Are video games art? Online literature summary


Author: Doctor Terence Rajivan Edward        
Date: 24th May 2026 (version 5, v.1 on 7th March)


Aaron Smuts (2005): art by any theory. Smuts writes, "Rather than defining art and defending video games based on a single contentious definition, I offer reasons for thinking that video games can be art according to historical, aesthetic, institutional, representational and expressive theories of art." I was expecting Smuts to bulldoze readers into accepting his conclusion by saying "This is the expressive definition… This is why video games count as art by this definition…" and "This is the institutional definition… This is why video games count as art by this definition…", etc. He does not seem to do that, to my disappointment.


Grant Tavinor (2009): cluster theory. Tavinor, in the last chapter of his book The Art of Video Games relies on a cluster theory, inspired by Wittgenstein on family resemblances. This theory does not specify that all art has a certain specific quality, rather if something has enough from a set of specific qualities, even if it does not have all the qualities in the set, then it is art. Tavinor observes that players have aesthetic reactions to games, finding some beautiful; that some games represent in detail; that games engage the emotions and imagination; and more. Video games are art, he argues, by cluster theory, but not earlier games with primitive graphics, like Pac-Man (and any games I make presumably): games before the mid-1990s, says Tavinor. (I don't see why a well worded text adventure cannot count as art in a broad sense that includes literature.)


Douglas Bonneville (2011?): video games are not art argument. Bonneville appeals to the fact, or supposed fact, that many video games are not finished by players. He argues that the best explanation for why is that video games are not art: "They are unfinished because they don’t speak to the heart and don’t compel it to continue. They don’t rouse the desire of the beloved. They don’t stoke soul-thirst. They speak of logic, of dexterity, of thrill, of adventure, and even imagination. But we can leave these kinds of things, willy-nilly, without shedding a tear or being moved or overcome with emotion or insight." (Interesting about picture, by the way!)


Jef Folkerts (2011): fine line between art and entertainment. Jef Folkerts is discontent with various previous definitions of art, which focus on aesthetic features of art, emotional complexity, and ambiguity. He defines art in terms of experience: art is whatever causes a distinctive type of experience, an art experience. This art experience for him involves imitation of a signification process, a kind of mimesis - I am not sure what he means exactly, but it is cognitive science and there is a diagram which looks helpful. Fable II and Bioshock are offered as examples of art and there is much discussion of the art-entertainment relationship, including entertaining but also prestigious novels.


Al Baker (2012): representation by regulated interaction. Baker argues that video games can not merely achieve art, they are at least sometimes a distinctive kind of art. This distinctive kind of art involves representation by regulated interaction. One learns facts or qualities about a main character through causing interactions between that character and other entities within the video game world, instead of simply being told them. For example (an adaptation of his), a traumatic encounter leads to troubling dreams for the main character, in which one learns of his past. Video games have greater potential for creating empathy thereby.


Roger Ebert (2012): video games can never be art. Ebert engages in a debate with Kellee Santiago, a designer and producer of video games. Ebert is skeptical about defining art, but says that he tends to think of it as the creation of an individual artist, even though collective productions are art. He also famously says that there is no winning in art, rather experiencing it. And "“No one… has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.”


Jonathan Jones (2014): failed art is not art. The Guardian  denies that video games are art. His argument is unclear to me. He compares asking whether video games are art to asking whether Jane Austen is sport. He does suggest that it is not a problem if video games are not art - as it is not a problem if Austen is not sport? - and he asserts that art is rare. "Very few things count as Art. I would argue that very little art is actually art – because most of it fails, and failed art is not art."


Rene Alberto Garcia Cepeda (2014). A dissertation which seeks to argue that a few video games are art, appealing to Marcel Duchamp's The Creative Act to propose that the candidate for art object must exist, must be made with creative intention, and must be deciphered and interpreted by an audience, to be included in a canon of art history: an institution. Dissertation engaged with Ebert's claim that "a smorgasbord of choices" cheapens the artwork, denying that video games are simply open-ended explorations. Wreden and Pugh's The Stanley Parable is used to counter Ebert and Gaynor's indie title Going Home. Says, "artists like Jodi, Feng Mengbo, Josef Fares and Marina Abramoviç have taken notice of the artistic and creative possibilities video games present and have integrated them into their practice."


