Aiden Brooks
International Studies
Dr. Fox (advisor), Dr. Sittler (librarian), Dr. Hettler and Dr. Persinger (2nd and 3rd readers)
art, philosophy, culture, games, rhetoric

Introduction
My name is Aiden Brooks, and I am an International Studies student at California
University of Pennsylvania. While this topic is only extremely tangentially related to my major,
it has been something that I have thought about a lot for several years now, and the motivation
behind this thesis. I have been a player of games my entire life, from being taught how to play
cards at a young age, to playing video games as an adolescent, to working in the board game
industry during my time at university.
Additionally, since I was 9 years old, I have been a musician of many different
instruments. Music is an art form very dear to my heart, and I have always enjoyed the feeling of
having expressed a beautiful or interesting idea through the art form. I have also come to enjoy
creative writing over time, but music has always remained my primary artistic venture.
Particularly, I enjoy the interactions between myself and others when I perform live, or when I
receive feedback on my recorded music. Like many others, I consider the music that I create to
be a sort of extension of myself, something that I feel very intimate with, something that makes
me feel very exposed in a thrilling and interpersonal way. Releasing one's music "into the wild"
is inviting others into a very personal space within you.
Until recently, I never seriously considered why I felt so motivated to argue on behalf of
games being art. I first believed that my interest in the topic of games being art, in the same way
that music is considered art, was motivated purely by an interest in "accuracy". I would have said
that despite my love of games and my interest in the creation of them, and I didn't really think
that I was personally invested in the question beyond finding it to be an interesting debate in
which I felt that many were looking at it improperly or making weak arguments.
However, recently I have realized why it is that I feel so strongly about this debate. I have

been a Dungeon Master for various Dungeons and Dragons groups, and I've created countless
scenarios or custom rulesets for a few different board games during my stint in the board game
industry. For those unfamiliar, a Dungeon Master plays the role of the narrator in a game of
interactive storytelling. The players have individual characters that they roleplay, and it has been
my job to tell them how the world and its inhabitants respond to their actions. This takes a
variety of forms, from simple interpretations of written rules, to lengthy descriptions of a
cohesive fantasy world, to improvised dialogue between non-player characters and the heroes
that the players control.
I've come to realize that when I am doing this, I feel remarkably similar to how I feel
when I am performing. Not only does my role require a lot of writing, which occasionally takes
the form of stories or poems that the players will discover, but I am put on a stage to some
degree. I've spent the past six or seven years creating a world that I feel very invested in. When
my players explore this world with their characters, they are being exposed to something that I've
put a lot of time into, and that I'd really like to think is good, in whatever way art can be good. It
is like my friends are reading a story that I wrote aloud to me, and I'm hoping that it sounds good
through another person's voice, and that I'm not going to look silly, or uncreative, or boring. This
is the nature of music performance, of literature publication, and apparently, game design.
I'm no longer claiming that this essay comes from an attempt at pure objectivity, or
detached points about something just for the sake of "getting it right". It comes, at least partially,
from a desire to have what I have created be viewed with the same level of respect and dignity
that one would view an impressionist painting, even one they don't particularly like. Perhaps this
bias weakens my argument, but I truly believe that my position as a "traditional artist" and also
as game designer and enthusiast has given me a unique and interesting perspective on the matter.

The world of art is constantly changing and evolving, and with it, our understanding of
what we consider to be "art" is also always changing. As new technologies and techniques
change the way that we express ourselves, and the ways in which art is created, displayed,
consumed, and preserved change, new mediums and styles of art have earned acceptance within
the art world. What is it that allows something to be or to "become art"? Since "art" has existed
as a concept, philosophers, artists, art critics, curators, and others have argued what "art" is, in
order to recognize it when it exists, and to form a framework for how we could evaluate it.
Photographs, a relatively recent innovation in the history of art, are now displayed in
museums alongside Renaissance-era paintings, and alongside Greek marble statues. Beethoven's
9th Symphony is considered "art" in much the same way as these other things, but it doesn't
reside within a museum the way that other works of art might. We have come to recognize music
as a form of art just as valid as sculpture, paintings, and photographs, and the act of listening to
music as a way of consuming art.
New mediums of art have generally faced resistance to being accepted as legitimate
artforms. Photography as an artform was rejected from the art world at first, being seen as
something that lacked the technicality or creative elements of other art forms (Thripp). As the
technology surrounding photography changed, and the culture of taking photographs grew and
adapted into something different, the medium began to be seen as a legitimate art form. The
Guardian said in 2012 that "When Andreas Gursky's photograph of a grey river Rhine under an
equally colourless sky sold for a world record price of £2.7 million last year, the debate was
effectively over" (Prodger). For games, the debate most definitely continues.
What am I referring to when I say "games"? I am intending to talk about games of all
sorts- these could be card games, board games, video games, word games, sports, etc. The

argument of whether game are or are not art has come into the spotlight in recent years
particularly because of the video game industry growing to such a massive size. Interestingly, the
rise of of professional sports leagues earlier in the century did not trigger this debate in the same
way that the video game The Last of Us (2013) did.
However, to those that call themselves "gamers", or players of particular games (such as
boxers, or Go players), the question of games being art has been thought about time and time
again, with many game players saying emphatically for decades that "Yes, what we have been
doing is art". The Chess Grandmaster David Bronstein said in a 2003 interview that “Chess is a
fortunate art form. It does not live only in the minds of its witnesses. It is retained in the best
games of masters, and does not disappear from memory when the masters leave the stage.”,
although it should be noted that Bronstein is disappointed with the direction that chess has taken
since he was champion (Radović). He believes that the "art of chess" is actually dying, because
the game has been played out too much and the optimal strategies are too thoroughly understood
for anything new and interesting to happen; "the chess players should be playing, not going over
the same lines over and over again" (Radović). His words demonstrate the idea that something
can cease being art if it changes sufficiently, similarly to how some non-art could "become" art
if it were to change in some way.
Even new art styles within existing mediums have faced resistance. Impressionism as a
style of painting was denied the classification "art" by its critics at first. In response to the
painting Impression, Sunrise by Claude Monet first being exhibited in 1874, art critic Louis
Leroy said “Impression! Wallpaper in its embryonic state is more finished!" (USEUM).
Impressionism as an art faced resistance because of its style, not because of its medium. It
embraced ideas that were entirely contrary to what the art schools of the time period were

