It’s a simple question but it doesn’t have a simple answer. To a gamer, the answer is a resounding ‘yes’, to anyone who hasn’t spent hours of their free time in the virtual worlds of online games then the reply may be slightly more ambiguous. The question has been asked hundreds of times and it always varies.
But what is art? Conventionally, it has been defined as “painting, drawing, sculpture, design, fine arts and graphic arts” but art has become so much more than that.
Advances in the entertainment industry through the latest technology can now produce visuals that are worthy of study, the modern cinematographer can conjure visions of beauty that are not confined to a canvas or hidden away in a museum.
Art is no longer purely about the classical but has evolved; moving visuals and computer games are a perfect example of what an artist can produce virtually.
Noted art critic John Berger declared that “when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a whole series of learnt assumptions about art.”
He considered that assumptions such as beauty, truth, genius, civilization, form, status and taste would need to be taken into consideration when viewing a piece and although it is unlikely that he has ever had the desire to play free online games, popular games such as World of Warcraft or the free-roaming landscapes of Red Dead Redemption allow the gamer to embrace the virtual experience as an art form.
Art is designed to provoke an emotion distinctive from those in everyday life with the viewer basing his/her reaction on the aesthetic qualities of the piece presented to him/her.
You could put one hundred people in front of Damien Hirst’s The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (essentially a large, pickled shark) or The Hay Wain by John Constable and the emotional reaction could be entirely different.
Video and computer games are exactly the same. They are designed to produce emotional reactions by putting players in hypothetical situations. The majority of people that play Call of Duty are not professional soldiers, the millions that play FIFA will never run on to the pitch at Wembley and it is extremely rare that you will ever be asked to rescue a princess.
Art has always depended on the viewer taking in the images relayed through your computer screen. The latest generation of games rely not just on game-play but are increasingly including visuals that could be considered works of art.
Lighting effects, photo-realistic renderings of landscapes and urban developments, life-like simulations of human beings and creatures (both real and imagined); the game designer is limited only by their imagination.
If you consider Vincent Van Gogh, he painted the colours of the world as they appeared to him, in many ways no different to the designer who creates a virtual world.
Earlier this year The National Endowment for the Arts announced that interactive games would be considered as among the art forms to which it would offer funding. This decision is a small step forward towards acknowledging game designs as art, although for those in the industry it comes at a time when gaming is again under the microscope in terms of the benefits it accrues to society.
Video gaming is big business and it is developing all the time as more people want games that are not just entertaining but also visually spectacular. But the question remains, can computer games be considered art? Perhaps it is a matter of opinion and only by playing the right games will you find the answer.