“An Intriguing Proposition”
Art Plays Games

“Gaming has earned its place at the table.” With a new exhibition collapsing disciplinary boundaries between contemporary art and gaming, Mike Pinnington considers the medium’s growing confidence and ambition…

For years, the predominant media position on gaming was generally one ranging from bemused distrust to downright demonisation. As the form has developed and grown in popularity and (financial) power, however, despite the odd reminder of that narrative, the industry’s reputation – in line with advances in tech, driving ambition, innovation and capability – has markedly changed for the better.

While the stereotype persists, then, gone are the days when we think of gamers exclusively as spotty teenage boys in darkened rooms. Arguably, this has most recently been exemplified in the industry becoming more closely aligned with mainstream culture, not least with the popular success and critical acclaim for the TV adaptation of The Last of Us. But for every TLoU, there are many more turkeys – take this summer’s Borderlands movie as just the most recent example.

For a more accurate indication of gaming’s growing maturity and acceptance, it is arguably more helpful to consider the medium as an artform in its own right, as opposed to one in which hugely popular money-spinning franchises are optioned as small- and/or big-screen fodder. Certainly, an ever expanding list of games have been spoken of in such terms. From the alternate world of almost mythic 1993 adventure game, Myst, to 2012′s haunting and atmospheric Dear Esther, and 2018 indie phenomenon, Gris, about a girl journeying through her own sorrow, pretty much anybody who has picked up a controller in earnest has a game that they’ll have concluded to be, without question, a ‘work of art’.

Writing in Edge, the UK’s gaming publication of note (Edge #398), Alex Spencer asserted that the question of whether videogames can be art has “surely long been settled,” noting that  they “might [even] constitute a ‘total’ artform, the Gesamtkunstwerk.” Games being a fusion of art, tech, music and more, that isn’t as outlandish a claim as it might once have seemed. In her 2018 book, Playing with Feelings: Video Games and Affect, meanwhile, Assistant Professor Aubrey Anable went further, making a convincing case that the medium is the most significant art form of the twenty-first century.

In the same year as Anable’s book hit the shelves,, the V&A’s exhibition, Videogames: Design/Play/Disrupt (a subtitle at once outlining the show’s distinct sections and gaming’s scope) presented what the Guardian’s gaming editor, Keza MacDonald, described as “the first such major exhibition to treat games as a modern cultural force.” The accompanying catalogue expanded on this, putting gaming in direct conversation with cultural criticism across essays dealing with a variety of real-world issues. With ambitions increasingly outstripping the old cliches and expectations, then, it is no surprise to find contemporary artists leaning into and playing with the form, often from a position of fandom.

I first became conscious of this turn when Larry Achiampong and David Blandy, a sometime duo who “share an interest in popular culture and the post-colonial position,” used the virtual world of Grand Theft Auto 5 as a setting with which to explore the writings of French Afro-Caribbean political philosopher, Frantz Fanon. Their Finding Fanon Trilogy, made between 2015 and 17 finds the pair examining the politics of race, racism and the post-colonial.

Owing in-part to the comforting familiarity the world lends the series (below), these works feel fresh and accessible in ways some interrogations of such subject matter might otherwise not; simultaneously, they provide a convincing riposte to those believing that virtual realms offer only escapism.

Achiampong and Blandy are far from being alone in using the democratising visual language of gaming as the terrain for their art, and the list of artists who do grows ever-longer. From LuYang’s blending of religion, philosophy, neuroscience, psychology and modern technology (LuYang Arcade), and Danielle Braithwaite-Shirley’s platforming of the lives of Black Trans people, to Sara Sadik’s XENON PALACE CHAMPIONSHIP (which reflects on vulnerability and belonging), many have been championed and exhibited by FACT Liverpool. Sadik’s work, currently on display in its first floor foyer space, will soon be joined by yet more, with this week’s launch of Art Plays Games.

Representing a collapsing of disciplinary boundaries, the gallery describes the exhibition as “a space for games created by digital artists and independent video game developers.” So Art Plays Games is an intriguing proposition, one that will pose questions around the relative qualities of each, and whether they bear comparison as both art and satisfying gaming experience. In his exploration of the relationship between games and art, Associate Professor and author John Sharp suggests that game-based artworks can indeed satisfy the aesthetic and critical values crucial to both contemporary art and gaming communities.

We’ll soon be able to decide for ourselves. Opening this week, and running until April 2025, rotating lineups of artworks and games will feature throughout the duration. The first grouping sees artists Rachel Maclean (top), Sahej Rahal, Angela Washko (above), and Loopntale, rub shoulders with playable games from independent developers Broken Rules and The Voxel Agents (best known for their game about ‘memories, friendship and time’, The Gardens Between).

With the creativity and creative potential of the outputs of both in the spotlight, it will be interesting to see if and in what form a complementary overlap of experience emerges; for now, though, let us at least be satisfied that gaming has earned its place at the table.

Mike Pinnington

Art Plays Games opens 5 September @ FACT Liverpool

Rachel Maclean, DUCK (2023). Film still. Courtesy of the artist; Gris (2018), Nomada Studios game still; Larry Achiampong and David Blandy Finding Fanon (2015) still; Angela Washko, Mother, Player (2023). Game still. Image courtesy of the artist