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I think discrediting it as an art form due to its “linear nature” is silly, books and movies are also linear. Games have the ability to put you into a story and experience it in a way other media can’t, there just is not a valid argument against games being an art form.

I would add that games also have higher literacy requirements than movies/books/TV. Their design typically expects the player to be able to perform a lot of cognitive skills that are specific to video games. For instance, modern games typically require the player to independently navigate their character through a simulated 3D environment with the left controller stick/WASD keys, while simultaneously managing the position of the camera with the right stick/mouse. Even this simple example is a pretty niche skill that is very difficult for non-gamers to pick up. Razbuten's video series "Gaming for a Non-Gamer" does a great job of showing how impenetrable games can be for people who don't already play them. I think this impenetrability can make it hard for non-gamers to understand and appreciate video games as an art form, and limits how quickly video games can diffuse into the broader culture.

The tricky thing with measuring the size of the games industry is that nowadays mobile games are often included which make way more money, but have little to zero cultural impact.

In Sony's documentary about the development of God of War (2018), Christopher Judge (best known for playing Teal'C from Stargate) recounted how he was a bit dismissive about auditioning for a videogame until he ended up reading the script for it. He was surprised by how the dialogue was more akin to something from a movie or tv show. After that, he was on board and delivered one of the best performances of the year as Kratos.

Video games rose to their current level of popularity alongside the internet, meaning that validation from traditional sources - established news outlets or magazines- has remained much less important because there are so many alternate, Internet-based sources of information on the medium.

I love how metal gear has had so much influence in media even with its sounds alone but not a single person on the street could name the person in the cover art lol

JJ's estimates for video game revenue apparently did not include the Mobile Game market. which in the US is expected to bring in $69 Billion in 2023 just by itself. Together with that, related tie-ins, and merchandising, the video game industry is WAAAAY bigger than what was discussed in this video

You know, I am 13yrs older than my brother (he is in elementary) and one of the things I make sure he has access to are videogames. My parents didn't with me (immigrants) and I got by fine but I still felt left out once in a while. But nowadays not knowing about minecraft, or zelda, or smash bros REALLY alienates you. It is a huge part of American culture for the newer generations.

I feel like this can go back to that video you had about generational culture. The people who made video games did make that culture, but like the part about the high school films, people who grew up with the "golden" period of video gaming in its early days haven't reached the zenith of their social power at this point.

A good sign of video games' cultural importance is in the way they have influenced/driven people's engagement with _other_ media and topics. The ones that particularly stick out to me are history and music. Blue from OSP has openly spoken about how _Assassin's Creed_ got him interested in history, and certainly in the history space of KZfaq video games have a huge influence on what topics we talk about and when. And of course the resurgence of young people's interest in classical, jazz, and other instrumental music can easily be chalked up to their utility in video games.

I do think that the interactivity of games gives the medium an opportunity to engage in stories in a way that movies/tv shows can not. Though usually the games that engage in such a thing are indie productions that are not highly known even within the space of video game culture - Few of these examples are: Return of the Obra Dinn, Pyre, Hades, Papers Please, Disco Elysium, Inscryption. While the biggest games in the industry feel the need to include more "gamey" characteristics, like area grinding, collectables, ten minutes walks; the likes of God of War, Last of Us, Uncharted, Elden Ring, Assassins Creed, Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption end up getting most of the attention and representing the whole medium. I feel it is comparable to analysing the whole film medium. If you approach it through the biggest releases/box offices of the year, you'll face big blockbusters that are more occupied with broad entertainment, and will end up passing by the more artful and thought provoking stories that represent the depth that movies can attain. At the end, it is like J.J said: Video Games are a fairly recent medium that is still finding out where they will sit in the culture room. Will they be able to get to the big table or content themselves to the side couch, will be up for the future. As for me, I do think that games are able to deliver powerful stories in a whole different way that movies/music/tv shows can, and each one has its owns strenghts and weaknesses in doing so. As for always, very interesting approach to the topic, and thought provoking video. J.J always delivers and it's so good seeing the channel doing so well. Big Hugs!

One factor is that playing a game is such an individualized experience. We all saw the same version of Luke Tatooine and training with Yoda, and blowing up the Death Star. But nobody had the exact same experience of playing Skyrim. That really stops video games from having the sort of cultural touchstones you get from a memorable line or scene or whatever.

