Tyler Thompson

        Much controversy has taken place following the release of The Fullbright Company’s Gone Home. Gone Home is a first-person interactive story adventure game that has found itself in the crossfire between two sides: people who think their foray into story telling constitutes their title as a video game, and others who say Gone Home is nothing more than an interactive movie of sorts.

In the game the player embodies Katie Greenbriar, a young woman who returns from travelling abroad to visit her family’s new house, only to find that no one is home. Throughout the narrative, Katie’s younger sister Samantha provides context and story through the use of journal entries that the player finds and forces the player to emotionally invest in the lives of Katie and her family. The gameplay in Gone Home revolves around first-person exploration and little else, which would seem to be the cause of discourse within the gaming community surrounding this title (Riendeau). That leaves the community with an important question: what makes a game?

        In the past, the criteria for judging what a game is and isn’t was very simple. Do you play it on a screen? It’s a game. Does it use a controller? Of course it’s a game! But in the twenty-first century the parameters by which the images moving across our screens constitute the title of “video game” have become increasingly opaque. Now we judge video games in a much more intricate and subjective way. Is a phone app a video game? Is a text-based adventure game a real game? Some people say so, others will defy ‘till their last breath that Candy Crush or Gone Home is a bonafide video game experience. All these gaming experiences may have some harcore gamers turning up their noses in contempt, but they don’t get to make the rules. The reality is that any interaction with a moving image on a screen via some type of controls are all the criteria for what constitutes a video game. Trying to feel superior by putting down the types of games other people enjoy is simply damaging to the gaming community as a whole. If there is to be a healthy gaming culture; wasting time deciding who gets to join the club and who doesn’t just results in a smaller club.

 

       Now that we can define what games are, we look into what they can be. If you had asked anyone in 1972, when the game Pong first released, if video games could ever become art, they probably would have given you a quizzical look, followed by a curt “no.” However, with recent advances in technology, developers are able to present emotional stories with facial animations, unique art styles, and quality voice-overs. Developers are even pulling mainstream actors into their games, with Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare starring Kevin Spacey, famous for his role in HBO’s political thriller, House of Cards. However, some will still say that video games can not be thought of as art. The Guardian’s Jonathan Jones recently wrote a piece on why games are a fun pastime, but not art, he stated, “Electronic games offer a rich and spectacular entertainment, but why do they need to be anything more than fun? Why does everything have to be art?” People who try to define what art is and isn’t are practicing an exercise in futility. Why does everything have to be art? Well why does anything have to be art? Why can’t a movie just be an entertaining way to experience your favorite actors and actresses on the big-screen? Why can’t a painting just be a fun way to express oneself? Keith Stuart, also from The Guardian wrote a beautiful counter-piece to Jonathan’s article, where talked about the insanity of attempting to define art. He wrote, “The greatest philosophers in history have floundered on the question, many simply avoided it altogether preferring to grapple with more straightforward questions – like the nature of logic, or the existence of God. Art is ethereal, boundless, its meaning as transient as the seasons. When you think you have grasped it, it slips through your fingers.” In the end, the answer is very simple. Video games are a medium of expression, such as a canvas can be a medium for the ideas of the painter, or the camera the tool of the photographer.

Video games can be many things. They can offer entertainment, relaxation, and unique experiences born out of artistic expression. A large part of art deals with the viewer, and what they perceive to be the meaning of the piece. Who can say what art is and isn’t? So get out there, and play some art.