Why videogamers are artists at heart

Are videogames art? Not according to the renowned film critic Roger Ebert, who said that videogames cannot be art, purely because of their interactivity: it's not art if you become the artist. Yet, isn't this involvement exactly why videogames can stand apart as an art form in their own right? Videogames can reach an audience in a way no other medium can: directly. However, is passivity a prerequisite for something to be considered art?

Serious entertainment: Shadow of the Colossus

To answer that, you've first got to define art, and that's nigh-on impossible. So let's approach this from a different angle, and ask a question that doesn't boil down to semantics and stuffy elitism, but is rather more pertinent for the games industry and its audience. What are videogames capable of?

The prime examples of "artistic" videogames include titles such as Okami, which loom large due to their beautiful visual styles. In a way, they shouldn't, at least not for that reason. Fumita Ueda's two masterpieces - Ico and Shadow of the Colossus - are strikingly beautiful. Their haunting, bleak landscapes instil a desperate sense of solitude. The delicate use of music and silence only furthers the feeling that you are a speck on a canvas; you exist within this world, rather than the world existing because of you.

However, we're back to passivity: you could easily put the controller to one side and appreciate the visual work as you would a gorgeous landscape painting. But no, these games deserve acclaim due to the emotions they invoke precisely because of the player's input.

The relationship between you, playing as the titular Ico, and Yorda, the girl you must take by the hand and lead to safety, is not something that can evolve by inactive viewing.

There's a section in the game when Yorda is torn from your grasp and you are sent tumbling out of her reach. For the first time in a few hours of playing, Yorda isn't there. Little Ico is standing on a long water pipe, rain hammering down on the rusted metal, dark sea thrashing below him as far as the eye can see.

Never, in any form of entertainment or art, have I felt so alone. This combination of desolate visual beauty and emotional input, invested after hours of direct interactivity with the game's world and characters, is difficult, if not impossible, to recreate outside the medium.

Equally hard to create in other mediums is the way the player questions the actions of the lead character as his own.

For instance, would that feeling you get in your stomach as you, playing as Wander, fell the first of the great Colossi in Shadow of the Colossus, have been the same if you had merely watched, rather than dealt the fatal blows yourself? You destroy the Colossi because you know you must, but you're never quite sure whether it's right.

Last year's smash-hit first-person shooter, BioShock, set in an abandoned underwater world, shatters nearly every preconception you have about your own actions until a certain point. Then, in an instant, the game turns on you, and everything you have achieved comes crashing down and you come to the awful realisation that you've been had.

These are not things that can be achieved without that tactile interaction gaming offers. They are your actions; your mistakes.

Such games as BioShock and Shadow of the Colossus are imperious works that are standard bearers when it comes to taking videogames seriously. They demonstrate perfectly how the game can touch you in a way passive entertainent cannot.

But what about the structures beneath the surface that hold a virtual world together? Many videogames are crafted by extremely talented designers - and I'm not talking about technical prowess, but meticulous design, and inspired ideas that can turn a game on its head.

The shoot-'em-up Ikaruga features a "polarity" mechanic, where you switch your ship's shields and firepower between black and white, which affects the bullets you fire and the enemy attacks you absorb. It's a simple idea - but one that redefines genre conventions.

A meticulously designed dungeon in Nintendo's Legend of Zelda is a superb example of "digital architecture". Each level challenges the player, encouraging him to make use of items found along the way, yet remains negotiable, with subtle signposting. The same could be said of Super Mario Galaxy's candy-coated microcosms.

The immersive quality of videogames is frequently used to prop up arguments about how violent computer games can lead to violent behaviour in real life. I understand this perspective, but I disagree fundamentally: much video game violence is cartoon-like in its scale, scope and intensity; reminiscent of Tom and Jerry in its ferocity.

In games where violence is more central to the gameplay mechanism rather than a throw-away element, killing often sparks a sense of revulsion in the gamer. This is especially true in videogames where your decisions dictate the story of the character you are playing. Senseless killing is rarely the gamer's purpose, or his best course of action.

Ultimately, it's immaterial whether we look at this emerging media as artistic or technological. Gaming's biggest strength is that it lures the player into a world they feel part of and, as the industry continues to mature, more games should begin to take advantage of that.

The potential is there for videogames to forge their own identity as an entertainment medium to be taken seriously. However, already even the titles that do not aspire to anything more meaningful than blockbuster entertainment allow you to save the world, score the winner in a cup final, own a Ferrari F40, stand on the shoulders of giants and look out to a world that you, the player, can explore and influence.

So, back to the question: what are videogames capable of? Anything you want them to be. You are the artist, after all.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/07/26/dlgames126.xml

I think this article is great and I think it deserves more attention from you guys, as gamers this should interest you at the least.

Roger Ebert is an idiot if he thinks video games can't be art because of their interactivity. A beautiful vase can be used to store flowers, and it is still art, you can open the door to a building, renovate it, or even add extra floors to it, and it can still be considered art.

Art is anything that can be appreciated artistically, especially if it has already gained acceptance from the mainstream and critics (which video games already have, to a greater degree than some more traditional forms of art even).