I think Roger Eberts analysis does not account for many videogames that are still focused on “winning” or have points and mechanics, but use the expectations of other more traditional video games to make commentary on game culture, or just on a wide variety of moral or human issues lots of other forms of art try to make. Consider under tale, or games like inscription, that don’t make this game vs. immersive experience spectrum so linear.

I am thinking that the missing gap that would make video games larger would be in-app purchases (DLC and consumable purchases). Those are now a fairly significant portion of game revenue outside of console, software and accessory sales.

I think a unique thing about gaming is that as a medium it is so broad, which makes it hard to define what even IS a video game. The fact that something like Rocket League, VRchat and Life is Strange all fall under the same category really shows this. The "limits" of what you can do with a movie and song are pretty well defined, but that isnt really the case for games.

Personally, I think it is just time. When I first got into video games, they were often seen as "for kids" or "nerdy", but as time goes on... It grew in popularity. We are at the point that kids want to grow up and become streamers, reviews, join esports, and so on. It has had a very huge shift in the last 20 years.

I think The Last of Us is a really interesting case study for this topic. The HBO series was well received by critics and by all accounts stood at the same level we'd expect for a TV series by HBO. But at the same time, many people who both played the game and watched the show will attest that the narrative felt more impactful in the game. I think there are elements of the video game medium that can make stories like The Last of Us more impactful. One of the main things the show was missing relative to the game was the small moments between major plot points where Joel and Ellie would have a short back-and-forth about something they come across. These small moments wouldn't warrant their own scene in a show, but they fit naturally into the game since you're already spending time doing more "game-like" things like solving puzzles or navigating the environment. It manages to extend the run-time without boring the viewer, which gives the narrative and character relationships more room to breathe. Games also benefit from the more direct connection between the player and the protagonist. One of the main themes explored by The Last of Us is the level of brutality that otherwise good people are capable of in extreme circumstances. I think that by putting the player in the driver seat for that brutality, it makes the exploration of that topic much more visceral. There are times that the game will make you feel disgusted at what you as a player are doing. The enemies will panic when they see their friend was shot, they'll call each other by their first names, they will beg for their lives when you get the upper hand. There's a big difference in the experience between watching an actor on screen do something that we feel conflicted about and actually initiating that action ourselves. So given all that, I don't think it's fair to say that when a game has a strong narrative, it stops being a game. The game elements themselves give the writers new tools for creating a narrative, and in certain cases, they let them tell the story better than they could have in other mediums. I think games get a bad rap because it's true that the large majority of games focus on gameplay first, with narrative added as an afterthought to justify why you're going after some gameplay objective. But there are games that prioritize narrative and use the unique medium of video games to do things narratively that couldn't be done in other mediums. I think it's too reductionist to say that these games just "become a representation of a story, a novel, a play, a dance, a film." It's the same reason why it would be wrong to say that a good film is just "a representation of a story or a novel," film as a medium brings unique narrative tools that transform the story being told. Games can do the same.

As for how video games don’t really have “figure heads,” like how movies have recognizable directors and such, I think one of the reasons for that is because a lot of them happen to be foreigners. Japanese people with hard to pronounce or remember names. The only figurehead that comes close to a Scorsese or Nolan would probably be Shigeru Miyamoto. And that’s only because he created Mario-basically the Mickey Mouse of video games.

I think it was within the last year that NPR (National Public Radio) in the US finally started a regular column (at least on their website) for critique/commentary on video games. That's one barometer of mainstream acceptance.

That last bit hits me hard. With how easy it is to access new games, it's hard for new games to become household names as much as Mario, Sonic, Pacman etc. Hard to become a big part of the cultural zeitgeist when there's so many options. I feel like the last series to have that sort of impact was Minecraft

I love video games. As a kid, I would’ve done anything, hours of house or yard work, just to get 30mins on the family computer. I was continually told I would grow out of gaming. In my 30s, now and my enjoyment of video games has only grown.

Crazy to think for decades people have been saying how video games are primary cause of violence

It honestly depends on the game. Games like Pac-Man, Mario, and Doom (as random as it may seem to group those games together) are examples of ones I’d say made a huge cultural impact worldwide. Some games obviously have little to no cultural impact. But in other cases, the cultural impact is much smaller, but is highly concentrated. A great example of this is how the PS1 game Wipeout was tightly linked to club culture in Britain during the mid nineties.

