A bit of background (with links) for the uninformed: Dear Esther was originally released in 2008 as a mod for Half-Life 2. Like so many popular mods, these days, it was then remade as a stand-alone release, which was completed in 2012. Unlike most things sold on Steam and discussed on blogs like mine, however, Dear Esther doesn't have any goals or challenges and you can't win or lose. It doesn't really have any "gameplay" at all because it's not a game in any traditional sense. It's more like virtual reality made love to an audiobook, had an illegitimate child, and left that poor bastard on video games' doorstep because no one else would take him. But I mean that in the nicest possible way.
At its core, Dear Esther isn't much more than an interactive story, and the word "interactive" is being used here rather loosely. What you do is walk around in a virtual world, admire the virtual environment, and listen to sporadic snippets of metaphor-laden monologue over a calming soundtrack and the sounds of the ocean waves.
Given the nature of this particular piece of software, which may or may not be considered a "video game" depending on whom you ask, you might say I'd be just as well off if I'd watched a playthrough on YouTube instead of buying it. But even with such minimal interactivity and such a linear experience overall, I think watching someone else play is a poor substitute and misses the point entirely. Even though there's no real "gameplay" here, I'd still be denying myself nearly everything that does make Dear Esther a unique experience if I were simply to watch some other person decide where to go and what to look at. The prosaic monologues are wonderful, but the modest potential for free exploration by the player is likely the sole reason that Dear Esther was turned into a "video game" instead of a short film or a short story.
You might also say I could have played the free Half-Life 2 mod instead of buying the stand-alone product, but the newer version just looks so much nicer, and enjoying some nice-looking stuff is where at least half of the enjoyment lies.
Despite all of this, paying for Dear Esther might seem like a waste. There's a rather stiff limit to the number of hours of enjoyment you can possibly squeeze out of this product. Although each playthrough is supposedly a bit different, due to some randomization in the playback of monologue passages, this only gives it a little more replay value than a movie, and a single playthrough is considerably shorter than average movie length. (The first playthrough should take no more than 90 minutes. Mine clocked in at exactly 90 minutes, but that included some aimless wandering, graphical tweaking, and even pausing to get drinks.) While I'm guilty of impulsively buying Dear Esther at 75% off, and while I'm content with that decision, I wouldn't be so enthusiastic about paying the full price of $9.99 and I can't honestly recommend doing so.
Missing the Point
That being said, I think there's some unwarranted hostility toward Dear Esther that stems not from its quality or from any of its own merits, but from a misunderstanding of its purpose, and from a rejection of the concept of video games as interactive fiction. "That's the dumbest thing ever" was the response of one friend when he was told what Dear Esther is like. Opinions are opinions, so I can't really debate that point, but I do think the context matters: When this conversation took place, my girlfriend had just mentioned a new "video game" that we'd played. This guy was expecting to hear about a game, but then he heard there was no objective, no challenge, and no real gameplay at all. So, yeah, of course that sounds dumb.
The whole problem, I think, is that Dear Esther is considered and treated as a video game, but this is only for lack of a (commonly used) better term. You could call it "interactive fiction" but that might not be sufficient to fully describe such a product, and I don't see the term catching on as a way to describe these things anyway. Instead, I'm tempted to call it a "video non-game" because it really is, precisely, a video game with the game element removed. Actually, I think this might be the best way to describe it. The strong connection to video games is there, but it doesn't leave us expecting something we're not going to get.
When judged as a video game, Dear Esther might be called a failure, but let's be fair: the same thing happens when you judge Lord of the Rings as a romantic comedy. A valid criticism of Dear Esther should focus on what's there — the writing, the visuals, and the music — rather than obsessing over exactly how it's not a game. Unfortunately, so much of the criticism I've encountered takes the latter route and fails to make a relevant point. I can't say I'm surprised that everyone gets stuck on the non-game aspect, though; after all, we're still pressing buttons to make things happen on a screen. It feels like a game, and that's what makes it feel so wrong.
Experimental and atypical releases such as Passage, Flower, The Graveyard, Universe Sandbox, and Dear Esther seem to be expanding the definition of "video game" by really pushing the boundaries that separate this medium from others, and this seems to be happening regardless of whether the creators of these products even choose to refer to them as games at all. The result is that, while video games used to be a subset of games, they now occupy another space entirely. Dear Esther is, arguably, a "video game" — and most people will probably call it one — but it certainly isn't a game at all. Consequently, if people install it expecting a game, they're in for a disappointment. However, this doesn't make it a bad product. It just makes it something other than a game.