Sorcha Mackenzie (no date, no references after 2015): cluster theory. She refers to cluster theory of art (see Tavinor above) and proposes that the game Bioshock meets almost all the criteria: recall it is not necessary to meet them all. The example is taken from Glen Creeber and Royston Martin's book Digital Culture: Understanding New Media. She later refers to video games explicitly connected with art. Hunter Jonakin made the game Jeff Koons Must Die!!! which was exhibited at Florida Museum of Art. The player enters a retrospective exhibition of Josh Koons (Jeff Koons?) and can destroy all the work. She also refers to Joan Heemskerk and Dirk Paesman - their homage to ZX Spectrum game Jet Set Willy - Beate Geissler and Oliver Sann.


Doug Walker (2015): are video games art? A video response from a Nostalgia Critic who last finished a video game some years ago. He presents a definition of art - the expression of human imagination/creativity in short - and says that almost anything qualifies and the question is whether video games are high art. He notes that more recent video games are criticized in ways comparable to high art - Metroid: Other M; is this character behaving appropriately? - whereas no one asked this of Mario the plumber's quest for a princess. Walker says most people agree films can  be great art, and uses this as a starting point. Are video games films lite? Many cash on the attractiveness of movies. He argues that video games allow the user choice, to be involved with creation, which allows for distinctive great art. Has this potential been realized? Walker proposes The Sims comes close. Comic books were once dismissed as childish, and then Maus came out. Maybe video games characters will be like characters from Greek myths soon.
 
Nathan Deardorff (2015/2021): video games are high art. Deardorff says that what distinguishes art from craft is intention. He regards Ebert as expressing prejudices. He asserts that videogames are postmodern art, though with little clarification of what that is. He appeals to videogames' capacity for creating empathy. He refers to indie game maker Edmund McMillan and his game The Binding of Isaac, about a boy trying to escape his mother who believes God is instructing her to kill her son.


Roberto Dillon (2016): emotional reactions. Dillon quotes statements according to which emotional complexity or evoking emotion through fantasy is at the root of art. He uses a more quantificational approach. He exposes viewers to established masterpieces and to video games, asking questions about their emotions. He finds that video games produce sufficient emotional engagement to count as art.


Brock Rough (2016): art and game definitions. Brock's PhD dissertation defends a Levinsonian intentional-historical definition of art - an artwork proper is intended to be appreciated as these earlier works were. He defends Suits' definition of a game as having rules which prevent the efficient pursuit of ends: one cannot pick up the ball and run with it, in soccer, etc. Rough argues that something cannot be a game and art, and yet wants to admit some non-game video games are art.


Melissa Somedin (2016): storytelling. Video games often incorporate stories and Somedin argues that they have the potential for innovative storytelling, to make them a kind of literature.


J. Robson and A. Meskin (2016): interactive fiction. Video games are a special kind of fiction: self-involving interactive fictions. Robson and Meskin observe that players report what happened in game in terms of "I did this" and "I did that", for example, "I defeated the dragon and got to the next level." They take these descriptions more or less at face value: by interacting with the video game environment, one produces a fiction which is about oneself. Their article engages with Tavinor and also makes comparison with Italo Calvino's novel If on a winter's night a traveller…, suggesting the video game medium is more suited to what Calvino is trying to do.


Michael Ridge (2018): against Brock Rough. Ridge usefully specifies Brock's arguments for why something cannot be a game and an artwork and rejects these. He rejects a general assumption of Brock.


Felan Parker (2018): on Roger Ebert on video games. Parker details the controversy caused by the famous film critic's dismissive treatment of video games as art. Ebert even says that the visual aspect of video games is merely craft, not art. 


Andy MacDonald (2021): when do video games become art? MacDonald has both an article and a video. He provides useful historical information: a New York restaurant owner was barred from having arcade machines on his premises and appealed to the First Amendment right to freedom of expression, but was told by the judge that video games are not artistic expression. MacDonald thinks rejection of video games as art is down to lack of initiation, if not ignorance. MacDonald defines art as a tangible creation made for the purpose of telling a story or evoking an emotion. MacDonald concedes some games are pure entertainment, but develops some subcategories. Examples of beautiful visuals: The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami. More literary: Konami's Silent Hill 2, Nintendo's Mother 3. Minimal gameplay, mostly story: Abzû, What Remains of Edith Finch. The video ends with museum exhibitions of video games, e.g. at Victoria and Albert.


