The pertinent question of the week, and for the past few years, is "Are video games art?" Even if the majority say yes, there is still the question of what video games should do as art. And that's a harder question to answer. As an example, it seems our literary ancestors had a difficult time answering that question.
The Romantic Period (1785-1830) disagreed with the Enlightenment Period, saying that poetry--an art--should not be intellectual or concentrate on form, but rather praise the daily, mundane shores of life. William Wordsworth wrote a poem about a leech-gatherer, for instance. The poets of the Victorian Period (1837-1901) argued that art should be moral and reflect their pious values. Lord Alfred Tennyson emphasized that all men should be gentlemen. Then Modernism swept through England, adopting the individualism and rebellion the Romantics believed in. But Oscar Wilde added 'art for art's sake", and ended his manifesto with "all art is quite useless". Every age disagreed on what art should do, but they did agree on one thing: art should do something for humanity.
The Games as Art Debate is an intellectual and aesthetic discussion, but it ultimately pales in the shadow of what video games have already done in the past thirty years (or even back to 1931 when David Gottlieb invented the first mass-produced arcade game) to people as a whole. Matthew Hunter Mason describes what it means to be a gamer and have a family, and how the two must have a balance. And even though he is now passively following video games, Matthew still finds a community of gamers through his blog. Brian Shirk recently wrote a personal article on how video games sometimes eased his pain from various illnesses but have since lost their appeal.
The issue of diversity in video games are often explored: why isn't the GLBT community represented in video games, and where are the female game designers? Not to mention that hundreds of thousands of people have created careers in video games, allowing them to support their family, form friendships, and, most important, be productive citizen. Some people don't have jobs and live life on the fringe. Because video games touch the human heart in some way, they are no less valuable than other media. It is not just about what is on the screen, what who is holding the controller.
The contention is this: that anything that impacts society, whether it is positive or negative, is of significance, regardless of whether it should be called art. Whether something is art or not does, the medium still shapes the landscape of society.
Creativity and the imagination are essential to the human condition. We are divided by politics, class, race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Each are connected to deep intellectual debates and yet what art does to people breaks those barriers. I attend Auburn University at Montgomery; in the cafeteria you will find a small group of student huddled around several laptops. Everyone calls them The Gamers, because Monday through Thursday, from mid-morning to late evening, they play video games. You will find four African Americans, three Caucasians, a student from the Dominican Republic, and another who is a combination of Vietnamese, Filipino, African American, and Caucasian. But the atmosphere is friendly, and conversation blossoms with discussion on video games and classes.
Our existence would be miserable if we did not have creativity--if we always cared about the practical and important debates. Ending social stratification and discrimination are important, but oftentimes the barriers are broken not by debate that leads to some epiphany in values or a change in laws, but in the simple, daily experiences between people. Talking about music over drinks, or movies at the kitchen table, or playing video games at night. In those moments, we realize best the absurdities of our social ills and that some division should not be so.
Of course, video games cannot unite us, anymore than literature, movies, and music can. Indeed, sometimes we must don armor and jump into an honest debate about philosophy, politics, the economy, and so on with sword and shield in hand. We can take off the armor in the Games as Art Debate; it's significance to humanity is already noted.
But to answer the our literary ancestors, art is everything they believed it to be: it is about rebellion and conformity, intellect and emotion, morality, amorality, and immorality--it is all these things, contradictions they may be, but it is in the contradiction we find the paradox of art.