I think the term “gamers” is definitely not alone. “cinephile” for movie goers “audiophile” for music fans

From my perspective, the vast majority of people my age (around 20) have video games as their primary or secondary form of at home entertainment. It feels rare to find someone who doesn’t regularly have some genre of game they play. Maybe partly because it is one of the cheapest hobbies, compared to reading or movies, in terms of the amount of time you can get for x dollars.

I find it hard to say that a game like Shadow of the Colossus could be considered anything other than both art and a game. If you've played the game, you'll know why.

I think it's important to note how recognizable characters like Mario or Sonic are, even if many can't name them, they know they're "the guy from the game". I think Nintendo as a brand is also very widely known, my grandparents still call every platform i play on "the nintendo". I think video games have been in the background culturally for a while, and they're slowly gaining significance, especially with Nintendo continuing to cater to a casual market and bringing newcomers in

All, if not most, types of art have an interactive component to them to be enjoyed, like how with film you must be able to see and hear it (or be able to read subtitles). Video games has extra steps, but can still be used to tell a story, to entertain, and be art

the only issue with viewing games as lower is that some games are actually deeper story-wise from the interactivity. a game like half-life (which defined it's era and genre), is such a deeper experience when you interact with it first hand, in a way a show can never replicate, cause you are so integral to what happens.

That is amazing the New Yorker hired it’s first TV critic in 1992! I graduated high school in 1990 (making me officially an Old) and one day my Grade 12 English teacher (sorry, I guess that’s Senior Year English teacher to translate for JJ 😂) brought in her brother as a guest speaker, who was the TV critic for our city’s leading paper (and being well known as such would have been in the role for many years at that point)

I think a huge reason video games tend to be overlooked as "serious" culture that you didn't touch on is related to the age argument. Music can be listened to anywhere, and while doing other things. TV shows and movies can fill your time for a few hours at a time. Some quick Google searching and back of the napkin math shows that, in order to watch the ENTIRETY of the Simpsons franchise, one of the longest running and most successful TV shows of all time, it would take around 400 hours, and that is a generous estimate. Games can be played for days on end, with people sinking thousands upon thousands of hours into a single title. The older you get, the more responsibilities you must take on, and the less time you have for leisure. Adults simply do not have that kind of time while kids and teenagers certainly do. An adult can justify watching an hour and a half movie, but they can't justify playing a new video game for a week straight. In summary, the older a person gets, the less culturally relevant video games become to them.

The only equivalent I can think of to "gamer" in other realms of entertainment would be the term "book worm" for people who read a lot. Can't think of one for movies, but I suppose there are also terms like "metal head" in the realm of music.

Nearly all video game journalism is online only on KZfaq, twitch or other news websites. This will inherently mean that less of the older demographics ever come across video games as you usually have to seek out these places, unlike tradition news and radio where music, movies, sports are advertised heavily.

The problem is that the interactive nature in itself can be used for expression. There's ways video games can be art in a way that movies, books etc. can not be and this has been ignroed by many people until quite recently. For example, Dark Souls makes you get through the experience of being beaten down and having to get up again and again in a way that is coherent with its story and message. The story of the game is trying to get something across to the player through the gameplay itself.

It’s kinda frustrating to get so engrossed in the incredible experience that is the latest Zelda game, and yet hear absolutely nothing about it outside niche gaming websites despite it selling huge numbers. It feels like such a private experience that I desperately want to share.

Rather than gameplay detracting from the "artistry" of video games, I'd go so far as to say it's another form of art itself. Anyone who has gotten immersed in video games can tell you about the "flow state" and how things just click. Gameplay is just one of the many artistic components, alongside the visual, audio, and storytelling components, that form a cohesive whole. As such, gameplay can serve to enhance any or all of those elements just as aesthetic or musical choices can vastly impact the viewing experience of a movie.

As someone whose gaming experience is entirely made up of 3d pinball for windows and solitaire years ago I’m shocked at just how much revenue video games pull in

Even back in the 90s, games like the Final Fantasy series were putting out sprawling 120 hour long interactive stories that no movie could ever match in depth of concepts and chatacter development.

I'm almost 35 and I have been gaming literally since I can remember. There is and always has been a stigma around being a "gamer". I stream video games and whenever I tell someone this I hold my breath for a second because I'm bracing myself for the judgemental attitude a lot of people (especially older people) have about gaming in general. It's really unfortunate because some of the best people I know I met while gaming!

