the journey, this is no different to staring into space after finishing the last page of a book series.

However, in a game, like Final Fantasy, you may be entrapped for hundreds if not thousands of hours. It becomes a part of your world. Ask anybody who played Final Fantasy 7 for example. It is part of their childhood memories that they find themselves revisiting on YouTube, replaying on emulators or old consoles, just to feel that purity of that experience once again, not as a point of addiction, but reminiscence.

It's hard to realise just how much these games changed our ways of thinking, our personalities, by, for example, following 10 or so character's arcs, one learning to deal with the the feelings of loss and mourning, hopelessness another trying to discover where he came from, what life really means and another with trust issues. These are all real-world problems and obstacles that one must face in real life, told with brilliant dialogue, storytelling, and even better music.

Take a listen to Aerith's Theme on Piano & Violin, and read the comments below:

My baby sister took her life after battling with anxiety and depression more than half her life. We used to play FF7 when she was little and loved the epic music and story, she always reminded me of sweet Aerith. We played this at her funeral in her honour 15 days ago. I love you Abigail and will always miss you. I pray you found the peace that you couldn't have here.

This hits a part of me that not much else in this world does. Reminds me of asking my mother if i could buy this game after reading about it. My mother that sadly passed away 2 years after that. I played this game for hundreds, if not thousands of hours. And every time i replay the game, im filled with good memories from when she was still with me and my brothers. Not sadness, just pure happiness. And i now had to go to the bathroom to cry when hearing this. Beautiful, just awesome. Thank you.

My fiancé just surprised me saying that this is the song she wants to walk down the isle too. I almost cried, and I will at the wedding.

My son played this for me ca 6 years ago and now [CENSORING!!]. I played this on his funeral.

This was played at my cousins funeral yesterday. This made me cry an awful lot. It's really early but I can listen back to this with a tear and a smile, because I know that he wouldn't want me to be sad. I miss him a lot.

Just this one song is being played at weddings and funerals around the world, decades after it was composed. An inextricable, perhaps inexplicable connection binds family members, friends, and strangers around the world together under one 4-minute song. This is not only because it is quite simply a beautiful piece of music, but because of what the music was connected to, the story it invokes in ourselves.

Still feel games are a complete waste of time?

Final Fantasy is also famed for its visual beauty, but I wanted to address this through another, more recent game: Elden Ring.

A casual player could play this entire game without really knowing what is going on. You are completely free to fight, collect money and weapons, and end the game completely oblivious to the world around you - and still consider it one of the greatest games in modern history due to its visual artistry. You will feel, to put it simply, that you missed out on something so much greater than you realised. You'll feel a hollow victory, but a great one nonetheless; the character designs, the world, the map, the items, the paintings, the NPC's, even the trees, will make you feel like you've just left the grandest art gallery in London.

Alternatively, you can also pay attention. And when you do this, the game unravels something much, much deeper and profound. So deep that a game seemingly little more than a slashing grind fest turns out to be a story entrenched in complex lore and tragedy that will change your perspective in life for months to follow after completing the game.

Much, if not most of this story is not told through dialogue, but through art. Take this screenshot (nothing special, just one of the first google results):

On the surface it just looks like a cool city. But between the pixels are a thousand stories to unfold, each connecting to a single, larger cohesive story thousands of years in the making, like an ancient, oversized jigsaw puzzle.

In fact, they hired Game of Throne's George R.R. Martin just to develop the story of the land from 5,000 years before the game even takes place. Everything that occurred then is told within the walls of the ruins, the paintings inside the academy, the rot within the rivers, and the songs being sung by the men driven mad deep within the sewers.

This, I'm sure you can agree, simply cannot be accomplished in any other artistic medium.

So, when you tell me 'Games are a waste of time', I can, with 100% certainty say that you... haven't played real games. Now, that's understandable in and of itself. In art, I find there is a 90:10 ratio of quality (is that how ratios work?). Whether it's gaming, literature, music or anime, around 90% of it is utter garbage, and this is what most people are exposed to.

But the 10% most us of miss out on because we've been alienated by the shitty 90% more than makes up for the effort it took to find it among that trash. For those who do not take the time, they will die on a hill of dismissal.

Honestly, that's fine, we all do it - I feel the same way about dance, for example. Even the most high-level, perfectly choreographed dances just kind of look like every other dance to me. I feel like there's about 7 different moves that people do in any particular style, and that's all you get over and over again. Good exercise I guess, but that's all I'm willing to acknowledge.

Since I will definitely refuse to ever learn to or watch dance, this is likely the hill I will die on, and gladly so. But I should at least realise that although 90% of dances are objectively garbage (as in, TikTok in entirety), there is 10% out there which may be considered works of genius I just will never be able to grasp.

I could also say the same about DJs (literally just pressing play on an iPod), photographers (please show me more selfies in front of buildings!) and contemporary artists (paint now, justify later).

I suppose you have to pick and choose what to respect and appreciate.

There are people nowadays, perhaps the majority, who feel books are a waste of time. Those who grew up reading books will consider this a mightily depressing reality while silently screaming at these morons, these mouth-breathers, these phone-scrolling influencers of trash and twerks.

Well, this is how gamers, weebs (such a weeb! probably an incel), and jazz musicians (it's just showing off with no meaning!) feel about us every time we casually dismiss their precious forms of art. They, of course, do the same in return.

This is what having an open mind is really about, I suppose. It's not spending your entire life forcefully pretending to like everything, but to acknowledge that no matter how garbage you think something is, there is a reason to appreciate it.

Except TikTok, of course.

So to answer the title's question, it's not so much that a game is a work of art, but a wonderfully blended collection of both interactive and non-interactive art built of a variety of media, each as important as the last, created by legendary composers and world-class artists. Se should try to appreciate at least 10% of it.