Should Video Games Be Taken Seriously?

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Having dealt with what are essentially ad hominem attacks on video games and their association with chintzy graphics, profit motive, uncreative programmers, and immature boys, it is worth dealing serious arguments about the potential of video games as particular kind of medium. First, it might be said that video games are arbitrary and pointless, a simple waste of time enjoyed only for the sake of diversion. Of course, the same charge can made of all arts or crafts. As Kant points out in “Critique of Judgment,” art must be based on some arbitrary set of conventions, because “a product can never be called art unless it is preceded by a rule” (300). Therefore, the fact that the rules of video games are arbitrary cannot be held against them, anymore than it can be held against all art. As to whether video games are pointless, this too is a matter of priorities. As Suzuki points out in "Zen and the Art of Tea," no event in life is a cause for contemplation unless we make it so. He asks, "Has a wedding ceremony more moral or metaphysical meaning than tea drinking?" (58). Thus, weddings, tea, art, or video games, none have meaning until we decide that they do. Murdoch in "The Sovereignty of Good," goes so far as to praise art for its pointlessness, say that “is the pointless of human life itself, and form in art is properly the simulation of the self-contained awareness of the universe” (199). Video games may be pointless in some ways, but only because we fail to treat them seriously. Only in doing so, can we know if they are useful in understanding life or not. Being pointless does not make video games art, but neither can it be used a justification for preemptive dismissal, unless we dismiss much of art as well.

Next, it is charged that the form of video games mandate a content of that is narrowly self-interested, thus even taken seriously video games will fail to reward us with anything besides license for narcissism. In all games, the goal of the player is achieving personal satisfaction by playing well. Even in games where winning is not the object or there is no explicit competition with other players, the player is ultimately playing in order to derive personal pleasure. Pleasure is the key to the entire enterprise of gaming. A player gets pleasure from winning, pleasure from exploring a virtual city, or pleasure from flying a virtual airplane. One gets good at video games by blocking out other activities and mastering a particular sequence of button mashing or problem solving. Murdoch also says that the advantage of beauty is its being "an occasion for ‘unselfing’" (198). Beauty, particularly beauty in nature, allows us to, "clear our minds of selfish care" (198). Like the pointlessness of art, beauty should move us beyond ourselves. It is charged that video games, whatever their beauty, lose this advantage with their relentless focus on the individual. Video games focus on the self and reward obsession with pleasure, leaving us more self-centered than we are naturally.

"Should Video Games Be Taken Seriously?"

Having dealt with what are essentially ad hominem attacks on video games and their association with chintzy graphics, profit motive, uncreative programmers, and immature boys, it is worth dealing serious arguments about the potential of video games as particular kind of medium. First, it might be said that video games are arbitrary and pointless, a simple waste of time enjoyed only for the sake of diversion. Of course, the same charge can made of all arts or crafts. As Kant points out in “Critique of Judgment,” art must be based on some arbitrary set of conventions, because “a product can never be called art unless it is preceded by a rule” (300). Therefore, the fact that the rules of video games are arbitrary cannot be held against them, anymore than it can be held against all art. As to whether video games are pointless, this too is a matter of priorities. As Suzuki points out in "Zen and the Art of Tea," no event in life is a cause for contemplation unless we make it so. He asks, "Has a wedding ceremony more moral or metaphysical meaning than tea drinking?" (58). Thus, weddings, tea, art, or video games, none have meaning until we decide that they do. Murdoch in "The Sovereignty of Good," goes so far as to praise art for its pointlessness, say that “is the pointless of human life itself, and form in art is properly the simulation of the self-contained awareness of the universe” (199). Video games may be pointless in some ways, but only because we fail to treat them seriously. Only in doing so, can we know if they are useful in understanding life or not.

Next, it is charged that the form of video games mandate a content of that is narrowly self-interested, thus even taken seriously video games will fail to reward us with anything besides license for narcissism. In all games, the goal of the player is achieving personal satisfaction by playing well. Even in games where winning is not the object or there is no explicit competition with other players, the player is ultimately playing in order to derive personal pleasure. Pleasure is the key to the entire enterprise of gaming. A player gets pleasure from winning, pleasure from exploring a virtual city, or pleasure from flying a virtual airplane. One gets good at video games by blocking out other activities and mastering a particular sequence of button mashing or problem solving. Murdoch in "The Sovereignty of Good" also says that the advantage of beauty is its being "an occasion for ‘unselfing’" (198). Beauty, particularly beauty in nature, allows us to, "clear our minds of selfish care" (198). Like the pointlessness of art, beauty should move us beyond ourselves. It is charged that video games, whatever their beauty, lose this advantage with their relentless focus on the individual. Video games focus on the self and reward obsession with pleasure, leaving us more self-centered than we are naturally.

