My Two Cents on the "Are Games Art"-Debate

Recently we presented our paper on the art experience of games at CHI Play ’21. Both in the paper and the video, we point out that the goal of the work was not really to make an argument that games are art, but that they are experienced as art. Still, during the Q&A we got pressed on games being art and I do get why: Saying it out loud that games are art still feels like the long owed acknowledgment that videogames are important to us. Still I did not really want to get into it, because… well I think the discussion is done. Games are art. Period. Like art they are made by artists (many artists in many different disciplines), like art they confer meaning and make statements, and, as shown in the paper, they are experienced like art.

Given this, I believed that taking paper and presentation out of “Games As Art”-discourse was the right thing to do. At this point what is art and what is not art, is something curators might need to discuss when filling a museum. It is ultimately a discussion of power: The power to declare something as art and therefore to be uphold by society. To be cherished, to be learned from, and to be sold in bizarre money laundering schemes.¹

I do not really care for this discussion. Personally I do not care about what is art and what isn’t when deciding what to put on my walls, what to watch, what to listen to, and what to play. Why should I care about some institution putting a label on something I enjoy either way? See also: Are eSports sports? Should they be played in sports TV? And why should eSports care since it already makes money up the - to use the scientific term - wazoo? In other words: What would eSports gain from being seen as sports and what would videogames gain from being seen as art?

To be clear, I think this discussion was far more pressing when games faced censorship in the mid ’90s - like movies did in the mid 19th century. However, I think in most areas this discussion has long been settled, either by courts upholding videogames being protected speech or by the sheer market power of videogames which makes it increasingly hard to remove them from society.

I changed my opinion three days after we gave our presentation (read: My video was played and Julia and I had the opportunity to answer a single question), when CHI Play ’21 was rounded out by a great keynote by Jaroslav Švelch on his book “Gaming the Iron Curtain” [1]. A super interesting deep dive into game development and consumption in communist Czechoslovakia. Švelch’s talk impressively showcased to me, how games can be a powerful expression of culture and ideas. They can be both personal accounts and calls to action. The Game “The Adventures of Indiana Jones in Wenceslas Square in Prague on January 16, 1989” for example, which features Mr. Jones being repeatedly brutalized by the police ([2], p.207ff). A cathartic if difficult power trip potentially made by one of the protesters caught in the violence of the late 80’s. Albeit not surprising, it struck me, how much his work was dependent on data cassettes serendipidously surviving all this time. During the ’80s, these games weren’t systematically preserved, in part because they were revolutionary media that you probably didn’t want to be caught with, in part - from what I understand - because they were not seen as cultural or even commercial artifacts but something personal you made with and for your friends.

Of course nowadays preservation - the gaming landscape as a whole - is a different beast. Games are ubiquitous and most games of note are accessible in some way. Obvious examples to the contrary are games like No One Lives Forever which anguishes in rights-ownership hell, with no one knowing who actually owns the IP. A fact both CD Project and Nightdive Studios found out the hard way when they tried to make the game accessible again. Of course, you can still play the game: As it is Abandonware it is archived and easily findable and downloadable. However, No One Lives Forever is a cherished classic with many people interested in preserving it. The further back we go (or the further back something becomes) and the less well liked a specific game is, the less likely the game data will be preserved and patches will be available to keep the game running on modern systems.

Another cherished classic - if not seminal title - that was suddenly way harder to get is Warcraft III. When Activision/Blizzard launched the Warcraft III Reforged, they made the original game unavailable and replaced them with an all around worse, but more expensive product. Make no mistake: Yes, Warcraft III can technically still be played, but what did not made that switch unharmed was the original multiplayer and the extensive modding scene which - lest we forget - spawned the whole MOBA genre. Similarly, Rockstar had briefly removed the original GTA 3 trilogy from any storefront, suing modders who made visual overhauls of the originals and only then putting the games back up when the “Definitive (sic!) Edition” turned out to be more of a cautionary tale about the limits of AI than any usable product²

While the current gaming landscape is broad and easily accessible, it is so by grace of publishers alone. Publishers who have shown that they do not care about games and will take them away the second it would make them extra money. When we want to preserve games as we preserve art, as we preserve artifacts that are important parts of our cultures, this is disastrous. The times of games/engines being released as Open Sources after a while like ID software used to do are long over. With the increasingly deep reliance of proprietary servers to run a game even preserving physical media containing the game is more and more ineffective (see Titanfall). Also games barely come on physical media anymore so I guess all it takes is someone at Valve tripping on the wrong cable and countless games may be lost forever (And I really do hope this hyperbole).

All this is not to diminish the important archival work that is done by organizations like archive.org. It is a critique of unrestricted ownership by publishers who rather have a game (or book, or music) disappear forever than not make money of it. Two opposing sides, given the repeated attempts by the latter to stop and/or outlaw archival efforts by the former.

What I am getting at with all of this? Well, if we acknowledge games to be art, if we acknowledge them to be important part of our culture, we should be weary about our ability to preserve games. We should keep calling out the disgrace that the wish to preserve games is running counter companies who’d rather have us buy inferior versions again while the originals in their original form, context and technical specificities may be forever gone. So while I do not really see a point in debating if games are art, I think it is very important that we reiterate the need of treating games as art and holding publishers accountable.

Consequently, it is important that we start owning games again. Owning a version that can not be meddled with by publishers without our consent, owning a version that we can meddle with if we want to. I would argue, who is Rockstar to tell someone they cannot put better textures in the game they bought just because they now want to release a “remaster”. Likewise, just as it is supported by governments that art museums own artworks and have the free reign to exhibit them, make them accessible to the people, videogame museums/archives/etc. should be able to exhibit games, preserve them and - if needed for preservation - crack them and/or emulate server structures, protected from the litigious grasp of publishers.