Entertainment vs. Art: How Do They Relate?

In the interest of argument, I'll sometimes go onto a random chat site (just text, not video chat; I want information and discussion, not mental scars) to ask people if they think video games are art.  I've gotten all sorts of replies, but a surprisingly common one is that they are not art, but entertainment.  Which is interesting to me, not as a sort of argument against games as art, but as a general principle of art theory.

The question here is one of coexistence.  Can art be entertainment?  Can entertainment be art?  Are both capable of being the other, is one inherently also the other, or are they entirely separate, with no overlap?

Tag, you're it!

Well, there are definitely things that are entertaining, but are not art, at least in its culturally defined sense.  The best example is that of children.  Kids are entertained by the simplest of things; they don't need a complex RPG battle system or a non-stop action-packed movie, they just need you to grab onto their hands and spin them around.  To a child, pretty much anything is entertainment.  A game like Tag is obviously entertainment, but it would be difficult to argue for its status as art.  So entertainment can most definitely exist independently of art.

But is absence of art a necessary quality of entertainment?  I think a simple glance at any art form will prove otherwise.  Film is an art form, and movies are enjoyed by millions of people on a daily basis, most of them not even giving a second thought to its artistic value as long as they were entertained.  Literature does this as well, as do visual art forms such as painting and photography; just because something is an art form does not mean it can't be entertaining.  In fact, most art forms in today's world are dependent on some form of entertainment since artworks need to make enough money to fund others.

Thus, we conclude that entertainment is capable of being entirely independent of art, but is also fully capable of, and commonly does, exist within art.  In short, it can go both ways.  So now that we know how entertainment relates to art, how does it work the other way around?

Art can, I suppose, exist independently of entertainment, though that possibility is heading squarely into subjective territory.  I've known people who couldn't stay awake through the original Star Wars films because they were bored to death.  I've since avoided those people like the plague and now pray for their salvation on a daily basis.  Point being, these are three films largely considered some of the best, most influential and important works of cinema in history, and some people find no entertainment value in them.  Entertainment is a rather subjective thing, up to personal taste, so the only way we could make any sort of concrete judgement in this specific area is by considering intent rather than effect, since the effect of entertainment tends to be subjective.  So for the sake of figuring out art's relation to entertainment, I will use the word "entertainment" not to refer to anything that is entertaining to someone, but rather to anything that is created in order to entertain.

Case in point: I highly doubt you
watched Schindler's List thinking,
"This is so fun!"  But it was great.

But is there any art that does not seek to entertain in some way?  Sure, art has a higher purpose than to simply entertain, but if the viewer, reader, or player is not entertained, how will they be interested enough in that message for it to really have an impact?  The viewer/reader/player must be invested in the artwork, and that is best accomplished by being entertaining in some way.  Perhaps not "haha, this is fun" sort of way, but I think we can all agree based on the existence of horror movies, intense action games, and pretty much any other media made to keep those experiencing it tense, that "having fun" is not necessarily the same as "being entertained."  It would seem that art seeks to entertain as a means of communicating the higher purposes of its existence.  Perhaps this does not mean that entertainment is always necessary to art, but it most definitely points to the idea that entertainment is an important aspect of art, not some sort of opposing force to it or a "lower" version of it.

We have determined that entertainment does not inherently exist independently of art; it can, but does not do so on principle.  Nor is art inherently separate from entertainment; in fact, entertainment is a natural part of art and is commonly used within it to effectively communicate to the audience and financially allow the existence of artistic industries and studies.

So where did we get the idea that "entertainment" cannot be art?  It could be one of those things we think without realizing it conflicts with other things we think.  It could also be the result of a common thought that "art" is some sort of high-brow, snooty concept of which our entertainment cannot be a part.  Or is it perhaps it's simply that, if you look at something merely as entertainment, you will not see the artistic value in it.  I'm not entirely sure; this week seems to be more of an exploration than an explanation, I suppose.  But it's an interesting thing to consider.  I think it's important for us to remember that art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive, and just because not all examples of an art form are particularly "artistic" does not mean the entire form is one solely of entertainment with no artistic legitimacy.

Let me know if you have any further ideas in the comments, or feel free to email me at the address at the bottom of the page!  And don't forget to Like Binary Narrative on Facebook!

Relative Inferiority: How Video Games Stack Up

We live with the constant idea that, though video games are a narrative art form, their stories are not the best stories ever told.  That video game stories are not yet as good as stories told in other mediums.  This irritates me.