You hit the crux of the issue with "Death of THE MONOCULTURE". Very good video. The few friends I have in real life have completely different tastes in - well, everything - from me. We can typically find some compromise with a bit of searching, but that's very different from common preferences. While you could argue that this is better because everyone gets what they want - I feel the exact opposite. Much better for my friend and I to both get a video-game we're 85% aligned with that has a $10 million budget, than for each of us to get separate video games we're both 100% aligned with that only got a $5 million budget.

I think that last reason you gave was the strongest. Video games are such a segmented industry that mass popular appeal is far less common.

I consider video games to be my favorite medium and include my favorite storyworks but struggle to put it on the same level as other mediums. Interactivity is both a blessing and a curse, allowing players to challenge themselves and change the plot, but it is a basic fact that spending ten minutes walking around an area grinding enemies or searching for collectables makes the stories of games have radically different pacing than other mediums.

The rest of the money you didn't account for is 'mobile gaming'. Trust me, grandma might not think she is a gamer, but every time she buys gems for Candy Crush she's sinking money into the game industry without knowing it.

I think this is the reason for your last point re: popularity of individual games: Video games often take a long time to complete - at least dozens of hours. A song takes a few minutes to listen to. So you can listen to many songs and share that experience with many. But you're only going to play maybe a few big video games a year due to the time commitment. Same with TV shows. Movies are somewhere in between. Because of this, lots of people will have heard the same song because you can hear so many different songs in a year. But only a few people will choose to dedicate the time to watch the same TV show or play the same game as you, since you need to choose them (relatively) wisely and rarely.

I really think the generational gap here is key. Very few people under the age of 40 have video games as a major part of their media diet. I did a master's degree in popular culture in 2020-2022, and more or less all of my professor were dead-center Gen X. And while they were very well versed in music, film, and TV through the present day, video games were something that they were generally aware with but did not engage with on the same level as the media types that were prevalent when they were young. I suspect there's a very similar pattern in media journalism. Even if individual writers are of a "post video game generation," I suspect most of the people making editorial decisions are of a 'pre video game generation."

I would have to disagree when it comes to Ebert's point of view on games. I believe that video games, no matter how linear or 'game-like' they may be, can still very much have inherent meaning to the player. I recommend KingK's recent video, which is a retrospective on the 3D Zelda games and what all of them mean to him on a personal level. Video games have their own ways of communicating ideas, and taking control of a character is and continues to be an exciting and innovative way for people to engage with storytelling and art. I'm hoping with my art history degree to flip this narrative in any way I can. A wonderful video overall though, I've been waiting on a video like this from you, JJ!

One other thing to consider is that most of the 'old school' media is being consumed as background during other activities. With the access to streaming it's getting more and more common to have a music or a movie playing in the background (even audiobooks) while you work, do some housekeeping or... play videogames. The thing is that they are interactive, so that's another barrier to the experience. You can't play a videogame while you are activelly doing something else (most of the time). Again, I believe that's just another part of the conversation :)

I think game development is a unique artform that is underapreciated and unnoticed in part because it's often paired with many other artforms. If you asked someone playing BotW for the first time they might say that the story was bad, the music was underwhealming, and the art direction was about as good as any other Zelda. Why then was it a worldwide phenomenon? Because it captures a human experience that other mediums can't very well: fun. Just like a painter captures beauty in images, a musician in sound, or a chef in taste, the game designer captures the experiential beauty of fun through interactivity

Great analysis I have to disagree pretty heavily about videogame restrictiveness. I have played video games that were at least if not far more impressive than movies coming out at the same time. In fact for certain types of media such as horror there's no better medium because you have control over the character which becomes more terrifying because you know you're not want to set LINEAR track like a movie. You're actually part of the experience unlike other parts of media. And that means you can have a unique experience then no one else has had. Even in the less "artistic" video games like first person shooters they are less story focused on plot but you make your own little stories with your friends like C4 car in battlefield or creating your own game mode in call of duty or halo. When tom Holland Spiderman came out when the PS4 game did I enjoyed both but preferred the game because I could swing around almost feeling the momentum and walk the streets as Peter Vs seeing only the impactful story plots in the movie

I definitely think a huge part of the lack of cultural importance is that the average blockbuster video game is inaccessible to most people. Only a small subset of people have the free time to play through a 100 hour RPG, or grind through the ranks of an online shooter

To add onto your gamer culture point, those that have interests in higher level art, literature and cinema rarely involve themselves in video games. People who are into video games usually also have interests in anime, marvel, Brandon Sanderson, Lord of the Rings, Rick and Morty, etc. So the medium has a limited range of artistic expression.

