Yes, But is it Art?

In April 2010 Roger Ebert restated his position that video games are not and never will be art, or at the very least "that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art from." He made these comments in response to a TED video by Kellee Santiago, in which she stated that video games already were art, but were more like crude cave paintings than the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. As the resulting slew of backlash pointed out, Ebert doesn't understand games, something he acknowledged in his apology three months later. But his rationale is not incomprehensible, in his view the given objectives and the ability to win a game prevent it from being art, to draw a parallel is a board game art?

A board game contains artistic elements such as artwork, text, and some even come with videos, but most people would struggle to think of the overall package as anything besides a frivolity. Without a deeper story line board games struggle to make us feel more than competitive. Some cooperative games, such as Arkham Horror or Pandemic do manage to better portray a narrative but with table talk along the lines of 'I'll go and remove the red cubes from Hong Kong' it's clear that it is still being treated as a game to win rather than a story to explore. The Lord of the Rings LCG does a very good job of portraying the story, with the game rules changing as the plot progresses and character's abilities being thematic, but even here my thoughts would turn to winning rather than being engrossed by the story.

From this it would appear, at least to me, that the board games I have played so far fail as art, purely because I never feel invested in the characters and I choose to resolve events in the manner that I believe will gain me the most points. This is the same thinking that Ebert has towards video games. Whenever I hear someone say 'mindless killing game' it makes me wonder if they have actually played modern video games. Video games have moved beyond simple arcade, get as many points as possible, affairs and now we see branching story lines with no one correct answer. When playing through Skyward Sword the amount of empathy and emotion the game made me feel clearly demonstrated that I was playing this not to just get to the end and win, but because I cared about the characters and the story being told. I was experiencing the game as art.

While not all video games are art, which is absolutely fine, I do believe that there is a sizeable number that are and that as a percentage this number is increasing. I also look forward to the day when I get to experience a board game that makes me think and feel and ultimately say 'I have just played a work of art'.