The Newest Art Form
But regardless of whether we choose to call them games, Passage and Dear Esther seem to be at the forefront of the movement to have video games recognized as an art form. It seems good enough, for most people, that these video non-games attempt to be something resembling art while existing in a video game-like format. Just as often as they are criticized for not being game-like enough, they are cited as examples in arguments and discussions over the elevation of video games to the status of art — arguments and discussions which, for better or worse, tend to revolve around those artistically driven (but, importantly, secondary) aspects of the medium: story, graphics, music, et cetera.
Bringing this up on a video game forum is like bringing up politics at Thanksgiving dinner; that is, it's a good way to upset everyone. The idea that a video game, of all things, can actually be art isn't just a problem for video game haters; it's also enough to offend some "hardcore gamers" who reject the very notion that story, graphics, music, and intangible things like atmosphere can add anything of value to the medium. Any attempt to create a video game explicitly as a work of art, which unfortunately is most often done at the expense of the quality or amount of traditional gameplay, is obviously going to upset these people, and — referring again to Dear Esther in particular — the outright and total abandonment of the "game" in "video game" is obviously going to drive them crazy. The existence of Dear Esther itself isn't really such a problem, but the paradoxical notion that video non-games are actually the future of the medium is anathema to "hardcore gamers" everywhere.
To be honest, though, I don't think it should be a surprise that we're moving in this direction after so many years of video games with increasingly more emphasis on story, character development, visual effects, and other non-essential, movie-like qualities, often with less focus on conventional gameplay and player freedom. (I think I've discussed such things once or twice before.) Even where core gameplay mechanics have been preserved, video games have already become more like movies (presumably in order to grab larger audiences who might be bored with playing just a game), and maybe we've already passed the point where gameplay mechanics truly become the secondary attraction to the mainstream audience.
Is all of this good or bad? (Does such a distinction exist?) What does the concept of video games as an art form mean for the future of video games? But wait; if we're going to ask that question, we first have to answer a couple of others: Is it even possible for a video game to be a work of art? And should video game developers attempt to be artists? Perhaps these are silly questions — no doubt the idea of treating a video game as a work of art sounds downright ridiculous to a lot of people — but this debate seems to be happening whether we like it or not, so I think it's worth discussing.
To these last two questions, respectively, I'd give a tentative yes and a maybe. Whether a video game created specifically and intentionally as a "work of art" can be good, as a game, is certainly questionable, but if music and literature and acting and photography and, most importantly, film can be treated as art, then... well, I need to be honest: I can't think of a good (objective) reason that video games in general should be excluded. That video games, as a medium, should be considered an art form simply because of how a game can imitate and appropriate other forms of art (i.e., music and acting and writing and film) is a dubious argument at best, but I do believe that a good film would not automatically stop being a work of art simply if interactive (game-like) elements were added to it. Perhaps the new generation of video games, which are often more movie-like than game-like, should be analyzed this way instead. And if video games, at least in theory, have the potential to be works of art, then perhaps developers should strive for this... right? I guess. Whether they know how is another question entirely, but more on that will come later.
Comparisons and Analogies
The opposition to the idea of video games as art is largely (but not entirely) from those who don't believe that expensive electronic toys are deserving of whatever respect or elevated status comes along with inclusion in the invisible list of which things are allowed to be considered art. You might similarly argue that Picasso's paintings are not art just because you dislike them. Beyond personal tastes, however, I have to wonder if there's an actual reason for excluding video games when everything else that claims to be art seems to be accepted without much fuss. You can carefully arrange a bunch of garbage and call it art, and other people will call it art as well, as long as you can say with a straight face that the garbage arrangement means something. Or maybe it means nothing, and that's deep. Who cares? It's art if people say it's art.
It's clear, however, that video games are fundamentally different from all other things which are commonly considered art. The whole point of a video game is player interaction. Most art, meanwhile, is meant to be enjoyed passively, and one might even call this a requirement. Such a rule remains unwritten, however, since no one ever had a reason to include the words "passive" and "non-interactive" in the definition of art before video games tried to nudge their way in. Attempts to redefine the word "art" just for the sake of snubbing video games are confusing and unhelpful.
Other arguments against the notion of "video games as art" come from a comparison of video games to more traditional games. Chess is not art, and neither is football. On the other hand, a great amount of creative work, including visual art, often goes into the creation of many tabletop games, notably those of the collectible card variety. Furthermore, the entire analogy is rather fallacious; I've already pointed out that video games are, perhaps unfortunately, no longer strictly a subset of games, and moreover they can do things that traditional games cannot.
Some even try to argue that video games cannot be art because they're most often created for profit, or because they're most often created by large development teams in large companies. Obviously, though, these arguments allow indie games to slip through the cracks.