This made me think about how I talk with my buddies about games. When I start playing a game, I say "Has anyone else played [video game title]?" and it's common that nobody has. I feel like if you had a friend group of movie fanatics, the question would be "Have you seen [movie title] yet?" and there would be an assumption that people have or will see that movie. Just an interesting thought along similar lines.

I've been playing Persona 5 for the past few months and it is basically a social commentary of Japanese society and one of the best RPG's ever made.

Yo JJ! Just wanted to drop in and say I got into Sociology as a result of your channel - I completed my A-Level exam on sociology back in June and got a B, which I’m pretty happy with as I only studied it for 9 months! Thanks for helping me discover such an interesting subject :D

So music is art, storytelling is art, cinematography is art, acting is art, character design is art, visual design is art etc But if you put them all together they supposedly wouldn’t be art. I find that weird.

another factor I think is that elite art conversations tend to celebrate elite artists. John Lennon and Pablo Picasso and George R.R. Martin are easy to isolate and celebrate for their talents as individuals (even though much of their work is the result of collaboration). for most of their history videogames have lacked that kind of face. People knew Nintendo made Mario, but it was a deepcut to know Shigeru Miyamoto's name. Interesting to me that the rise of video games as cultural influences has included isolating individuals credited with those games - Neil Druckmann is having a moment as a celebrated individual while Scott Cawthorn is on the way down. American culture (and its British and French influences) love the idea of a genius. We love to celebrate that genius, and we love to take them down. Even with a few celebrated creators, video game production is still mostly faceless, which I think dulls its cultural presence.

One point that I think you haven't quite understood is that while a Video game may have say 15 - 20 million sales, players will usually spend much longer consuming this product than tv shows, movies or music.. Video games especially the large online games like Fortnite, League of Legends or Call of Duty are frequently played for many hours each week and these games stay relevant for years on end. This builds a much bigger impact in peoples lives than a songs and movies which in current culture are much more 'flavour of the month'.

Started playing in the very 1st console generation (Magnavox Odyssey!), so love this topic. Think another reason why video games aren't taken seriously is for the first 5 generations or so (1970s - 2000) developers weren't able to tell meaningful stories. Sure, some random instruction manuals might share a "backstory".. but these had zero effect on gameplay, and plenty of kids never even read them! Thus, no emotional attachment. Today's games are both 1) real enough that we can relate to what' we see, and 2) games now allow choices that affect outcome

as someone who loves the horror genre, the interactivity of video games makes them more terrifying to me than movies. it is much scarier to force yourself to do a something frightening than to simply watch a character do it on screen. this actually holds true for watching lets plays as well, because even though i am not the one directly interacting with the game, the fact that it IS interactive makes it more inherently unpredictable than a movie.

I find the direction in which the video game industry is moving to be really interesting. While shorter forms of entertainment are getting more and more popular, single player video games are getting more and more narrative focused, deeper and longer. I think that a big reason that I never really enjoyed youtube shorts and tik tok much is because of my love for single video games which take hundreds of hours and several months to complete.

I'd like to add as a "gamer" that I usually don't go to places like The New York Times for gaming related news/journalism; in my opinion that's not really what they're for. I'd actually prefer going to gaming related news outlets like Polygon or Kotaku. I feel like maybe the reason that games aren't as culturally influential as movies or TV is partially because gamers tend to be rather introverted and prefer to stick to their own spaces.

I truly can't put to words how happy I am to see a notification from this channel. Always very entertaining and thoughtful!

I enjoy how JJ both manages to go relatively in depth, while starting from the very beginning, explaining the most basic cultural aspects to lay a foundation so that even aliens could understand his content

The line “I’ve never heard about elden ring” really just summarized gaming culture and the problem with it

Video games in some people's eyes across generations, including mine (22), are either a crippling addiction or an interactive movie to pass time. I've heard of plenty of people my age who think video games are for kids and are a waste of adult time and money and others who hop on to warzone every day after their shift. But either way there is no denying the cultural impact they've had since they first emerged as a major entertainment source

It’s also worth mentioning that Video Games still kinda act as a self contained large subculture with their own rules, critics, media, and self sustaining cultural ecosystem that’s basically independent of most large legacy institutions. Given a few more years it’ll probably become so large it’ll just be culture like how superheroes became culture, but we are just on the edge of that. Also the industry has causal, average, and hard core gamers who show different levels of engagement with game culture. For example mobile games tend to be the ones to breach the subculture to normal culture barrier because they reach the casual demographic, but most console or PC only games tend to only reverberate with the median or hardcore demographic that’s tuned into the subculture specific media.

