Cole Mayer

Art is meant to entertain, evoke emotion or espouse a political or social position. By definition, video games entertain, but like movies, music and paintings, they can also make you laugh, cry or get angry about injustice or inequality.

Video games, simply put, are works of art.

Roger Ebert, a movie reviewer, would have you believe video games are not art. They are just entertainment and will not survive long enough to become an art form, he said on his blog.

Roberto Pomo, professor of theater and dance, has a different viewpoint from Ebert’s.

“As they include music scores and cut scenes, video games are at the core of art form,” Pomo said.

Video games use computer-generated images, just as movies do, and are becoming more and more life-like. Racing games such as “Blur” feature ultra-realistic cars with seemingly insignificant details that make a big difference, such as scrapes and dents after you grind against a metal barrier or another car.

Creating something life-like is an art form into itself, and making a digital image seem real for the viewer is an extension of this.

Video games often include in-game videos that tell the story, with many of these videos on par with feature films in terms of quality.

Some video games eschew realism and go in the opposite direction, to the realm of fantasy &- even then the magical creatures seem as if they could jump from the screen. Last year’s “Brutal Legend,” a game by Double Fine Productions, dropped the player in a world based around the concept of heavy metal music.

The world was meant to be a mix of CD covers, with fields of giant stone swords sprouting from the ground, a mountain of subwoofers and giant car engines dotting the landscape. It was akin to a painting, or a music video in which the player could run around and fight heavy metal demons.

“Brutal Legend” did not rest upon its visuals as the only form of art. It included a soundtrack of rock and metal, the songs that inspired the developers.

Pomo believes putting these pieces of art in the game is only the first step in being recognized as art.

“We are at the threshold of the 21st century; we are just beginning to manipulate the art form,” Pomo said. “The majority of games are rooted on action, but I think, in time, the video game industry and art form will develop into a vast arena of electronic communication.”

Pomo said he wishes video games were as advanced as when he was in college; creating art with computers was something of which he could only dream.

“It’s absolutely marvelous, you can manipulate, alter and change images,” Pomo said. “It’s an extraordinary way to create art.”

Pat Chirapravati, art professor, sided with Ebert on the issue of art and video games.

“(In games) there’s scores to keep, a goal to reach,” Chirapravati said. “In art, you don’t really have a goal.”

However, some art does have a goal: to provoke the viewer or cause the listener to dance. The goal in video games is, instead, to win.

Chirapravati agreed there is art in video games and that it takes an artistic sense to make them look good, but she said overall games are not art.

“People are addicted (to video games),” Chirapravati said. “You don’t get addicted to art. You look at it, like it, come back and see it many times, but you are not addicted.”

Addiction, however, has nothing to do with an art form. Humming the same song over and over again, and listening to it on repeat on an iPod, does not make a song any less a form of art.

It is the same way with video games. People are drawn to the video games partly because of the emotions that they evoke. The game “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” is played from a first-person view, which can evoke deep emotions if done right. In the game, a main character dies while the player sees his final moments, all from the intimate first-person view.

During a pivotal scene in “Modern Warfare,” the game character is dying as a result of a nuclear blast and crawls out of the plane wreckage as a mushroom cloud forms.

This type of an emotional story could tear at the heartstrings of even the most emotionally hardened gamer.

Music, aesthetics and emotion are key in video games. These make video games one of the most interactive and widespread art forms in the world.

Cole Mayer can be reached at [email protected].