Ultimately, these debates never go anywhere because the definition of art is notoriously fuzzy, subjective, and ever-changing. It all boils down to opinion, and that's okay. Words aren't invented by dictionaries; their definitions come from their usage, not the reverse. Arguing semantics in this case is effectively a dead end, and once you get past all that nonsense, the most commonly cited reason for excluding video games in particular from the art world is simply that we haven't yet seen a video game worthy of the same praise as a Shakespeare play or a Rembrandt painting. The implication is often that we never will, even if no specified rules would exclude video games on principle, because the quality of creative work that goes into the most critically acclaimed video games is still supposedly mediocre at best in comparison to, say, the most critically acclaimed films.
Again, the opinion that video games will never be art doesn't just come from old men like Roger Ebert who never played a video game. It comes from within the "gaming" community as well, mostly from those "hardcore gamers" who would argue (perhaps correctly) that the industry needs to return to a strong focus on complex and challenging gameplay, and to stop pandering to casual "gamers" with artsy/cinematic nonsense without even a lose state or a hint of any meaningful challenge. Games shouldn't be movies, the hardcore audience likes to say. If you've perceived a significant decline in the quality of video games over the years — that is, I should clarify, a decline in the quality of everything in video games except for graphics — then you'd probably say this is a compelling argument, and I would strongly agree. However, if we want to push for better gameplay via an end to the game industry's distracting infatuation with film, then we should just do exactly that. The argument about the video game's status as an art form is a separate one entirely.
Even arguing successfully that video games should not be art doesn't exactly prove that they are not or cannot be art, and even arguing successfully that they are not or cannot be art wouldn't keep them from trying to be art. More importantly, the notion of "art" being discussed here might be the wrong one for this context. It is possible, after all, for games to be a kind of "art" without relying on the imitation or appropriation the various aspects of other art forms.
Pixels and Squares
It's with some reluctance that I place myself on the pro-art side of the fence, for a number of reasons. First, regarding the more dubious but more common notion of "games as art" by virtue of their essentially movie-like qualities, I must admit that such a definition of art is valid whether or not it's good for the video game industry.
Although I don't think the potential for the inclusion of non-game-like qualities should be the justification for broadly treating the video game medium as an art form, I do think it's fair to treat an individual video game as a work of art based on whatever kind of arguably artistic work was involved in its creation. That is, although I don't think video games should necessarily be praised for how they simply imitate film and other media, the typical modern video game (like a typical film) is the product of many kinds of creative work — music, writing, acting, and of course the visuals which might be hand-drawn or computer-generated — and regardless of the average quality of all this creative work, it's still there. Picasso is still an artist even if you don't like him.
So how can one say that the culmination of all the artistic work that goes into a video game isn't art? I can't think of a non-feelings-based argument to support such a claim. Short of declaring that none of that work is currently done at a level that qualifies as true art (which leaves the door open for better games to qualify as art in the future), the only way out is to say that it ceases being art once it becomes a game — that even though it contains art in various forms, the finished product is not art because its primary function is to provide the player with a challenge or some entertainment. And I think that's a pretty bizarre thing to say.
But let's just go with it. Let's say it's true: video games cannot be art because they're games. Now we get to ask the really interesting question. What happens when the video game evolves to the point where it's no longer a game, as is the case with Dear Esther? Are we then allowed to call it art? And if so, is there really no point along the continuum from Tetris (pure gameplay) to Dear Esther (pure "art") at which games and art do intersect?
Perhaps the right course of action is to reject everything I just wrote and say that Tetris itself is a work of art already. So far, I've followed the typical course of these "video games as art" debates by analyzing the controversial (and perhaps misguided) idea that video games should be considered art by virtue of the way they incorporate other forms of art, e.g., the writing of the story that provides context to the gameplay, the drawing and modeling that result in the game's graphics, and the production of the soundtrack — but you also could argue (and should argue) that a well-designed game is a work of art by virtue of its design, be it elegant or complex or somewhere in between.
That's probably how the concept of the video game art should be understood in the academic sense. I think games can, and should, be recognized as art for the qualities that actually make them games. The defining feature of the video game as a medium — gameplay — needs to be considered, and perhaps nothing else. If architecture is an art form, then it's not because architects like to hang paintings on the walls of the buildings they design. It's because the talented architect will bring a unique kind of excellence to the actual design of the building itself. The same should be true of video games if they are to achieve that same status.
In truth, regardless of what we might say on occasion about an individual game which incidentally borders on "work of art" territory according to someone's opinion, I think the video game as a medium can never be accepted as an art form unless it is recognized as such for the qualities which make video games what they are. For the video game to be accepted as an form of art, game developers need to do more than paste some audiovisual art on top of some game mechanics. The game design itself — not just the graphics, or the music, or the story — needs to be done at a level that deserves to be called art. If you can remove the interactive elements from a particular game without sacrificing any of what makes that game a work of art, then that game isn't doing anything to promote video games as an art form. It could have done just as well as a movie.