Murdoch, Iris. “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 196–201.

To the charge that the creation of video games requires no creativity, there has been much recent activity attempting to link the quality of video games to the creative insight of individual geniuses involved in their production. This activity is very similar to the rise in the auteur theory of film during the 1960s. During the transition between film being seen as a completely derivative version of the theater and the acceptance of film as an art form with its own rules, one important development was the rise of auteur theory. According to auteur theory, although films have many important components from script to cinematography to acting, the director exerts the most influence on the quality of the film, and the director is the person whose singular vision a film represents. This assignment of credit to the director was important because it fit film into the standard mythology of art as the work of a creative genius. It seemed clear that the work of sound engineers and lighting directors was mostly mechanical, so the focus in discussion of film was shifted onto directors and other cast members considered to be more creative. Much of the respect accorded to art comes from the Romantic belief that the artist has insights above those of ordinary people and through art the audience can receive a glimpse of his (almost always a male) genius. Such attribution of praise is increasingly prevalent in video games today. Game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, John Carmack, John Romero, American Mc Gee, Will Wright, and others are singled out for praise, and the games they help create are seen as their creative vision. Unlike some modern art, video games are clearly the result of elaborate process of creation, exempting them from the "But even I could do that!"-syndrome discussed by Melchionne in “Artistic Dropouts.” However, the work of actually programming a game is seen as mostly a kind of drudgework, that anyone with the right intellectual skills and training could do. Surely, it could make little difference if the programmer who programmed the motion of the flying turtles in Mario had been replaced by another programmer with a different personality. So whether I could do that, it is probably true that anyone properly trained in programming could have done it. Such work is not believed to leave any room for creative expression, thus leading to the belief that video games should not be seriously considered. As a means of countering this belief, designers are raised up as the "creative genius" behind games. This effect can be seen very clearly by seeing how the website Miyamotoshrine.com praises Shigeru Miyamoto, the so-called father of Mario and other characters.

"Should Video Games Be Taken Seriously?"

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Everywhere video games are popular, and everywhere video games are dismissed. In 2002, U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Sr. issued a ruling that video games have “no conveyance of ideas, expression, or anything else that could possibly amount to speech" ("Playing games with free speech"). He further found that, "video games have more in common with board games and sports than they do with motion pictures" ("Playing games with free speech"). The case concerned an ordinance passed in St. Louis restricting the sales of explicit video games to minors, and both the law and the initial ruling on it make it clear that video games are not universally considered to be an act of expression, let alone worthy of serious aesthetic consideration. Though, in fact, Limbaugh’s decision was eventually overturned by the 8th Court of Appeals ("Constitution protects video games"), it continues to be the case that video games are only rarely considered seriously as aesthetic objects and are more frequently dismissed as a class. Several arguments are made to support this opinion. Video games are poorly made both graphically and musically. Video games are commercial rubbish and completely without creativity. Video games are childish and a waste of time. Video games are arbitrary and pointless. Video games are by nature self-centered and primarily a means of self-gratification. However, in this paper, I will show that each of these arguments makes unfair generalizations about video games as a whole, excluding the complex pleasures offered by some video games from the realm of serious aesthetic evaluation. Performing such an evaluation has numerous advantages, not the least of which is the unique and potentially valuable source of information about the human experience they represent. Whether the experience of a particular game is valuable is of value or not is a judgment that must be made on a case-by-case basis rather than on the basis of the perceived deficiencies of the category. Just as some novels inform us about the human condition and some merely gather into one place awkward prose and lame dialogue, so too video games have a collective potential that may or may not be fulfilled by a particular game and must be evaluated on the basis of specific examples.

That video games have traditionally had sub-stellar graphics and sound is an undeniable fact. Early video games were severely limited by the processing power available to them. Both the number of colors employed and the number of pixels on the screen were restricted on early systems. Further limitations made the music accompanying games a collection of timed pings and squawks. However, these limitations alone cannot be reason for dismissing video games. Certainly, in the history of art, there have been many times and ways in which artists imposed artificial limits on themselves but produced profound experiences in spite of or even because of those limits. If anything, in most cases finding interesting ways of working within genre or personal restrictions can be an intriguing source of complexity in art. Of course, with improvements in computing power, modern video games can display pictures that are more complicated and use CD-quality sounds. There are still some restrictions about what can and cannot be done within the medium, but these are no different the restrictions that hamper every other artistic endeavor. No one faults the sonnet for being only fourteen lines, and though this restriction means that sonnets can never achieve the same effect as epic poetry, it does not mean that sonnets should be excluded from serious contemplation. Similarly, video games should not be dismissed out of hand for appearing on a video screen and requiring user interaction, unless it can be shown that these requirements bind video games in such a way that no topic of substance can be addressed. That this is not the case will be addressed later in this essay.

