Video Games

At first, I was kind of skeptical to say video games are art. I mean, what's artistic about Grand Theft Auto? Maybe it's the way the blood gushes out of each victim you kill, or the way that prostitutes switch when they walk. Art has such a vague definition that practically everything can be defined as art, including video games. The definition that my lovely dictionary (provided by Apple) gave me is "Art–the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power." According to this definition, video games are indeed art. There is no doubting that they are an expression of the imagination and that they evoke emotion from their users.

I think it is because video games evoke such emotion from users that they can sometimes tell stories in a better way than a book or an orator can. Growing up, I used to play Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? From that game, I learned about Egypt, the printing press, the vikings, etc. wayyy better than I did by reading a textbook or listening to an instructor. Video games are exciting and help disguise the fact that you are learning. Not to mention, you are more likely to retain something that was fun to learn about, opposed to something that you had to force yourself to stay awake and take notes on.

Since video games and movies depend on visual literacy, they are similar in their effectiveness in telling stories. A lot of video games actually show movie clips right before you are given a task to complete to add to the overall narrative of the game. I think that in this respect, video games can be more effective in telling stories because they actually involve the user, whereas movies require that you simply look at a screen.

Honestly, I didn't even want to write what I wrote, but technically video games do fall under the category of "art," and they can actually tell stories better than some other forms of art. However, this is not to say that I am in complete support of this idea for all video games. In fact, I think a lot of them turn your brain to mush.