Allen Fairway (2021): Are video games art? The University of Kent art history student reviews Smuts, cluster theory, and Nguyen. Smuts says that some video games are art, but there are no masterpieces. Fairway thinks that Smuts is insufficiently appreciative of video games as a distinct art form, imposing standards from earlier ones. Fairway refers to The Ghost of Tsushima (2020) by developer Sucker Punch as a candidate for being a masterpiece and relies on a cluster definition of art from Berys Gaut. The game ticks the boxes of having aesthetic qualities (photorealistic, Kurosawa-like), expressing emotion, and the product of high creation skill. Fairway also appeals to Nguyen, on process arts, which "are designed to 'sculpt activity, often to aesthetic ends' and that these artefacts are overlooked as art forms when compared to ‘traditional’ arts." The player helps develop the narrative in the Sucker Punch game.
  
Justyn Cooke (2022): video games are art, uncontroversial? Not only does Cooke assert that video games are art. He also suspects this is uncontroversial. He compares the journey to art to that of film, which took a while to achieve art. Likewise games in the 80s attracted attention but were they art? He argues for video games as art because of their potential to create empathy. He refers to the 2013 game "The Last of Us" featuring a hero called Joel and how the player learns to appreciate the necessity of violence in a post-apocalyptic setting. (Sounds somewhat like Apogee Games' Monster Bash of 1993.)


Reddit discussion (2022 or 2023): are video games "art"? Pragomatic passes on this argument from Penny Arcade: "how can something that hundreds of artists spent creating not be art?" From 20 years ago apparently. Peakzorro says, "If someone can tape a banana to a wall and call it art, then video games must be art too." Wezelboy says, "If you define art as something one can display in a museum and sell for lots of money, then video games are art." Raisinsandpersons refers to the authority of C. Thi Nguyen. Most commentators agree video games are art, or some are.


David Dennen (2024): video games are not art. Ethnomusicologist Dennen argues that video games are games and that is simply something different from art. He says that although video games can be aesthetically appreciated, they are typically made for and used for something else. His account of the aesthetic attitude is "To treat something aesthetically, to take the aesthetic attitude to something, is to treat it as an experience in and of itself. The practical attitude, in contrast, always treats objects as means beyond themselves." And "to approach an object in the aesthetic attitude is to reduce overt doing to a minimum. You let the object guide your perception." But don't various paradigmatic art forms involve reactions to audience reactions? (Stand up comedy, theatre.)


Wisecrack (2024): are video games art?. A video. Video games are less prestigious and the study of them is less prominent academically than film studies. The narrator - not the most pleasant - refers to a Guardian critic's dismissal of them as art. Most game criticism reads like technology reviews, e.g. of a new mobile phone. Video games are seen as a mere accompaniment of new technology, not culture, and the narrator compares this to the initial devaluation of photography. Association with play leads to devaluation. He refers to a sociologist from 1938 who said all art derives from play. Dadaists and surrealists included games in their output. Increasing sophistication overcomes flimsy arguments against regarding games as art. He emphasizes audience agency in video games, in contrast to horror films, where you scream at a girl not to go upstairs, say. He refers to C Thi Nguyen's observation: novels reveal to us lives we have not lived; games let us experience forms of agency we might not have discovered on our own. And recommends Final Fantasy 7 as engaging with ideas of our earth as a living being.


Daijiro Ueno (2024): not aesthetically-focused. Ueno argues that the player is too busy doing other stuff to be involved with aesthetic aspects of a game. "In reality, when someone is playing a video game, they hardly care about the game’s artistic aspect. Instead, what goes through their mind is: Can I climb this object? Which button should I use? Is this NPC well-programmed? Why do I hear the boss music?" He offers an amusing analogy: a man juggling paintings can hardly appreciate them.