teaching as "the way to paint". Over time though, as more artists began to paint in the
Impressionist style, and more art critics began to criticize it as art, it began to actually become
art, to the dismay of its most ardent critics (Hudson).
However, despite the long historical trend of new styles and mediums being slowly
accepted into the traditional conceptualization of art, "games" of all types remain largely outside
the realm of "art" in the minds of many people in the art world (Ebert, Games vs. Art: Ebert vs.
Barker). It does not seem difficult to point out many things that seem to be wildly different
between games and more traditional forms of art. Games are extremely interactive; they require
input from the player in a way that appears very different from the way we generally absorb art
in a more passive way. Games are not rigidly defined, in the way that the text of a book remains
unchanged as it sits on a library shelf. We shape our experiences with games in potentially very
different ways each time that we play them. Games are also often created by large groups, such
as video game development studies, or they emerge in a somewhat organic fashion, like
playground games. We often think of a work of art as being the manifestation of some individual
person's "artistic vision", not as something that can arise spontaneously on the playground.
It isn't entirely unreasonable to suggest, though, that art could arise spontaneously on a
playground, just as games might. It is recognized that children can produce art, whether it is
considered good art or not (Why the ICAF). Children poking and scratching designs into the mud
might say that they are "drawing", something we consider art. They might even call it "mud art".
However, an adult watching them do this might say that they are "playing in the mud". Are the
children or the adults wrong? Is it unreasonable to think of art as something that is "played"?
I don't think that the children are wrong for calling what they are doing "art", and the
adults are not wrong for calling it "playing". Amongst their own circles, meaning is conveyed

adequately, and the terms they employ contribute to what they are saying in a significant way.
The ability for a "game" to be represented and spoken of by using the term "art" without
confusion more often each year as the medium develops is what "makes games art" just as
photography has done in the past. This way of examining art, by looking at ways that the term is
employed, had been done long before the popularity of video games brought this question into
the spotlight. Morris Weitz writes on page 30 in his 1956 essay "The Role of Theory in
Aesthetics" (building off of the work of the Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein):
"The problem with which we must begin is not "What is art?," but "What sort of concept
is 'art'?" Indeed, the root problem of philosophy itself is to explain the relation between the
employment of certain kinds of concepts and the conditions under which they can be correctly
applied."
Understanding how the term "art" can be correctly applied is my goal in this essay. This
is a subtle but critical distinction from more traditional approaches to arguing for or against
something "being art". What I am doing is not attempting to talk about what should follow after a
colon in the dictionary next to the word "art", but rather to claim that by examining the way we
are already using certain terms, one can reasonably use the word "art" to describe what would be
called a "game", without serious confusion from listeners. Interestingly enough, Ludwig
Wittgenstein himself refers to the use of and understanding of a word as a "language game" very
often. One of these "language games" is described in detail in the very first section of his
Philosophical Investigations:
"Now think of the following use of language: I send someone shopping. I give him a slip
of paper marked "five red apples". He takes the slip to the shopkeeper, who opens the drawer
marked "apples"; then he looks up the word "red" in a chart and finds a colour sample next to it;

then he says the series of elementary number-words - I assume that he knows them by heart - up
to the word "five", and for each number-word he takes an apple of the same colour as the sample
out of the drawer. -- It is in this and similar ways that one operates with words. -- "But how does
he know where and how he is to look up the word 'red' and what he is to do with the word 'five'?"
-- Well, I assume that he acts as I have described. Explanations come to an end somewhere. - But
what is the meaning of the word "five"? - No such thing was in question here, only how the word
"five" is used"
I intend to argue that by examining instances where the word "art" is used- ways that we
talk about art, things that are written about art, things that have the label of "art" placed upon
them- we can begin to get an idea of the "sort of concept" that art is. If we do the same for the
word "game", examining the way that game designers talk about games, the way that players of
games talk about them, the way that games are presented, displayed, and used in our culture, we
can compare the two concepts and get an understanding of the possible connections between the
two terms.
Also, I would like to make the scope of this argument clearer. There are far too many
instances where these terms are applied to say anything about all of them in one document. Here,
I intend to examine a number of possible arguments that can be made in favor of games being
art, arguments that are either directly made by people very often, or arguments that are implied
through our use of language very often. As much as I am not providing a concrete definition of
what "art" is, I am also not providing a definition of what "games" are, a detailed exploration of
which would could be very instrumental in making my points here.
For another example of the type of argument I am trying to make, there exists a debate
over whether a hot dog is considered to be a sandwich. To nearly all those who argue about this,

