Sorry for the clickbait title... So let me get to the point quickly. Videogames and art are two separate things. They are literally two different words. Apples and oranges. Me and you.

I think there's a big problem with the question, "Are videogames art?" because art gets used in two different ways. The version of art that this question seems to imply is the general usage of the word art to mean a craft, in the way that we can say anything can be an art: cooking, conversation, war, ect. In this sense, yes! Videogames are an art. Problem solved. I just proved myself wrong, but stay with me...

The other, stickier, way that we mean art in this question is the art that’s in museums (like MoMA or the Met), art galleries, and art schools. Whereas the first definition of art is a big umbrella, this one is on the same level as 'videogame'. While there can be overlap in things that fall in the Venn diagram of both art and videogames, they are still two separate things.

Where people start getting defensive here is that this line is often used to gatekeep in art institutions, "But is it art?" It can be confusing and maddening to see what gets rejected and what gets propped up. Why are Corey Arcangel's hacked Nintendo 'Super Mario Clouds', Rirkrit Tiravanija's Thai food installation 'Untitled (Free)', Marina Abramovic sitting and staring at people in 'The Artist is Present', or Donald Judd's metal boxes art? While there are a lot more complex discussions and details to have about this, I think one simple explanation is that they were successfully framed as in conversation with what was already accepted as art by the art public/institutions. While Super Mario Bros could be considered artful in the first definition, it was definitely not created to make reference to or fit into the ecosystem of the art world, whereas Arcangel's work used that game as material to make something that was.

I say all of this without trying to make judgements about this being good or bad, but just as my view of why this is. My objective view (from where I'm sitting in this coffee shop). The word art in both senses carry a weight of importance and legitimization with them- if a work gets put in something like MoMA then the art world is giving its stamp of approval that it is valuable and looks expensive (to borrow from Nina Garcia). While I agree that this is used to gatekeep I also sometimes feel like, well of course this ART museum is not collecting things that aren't art. They have to have a specific mission or else they loose focus and become illegible as an institution.

Another wrinkle, MoMA noteably has started collecting videogames, not art that uses videogames, but in their design department. It's in the building... but it's over there next to the weird chairs. In my view of this discussion it seems reasonable, these games would fall flat if they got put in the art gallery because they weren't made for it, the same way that putting a painting in an arcade would make no sense. It might look cool, but that's not what I came for and I'm not in the proper headspace to really appreciate it. This way MoMA can put its resources toward preserving these works, which is something we often neglect to think about when we talk about making and playing games.

I find John Sharp's book 'Works of Game' useful in starting to piece apart the differences between games that are 'artistic' and art that uses games as material. Whereas he looks to synthesize both of these categories into the 'artist's game' which successfully acts as both a proper game and as a work of art, I am more interested in these two categories as poles to work between. When I'm making something I'm not super concerned whether or not it is properly a 'videogame' or 'art', I just want to make whats interesting with the tools and references that speak to me. The expectations of what games or art are supposed to do become rules that I get to play with rather than be bound by.

Ever since I started learning about art I've been fascinated by Minimalism, partly because I find the simplistic sculptures alluring and partly because of how successfully they still, after 50 years, challenge our ideas about what art should be. Many people are rightfully put off by them, they seem to represent the epitome of art turned in on itself and feel like they could be some kind of money-making scheme that the artist, gallery, museum, and collectors are all in on. While those things may be true in some specific cases, I also love how they speak to bodily presence in a space and how we encounter and perceive objects. There's something undeniably uncanny about seeing a seemingly simple form in front of you just existing quietly and yet somehow not immediately revealing itself to you.

I'm describing this because I also find that many of the critiques we lobby at modern and contemporary art, how it is insular, self referential, and costs big money to get into, are all also true in videogames. Anyone in videogame design knows the joke of the person who's never tried to make a game who has a Great Idea for a game that they are too willing to share to anyone who will listen. These ideas tend to be a list of attributes from games they like that are frankensteined together in their head- this genre plus this minus that.... This is the same kind of insularity that gave us Modern art which is primarily concerned with being as much of a painting (flat pigment on a surface) or a sculpture (hunks of physical material) as possible. Picking up a new game might require learning a complicated control scheme that some players have already spent thousands of hours using in previous games that it assumes you also know.

Developing a game to the point that is considered legitimate involves having some combination of a large team, lots of time, and deep knowledge across many disciplines like art asset creation (a third way of using the word 'art'!), coding, sound effects/music, interface design, marketing, and so on. Figuring out how to fabricate a giant steel sculpture is sounding to not sound so bad now! My point here is that the perceived (in)accessibility of games and art seems to be a lot about marketing and distribution. Videogames make money by selling thousands of now mostly digital files and hardware to play it on, the art market is more focused on big luxury iteams. There is a very small percentage of people who are able to make liveable money off of selling their art, and probably a similarly small percent of game developers who are able to make a living off of games without being attached to a larger corporation.

With the current state of free videogame engines, being able to sit down and make a game requires just a computer and an internet connection in the same way that making art just requires paint and a canvas or some wood. The barrier of entry to making 'legitimate' or 'important' works seems to be equally high either way... while both are easy to make on smaller scales. This is partly why I don't particularly care if something is 'art' or 'videogame', I'm not an institution who's identity is based on supporting one or the other. Instead I default to artist Thomas Hirschhorn's "Energy = Yes! Quality = No!". Is it art? Is it a videogame? I don't care... is it good? Does it speak to me honestly?

To circle back to the beginning, the tension at play is about the word art getting used in different ways with the stakes being legitimacy and value. Videogames and art (and cooking and music and literature...) are different disciplines with different contexts that can all be under the umbrella of art in the more general sense. They each have their own standards and conversations and ways of generating value, both in terms of money and cultural importance. But as creators, these categories are only important in how you make your work legible to a certain audience (which is often important for securing funding). So no, videogames aren't art and yes, videogames are art (OK I lied a little in the title). Just go make, play, and see what you want!