As a member of gen z I actually disagree pretty strongly with video games place in culture being small at least in my age range at school slang from video games is common among everyone and references are also everywhere A reason I think that video games are still not on the level of movies is because the price most games big games are 60 dollars where as movie tickets are far cheaper and more consistent with prices between big productions and smaller ones Another reason is that the format of video games is hard to understand if your new to it there is things that you need to understand to simply move around a basic function if you didn’t grow up understanding how to do it, it would be like asking George Washington to find a Netflix movie it has so many small thing that can be hard to navigate

The comparison with tv shows is the most apt since individual games expect you to spend like 20 hours on average on them

Think you're really onto something on calling it "Low Art." During a job interview, they asked what my hobbies are, what I do for fun. I listed off a few things, but ended on games. By the faces they made, I might as well have said I like hardcore pornography

You're so skillful at cultural analysis it's crazy. The last point about about having more anachronistic figureheads because entertainment is just so spread out now is something I never thought about. It is crazy that we live in a world where millions of gamers like myself can know and talk about every new release and it feels like such a huge thing, but I could talk to my neighbor and he might not be able to name a video game past mario.

I would consider the spectrum between mono- and multimedia art forms. A novel just has a story and an album just has music, whereas a radioplay has both and a movie has music, story, and visual art to boot. Given that a videogame has all of these plus the practical element of a (usually) new form of gameplay, perhaps a culture grows used to entertainment media at a rate in inverse proportion to the latter's scope.

13:27 there is another equivalent I thought of immediately-“weeaboo” for anime watchers (and subsequently “koreaboo,” the term for K-pop and K-drama fans, used particularly before stan culture became prominent in the English-speaking world). but even so the point remains the same, it’s terms specifically to isolate people for their entertainment preferences, and therefore cultivates sub-cultures

Cinephile=gamer I'm surprised that the time commitment and skills demanded to complete a game wasn't brought up.

Great video, JJ! I especially liked the discussion of the monoculture at the end there, plus the simple fact of there having not been as much time for video games to mature as a category of entertainment. I think as time goes on, video games may well become more and more culturally relevant as the wealthy, influential people in society are increasingly people who grew up playing video games. However, one thing you didn't mention that I think is really important to the discussion of video games as American cultural products specifically is that many early video game hits were foreign imports, like Mario, Sonic, Pokemon, Final Fantasy, and others. This lead to them being othered in the culture, both by people who thought their foreignness was a bad thing, and by those who thought it was a good thing - it's a big part of video games being counterculture, I think*. Because of this, it was and still is hard to consider video games a part of the American cultural canon.

This reminds me of a few years ago when my art history teacher asked my high school class to make a series of presentations about some form of art that we were insterested in. Some people talked about frida kalho's works, some about movies, etc etc, and my buddies and i made a whole presentation about art in games/the art of games. We spoke about various art styles and art movements being represented in games (like art deco in bioshock or disney styled rubber hose animation in cuphead) but then we also spoke about the artistic part of games that is unique to them, the interactivity, like how the exploration in games like journey makes you feel a sense of wonder that wouldn't be present if it was just an animated movie. I was shocked at how tough it was to convey this concept to outsiders, but thankfully the teacher really appreciated the presentation. Like some other people pointed out in the comments, while i find it to be the best part about videogames i would say the fact they are interactive is also their biggest hurdle since it's a huge barrier to entry. You can show anyone a painting or a movie and even if they haven't studied it in art school and can't critique it they can still understand most of it and comment on it. Give a controller to a 60 year old art teacher who's never touched a video game before and throw her into dark souls and other than commenting on the initial cutscene she won't be able to do much. As a side note, it was pretty shocking when you mentioned you'd never even heard about elden ring. It was a monumental game release, everyone talked about it for months and is still talking about it today. To me it felt like someone saying "i didn't know avatar the way of water came out a while ago", though of course the stats you provided put things more into perspective.