Ackeem Durrant (2025): video games as ultimate art form. A video. Character designer Durrant argues that video games are one of the ultimate art forms because one day you have to be a sculptor, the next day an anatomist, a third day do lighting, then fashion designer, etc. He says that digital sculpture resembles actual sculpture. And that it takes him about 2 months to do a character.


Alex Humphreys (no date): eight reasons to say video games are art. She gives a series of examples of games that qualify as art in her eyes. What Remains of Edith Finch,  won the 2018 BAFTA for Best Game, and it explored the beautiful and the sublime. Bloodborne has intricately crafted combat sequences. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture has an orchestral sound track: the music by Jessica Curry won her a BAFTA. Journey won a Grammy for composer Austin Wintory and is characterized by Humphreys as creating new social experiences. World of Warcraft uses colour to evoke mood. Lucas Pope's Papers made a political statement. Sam Barlow's Her Story refined interactive storytelling. Virginia broke conventions. We are told, "It’s remarkable how much it conveys, and how emotional it can be, without exposition or conversations between characters. Sometimes a facial expression or a shift in body language is all it takes."


Wikipedia. Wikipedia devotes much attention to Roger Ebert's opposition to counting video games as art. In a video game you can win, according to Ebert, whereas in art there is no winning, rather there is experience. Video game luminary Brian Moriaty gave a lecture supportive of Ebert, entitled An Apology for Roger Ebert. Zach Gage criticizes the lecture. Game designer Hideo Kojima agrees with Ebert, as do Michael Samyn and Auriea Harvey, according to Wikipedia. Samyn argues that games satisfy the physical needs of the player to play, whereas art has higher purposes. He also argues that artistic narrative is marginalized in the games industry, with games being digital sport.  