it is agreed that the debate really doesn't matter all that much, but nonetheless, people have very
strong opinions about the matter. Typically, some of those on both sides end up looking in
various dictionaries for definitions that support their belief, and examples of other things that
may or may not be sandwiches are brought up in attempts to make the other side's arguments
seem absurd.
Many will claim that a sandwich is bread with some sort of meat filling, but then cheese
sandwiches or ice cream sandwiches are brought up. A common counter argument to that is that
at least cheese sandwiches and ice cream sandwiches have two individual pieces of bread or
something similar, between which the filling of the sandwich resides. Submarine sandwiches
where the bread is in one solid piece are brought up to disprove that point though, and inevitably,
the argument continues in a similar fashion, with an agreement on the matter rarely being found.
These all usually seem like reasonable ways to argue if something "is" something else, or
that an object belongs to some sort of category; but if we look at the way that the words
"sandwich" and "hot dog" are employed, to use Weitz's terminology, then we should imagine the
following situation. A person says to another, "Bring me a sandwich. I'm not picky though, you
can bring me any kind of sandwich".
If the first person returns with a hot dog, what would the second person's reaction be? If
they would be surprised when presented with a hot dog, not expecting that as a possible result to
their request, then perhaps (to them, at least), a hot dog does not fit the category of "a sandwich".
If they feel that bringing them a hot dog was a perfectly reasonable response, then the proper
employment of the word "sandwich" can be understood to refer to hot dogs.
There are other reactions that we should consider, though. The second person could
reasonably say "I didn't expect you to bring me a hot dog, but I suppose this counts". In this

situation, it is implied that the requester did not think of hot dogs as sandwiches until presented
with an instance in which "sandwich" was interpreted as a category of foods that includes
sandwiches. I believe this situation more closely resembles what happens with games and art,
where many people might not list "games" as a medium of art off the top of their head, but if
presented with a game that claimed to fit the category of "art", they may agree.
What is going on when someone asks for a sandwich, and they are brought a hot dog?
Wittgenstein again discusses a very similar situation in section 74 of his Philosophical
Investigations. He imagines a scenario in which someone has a depiction of a square and two
rhombi, which form a schematic drawing of what we call a cube. He says, "Bring me something
like this", and is potentially met with varying responses. Multiple people could be seeing the
drawing the same way, in that they are physically perceiving the drawing "accurately", but
people could respond by bringing him a small cube made of metal or plastic or some other
substance, or perhaps by bringing him a cardboard box of a similar shape but a much larger size,
or even by bringing him yet another drawing that looks identical to his. This is a more realistic
model for these types of requests than the "five red apples" scenario presented by Wittgenstein
earlier.
There is an amount of interpretation necessary in order to carry out the request. In our
everyday lives, these circumstances arise all the time. We consider who is speaking to us, and the
context of the situation in order to respond appropriately, and to essentially "match up" what is
requested of us with a sort of mental database of what categories things belong to. When
someone is requesting a sandwich, we base our response off of the information about sandwiches
that we believe ourselves to have accumulated. We may think back to seeing a "sandwiches"
section on a menu, and what was contained there, or we might think of conversations we have

had that involved sandwiches. If someone travelled to a place that was foreign to them, and
asked hundreds of people to bring them a sandwich, and each time, someone returned with a hot
dog, they might begin to get the idea that perhaps a hot dog is a sandwich after all.
How does this relate to art and games? Imagine that someone made a request such as,
"Bring me art", or, "Bring me a work of art". How could one respond to this request? It is easy to
imagine a scenario in which someone brings them a painting. If architecture is also art though,
which it is often understood to be, it would be difficult to physically bring them an example of
architecture. They could return with tickets to tour some sort of building, but it isn't exactly the
tickets themselves that are art. Despite not having "art" itself brought to them, the requester
might still reasonably see this as an appropriate response. Could they be brought a photograph of
architecture? Or could they be brought tickets to a play? If they could reasonably be brought a
game, without confusion, it could suggest that games art art, at least as much as these other
possible things they could be brought.
I should also make clear that I understand that to a certain degree, I am hoping to preempt
the use of "games" in this way. The arguments I make in the rest of this paper are ones that I
expect to permeate our language more and more each year, as the "trend" seems to me to be that
games are increasingly being recognized as art. If my premise that games are art, as I describe in
this paper, is not "true" at the time of writing, I believe that it may grow "more true" as time goes
on, leading to a point in which games are questioned as art about as much as photography might
be.
Art is a particularly interesting item to be requested because of the ways in which we
interact with it. It has long been debated whether "artworks" are physical objects, intangible
concepts, perceptual information, or something different altogether (Danto 2). One common

view is that art is "experience", in that a person interacts with art through material objects, like
physically seeing a painting, but that the "real artwork" itself could be more accurately thought
of as the experience of doing that (Collingwood, 30). Art itself is an "experience", but it still
requires some degree of interaction with material objects in order for us to "access" it in some
way. This can be our eyes being used to read text on a page, or to see dancers on a stage. It could
be using our ears to hear music, or to hear a speech being given. Less intuitively, it could be
tasting culinary art, or feeling art that utilizes textures as part of the art.
As conscious beings though, the experience of art is not likely to be something that
consists entirely of sensory "input". Some degree of processing or feedback occurs, voluntarily
or not. Incoming information is compared to our past experiences; we may see a painting of
something and think to ourselves that it is a painting of a dog. We are able to identify the
painting as a painting of a dog because of our past experiences with things that we have assigned
the category "dog" to, through processes like the ones that Wittgenstein described with cubes, or
the process of asking for sandwiches.
One can ask that someone "bring them art", but without some sort of advanced
technology that interacts with our minds directly, one cannot bring to someone else "the
experience of art". If such a request were made, likely the closest approximation would be to
bring them something that is expected to induce the experience, thus satisfying the need
indirectly, through something like a painting, a photograph, or tickets to a play. John Dewey,
American philosopher who espoused his ideas in his 1934 book, Art as Experience, said that "A
work of art, no matter how classic is actually, not just potentially, a work of art when it lives in
some individualized experience" (Dewey 43). The point is that it is necessary to interact with art
in some sort of experiential way in order to acknowledge the art. This interaction is facilitated by

