Over on Twitter I said something about how “my favorite thing about the TTRPG/video games should be taken as art crowd is how they hate it when we actually do take it seriously as art, they get big mad real fast” and I do 100% stand by it, but predictably, have more to say. Because obviously I’m not actually talking about the people who do want this hobby treated and categorized as art, but the people who say they do for clout, or for respectability and cultural cachet. I mean I get it; I was raised to eventually “put away childish things”, with the idea that when I started growing up, around 11 or 12, I would get a job, I would stop playing games, I would understand that toys were toys and that I should no longer be “playing” anymore and so yeah, I get it, it kinda sucks for people to be saying “aha the things you enjoy are not things worthy of Adulthood, where we have no room for frivolous things and instead only value Work, Books, Sports, Cars, Crafts and Art, you know, things of Value”
(Which obviously has the big self contradictions; where does watching a TV show or movie fall, if you aren’t watching one of the ones that’s considered Art? Why are books all okay and comic books not okay? Why is woodworking okay and model railroading a respectable hobby, but Lego or mini skirmish games not? But that’s another essay all its own)
And so the thing is, there’s a lot of people - a preponderance of young to middle aged cis men, but a spread across identities still - who have rightfully realized that no, there are some things that maybe we shouldn’t have to “grow out of”, maybe they don’t lose value when we turn 12 and have to decide if we’re joining the work force, the mission force, or the art world, maybe there isn’t anything wrong with an adult pursuing hobbies for entertainment (here meaning “playing video games”) but the thing is, they… WE, really, in post-Reagan USAlandia… lack any form of categorization outside of the “work, crafts, books, or Art” banality.
And video games aren’t “crafts” unless you’re making them, so that’s out
(Anecdote: I had initially wanted to go into making video games and I was encouraged to do so, as a hobby, until I was 13 or so and then I was informed very firmly that while it was okay for some people to do it as a job, I needed to concentrate on getting a real job instead, not a “retirement job” or “hobby job for the idle rich” like video games. There’s something to that, methinks.)
On the other hand, everyone agrees that it’s a universal good thing for adults to consume Art. Well okay, that’s not true. There’s the whole reactionary wave thing going on, so even my generalization here doesn’t apply. But the sentiment is/was there. If you can classify video games as ART, they’re OKAY, they’re PERMISSIBLE now.
(Further anecdote: this phenomenon manifests in other forms elsewhere. One of my favorite stories is the tale a developer told me at GDC some years back, about why the Yakuza/Ryu Ga Gotoku series was so successful and why it had so many minigames contained within. You see, an entire subclass of Japanese men at the time really enjoyed the idea of rhythm games, or other frivolous sim activities, or dating sims, but it was taboo for them to be caught playing or enjoying such “unmanly” games. But see, here they aren’t buying Dating Sim Girl Manager Dress Up Fashion Time, they’re buying LIKE A DRAGON, a game about manly men brawling for their personal honor in crime land, it’s different, this is MANLY and MACHO and it’s not ME doing the Photo Booth Sticker Game, its Majima, look how cool he is)
The problem here is that it’s important to be critical of art (and at the same time, being critical does not mean we don’t enjoy it). A thing does not get a pass just because it’s “art”. There are vast volumes to be written about what is or what is not considered Art, but something which is always true: we dig into what Art means, what a piece says, how a piece is constructed, what are the politics of a piece. And when the lens of critique is held up to video games, or tabletop games, and we start to dig into “despite famously being “inclusive” and not taking a stand, what is D&D actually saying, how do its mechanics actually function and what can that tell us” we irritate the unserious But Games Are Art demographic on two levels.
The first is just that: they’re unserious. They want games to be perceived as Art because that makes them Acceptable, that means that the Grown-Ups in the room can’t mock them for playing games instead of doing something Important and Unchildish with their time. And this is important to me too, but this is ALL they want. They want “it’s just a game, bro” to apply in all other ways; they take “games are art” to mean “games are safe for me to enjoy, you can’t be mean to me for liking games” and that’s where the thought terminates. Someone taking games seriously and holding up critique is missing the point, man, just play games and have fun, why you gotta try hard?
And yes I know there’s hypocrisy in that statement, as even people who take games unseriously have their own metrics and standards for what makes a game “good”, even in consuming their media uncritically they still have their own tastes, but that doesn’t make the cutoff for awareness, for them. And I also know that there are people who want to claim Art for different reasons, but I’m writing this on my phone as I wait for pain meds to kick in so I don’t have the energy to really get into that. Because we have the next category too..
The second reason the Games Are Art people hate it when they get serious critique is that in modern USAland culture, an attack on something you enjoy is an attack on your worth as a human being. You can’t like something BAD. That would mean you’re bad, and so someone criticizing a thing you like is criticizing you, personally, they’re attacking your identity, your lifestyle, your very personhood when they say “the call of duty games, much like the madden franchise that set the blueprint, have been creatively and artistically plateaued for decades” or some similarly broad critique, let alone when someone gets deeper into it. Talking about unequivocal things like “there’s over 1.5 seconds of input lag in this game” or “the tabletop designers put in 39 pages of feats which all do uninteresting “speedbump” things” is generally okay, but even then you’ll get people arguing that we shouldn’t judge too harshly there, be nice, it’s just a game.
And all of this isn’t even touching the reactionary angle surrounding things like the portrayal of marginalized identities, the political messaging of games, the treatment of workers in the game industry, the politics and optics of game celebrities and performers and other professionals and the reactionary subculture surrounding those, all of which are ripe for meaningful critique (and in need of direct action, but that is another essay too) and bringing up any of these is disturbingly likely to have a Games Are Art bro feel threatened, get Big Mad, and then you’ve got slightly more death threats than the usual daily allotment of being a trans person on the internet in your inbox, some of which still know where you live thanks to the gaming industry.
I mean, games ARE art. And I treat them as such and my life is richer for it. But it both amuses me and irks me that the people who are often loudest in calling for their recognition are the same ones threatening me with assault and humiliation for, er… (checks notes) …doing what they claim to want in the first place.
You can’t win.