In the colloquial sense, however, most people accept a game as a work of art only if it conveys some meaning and evokes some emotion, and thus pasting audiovisual art on top of game mechanics is perfectly fine. Most video games attempt art status by telling a story, and maybe that's totally legitimate as well. I wouldn't object to classifying Max Payne as a work of art for its narration alone, even though Max Payne achieving "art status" merely by way of its writing does nothing for video games as a medium. In any case, on the subject of video games as art via narrative, I only wish it were more often done much better. The typical story-driven game is an alternating sequence of meaningless challenges and non-interactive cut scenes. They could very often be separated from one another and each do better on their own. If developers want their games to be art — or, perhaps more accurately, if they want their art to be games — they should at least incorporate interactive elements in a way that supplements the supposedly artistic value. Too often, these two aspects of a game just end up sitting side-by-side. Ideally, game developers who want to be artists should just study the art of good design instead of stapling a half-decent game design to a half-decent movie.
All of this is just food for thought, obviously. The question at the heart of all this thought is too subjective (and currently too controversial) for a satisfying answer. If you want an objective definition of the word "art" then I have one observation to share: with few exceptions, a thing is considered art if and only if it was meant to be art, created with artistic intentions by one who fancies oneself an artist. (Whether it's good art is another question entirely.) In other words, the creator does have some say in the matter. In 1915, a Russian guy named Kazimir Malevich painted a black square and called it art, and that black square ended up in an art museum, but that doesn't mean every other black square is also art. And of course, the "consumers" of art also have some say in the matter, because that black square wouldn't have ended up in a museum if nobody else had thought it was worth displaying.
And hey, look, there are video games in an art museum now. It's worth noting that the games featured at MoMA were selected for their ingenious design. They are being appreciated for the qualities that make video games a unique medium, and nothing else. That's a step in the right direction both for gameplay purists and for those who want video games to be taken seriously as an art form. After all, how are video games ever going to get this recognition if the way we're trying to make them more like art is by making them less like games and more like movies? The video game itself cannot be art if individual games only become art by branching out into other established art forms. Indeed the game design itself needs to be recognized as an art form on a fundamental level, with or without all the fancy toppings.
In any case, as with black squares, I would hesitate to hail a video game as a "work of art" if it's known that the developers never had this in mind, but if the developers are passionate about their work and if consumers are passionate about enjoying it, the label fits well enough to elicit no complaints from me. The relevant point, I suppose, is that a video game can be art — the art museum has spoken — and, more importantly, it can still be a good game, too. However, with regard to digital entertainment in which the basic elements typically defining the traditional game are drastically demoted or abandoned entirely in favor of other types of artistic expression, I really think we need to update our terminology. In other words, if Dear Esther isn't a game, it shouldn't be called a "video game" either.
Wrong Direction
The fact that Dear Esther and similar releases are considered to be video games, by many, is terrifying to the rest of us because it amplifies the perception that these overly cinematic, overly linear, sometimes pretentiously artsy experiences, devoid of any challenge or depth in gameplay, are the future of our hobby.
There are those who really would argue, instead, that Dear Esther is an extreme example of where video games should be headed. Some say that video games should do more than simply challenge the player — that they should convey a deeper meaning and tell a better story — and that's totally fine, as long as we're talking about supplementing the gameplay, not removing it. Otherwise, the argument is really just a roundabout way of saying "I've realized that I don't even like video games and I need something else to do with this controller I bought" — something else like interactive fiction, perhaps. So why don't we make that, and call it that, instead of pushing to change video games into that? Apparently because, even when people realize that all they care about is the storyline, they still seem unusually desperate to call themselves "gamers" despite the fact that their ideal "video game" is hardly a video game at all. They just really want their nerd cred or something.
Perhaps this is what the industry gets for having attempted for so many years to fit deep story and deep gameplay into the same product. The prospect of an interactive story inevitably attracts people who — let's be honest — just aren't interested in playing real video games. I'm referring, of course, to the "casual gamers" who really do see challenge as an unnecessary obstacle that should be removed so that people who aren't any good at video games can still enjoy what's left of them. To be honest, this worries me. If players see challenging gameplay itself as a nuisance, and developers cater to them by making challenging gameplay optional, we're coming awfully close to throwing out one of the most fundamental properties of the video game as we once knew it.
I think we'd all be better off if we just allowed interactive fiction to become its own thing, with its own audience, instead of allowing the entire industry to be dragged in the wrong direction. It seems to be going in that direction either way, in its attempts to hook that casual (non-)gamer audience, but we shouldn't legitimize this by expanding the definition of "video game" to such an extent that people who buy interactive movies get to call themselves gamers.