Okay, so I had to write a whole essay responding to Ebert's take on video games, and I wanted to say that his definition of what a game is is completely incorrect. The second half of the quote is "when someone presents me with a game that doesn't fit my definition, I simply move the goalposts to not include it as a game." The things he defines as being quintessential to a game are simply not. Among Us is a game that doesn't have points, Tetris is a game that doesn't have an outcome, Minecraft is a game that doesn't have rules, and Yume Nikki is a game that doesn't really have objectives, at least not in the way that I imagine Ebert was thinking. The best working definition of what a "game" is is an interactive piece of media. There are a lot of weird edge cases, of things like Choose Your Own Adventure books, or like in the Peter Pan musical how the audience has to clap to save Tinkerbell, where there is interactivity but a lot of people wouldn't define them as being games, but there are things like that on the boundaries of all the different mediums (puppetry for animation, why are films and tv separate mediums, is a novel a different medium from a poem, and do articles and speeches get included, etc.). Yume Nikki is a great example of a game that feels like it lacks most of those "gamey" vibes. It's a non-linear exploration of the dreams of a troubled mind, with no direction given, and no points for doing well. The only method of progression the game has is in the collection of various "effects", which change the appearance of the main character, Madotsuki. Some offer an actual benefit, like the bike making you go faster, but others just make the character blonde or play a flute with no impact on the gameplay. After collecting all of the effects, Madotsuki jumps off a building and the credits roll. You could look at this and say, "well, the objective is to find all the effects and get the ending", but that misses the entire point of the game. The game is about trying to piece together the shattered psyche of the main character, through the most abstract and vague context clues imaginable. It is a game that really only works as a game, not as a representation of a movie, dance, or whatever else. It is most certainly not a game that you play to win. I have a friend going to DigiPen for game design, and we have had numerous conversations over one of the concepts that was taught in his class, which is the notion of there being different types of engagement that you can design for. Their list included ten different reasons why people play games, purely from a design perspective. They are achievement, which is to say the feeling of finishing a game or accomplishing everything that there is in a game (Mario games are a good example), challenge, which is to say enjoyment from experiencing a game's difficulty and overcoming it through repeated attempts (Dark Souls, Getting Over It With Bennett Foddy), mastery, which is to say getting to the point in game where there is no more challenge or striving to be the best at a game (Celeste, Pizza Tower, or any game Speedrunners like), competition, which is enjoyment through victory over others (Shooters, MOBAs, and many board games), fellowship, which is through experiencing a game with others or enjoyment from just playing with other people (Co-op puzzle games, D&D, Let's Plays), discovery, which is through finding as much as you can on your own within a game's world or mechanics (Yume Nikki, Hollow Knight, Zelda), fantasy, which is the act of becoming fully immersed in the game world and enjoying the feeling of impacting the world as you play, including power fantasies (any Bethesda games, Assassin's Creed, also D&D), expression, which is the enjoyment from having your actions and appearances represent you or an idea you have (Bethesda, Disco Elysium), drama, where the enjoyment comes through the experience of the unraveling of a narrative and the tension and intrigue inherent (Uncharted, Visual Novels, many JRPGs), and catharsis, which is deriving enjoyment from large emotional releases (ending of RDR2, Hinawa's Death, ending of LISA: The Painful). The reason I felt it necessary to list out all of these various reasons people play games is to refute the notion that people only play games to win or to beat them. I certainly enjoy the feeling of finishing a game, but pretty much every person who plays games can look at this list and say that they enjoy aspects of all of them. I don't really care for fellowship or expression, but I still can appreciate and enjoy that aspect when i play D&D with my friends, even if I care more about the characters, the world, and the progression of the plot. Games are most similar to animation, in the sense that there is a great deal of people who think that the closer that they get to emulating movies or real life, the better they will become, and can be respected as art. But this is simply not the case. Animation is at it's best when it's portraying visuals that are impossible to recreate in live action, and plenty of games are going in the same direction away from realism. The idea that realism equals maturity is an idea that needs to be broken in order for games to be respected as art on their own terms. Also, one last footnote, I think there's three main reasons why newspapers don't talk about games as much as other mediums. The first is that most people who are avid gamers don't really read the Atlantic, and get their media analysis of games primarily through independent content creators. Game Reviewer is a whole genre of content on KZfaq, and the people who do it are primarily people who grew up with games their whole lives. The second reason is that games journalism that does take place in a more traditional medium like news articles tends to be relegated to game-specific sites, like IGN, Kotaku, and Polygon. Sports journalism is equally segregated. The third is probably because of the harsh disconnect between game journalism and the audience that consumes games. You can point to gamergate as being a good example of this extreme disconnect, but you can also look at the Kotaku guy who spent 17 minutes in the cuphead tutorial, or the many articles saying that DOOM Eternal or Fromsoft games are too hard. It's a cocktail of incompetence and toxicity that leads to journalists not trusting the audience, and gamers not trusting the journalists, which drives them to independent content creators. I think this wins the award of the longest comment I've left on a video.

