Video games emerged in the middle of the twentieth century and developed at the end of the twentieth century, after the emergence of conceptualism in art, which undermined classical definitions of art. In addition, this medium is highly dependent on the rapid development of technology. For these reasons, the game industry does not ask the question: “Is it art or not?”. Nevertheless, this question has been raised in the cultural environment since the 1980s. So can we perceive computer games as art?
The idea of video games as an art form has been around since the late 1980s. Since then, games have been exhibited in museums. In 1989, the Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) opened the exhibition “Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade”. At the time, the museum’s director and founder Rochelle Slovin positioned games as “an important form of moving image worthy of scientific interpretation and discussion.” The exhibition looked like a game room filled with slot machines. The 1993 remake of this exhibition also added consoles and handheld games, and the museum’s collection began to expand with computer games.
This theme was developed in several other projects in the 90s and early 2000s. The term “art game” first appeared in academic usage in 2002. However, this view had both followers and opponents. From 2005 until his death in 2013, American film critic and Pulitzer Prize winner Roger Ebert fought against the perception of video games as art. A year before his death, in 2012, the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) introduced games to the exhibition context on a large scale.
The SAAM’s exhibition “The Art of Video Games” was designed to emphasize the evolution of art in the medium of video games over its 40-year history. Curator and video game collector Chris Melisinos presented works by leading designers and developers from five periods of gaming technology development. Video games were considered in a broader cultural context and in relation to video art, film and television.
Video games use images, actions, and player participation to tell stories and engage their audiences. In the same way as cinema, animation and performance, they can be considered a compelling and influential form of narrative art. New technologies have allowed designers to create more and more interactive and complex environments while remaining within the traditional game model.
The SAAM exposition featured 80 games, mostly in the form of screenshots and short videos. And less than a month after the exhibition ended, the most famous art institution in the United States, the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), bought 14 video games for its permanent collection.