#i got thoughts about video games and y'all activated my trap card with this post.

[edrel-whitlock]

I agree with OP but it's coming at this whole thing from the wrong angle. Video Games are an art form. But we shouldn't be arguing about what video games should be qualified as art and which shouldn't. We should be arguing about what video games are good video games.

What video games out there are doing things that can only be done in an interactive medium? That's the question we should be asking.

The Last of Us fails because it doesn't want to be interactive. It wants to be a movie so badly. You can (and they are) take the story wholesale and adapt it to a non-interactive medium and what do you actually lose from the experience? Lore bits, combat, and sneaking. But that’s the thing, people love to (wrongly) praise the last of us as peak video games because of the story and because Joel emotes real good! But the way the story is told and joel being a sad angry guy are both linear and disconnected from the actual game! The Last of Us is an average video game at best with an above-average character performance. It's nothing more special than any of the uncharted games.

My point is everyone should go play Outer Wilds (and it's dlc Echos of the Eye) and experience a story that can only exist in an interactive format (and go figure out how to break the fabric of space-time while you're at it).

Or, if you can go play Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater: Subsistence and spin snake around in the med screen till he gets sick. Now that's a fucking video game that knows its a video game.

I think putting games like The Last of Us or other games that can only be distinguished as being “cinematic” forward as arguments for “games are art” is misguided at best. Because games like that don’t prove that games are art. They’re just proving that movies are art, again, with some gameplay in between.

If the only way to prove that a game is art is how well it can emulate film, you’re not proving games are art, you’re proving that games can be mediocre movies. A game can have a strong narrative without stopping the gameplay to turn into a movie, and the narrative can be expressed not only during but *through* its gameplay. And THAT would prove games are art, since it’s something that movies can’t do.

When you ask me for games that “feel” like they can be called art, I would much sooner put forward something like Hades or Psychonauts or Dark Souls.