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Letter to the Smithsonian: How Not To Curate a Video Game Art Exhibition

The videogames-as-art discussion is rife with many arduous "arguments":http://motherboard.tv/2011/3/22/brian-moriarty-is-with-ebert-video-games-aren-t-true-art from without and within the gaming community. So when an august institution like the...
But is it art?

The videogames-as-art discussion is rife with many arduous arguments from without and within the gaming community. So when an august institution like the Smithsonian Art Museum attempts to crowdsource its upcoming exhibit on videogames as art — a whole bunch of words that don’t typically go together – it’s bound to draw the ire of the gaming community. And you know that given its Internet presence and outspokenness, that’s a community where ire can spread fast and far.

In the list of 80 games (pdf) the public voted for and curator Chris Melissinos assembled, whole genres are missing (like the music game), while certain canonical titles (like Quake and Oregon Trail) are notably absent. The Creators Project asked artist and independent game developer Zach Gage what he thought about the ongoing controversy, and he replied with a thoughtful letter. The gist: in video games as in much else, everyone may be a critic, but not everyone should be a curator.

First off, I really appreciate that Chris Melissinos and the Smithsonian have attempted this exhibition. We're still in the very early stages of determining why exactly video games are important and have artistic merit, so going out and creating a show in a large cultural institution like the Smithsonian is going to be a controversial move no matter what your perspective on the whole thing is. My initial concerns about the current show were its sort of lack of perspective. The strength of a curated show comes from the choice and arrangement of the works, and I worried that with a crowdsourced show like this, it would be hard to form a central thesis. What makes each of these games influential and how will those qualities come together to paint a moving picture of games as an art medium? I wasn't sure this list particularly answered those questions. Having now watched the video that the exhibition had put together to introduce the list on artofvideogames.org [see below], my concerns have been somewhat assuaged by the obvious love and understanding that Chris Melissinos has for these games, and his ability to explain what was so important about each of them. To some extent, I think what Chris and the Smithsonian have done is very smart. They've avoided directly addressing the question of why are video games art, and instead danced around it, showing a number of wonderful games and explaining why each great. Despite this success though, I feel that the show was still damaged by the crowdsourced curation approach. While I agree that the player is a major component of games (as Abe Stein recently posted to his blog, "A game not played is no game at all"), the argument that because games are played by the public they should be publicly curated doesn't necessarily follow for me, especially when the resultant list is so muddled. So of course, here are my nitpicks. Why does the list forget entire genres like beat 'em ups, music games, movement games, text adventures, sports games, fighting games, mod-able games and flight simulators? Why are all the Panzer Dragoon games on there? Certainly they were visually stunning, but enough to showcase each one separately? How is this list missing classics like Tetris and Asteroids? What about genre-defining games like Alone in the Dark, Zork, Everquest, GTA3, XCOM, Prince of Persia, Another World, or Oregon Trail? Why is Doom 2 mentioned over Doom, and where is Quake, the game that basically invented online first person shooters? And how could you leave out Wing Commander 3 or Street Fighter II? And how did no Sonic game get on that list except Sonic Adventure, a game that primarily taught the industry how not to convert a 2D franchise to 3D. And what happened to Duck Hunt, and contemporary classics like Bejeweled, The Sims, and Wii Sports? And the list barely manages to mention roguelikes, thankfully including Minecraft. Despite Chris' apparent love for the games, the show doesn't feel as strongly curated as it could have been, overly heavy in some places, and completely missing in others, and I think that is a result of the crowdsourcing. Although I'm sure Chris has a fantastic perspective that will tie this all together beautifully and the resulting show will be enjoyable and successful, I wish that he had just selected a strong list of games on his own and been confident with his picks. And perhaps it would have been nice to not side-step the question of why are these games, as a whole, important as art. Considering this is the first major American art institution to put on a video game show, I would have liked to see a more powerful statement about the medium.

In the video below, the curators address the controversy and introduce the chosen games.