References
Apologies for any absences. Apologies to myself? To Dominic Lopes?
N.a. n.d. Video games as an art form. Wikipedia. Available at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_games_as_an_art_form#:~:text=In%20May%202011%2C%20the%20United,games%20as%20an%20art%20form.
Al Baker. 2012. Videogames as representational art. Postgraduate Journal of Aesthetics 9(2): 28-39. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/1837508/Videogames_as_Representational_Art
Douglas Bonneville. 2011. Why video games are still not Fine Art (yet have art in them). bonfx.com. Available at:
https://bonfx.com/why-video-games-are-still-not-fine-art-yet-have-art-in-them/
Channel Awesome. (Doug Walker). 2015. Are Video Games Art? YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VbNkDXfP_0&t=594s
Rene Alberto Garcia Cepeda. 2014. Video games as a medium of artistic expression. MA Art History and Curating Dissertation. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/11342346/Video_Games_as_a_medium_of_artistic_expression
Justin Cooke. 2022. Video games are art, and I'm not sure if that's still controversial. The Miscellany News: Vassar's college student newspaper of record since 1866. 7th September 2022. Available at:
https://miscellanynews.org/2022/09/07/arts/video-games-are-art-and-im-not-sure-if-thats-still-controversial/
David Dennen. 2024. Videogames Are Not Art. But They Are Important. Medium August 11th 2024. Available at:
https://daviddennen.medium.com/videogames-are-not-art-but-they-are-important-51e064d5bd80
Alex Humphreys. n.d. Are video games art? Eight reasons to say yes… BBC. Available at:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/5hj4RjMNddMcLBDqhHSRqgp/are-video-games-art-eight-reasons-to-say-yes
Nathan Deardorff. 2021 (version 1 2015). An Argument that Video Games, Are, Indeed High Art. Forbes December 10th 2021, first version October 13th 2015. Available at:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2015/10/13/an-argument-that-video-games-are-indeed-high-art/
Roberto Dillon. 2016. Videogames and Art: Comparing Emotional Feedback from 
Digital and Classic Masterpieces. IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science 21(7): 79-85. Available at:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/305747574_Videogames_and_Art_Comparing_Emotional_Feedback_from_Digital_and_Classic_Masterpieces
Royal Academy of Arts (Ackeem Durrant). 2025. Are Video Games Art? Available on YouTube at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA31oh98_WU
Roger Ebert. 2012. Video games can never be art. December 14th 2012. Available at:
https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/video-games-can-never-be-art
Terence Rajivan Edward. 2026. 2 dimensional lovelies, or Grant Tavinor against retro video games. Available at academia.edu:
https://www.academia.edu/164990506/2_dimensional_lovelies_or_Grant_Tavinor_against_retro_video_games
Terence Rajivan Edward. 2026. Winning in games versus experience of art: a response to Ebert. Available at PhilPapers: https://philpapers.org/archive/EDWWIG.pdf
Terence Rajivan Edward. 2026. On "Video games as self-involving interactive fictions": response to Robson and Meskin. Available at academia.edu:
https://www.academia.edu/165013731/On_Video_games_as_self_involving_interactive_fictions_response_to_Robson_and_Meskin
Allen Fairway. 2021. Are Videogames Art? Art History News, University of Kent:
https://blogs.kent.ac.uk/artistry/2021/07/22/are-videogames-art/
Jef Folkerts. 2011. Video games, Walking the Fine Line between Art and Entertainment:
https://www.academia.edu/128153944/Video_Games_Walking_the_Fine_Line_between_Art_and_Entertainment
Jonathan Jones. 2014. Santa brought me a Playstation. But it's still not art. The Guardian 7th January 2014. Available at:
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2014/jan/07/playstation-video-games-art
Andy MacDonald. 2021. When exactly does a video game become art? BBC The Social:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/4lrtQHnLJ2CzLTbJv39zGRH/when-exactly-does-a-video-game-become-art
Sorcha Mackenzie. n.d. The New Old: Obsolescence in the Digital Age. Available at:
https://www.academia.edu/7264733/Videogames_are_beginning_to_share_the_forms_and_concerns_of_art_and_should_be_considered_an_artistic_medium
Felan Parker. 2018. Roger Ebert and the Games-as-Art Debate. Cinema Journal 57(3): 77-100. Available at: https://se4n.org/papers/parker.pdf
r/gaming. 2022 or 2023. Are video games "art"? Reddit. Available at:
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/165srpx/are_videogames_art/
Michael Ridge. 2018. The compatibility of games and artworks. Journal of the Philosophy of Games 1-11. Available at:
https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/files/67291449/5915_17116_1_PB.pdf
J. Robson and A. Meskin. 2016 Videogames as Self-Involving Interactive Fictions. Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 74 (2): 165-177. Available at:
https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/id/eprint/93610/2/MeskinVideogamesAsSelf-involving.pdf
Brock Rough. 2016. Are video games art? PhD dissertation for the University of Maryland. Available at:
https://api.drum.lib.umd.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/e3fbb82d-180f-4076-89c4-5e8c5d57715c/content
Somedin, Melissa. 2016. The Game Debate: Video Games as Innovative Storytelling. The Oswald Review 18: 69-82. Available at:
https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1165&context=tor
Grant Tavinor. 2009. The Art of Video Games. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Available at:
https://kevinjpatton.com/teaching/phil_3230/readings/Grant%20Tavinor%20-%20The%20Art%20of%20Videogames.pdf
Daijiro Ueno. 2024. Video Games as an Art Form? Medium. Available at:
https://medium.com/the-collector/video-games-as-an-art-form-18bc31b7fd9
Wisecrack. 2024. Are Video Games Art? Available on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7DDlZ-F5M4&t=783s


Other sources
Beto Costa Fm. (translated by Meline Hoch and revised by Romeu). 2025. Are Video Games Art? An Analysis of Definitions, Histories, and Controversies. Umgamer. Available at:
https://umgamer.com/en-us/articles/are-video-games-art-an-analysis-of-definitions-history-and-controversies
(Has some examples of video games which are studied, their aesthetic properties presumably: Journey - 2012, Hellblade 1 and 2, and Disco Elysium - 2019.)
Our Culture Mag & Partners. 2024. Video Games As A Form Of Art. ourculture. Available at: https://ourculturemag.com/2024/04/30/video-games-as-a-form-of-art/
(Gives some examples of video games which are appreciated as art: “Journey,” “The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild,” “The Last of Us,” “Shadow of the Colossus,” and “Bioshock Infinite.” Discusses game music, identifying Nobuo Uematsu and Koji Kondo as game music composers.)