Video Games Aren't Special
(on the focus on games as a medium over everything else)
Last week I watched the streamed Games Against the Empire panel from Boshi’s Place in NYC. The panelists were excellent, and hearing them talk about their games and their process creating political, often deeply personal art was really compelling to me. In games, there’s a serious lack of this kind of thoughtful reflection from artists, so making space for these discussions is always welcome. However, watching this panel highlighted an issue I’ve had with the way academic approaches to games studies bleed into broader discussions of games, and I wanted to dive deeper into that.
For what it’s worth, Boshi’s Place is an independent organization, but it’s heavily connected with the NYU game design program in terms of people involved from what I can tell. I like what they do a lot and I’m only using them as an example because they’ve done enough right to get me to watch a panel in the first place.
Discussions of game design in academic adjacent spaces often focus heavily on video games as a medium over the content of games. Even in a panel like this, where games with similar themes are being discussed, much of the discussion still focuses on the medium itself rather than those themes. Many of the questions posed to the panelists were about how video games can be used to share ideas in novel ways. I found this part of the panel kind of disappointing, as these formal questions about games can be asked to anyone, but only these artists can discuss the political ideas they’re exploring in their art with as much clarity and thoughtfulness. I don’t want to put words in people’s mouths, but the panelists seemed less interested in discussing video games as well–Paolo Pedercini even responded to a question about being influenced by other media by saying his favorite medium is anything but video games.
It felt assumed that we didn’t need to hear about the artists’ ideas in detail because we’re already on the same page about politics, which is 1. clearly not true when it comes to colonialism among NYC liberals, and 2. positions everyone in the room as enlightened educators trying to find the best method to share their unchanging ideals, rather than human beings who are constantly learning. Kas on the panel described growing and finding clarity through working on his game Onto Maizilind Unto Infinity, which I found very relatable. I really respect that humility and I think we ought to see ourselves that way rather than as an educating class when it comes to art and politics.
I think there’s room for the insular focus on craft and form found in these institutions and the kind of discussion that comes out of that. But with the state of games criticism, these types of games don’t get talked about anywhere else, and so they don’t get analyzed in any other way. In a more established artform like film, artists have opportunities to talk about the themes and messages of their work in interviews, at festivals, etc, so they’re not starved to speak on these things. In video games, academic spaces are sometimes the first and only platform for these artists, so the academic way of analyzing games has an outsized influence on discussions about the work, pushing everyone further away from the ideas the artists are engaging with.
Maybe we’re at a point where every conversation about games turns into a discussion about the medium because we want people to care more about video games, and formalism gives a compelling argument for why video games are special. But maybe if we want people to take games more seriously, we should start by admitting that the ideas within games can move us and change our minds before we get so analytical about the medium as a whole.
I think the artists are ready for that framing. In my eyes, this tiny world of unusual/experimental games has just recently started to produce really thoughtful art that I want to share with my friends, art that engages with ideas outside of games at the same depth as other media can often reach. These games don’t need the theoretical backup of game studies to prove that they’re worthwhile anymore. I would love for the structures surrounding discussions of these games to celebrate that and hold them to the scrutiny they’re asking for.