material objects; we use tickets to see plays, we use our eyes to see paintings, and we have to
move our bodies to where the paintings actually are in order to see them. In game-playing terms,
you have to actually play the game in order for it to actually exist as a game.
Furthermore, our ability to experience the art and the manner in which that experience
occurs is contingent on a wide variety of things. We are only capable of hearing sounds within a
particular range of tones, and we can only distinguish a finite number of colors. Aside from basic
sensory characteristics, it is understood that our mental capabilities are another limit on our
ability to experience art. When a movie director makes a movie, if it is made well, it will be
made with the understanding that every audience member isn't going to be able to perceive and
memorize each individual frame of the movie. Our focus and awareness is a limited resource to
us, and understanding how this limit shapes our interpretation of the artwork is critical to being a
good artist. This limitation on our ability to perceive art shapes artistic decisions by the creators
of the art. In The Godfather movies, oranges were shown on screen in some form or fashion
shortly before most instances where someone was killed (Moviepedia). This is something that
most people would only notice after watching the movie several times, or having it pointed out to
them, because the oranges are generally not something that the audience is focusing on during
those scenes.
The process of the audience experiencing art through their own limitations is often
characterized or romanticized as an interaction between the audience and the artist themselves,
with the artwork functioning as the medium through which some sort of message or information
is conveyed. The English philosopher R.G. Collingwood describes the interaction between artist
and audience in his book, The Principles of Art, as such: "The artist may take his audience's
limitations into account when composing his work; in which case they will appear to him not as

limitations on the extent to which his work will prove comprehensible, but as conditions
determining the subject-matter or meaning of the work itself" (Collingwood 311). Understanding
and shaping the limitations of the audience is what game designers do when they make games,
which, generally speaking, is making rules. Game designers provide the boundaries for what
constitutes playing the game "properly", doing something very similar to what a playwright does
when they provide stage directions in a script. If the directions are entirely ignored, it can be said
to have been performed "wrong", or at least that it is in some way different than the "original",
similar to "house rules" or how other modifications of a game would be viewed.
Rules, objectives, goals, and the idea of "winning" a game are common complaints with
the idea of games being art (Ebert, Video Games Can Never Be Art). Conditions for winning a
game provide the player with explicit goals to achieve, goals spelled out very clearly in the rules
of the game. Traditional art can definitely have goals- such as protest music of the 60s and 70s
that sought to end the war in Vietnam- but these goals don't appear to be stated or expressed in
quite the same way that a game's rules are. If one believes that art can be used to achieve goals, it
is generally understood that art can be straightforward, or ironic, or satirical, or that it might go
about achieving its goals in a wide variety of ways that may make any "goals" of the art less
clear.
Arguments against games being art sometimes take issue with the idea of "winning" art,
or the idea that playing a game is something you can be good at. However, not all games can be
"won"; for instance, many games that are considered works of art, such as EVE Online, are
games that cannot be won (Antonelli). The particular way that a game is won can also be the
subject of evaluation or interpretation, similar to other artistic decisions in other forms of art. In
chess, there is a gap in skill between the top human players and the top computer engines that

play chess. Human moves can be refuted by the computer players, shown to be sub-optimal
moves. However, fans of the game, including top players, develop an appreciation and a sort of
"taste" for some strategies, even ones that are "refuted by the engine". Antonio Radić, Chess
Grandmaster most known for chess commentary and analysis, has a particular appreciation for a
game played between Vassily Ivanchuk and Garry Kasparov at the 9th Annual Linares Super
Tournament in 1991 (Agadmator). As he says in a video on his YouTube channel, "It contradicts
everything you know about chess" and that the game "is beautiful, a beautiful accomplishment
by Ivanchuk" (Agadmator). Many of the moves Ivanchuk made can be "proven" to be worse than
the best possible move, but nonetheless the particular way that they allow Ivanchuk to win is
particularly satisfying.
The choices involved in how a game manifests are something that may seem to discredit
games as art. After all, the audience does not decide if the main character in a horror movie
opens the door; in fact, part of the horror is that they are powerless to stop it. Not only do games
inherently seem to require some degree of choice, but even the initialization and continuation of
a game requires a choice- the choice to play the game, or perhaps the choice to "turn off" the
game, in the case of a video game, or forfeiting a game of chess.
Games certainly would not be the first examples of art that are not predetermined
creations, but rather boundaries of what the artwork could acceptably be. This is seen across
other mediums of art. In the "silent piece" of John Cage's 4'33", a piano player is given
instructions to sit at a piano, and to deliberately not make any sound (Gann). The performer is
armed with a stopwatch as well, to ensure that the piece lasts four minute and thirty-three
seconds (Reilly). In this artwork, there are instructions given, and through those instructions,
boundaries are set; playing a note would violate that rule, and thus the artwork would no longer

exist as 4'33" (but perhaps as something else).
The boundaries of the artwork are also set by the audience, and by social practices
concerning the way that we view art. 4'33" was first premiered at the Maverick Concert Hall,
near Woodstock, New York, on August 29th, 1952 (Ross). Audience members went to the
concert hall intending to hear a selection of contemporary classical music (Ross). This means
that they would have purchased a ticket in advance, they would have been seated, they would
hear other music potentially before and after this piece, etc. Notably, they would have been
expected to follow traditional concert etiquette, which includes being silent. However, absolute
silence can never be achieved, even if all the people in the room tried their hardest to be silent.
John Cage himself was partially inspired to compose the piece after visiting an anechoic chamber
at Harvard University in 1951 (Reilly). The chamber was built as to prevent as much sound as
possible from being heard within the room; however, he heard two sounds in the room, a high
one and a low one. He was later told that the high sound was his nervous system, and the low
sound was his blood flowing. About the experience, he later wrote "Try as we may to make a
silence, we cannot. One need not fear for the future of music" (Cage 7).
Thus, during the premiere performance of 4'33", there were "rules" set- the piano player
is not to play the piano, and the audience is expected to remain as silent as possible. The artwork
is "allowed" to be whatever can happen as long as those rules are followed- there are often stifled
coughs, or the sounds of people adjusting themselves in their seats during the recordings of the
piece. 4'33" has also been recorded in a wide variety of locations since then, including busy
street corners where lots of environmental sounds are expected to make their way into the
performance (Brown).
In his book about 4'33", the composer Kyle Gann calls the piece “an act of framing, of

