At least, that’s what the critical circuit ostensibly cares about. A “game,” by design, is supposed to be fun. The other great hindrance to games as art comes from the conflicting goals between those two idenities. The term commonly applied here is “ludonarrative dissonance,” and it’s indicative of gaming’s wasted potential to actually create significant art while recycling the techniques of cinema ad nauseum. Playing Uncharted and seeing Nathan Drake portrayed in cinematic cutscenes as a suave, charming jokester with compassion for his friends fails to translate into gameplay, where Drake kills people in the hundreds to satisfy his lust for adventure. The Last of Us, Mass Effect, Metal Gear Solid, all of them play out as two separate works: the game and the story. Most games with acclaimed stories, many of which I enjoy, do employ the language of cinema, instead of exploring the potential of games. But even games that are praised for their writing and storytelling often do so entirely through the strength of their writers, rather than taking advantage of the medium. It’s difficult, though not impossible, to reconcile the aesthetic with the technical. Digital artists, computer programmers, level designers, and QA testers team up with writers, voice actors, and composers whose respective fields are often difficult to synergize. In the case of video games, this gets even more complicated, as the disciplines of craftsmen are further scattered. But the point remains that strong directorial vision has a much greater likelihood of producing art than some ghost in the machine from the disjointed efforts of hundreds of employees. Auteurs are few and far between, and not even necessarily good you could consider Neil Breen or Tommy Wiseau as deserving of the title as Wes Anderson or Quentin Tarantino. Particularly strong directors who micromanage every element of a film eventually produce something of a signature style. The role of the director is to ensure that these varied undertakings all contribute to a unified, greater whole. Feature films are frequently made by hundreds of people, all working very specialized tasks: writing, lighting, editing, visual effects, acting, costuming, sound mixing. This raises the probability of incongruity and sloppiness – not just because of the workforce’s size, but also the diversity of the roles the craftsmen play. When an artist fails to make a piece interact positively with its own composition, it leads to bad art – and the more complex the undertaking (such as a film or a game), the more craftsmen you need to carry it out. What is ultimately rendered is a gestalt of an individual artist’s (or a small group’s) conscious efforts. This is more feasible in mediums such as books or paintings, since a single creative agent often oversees every aspect of a piece’s construction. Traditionally, high art is often thought of as a harmony of the elements, where every component of a piece interacts with every other component to generate a larger meaning that is (hopefully) greater than the sum of its parts. The first limitation comes from the division of labor. My thoughts on the subject have matured since then, but I maintain that video games suffer inherent structural limitations that hinder their chances of artistic achievement. My satirical defense of artistry within the medium picked out games like Dead Space, Red Dead Redemption, and Gears of War – such low-hanging fruits that I almost threw out my back making fun of them. The video was mostly comedic in intention, poking fun at self-conscious gamers who felt compelled to validate their hobby as high art, as if they weren’t entitled to enjoy it otherwise. The core conceit basically focused on the void of a literary canon in popular games, evidencing its deficiency as a medium. Six years ago, I made a video mocking the idea of video games qualifying as art. A Boring Treatise on The Paradox of Games as Art In this essay, I intend to examine the game’s overarching themes and evaluate the mechanisms of storytelling contributing to its unique accomplishments. Nier: Automata recently released to nearly universal praise. Chronicling Transactional Storytelling from Drakengard to NieR: Automata