Another potential set of arguments against video games as a candidate for serious appreciation is that they are highly commercial products turned out by large teams of interchangeable workers with no particular creativity involved. Of course, the analogy of video games to movies in this case should be immediately obvious. Addressing the objection that video games are too commercial to be seriously considered, it is obvious that all art done by professionals is influenced by commercial considerations. Particularly in the case of movies, the huge capital costs associated with production leads to a situation in which many movies are created with no ambitions outside of generating a profit. Even if an analogous situation is also the case for many games, it is hard to argue that it must necessarily be the case for all video games. If anything, in such cases it is more important for consumers to evaluate video games seriously, if it can be done. In doing so, they create market conditions favorable to high quality works, and supply of quality games will rise to meet demand. Thus, the commercial nature of a medium is no bar to its possibility of excellence, if that possibility otherwise exists, the commercial nature of a medium requires more seriousness of evaluation, not less. Unlike, say, television commercials, which by definition can only exist for reasons of profit, video games are not restricted by this aspect of their nature and should not be discounted for this reason. Again, that the nature of video games does have a possibility of excellence will be addressed later.

To the charge that the creation of video games requires no creativity, there has been much recent activity attempting to link the quality of video games to the creative insight of individual geniuses involved in their production. This activity is very similar to the rise in the auteur theory of film during the 1960s. During the transition between film being seen as a completely derivative version of the theater and the acceptance of film as an art form with its own rules, one important development was the rise of auteur theory. According to auteur theory, although films have many important components from script to cinematography to acting, the director exerts the most influence on the quality of the film, and the director is the person whose singular vision a film represents. This assignment of credit to the director was important because it fit film into the standard mythology of art as the work of a creative genius. It seemed clear that the work of sound engineers and lighting directors was mostly mechanical, so the focus in discussion of film was shifted onto directors and other cast members considered to be more creative. Much of the respect accorded to art comes from the Romantic belief that the artist has insights above those of ordinary people and through art the audience can receive a glimpse of his (almost always a male) genius. Such attribution of praise is increasingly prevalent in video games today. Game designers like Shigeru Miyamoto, Hideo Kojima, John Carmack, John Romero, American McGee, Will Wright, and others are singled out for praise, and the games they help create are seen as their creative vision. Unlike some modern art, video games are clearly the result of elaborate process of creation, exempting them from the "But even I could do that!"-syndrome discussed by Melchionne in “Artistic Dropouts.” However, the work of actually programming a game is seen as mostly a kind of drudgework, that anyone with the right intellectual skills and training could do. Surely, it could make little difference if the programmer who programmed the motion of the flying turtles in Mario had been replaced by another programmer with a different personality. So whether I could do that, it is probably true that anyone properly trained in programming could have done it. Such work is not believed to leave any room for creative expression, thus leading to the belief that video games should not be seriously considered. As a means of countering this belief, designers are raised up as the "creative genius" behind games. This effect can be seen very clearly by seeing how the website Miyamotoshrine.com praises Shigeru Miyamoto, the so-called father of Mario and other characters.

Notice particularly the comparison to Spielberg, a film director, and the attribution of "unusual understanding" to Miyamoto. Clearly, Miyamoto is being praised as though he alone gave birth to the world of Mario, and it is his special genius that made Mario so internationally popular. As a result of this process, those who consider genius to be an important factor in judging the worth of a product cannot dismiss video games without also dismissing the vision of their creators. On the other hand, those who accept feminist critiques of the patriarchal structure believed to be implicit in the notion of creative genius are already able to accept video games without the aid of this device. In either case, lack of creativity cannot be cited as a reason to dismiss video games out of hand.