enclosing environmental and unintended sounds in a moment of attention in order to open the
mind to the fact that all sounds are music” (Gann 2). This "act of framing" is done in other
artworks as well- indeterminate music has a rich history, going at least as far back as 1757 with
the "Musikalisches Würfelspiel" or the "musical dice-game" (Nierhaus). This was a set of
instructions that allowed one to create one of 45,949,729,863,572,161 similar yet unique waltzes,
using dice (Nierhaus). The Musikalisches Würfelspiel cannot be evaluated in exactly the same
way that music can be. Rather, it can be evaluated as a generator of music. The Musikalisches
Würfelspiel is a procedure, a set of instructions or "rules" that can be followed in order to
generate music.
The procedural generation of art, as in the Musikalisches Würfelspiel, is something that
has appeared consistently in the realm of video gaming for decades. "Roguelike games" are a
genre of video games that generally consist of exploring a procedurally generated dungeon of
sorts, with each play being different than the last because the rooms created, the items available
to you, the enemies you encounter, and the exact attributes of your character are often
randomized. The genre derives its name from the 1980 computer game by Michael Toy and
Glenn Wichman titled "Rogue" (Berlin Interpretation).
Roguelike games are an excellent example of an artwork in which one of the primary
components upon which it is evaluated is the frame that the artists have created via their
procedural generation algorithms. When talking about a game like Rogue, it makes less sense to
say that "this dungeon is a well-designed dungeon", than to say "this game generates welldesigned dungeons". The game is evaluated based on what it can be, rather than what it always
is. If the realm of possible outcomes is too narrow, than the game will get boring and repetitive
too quickly. If the realm of possible outcomes is too wide, or poorly designed, than many

dungeons that are created might not be fun or even playable.
Roguelike games can be praised for doing things that were not explicitly expected or
created by the developers. For instance, if the location of enemies is determined on an enemy by
enemy basis, two very different enemies might end up being generated very close to eachother,
and it may present a unique challenge that was never anticipated by the game designer
(Galloway). Unanticipated interactions between game elements is perhaps no better exemplified
than by the free game that began development in 2002, titled Slaves to Armok: God of Blood
Chapter II: Dwarf Fortress, more commonly known simply as Dwarf Fortress.
Dwarf Fortress is a rougelike game created by Tarn and Zach Adams. The developers
state on their website that the "long-term goal is to create a fantasy world simulator in which it is
possible to take part in a rich history, occupying a variety of roles through the course of several
games" (Development, Bay 12 Games). The "rich history" that they mention is something that is
created via an extremely complex and vast amount of code that procedurally generates locations,
historical figures, famous events, and artifacts of note. Not only would the amount of variance in
these creations be impossible for a human being to create by hand in some way, without
procedural generation, but the game also allows the player to influence these creations and to
make new ones for them to stumble upon in a later play-through. For example, if you have a
dwarf that becomes an excellent stonecrafter, and the dwarf crafts a throne of "legendary
beauty", in other playthroughs, you may have dwarves come to your fortress that tell stories of
the throne and its beauty. They may even have some details about the throne wrong, due to their
own memories not being perfect, or due to them not having seen the throne themselves, but
rather having heard about the throne from another dwarf.
What does Dwarf Fortress and its procedural generation and complex interaction

between game elements have to do with art as we understand it though? Well, Dwarf Fortress is
like 4'33" in that a nearly limitless amount of possibilities can be "framed" within the artwork. In
the case of Dwarf Fortress, there is an extremely high number of possible things that can happen
within the game, and in 4'33", there are as many "variations" of the performance as there are
possibilities of combinations of sounds that occur in the background of the recording. Clive
Barker, British horror novelist and writer-director of Hellraiser praises video games for their
ability to be malleable (by the player), and also for their ability to portray a wide variety of
potential outcomes. In a speech at the Hollywood and Games Summit, Barker suggests that art in
this form, games that generate a wide variety of potential outcomes create "a world where the
player gets to go through every emotional journey available. That is art. Offering that to people is
art" (Ebert, Games vs. Art, Ebert vs. Barker).
Barker made this statement in response to multiple articles by the acclaimed film critic,
Roger Ebert, who had said first that games categorically could never be art, and later that "never
is a long, long time", and rather that "no video gamer now living will survive long enough to
experience the medium as an art form" (Ebert, Video Games Can Never Be Art). Ebert
questioned Barker's praise of the malleability and potentiality of video gaming :
"If you can go through 'every emotional journey available,' doesn't that devalue each and
every one of them? Art seeks to lead you to an inevitable conclusion, not a smorgasbord of
choices. If next time, I have Romeo and Juliet go through the story naked and standing on their
hands, would that be way cool, or what?" (Ebert, Games vs. Art, Ebert vs. Barker)
Here, I believe that Ebert implies something about drama incorrectly, and he approaches
the evaluation of video games from a particular and biased perspective. Ebert's use of the term
"inevitable conclusion" and his rejection of the idea that there are choices made by the audience