You will not find me denying that most video game writing sucks.  I think it's pretty well established that most developers do not spend enough effort or give enough priority to storytelling, and the writers end up needing to work around a half-finished game.  There are also problems of writers being brought in from non-interactive mediums and having no idea how to write for the relatively new idea of interactive storytelling.  Most game stories and writing are pretty terrible; you won't find me denying that.

But first of all, that is true of everything.  Everything artistic, at least.  The arts almost always follow the second principle of Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap.  There are many people out there with the creativity to create great works, but lacking in the skill to bring their creative vision to life.  There are also many people out there with the technical skill but lacking in the creativity.  Many people think they can do great things artistically, and only so many people actually can.  This is why Youtube is simultaneously home to some great talent and a lot of pointless video blogs and stupid music videos.  It is why most movies are derivative and badly-made, but many are quite good and a few per year will be remembered for decades to come.  It is why books are the host medium of some of the greatest literary works in history, yet the harlequin romance section of the library takes up about half of the building.  And it's why most video games tell terrible stories.  It is a widespread artistic principle, not some disability only video games bear.

There are other things to consider as well, such as the fact that video games are more diverse than other mediums and can include works made solely for competition or social game nights, the artistic status of which can be debated.  But it is usually assumed that when we are talking about bad game stories we are talking about games that tried, at least to the extent of having a story at all.  It is debatable whether we should criticize a game made solely for the sake of online competition for its lack of artistic vision when art was obviously not their intention, but I think it is much clearer that we should not judge the quality of an entire medium based on these examples.

When looking to see if video game stories have told tales worthy to stand with history's great stories, we should not look at the worst of the medium but the best.  We do not determine the comparative worth of film to literature by comparing The Room to The Odyssey, nor should we use Killzone as the measuring stick we put next to Star Wars to determine the relative worth of video games as a storytelling medium. 

I imagine anyone who plays video games for their story can name at least one game that has impacted them emotionally just as much if not more than any other story from other mediums.  I know many people, myself included, can say that about games as far back as the Super Nintendo, possibly even before that.  Thing is, most gamers who claim the storytelling inferiority of video games know that perfectly well.  So why do they say that games haven't told truly great stories?

I think there is one thing games need to get better at before they will more widely be considered able to stand among the greats.  Developers need to figure out how to best integrate interactivity and gameplay with the narrative.

Consider what Citizen Kane is to film.  It used brilliant cinematography and revolutionary storytelling techniques to set the standard for what film is capable of.  It was the first to create many film equivalents to well-established literary techniques, and presented itself visually like no film had.  It took advantage of the medium's strengths and potential to create an experience like no other at the time.  It is remembered now not because it is the best film ever made, but because it set the precedent for what the medium is capable of doing and the ways it can uniquely present it.

Though we have some stories in video games that, in my opinion, deserve to stand among history's best, we have yet to see a game that fully, completely, and effectively ties interactivity into it.  We have had games that do one or more of these, but not a game that revolutionarily does so on the level that Citizen Kane did for film.  Once that happens, I believe people will more easily accept video game stories into the same league as the greats of history.

Is it necessary to take full advantage of a medium's unique strengths to make a good work in it?  Absolutely not; that idea causes a lot of problems that I plan on addressing in a later article, as it's too big a topic to tack on to this one.  Suffice it to say that good, well-told stories are good, well-told stories regardless of their medium or how thoroughly they utilize said medium's unique abilities, else we begin to settle into a decorum-based, systematic art theory.  But despite this, a medium comes fully into its own when it figures out how to separate itself from other mediums in one or more important ways.

The problem?  Gaming will never have a single work that revolutionizes the entire medium's storytelling.  Video games are a much more diverse medium than any other because of the varying styles of gameplay.  For example, storytelling techniques that could revolutionize RPG storytelling do not necessarily work for a shooter, and vice versa.  Take the idea of first-person games taking place entirely from that perspective; the player becomes the character, with no cutscenes or even lack of control to take them out of the experience of being that character.  This simply would not work as well for an action game or a JRPG, or at least it could not have quite the same effect.  The diversity of gameplay styles and the subsequent diversity of storytelling principles that go with them makes it impossible for a single work to revolutionize the way every game and genre tells stories.  Video games will eventually learn to very effectively interweave interactivity and storytelling, but I have a feeling it will sneak up on us rather than arriving in one grand artwork.

If you have not played a game that impacted you emotionally on the same level as a book or movie that you've read, that's fine.  But if you have, I see no reason why that story shouldn't be considered on par with many great stories of other mediums.  However, I bet we will be seeing more and more games that reach the heights set by the great literary works of history, not only because of excellent storytelling, but because of the interactivity that only video games has to offer.