Video games ARE art. Next topic, please!

Like Kellee Santiago says to introduce her speech: "I'm here to tell you that video games are art. Great! Let's move on".
There is a big misconception about video games that may never be clarified. Not all games are the same. My mom used to think that there were two types of games: Mario and others where you kill people. (That later changed with Left 4 Dead and created the category “others where you kill zombies”). Violent video games exist; they can look beautiful like Battlefield 3 or creepy and gory like Killing Floor. But just because SOME games have blood, curse words, critical combos and big boobs, doesn’t mean ALL of them do. 


There are many beautiful, inspiring and FUN games all over the Internet. Kellee’s company Thatgamecompany, dedicates all their time to developing games about exploration and discovery, not dismembering aliens and killing them with their own limbs. There are many games like Bastion that look like this:

 All the levels in this game were hand painted.

On 2010, the topic about video games being art or not was the hype. Some people still don’t know the story behind Kellee’s TED talk and if you want to know all of it, read this. What I can tell you is that it began with Roger Ebert, the film critic, saying video games are NOT art. Also, after Kellee’s talk he replied with a narrow-minded and personal blog post. In his words: "The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat: 'No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.'”

 Did he just call Braid pathetic!?

That is an opinion and should be respected, true. But this shows that he is one of the many who have a biased perception on video games and gamers. Not all gamers like shooting, not all of them like elves and orcs, not all of them like taking care of a farm or even basketball.

In MY opinion, games can be art. Some of them are beautiful and gratifying, some are gloomy and depressing, some are thought provoking and put your morals to test, but all of them create emotional responses in us (no, getting mad and saying racial slurs in MW3 is NOT what we’re talking about); they are an expression of human creativity, and isn’t that a definition for art?

Oh, BTW. Kellee Santiago is a venezuelan like me :)