involving the reception of drama completely dismisses the work of those involved in the
production of a play, and even the "work" done by the audience in the viewing of the play.
I believe that skilled actors, directors, set designers, costume designers, and other
contributors to the production of a play would most definitely say that they have a "smorgasbord
of choices" to make in their presentation of a play. No doubt, Shakespeare can be said to have
written the play, Romeo and Juliet, but to suggest that he had (or more absurdly, currently has)
complete and finite control of every aspect of the performance is incorrect. Individual actors
make choices about how they are to deliver their lines, and how they are to move on stage. Set
designers make decisions about the placement of props, the way that scenes will be changed, the
lighting involved, etc. It is accepted by playwrights that what they write down, in terms of lines,
stage directions, descriptions of scenes, etc. will necessarily be interpreted and expressed by
those that are creating the individual performances of the play.
It could be argued that the amount of deviation between various performances of a play is
small enough as to be negligible, but that seems to be at odds with the current state of the
entertainment industry. There is a reason that many local theater groups perform for free, and
that Broadway performances can be quite costly. When audience members deliberately choose to
seek out particular performances of a play or musical, over other options, they are showing that
when presented with a "smorgasbord of choices" to make concerning a performance, they
believe that some theater groups are going to make better choices in some way.
These types of choices that I have described have thus far been made entirely by the
theater group, rather than the audience. In video games, rather than viewing different "versions"
of a play as they differ from theater to theater, a player views different "versions" by making
different decisions within the game as they play it. Quite often, a video game publishing

company will distribute one version of the game to everyone individually, and the actual
software that each player runs will be essentially identical to every other player's. On the surface,
this can seem like an extremely different model, and it seems that this model is more along the
lines of what Ebert is criticizing.
I don't believe that making a distinction between "versions" that performers, costume
designers, set designers, directors, etc. make and "versions" that an audience makes in the way
that they interpret, create, or otherwise influence entirely makes sense, though. The audience's
role in the artwork cannot be dismissed.
The "audience's limitations", as described earlier by Collingwood in The Principles of
Art, may refer to prior knowledge that the audience may be assumed to have or to not have
(Collingwood 311). A successful artist will not create art that is unintelligible to their audience,
and claim that it is simply "too profound" for their audience to understand. Collingwood goes on
to describe how the anticipation of the audience's "endless quest" for understanding can be taken
into account by the artist, before the creation of the art: "Instead of conceiving himself as a
mystagogue, leading his audience as far as it can follow along the dark and difficult paths of his
own mind, he will conceive himself as his audience's spokesman, saying for it the things it wants
to say but cannot say unaided. Instead of setting up for the great man who (as Hegel said)
imposes upon the world the task of understanding him, he will be a humbler person, imposing
upon himself the task of understanding his world, and thus enabling it to understand itself"
(Collingwood, 311-312).
Collingwood was not able to refer to video games in his book, as they had not been
invented yet. However, I believe that his words apply to games as well. Working within or
around an audience's limitations is something applicable to all art; in video gaming, much of the

artist's work could be described as creating limitations. Just as 4'33" is shaped by the audience's
limitations, created by "rules" enforced by social custom, a game like Dwarf Fortress is shaped
by the limitations of the software. Dwarf Fortress is not primarily praised for "what is there" the visual elements are entirely text based, and there is only a small amount of music that comes
with the software. The game is praised more so for its ability to function as a "sandbox style
game", a set of tools and limitations that allows the player a great deal of freedom and choice in
how they choose to work with those limitations. Understanding choices that a player can make
within the limitations set by the rules of the game is a fundamental part of our understanding of
"games". Analyzing the behaviour that results from a player following the rules of a game, and
what that experience is like, is the nature of game reviews.
Art can reasonably be understood in a very similar way. Art presents information to us,
and our behavior in response to that information is often the subject of art criticism. It can be
said to have succeeded at art because it holds our attention, or engages us. It can be judged in
regards to the moral nature of the behavior that it produces in the audience (Melissinos). Ebert
suggests consistently in his articles about video games as art that he believes in the value to our
society that art holds due to the ways in which it improves the human condition in some way
(Ebert, Okay Kids, Play On My Lawn). This is a line of thinking that makes sense intuitively, and
it has roots in much earlier philosophical theories of art. In his essay, "What is Art?", Leo
Tolstoy writes that art "...is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them
together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well‐being of
individuals and of humanity" (Tolstoy 4). Ebert has a more individualist approach to the idea, but
he shows a similar attitude when he writes that, "The real question is, do we as their consumers
become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, philosophical

(and so on) by experiencing them? Something may be excellent as itself, and yet be ultimately
worthless" (Ebert, Games vs. Art, Ebert vs. Barker).
Are games able to make us more complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, etc.? It can be
difficult to feel this way when looking at games that are not much but "point and shoot in many
variations and plotlines", as Ebert believes are common (Ebert, Games can never be art). It is
difficult to argue that games do not influence our behavior in some way, because the actual act of
playing a game can be considered "behavior" that is influenced. In what ways do games change
our behavior "outside of the game", in such a way that they might progress humanity or lead
individuals to successful lives, as Ebert and Tolstoy suggest is needed for art to succeed?
The way that games are interactive and focused on the players' behavior within them is
what they are valued for. In fact, the Museum of Modern Art selected 14 video games to be part
of their collection, as art, in 2012, partially due to the behavior that some games incite in the
players. The Huffington Post wrote in an article about the acquisitions, that "Museum officials
selected games for the collection after evaluating the work based on 'behavior (the behavior a
game elicits from a player), aesthetics, space (physical environments built by code) and time"
(Grenoble).
The behavior that games encourage is not just limited to raw decisions made in the game,
though. Just like traditional forms of art, games can influence our behavior outside of the
artwork, and change fundamental things about ourselves. It can be difficult to understand how
something like Pac-Man can be a serious influence on someone, but the gaming world is
certainly not devoid of games that function as art in the way that they "stay with us" after playing
them, and the way that they change our worldviews (Simmons). The Last of Us, That Dragon,
Cancer, and empathy games as an entire genre have been extremely powerful works of art that

