The Art That No One Can Describe
Video games are art. At this point, almost everyone agrees, even those who, like Roger Ebert once did, claimed otherwise. But they occupy a strange position in popular culture: universal and dominant, yet almost invisible outside their medium.
Why do film adaptations of books often work, while those of video games systematically fail? The answer lies in one word: transformation.
The Transformative Nature of Gaming
The essence of a video game — what distinguishes it from a mediocre animated movie — is that it's interactive. It demands that the player enact the story. It transforms the player's mind.
Such transformations cannot be written down or filmed. If they could, they wouldn't need to be a video game.
A game that believes games are movies manqué for lack of enough cutscenes, as so many video game auteurs discovered the hard way, ensures that will be true. And games that try to be novels will be neither.
The Failure of Criticism
Despite decades of maturity, billions of cumulative hours of gameplay, and some of our brightest talents working in the industry, video game criticism remains deeply unsatisfying.
The 10-hour YouTube explainers, blogs, endless Let's Plays, the streaming industry, meritorious academic attempts, celebrity critics — none of it manages to capture the essence of the experience.
Reading a video game review, writes Gwern, is scarcely more satisfying than listening to someone tell you about a dream they had. Even a psychedelic trip report or music album review is more illuminating.
You Had to Be There
The reason is simple: a video game critique is indeed like someone telling you about a dream. "You had to be there — and doing it, like I was."
The critical difference between a movie, novel, album, painting and a video game is that the former are something you feel or experience, while the latter is something you do or are.
An artful video game cannot be described, because it is not a description but a transformation. You can point at the moon, but it's not the moon, and once someone sees it, they no longer need the pointing.
Unexpected Parallels
The closest "passive" art forms to this experience are also the most demanding of their viewers. Wagner's Ring opera cycle, for example, requires considerable intensity and time investment.
Is it an accident that reviews of escape rooms or immersive theater never seem to successfully convey why you would want to bother?
Implications for the Future
This limitation isn't a defect to be corrected. It's the very nature of the medium. Video games will continue to be the most practiced and least understood art form of our time.
Criticism can serve as advertising, a finger pointing toward the possible transformation. It can offer exegesis, parasocial gossip, or technical critique of the craft. But it can never replace the experience of the transformation itself.