The charge that video games are childish is probably true for most games but hardly a critique. The accusation is a mostly matter of the origins of video games and associations that society continues to have with them. Video games are or were primarily the province of children, especially boys, and they are usually played in the home or in the arcade. This merits comparison with the feminist arguments of Parker and Pollock in “Crafty Women.” They feel that most distinctions between craft and art are caused by association of supposed crafts with women in the home. They explain their theory, "what distinguishes art from craft in the hierarchy [of arts and crafts] is not so much different methods, practices and objects but also where these things [i.e. supposed crafts] are made, often in the home, and for whom they are made, often the family" (51–52). Video games, like comic books before them, present an interesting contrast with the theory of Parker and Pollock. On the one hand, video games are undeniably masculine, almost to the point of caricature. On the other hand, video games are juvenile and domestic. Thus, against Parker and Pollock’s theory, video games are relegated to the status of craft (or worse) in spite of their supposedly masculine nature. However, it is possible that their theory can be salvaged by arguing that an association with domesticity is what condemns video games. In either case, video games can only hope to follow the pattern of comic books, which were once similarly seen as of interest only to young boys. Under the new title of "graphic novels," what were once called comic books are now generally evaluated on their own aesthetic merits rather than condemned for the nature of their medium. Charges about the childishness of video games are as pointless as charges about the domesticity of arts associated with women. Video games are no longer sold only to children, and even if that were the case, it would not prevent game designers from creating games with universal appreciable content. Just as domestic arts should not be negatively evaluated because of the gender of their producers, video games should not be considered as unworthy of contemplation merely because the demographics of their past audiences.

Having dealt with what are essentially ad hominem attacks on video games and their association with chintzy graphics, profit motive, uncreative programmers, and immature boys, it is worth dealing serious arguments about the potential of video games as particular kind of medium. First, it might be said that video games are arbitrary and pointless, a simple waste of time enjoyed only for the sake of diversion. Of course, the same charge can made of all arts or crafts. As Kant points out in “Critique of Judgment,” art must be based on some arbitrary set of conventions, because “a product can never be called art unless it is preceded by a rule” (300). Therefore, the fact that the rules of video games are arbitrary cannot be held against them, anymore than it can be held against all art. As to whether video games are pointless, this too is a matter of priorities. As Suzuki points out in "Zen and the Art of Tea," no event in life is a cause for contemplation unless we make it so. He asks, "Has a wedding ceremony more moral or metaphysical meaning than tea drinking?" (58). Thus, weddings, tea, art, or video games, none have meaning until we decide that they do. Murdock in "The Sovereignty of Good," goes so far as to praise art for its pointlessness, say that “is the pointless of human life itself, and form in art is properly the simulation of the self-contained awareness of the universe” (199). Video games may be pointless in some ways, but only because we fail to treat them seriously. Only in doing so, can we know if they are useful in understanding life or not.

Next, it is charged that the form of video games mandate a content of that is narrowly self-interested, thus even taken seriously video games will fail to reward us with anything besides license for narcissism. In all games, the goal of the player is achieving personal satisfaction by playing well. Even in games where winning is not the object or there is no explicit competition with other players, the player is ultimately playing in order to derive personal pleasure. Pleasure is the key to the entire enterprise of gaming. A player gets pleasure from winning, pleasure from exploring a virtual city, or pleasure from flying a virtual airplane. One gets good at video games by blocking out other activities and mastering a particular sequence of button mashing or problem solving. Murdock in "The Sovereignty of Good" also says that the advantage of beauty is its being "an occasion for ‘unselfing’" (198). Beauty, particularly beauty in nature, allows us to, "clear our minds of selfish care" (198). Like the pointlessness of art, beauty should move us beyond ourselves. It is charged that video games, whatever their beauty, lose this advantage with their relentless focus on the individual. Video games focus on the self and reward obsession with pleasure, leaving us more self-centered than we are naturally.

However, video games are not unique in their giving us pleasure. Numerous activities are undertaken for the pleasure that they bring. Eaton in "Locating the Aesthetic" even argues that the only constant in changing aesthetic standards over the centuries is the delight or pleasure we take in experiencing the aesthetic. She writes, "delight in what resides intrinsically in something is a mark of the aesthetic generally" (87). Thus, since any aesthetic experience must be marked by pleasure or delight, video games cannot be singled out for scorn solely on this fact. The question then becomes whether the pleasure of video games is so overwhelming that we are unable to appreciate particular video games for their intrinsic properties. In sports, we generally neglect the delight of the intrinsic in order to focus attention on the score. In sex or pornography, we generally neglect the delight of intrinsic in order to focus our attention on pure pleasure and lust. Thus, we can say that in general, we do not have aesthetic experiences during those kinds of activities, unless we disrupt their natural mode of experience. On the other hand, I can say from personal experience that it is possible during a video game to enjoy the beauty of the graphics, the harmony of the music, the unfolding of the plot, and one’s increasing mastery of the controls, as well as just winning and losing. Return briefly to the quote about the games of Miyamoto at Miyamotoshrine.com. The author, Johnson, emphasizes the fun of Miyamoto’s games and then states that they are, “not only a great escape from reality, but an awfully good reason to step outside and open our eyes to a world waiting to be explored” (http://www.miyamotoshrine.com/theman/bio/). Moving from one’s own pleasure to an understanding outside world is a central goal of aesthetic experience, and Johnson is stating here that he has personally experienced such a shift because of video games. Video games, even when enjoyed as video games, can be rich and complex experiences that give one an opportunity to think seriously about aspects of the human condition. Of course, not all video games are able to inspire serious reflection and most do not even attempt to do so. Jazz, rock, and rap music were all initially dismissed as being unsuited for any serious contemplation because of the intensity of their beat and the relative simplicity of their form. However, in spite of the accessibility of these kinds of music, they have been accepted as legitimate means for aesthetic experience. Of course, most rock and rap songs, as well as most jazz songs during their more popular years, are derivative garbage. Similarly, the easy thrills of video games may result in a situation in which many have content that is of poor quality. However, just because the medium is usually enjoyable does not mean that nothing of interest can be learned by treating it seriously. Treating something seriously can bring out the complexity in it, and video games are no less a candidate for serious contemplation than jazz, rock, rap, or any other part of life. If game designers sometimes manage to capture a part of life in their game, as both I and the Johnson can vouch that they occasionally do, we should look at what they express with no less interest than if it had been expressed in some other medium.