some people have used to gain a better understanding of themselves and their place in the world
(Simmons).
Another reason that art is encouraged to some degree is that it has often served the
function as an "outlet" for the artist. Art is made as a way to express emotions, convey messages,
and a way of organizing thoughts and ideas in such a way that is seen as beneficial towards the
artist. Viewing art through the lens of an expressionist, the artists has emotions that are expressed
through art. Those emotions are intended to manifest within the audience as a result of viewing
the artwork. Leo Tolstoy, as an expressionist himself, thought this act of "infecting" another with
your emotions via expression in art was actually a fundamental requirement of art. He stated this
in his 1899 essay, What is Art?:
"The activity of art is based on the fact that a man, receiving through his sense of hearing
or sight another manʹs expression of feeling, is capable of experiencing the emotion which
moved the man who expressed it...and it is upon this capacity of man to receive another manʹs
expression of feeling and experience those feelings himself, that the activity of art is based"
(Tolstoy 1)
This process of experiencing another person's emotions through artwork is consistently
praised as a reason to value art (Oliver). By Tolstoy's way of thinking, if something is intended
to be art, it must succeed in some way to transfer feeling and emotion to someone else, and that
that process is a good thing. Art, by succeeding as art, can be a way to better our society. For
games to have the label of "art", they would need to be able to function as expressions of
emotion that others can receive by seeing, hearing, or otherwise experiencing. This suggests that
"art" as a title to something is an honor or entitled to some level of respect. This respect is shown
in the way that we treat art, particularly in formal institutions of art. There are a number of

reasons that our behavior towards artworks is typically different than our behavior towards other
things. For example, artwork in a museum generally cannot be touched by the public.
A desk in your home is understood to be something that you can use to write on, or to eat
on, or to otherwise use for very practical purposes. This is not something that is typically
permissible of something that is called art. If the same table were in a museum on display, it
would be seen as disrespectful or disruptive of the artwork. The same action when applied to art
and non-art is viewed in very different ways, because of the "status" of something being
considered art. By succeeding in being a means of expression for the game designer, through
which they convey and induce emotions in another individual, "games" would earn the privilege
of being respected in a similar way.
It should also be noted that the way in which we "respect" art is different depending on
the medium and the circumstances. We do not have symphonies in art museums, but there are
other ways that music can be shown respect as art.
How do video games function as an expressive outlet for the artist, and can these
expressions of emotion "infect" the players of the game successfully? It is relatively easy to find
examples of games producing emotions within their players. The most common example is the
general feeling of satisfaction, pride, confidence, etc. in winning a game. Those emotions are not
easily traceable back to the artist, however- it would be like saying a glass of water is art because
someone was happy when you gave it to them.
How can games be the outlet of expression, and can whatever emotions are expressed be
transferred to another person in the way that Tolstoy reveres? I believe that many games that are
narrative-driven can most definitely do this. Many modern, successful video games from well
recognized publishers, such as The Last of Us and the Bioshock series, are well known for their

emotional impact (Grenoble). These games are often compared to movies, or TV series, because
of the depth of the characters and the plot, and due to their ability to pique our interest and
induce emotions within us (Grenoble).
The comparisons drawn between those games and movies make another interesting point.
Many games use in-game movies, called cutscenes, to progress the plot and develop the
characters. With many games, it is possible to watch all of the cutscenes in order, without
"playing" the game in any way, and to be told an interesting story and possible presented with
what would normally be an entertaining and interesting film. If those cutscenes were displayed at
a movie theater, without the game ever being produced or released, it would likely be called a
"movie" by those attending the film. Does the addition of what we call "gameplay" in between
those cutscenes somehow negate that previous label of "movie" (and therefore, art)?
Ebert's comment about a game in which Romeo and Juliet is recreated, but with the
characters naked walking on their hands, seems to be a criticism of the inclusion of "choice" in
video games. I don't think that he would argue that Romeo and Juliet was somehow not "art" if
the original play did in fact call for the actors to be naked and walking on their hands. It certainly
might not be the respected masterpiece that it is today, but it would still be called "art" by mostit isn't what the choices actually are, as much as it is about who is making those choices. Ebert's
use of the word art, as shown in his articles about games not being art, demonstrates that he sees
art as something that involves choices by the artist, but not by the audience.
I don't believe it is fair for us to discredit games as art because of the inclusion of choice
by the audience, though. The audience always has choices in regards to art; even if that choice is
simply to look at the art in the first place. We are constantly met with decisions about where to
focus our attention, what angle to view the artwork from, or even less obvious choices such as

whether we clap at the end of it or not. These choices shape our experiences with the artwork:
choosing to watch what the characters in the background of a stage performance are doing, as
opposed to watching the character delivering an important monologue, will yield a dramatically
different experience. I believe that when art is created, it is generally made with the
understanding by the artist that the audience will have some degree of choice or interaction with
regards to how they experience the art. Painters recognize that their painting may be viewed from
the left side or the right side, and work within that understanding. Game designers crafting the
rules of a game will recognize what options they are giving the player, and will seek to craft a
successful artistic experience that accounts for the player having a degree of control and choice
in the experience- painters, playwrights, movie directors, sculptors, and others are already doing
the same with their artworks.
The particular choices that the players of games make are often viewed in a similar way
to how choices made by an artist are viewed. The choices are talked about, and their significance
might be debated by the audience or by critics. Conversations may occur where audience
members attempt to discern something about the artist, or the player of the game, based on the
decisions they made in the creation of the artwork. People who feel that they "understand" the
decisions made may cite possible reasons for those choices, or suggest "goals" that those choices
were trying to achieve. This process of giving "reasons" or "explanations" is often the nature of
the interpretation of art, and this interpretation is something that happens surrounding games as
well . A variety of questions surrounding the object in question come about as part of this
"interpretation", as listed on page 201 of Principles of Interpreting Art, by Terry Barrett:
What is it about? What does it represent or express? What does or did it mean to its
maker? "What is it a part of? " Does it represent something? What are its references? What is it

