Video Games Are the Highest Form of Art
I wanted to make this post because someone made a claim to me once and said that “Video games aren’t art, but can have artistic qualities.” Not only do I think this is wrong, I believe that video games, as a medium, are the highest form of art in existence.
So before I start, I want to be careful and define terms properly. When I say that video games are the “highest” form of art, I’m referring more specifically to the expressive ceiling that any given form of art can reach. The upper limit of what any given medium can cause a person to think, feel and understand. My claim isn’t that your average game outclasses the average painting, song, or movie. My claim is that the medium at its best (meaning all or most aspects of it are firing on all cylinders) can (and does) absolutely outclass everything else by virtue of the amount of ground it can cover. Most forms of art speak a single language. Music is organized sound, and granting that lyrics fold poetry into it, it still exists fundamentally as a single channel of expression. A painting is a single arrested image. A novel is prose. These forms of media can demonstrate amazing depth within their channel, but the channel is still largely fixed. Besides games, other hybrids do exist. Film, for example, has the ability to incorporate photography, cinematography, writing, performance, score, etc. But games can do everything film does and then some. All of those disciplines exist within games, and they can reach the same heights there that they do in their standalone mediums.
One pertinent example I would give is music. In games, music isn’t just the import of a film-like score. Instead it introduces a new compositional discipline. Adaptive music reacts to the player. Layers can swell as combat intensifies, themes can resequence depending on where you wander, motifs return at the exact moment you make the choice they foreshadowed. The composer has to write music that stays beautiful and thematic but in an order that is largely out of their control (and in the player’s hands). Baldur’s Gate 3 adds an extra uplifting layer to the combat theme when an enemy falls (and the music likewise turns more somber or desperate when an ally drops). Nier Automata’s soundtrack strips and rebuilds its vocal layers in real time as the world changes around you. The most important thing about these two examples is that the transitions are seamless and fit naturally within the composition. I’ve never experienced that at a live concert.
There are several other examples I could point to, of course: architecture, concept design, sculpture, animation, performance capture and more. But doing each of them justice would exponentially lengthen this post, so I'll take them one at a time if anyone wants to dispute a particular discipline.
So no, video games don’t just have “artistic qualities.” A medium that contains every other art form within it, and does things none of them can do alone, isn’t borrowing art’s qualities. It’s raising art’s ceiling.
