Art of the Unlikely

There is something that always annoyed me in "Are video games art?" debates which is that people trying to show their favourite games or "best of the best" to prove their worth. This is not entirely unjustified, I understand the frustration that comes from claims such as "Video games are hollow" but it's a response that reinforces certain beliefs regarding art that I don't enjoy:

• There is inherent goodness in art and artist.
• It should be "pure" in its intentions and must only exist for its own sake.
• Carrying "Art" label indicates a certain level of quality.

I wholeheartedly believe video games are art, not because they can really hit my heart or they have a high expressive potential; although i believe these too but because I hold a very neutral and loose definition of art: Art is simply the creation of expressions by abstracting and encapsulating real life experiences, emot,ions and thoughts. Purposes, ways and results of the creation is only relevant to the content of the work. From that's perspective, let's look at two games and how really "art" they are.

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Think about pictures that depicts battles, epic stories or scenes from mythologies. Do they faithfully depict war? Not really, obviously real war is quite different from you see in pictures. Think about photographs or even live footages of war. They look close to real war, but they are not, it is not the same thing with being inside war, even the best simulation is just an abstraction. Even the real life senses of two different people will cause them experiencing the same phenomena differently and when people attempt to communicate those experiences with any device; songs, cave paintings, books or camera; it won't be "the real thing", it will be an expression, whether you are making a documentary or drawing a Dadaist art.
So what does Counter-Strike or any competitive shooting game express? They are not war, but they are as much a vision of war as any painting. A clean war where participation and quitting is voluntary, there are no logistic problems, no personal stakes or high motives besides the competition itself, no real danger for any of the characters in it and an individual can be victorious or defeated on certain, clear-cut terms. It's a fun version of war, with Source engince graphics adding another level of abstraction to seeing real bodies of real people being blown off. It doesn't matter creators didn't actually want to communicate a particular message when they made CS, but it certainly exists regardless.
And these expressions matter. Not because playing FPS games turn you into school shooters, but every media we consume affect us in a certain way. Expressions matter even more when they are made silently. People can easily detect propaganda, symbolism or allegory but can shoot thousands of virtual enemies and not realise they are consuming, maybe even internalizing certain kind of expression. This is one of the reasons why a kind of high art/low art distinction is actively harmful. Creativity doesn't always arise when someone wants to touch human soul or something, sometimes mundane things are the most striking and not always in positive ways.

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A classic like Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing contain a plethora of expressions and I don't even mean "Oh, this is actually so deep, you can write a fan fiction out of this.", no it expresses things simply by existing. To being able to bypass objects, going backwards at infinite speed or "You are winner" text all express things. There is no rule that asserts these expressions have to hold a coherent meaning. The game being hastily made for making some quick cash doesn't change this either. The game probably tried to capture the feelings of racing, using a heavy vehicle, speed etc. and failed at it, which in turn accidentally created other expressions.
It's easy to lament about how a work of art is made only for money when it's bad art, whether it's a cheaply made game or your average summer blockbuster, but we should never forget nothing under capitalism can escape it. Whether the consumer is milked in cheap deals, people stay true to their vision despite all the suffering they go through or creators get shielded from thinking about money by a support network; someone pays the price. One can reach the conclusion that art under capitalism or at the very least created for mass consumption is not worth engaging, but I heavily disagree. Sometimes, the best expressions come from the most unexpected places.
I can easily see that this perception of art is not easy to swallow to some readers. But at the very least, consider this: Do you apply your rules about what constitutes art equally for the things you consider art? You might realise being consistent about such rules is actually quite difficult. In that sense, an open definition of art is more clear and practical, if nothing else.
This article is written thanks to my dearest Patrons and special thanks to: Alexandra Morgan, Laura Watson and Spencer Gill.