responding to? Why did it come to be? How was it made? Within what tradition does it belong?
"What ends did a given work possibly serve its maker(s) or patron(s)? What pleasures or
satisfactions did it afford the person(s) responsible for it? What problems did it solve or allay?
What needs did it relieve?" What does it mean to me? Does it affect my life? Does it change my
view of the world?
In professional art criticism, there is an understanding that art "deserves" in some ways to
have these questions asked of it. Dismissing the art immediately without considering how the art
may have alternative interpretations, how it fit into the life of the artist, how it might impact
audience members, etc. is seen as not giving the art a "fair chance". One who hasn't really delved
into an artwork deep enough to ask or answer these questions could potentially be considered
unqualified to have a "serious" opinion on the artwork. The "Feldman Method" is a common
structure that many critiques of both art and games follow, whether purposefully or not (Oliver).
This method includes providing a neutral description of the artwork, an analysis, an
interpretation, and finally a judgement. During the analysis and interpretation of the artwork,
questions about the artist, the purpose of the artwork, the goals of the artwork, the purpose of
individual components of the artwork, and other similar questions are asked.
These are questions that motivate game criticism as well as criticism of traditional art
forms. Take the following excerpts from a review of the board game Freedom: The
Underground Railroad from the reviewer known as the "Rules Lawyer":
"...we are dealing with real events that affected real people. Academy Games did a great
job of making sure that you know this throughout the entire game. And thematically, this game
makes me feel uncomfortable for being part of a nation with such a dark time in our history. This
uncomfortable feeling comes out most strongly for me when I look at the back of the card decks.

Each has an illustration of shackled hands with the appropriate epitaph: "Am I not a man and
also a brother?
"What Academy Games has achieved here is masterful, they have attempted to show the
harsh realities of an ugly side of history and get you thinking about it, all in a very tasteful and
honest way" (The Rules Lawyer)
The game is praised for the way that it induces feelings of uncomfortableness within the
players, and that it challenges the player's worldviews and identities by presenting such a
powerful and honest presentation of slavery in American history. The reviewer provides his
interpretation and analysis of what he believes the game designers (Academy Games) were
trying to do through the artwork. The game reviewer was praising the game for the same
characteristics that other traditional forms of art are praised for. 12 Years a Slave, a film about
the same subject (American slavery), was praised for its success in presenting the same subject
matter in a similar brutally honest fashion; "12 Years a Slave lets us stare at the primal sin of
America with open eyes, and at moments it is hard to watch", as Owen Gleiberman of
Entertainment Weekly said in a review of the film. The same review repeatedly implicitly
suggests motives and reasons behind the presentation of the film by the author, just as motives or
design decisions of a game designer would be questioned.
In the eyes of the "Rules Lawyer", comparing his positive criticism of Freedom to a
positive criticism of 12 Years a Slave, it would seem that Freedom has succeeded as art. If a
game is able to do what "art" does, and to do it well, it is exceedingly difficult to argue that it is
not art at all, to someone who has felt the impact and power of the game, as artistic impact and
power. Indeed, examining a wide variety of critiques of games and art, games can be seen to
have an effect on us that we cannot shake, similar to the way that a fan of classical music cannot

shake the beauty of a great symphony. In fact, as evidenced by the typically contrary responses
that Rogert Ebert (someone that we might think of as having some level of "authority" on the
matter of art) received to his articles declaring games non-art, it seems entirely fruitless to try to
convince believers that games are not art. It is something that a lot of gamers will tell you that
they just know, and whether or not they are "right" in some sense, if there are enough of them,
then those that align with Roger Ebert will be powerless to stop their "misuse" of the English
language, as they continue to call games "art".

Conclusion
Our understanding of "art", and of most concepts in general, is derived from our use of
terms in relation to other terms and objects. When asked if "games" are "art", one will
necessarily be answering the question by thinking of when those two terms are used, how they
are used, and what possible connections can exist between the two ideas. The gradual creation of
a conceptualization of "what art is" is done at every level; from the audience in their
interpretation of art, to the artist as they create their work and relate it to themselves and the
world, and to the institutions surrounding art in the way they preserve and display art.
The process that the term "art" undergoes during all of this is a process that the term
"game" goes through as well. During the creation of games, the playing of games, the
interpretation and critique of games, the preservation and study of games, among other things,
"games" are spoken of, understood, and manipulated in such a way that resembles traditional
forms of art.
The components of games: things such as choices, player interaction, varying outcomes,
narrative elements, emotional impact, unintended actions, and role playing elements are all
things that can be shown to already exist in traditional and commonly accepted forms of art.
Furthermore, even elements of games that might not be present in existing art cannot be used as
evidence of its inability to be art, as "art" as a concept has already been expanded and adapted
significantly over time to include a variety of things that it did not previously include.
Games are being talked about "as if they are art", so much so that it becomes difficult to
argue that they aren't just actually art themselves. As new games and industries surrounding
games develop and push the boundaries of what is possible with a game, games continue to
prove that they have the ability to succeed in a way that we might say that "art" succeeds. Games

are proving themselves to be capable of being good art, which requires them to be art in the first
place.
Those that continue to disagree with the idea of games being art will continue to make
their voices heard, although they are rapidly being drowned out by the numbers and types of
people that are using the term "art" to refer to an idea that includes games. If games are not "art"
yet, it seems that it is only a matter of time before they "become" art, and join the ranks of
sculpture, drama, paintings, music, photography, dance, and everything else that typically finds
itself being referred to as art.

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