Finally, video games are capable of controlling our emotions to an enormous degree, and this control should be understood in terms of its relation to the aesthetic. We naturally identify ourselves with the characters in video games and are apt to feel what they feel. Indeed, this effect of video games on the emotions may be why St. Louis felt the need to restrict the sales of violent and sexually explicit video games in the first place. The power of video games to instruct the emotions is so great that it is dangerous to allow children to be exposed to games that would train them in callousness and licentiousness. St. Louis is only the latest to follow the example of Plato in The Republic, where he has Socrates ban potentially dangerous poetry. If video games do have this power, if they are potentially dangerous, it is important that we consider them seriously for the aesthetic experiences they invoke, in order to understand whether their effect on us is positive or negative, as well as to glean whatever understanding of human nature can be taken from them. Cohen in "One Idea of Collingwood’s Aesthetics," speculates that "whenever a person has articulated his feelings sufficiently to make it accessible to others, … the person has indeed produced a work of art" (585). The unique emotional intensity that video games have to offer make it clear that video games are a potential means of evoking complex feelings in another human being. Whether or not video games are art, video game players as much as anyone would like to believe that the feelings or emotions they receive from the particular source of video games are as legitimate an expression of the human condition as those received any other way.

In this paper, I have shown that most arguments against video games stem from their negative association with poor quality, commercialization, mechanization, and especially immature boys. Charges that video games are arbitrary, pointless, or self-gratifying cannot be allowed to discount video games from serious consideration without also discounting much of art for the same reasons. That some video games are able to impact us in ways going beyond the simple thrill of victory and reach us on an emotional level shows that video games are capable of genuine expression and worthy of serious contemplation. Casting aside gross prejudices against video games will serve us much as casting aside early prejudices against movies and comic books has. Though not all or even most movies, comic books, or video games are of aesthetic worth, those that are provide a perspective that is both unique and intense. Unlike television commercials, sports, or pornography, nothing intrinsic to the definition of videogames– interactive audio-visual systems with a strong, but not absolute, tendency to competition– should exclude them from aesthetic consideration. The advantage of treating video games seriously is the same as the advantage that we get from treating all forms of expression seriously, a new way of seeing the world and our place in it.

Works Cited

Au, Wagner James. http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2002/05/06/games_as_speech/print.html “Playing games with free speech.” Salon.com 6 May 2002. 10 Feb. 2004.

Cohen, Ted. "Reflections on One Idea of Collingwood’s Aesthetics." Monist 72.4 (1989): 581–585.

Eaton, Marcia M. “Locating the Aesthetic” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 84–91.

Johnson, Carl. http://www.miyamotoshrine.com/theman/bio/ “The Man: Bio.” Miyamoto Shrine. 10 Feb. 2004.

Kant, Immanuel. “Critique of Judgment” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 300–305.

Melchionne, Kevin. “Artistic Dropouts” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 98–103.

Morris, Chris. http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/03/technology/games_firstamendment/index.htm “Constitution protects video games.” CNN 3 June 2003. 10 Feb. 2004.

Murdock, Iris. “The Sovereignty of Good Over Other Concepts” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 196–201.

Parker, Rozicka and Griselda Pollock. “Crafty Women and the Hierarchy of the Arts” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 44–55.

Suzuki, Daisetz T. “Zen and the Art of Tea” in Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998. 55–59.

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