Seeds | Video Games: Audience As Art

Story by Greg Bright 

| Published Nov 29, 2011

Are video games art? I think we are finally past the argument, with the answer being a resounding yes. While video games still have a long way to go, I think we can safely say that they have proven themselves to be a new art form that deserves our attention.

That isn’t to say that all video games deserve our attention; far from it. Most video games coming out today are garbage; they spend too much time bogging the players down with stories that control what the player can do. This, unfortunately, is because they are under the misconception that video games have a lot in common with the cinema. Which, of course, is false.

What makes video games special, something that cinema has consistently failed to do, is force the audience to interact with the art. Godard, Fassbinder and other film directors tried to do this cinema with the Brechtian technique, a way of forcing the audience to be aware that they are watching a film and therefore more likely interact with it instead of just passively watch it. In the end, they weren’t successful (how many of you honestly know Godard or Fassbinder?).

Video games, in their very nature, force the audience to interact with them. Because of this, they have far more in common with the stage than cinema. The stage has learned to thrive on audience interaction, whether it be laughter, gasps, or even boos. And this is what video games still need to learn: how to use audience interaction to their advantage.

Video Game’s strengths do not lie in first-person shooter games such as Call of Duty where the character is forced into doing what the game tells them to do. No. Video game's strengths lie in wide open game structures such as the “sandbox” style games, Grand Theft Auto 4 and Red Dead Redemption. While both of these games are masterpieces, they have barely touched the surface of what video games can be. We may yet see a world where players create their own unique stories and the audience itself becomes the art form.