Great video as always. Very insightful. If I could tip my hat into the ring as a game designer, I think the vast majority of games can be considered art, as they are created with an artistic and emotive intent. Be it to make a person feel guilt for their actions (Spec Ops: The Line), a varied globetrotting adventure aimed at a younger audience (Mario: Odessey), or ever something as basic as mindless stimulants to keep the money flowing in (Clash of Clans)

I used to be a gamer like you. Then I took an arrow in the knee...

I've always been someone resistant to applying the term "gamer" to myself, but even so it does become frustrating not being able to talk to a large number of people in my life about anything video game related, despite how much significance it might have as entertainment in my life and the lives of my friends that also share games as an interest.

The tricky part of comparing numbers between mediums. Is taking into account the price and accessibility of each medium. As well as take those factors into each mediums branches of access and how differently they are distributed to the public. A movie ticket, for example. Costs less than your average video game. Then you have to account for snacks at the theater and wether the game has a season/battle pass, day one dlc, or monthly subscription. Then compare at the theater day one. Or being at home day one, to play. Between the two mediums.

You raised an interesting question and answered it so comprehensively. Great video and analysis!

Loved the video. I think its worth noting that a video game usually has a much greater impact on someone than a movie. Even if Overwatch and the new lion king had similar amounts of people who consumed them, a person who got Overwatch has likely played the game for many hours, maybe even dozens or hundreds of hours, rather than just the 2 hours someone watches a movie.

As someone who used to play a lot of video games as a kid but doesn't as an adult, I've always been astounded by how much video games aren't taken seriously by certain people. This is particularly given the astonishing level of talent and work that goes into making a video game. It's everything from coding the logic to building a plot to designing the worlds and characters to creating every single possible movement. Video games are expensive, full of intricate detail, and take such a long time to make. They really are a great technological achievement, but I also think they are also increasingly something like art. The reason you can create a good series out of a game like The Last of Us is because The Last of Us had so much to offer as a game to begin with. It also offers something unique as an art form, because games give people the ability to choose from multiple outcomes. If a purpose of art is to represent life, games are a lot more like life than an art form where the outcome is predetermined for you. Some movies have tried to do this, but it's never really convincing. I'm not saying games are better than movies or theatre or books, but they offer different possibilities and perspectives not just from a technology perspective but from an artistic one too.

I've never cottoned to the idea that the word 'gamer' has no equivalent terms to other media. Film buff? Sportsfan? Bookworm? C'mon.

the gamer is the most oppressed man in America.

I think videogames have one unique unique quality . The interactive nature of vidéo games bring videogames to a whole other level of immersion adapting to the person playing. Its an interaction that Can question your morals , move you emotionnally etc..

I think despite most video games having clearly define win/loss conditions, there are some things they can do as an interactive medium that are just as open to interpretation as a more "performative" art form. A couple that come to mind: - Critical darling Papers, Please puts the player (in the role of an immigration officer) into some morally gray scenarios and forces them to make some difficult decisions. I think it heightens the game's artistic merits that each player's experience will be at least a little bit different and the choices they make reveal something about themselves, although that does make games harder to talk about. - My personal favorite game, Skyrim's 2002 predecessor Morrowind, is what I would call a terrible game but an amazing travel experience. The game's combat is incredibly simplistic and easy to exploit, but there's no other artistic medium that can give you such a complete perspective of a place, a history, and a culture.

There are hundreds of great youtube channels that give sophisticated analysis on the music, story, level design, and art style of games. In fact it is what I grew up watching as my primary form of entertainment growing up, video game video essays. I find it unsurprising that there isn’t sophisticated critique and analysis on NYT, it’s on youtube!

I always thought it was because video games can be intimidating. Where as not everyone can pick up and play a video game anyone can sit down and watch a movie. When some people see a modern game controller they see something confusing with a substantial learning curve.

What's missing from the gaming industry's annual revenue might be subscriptions?

Loved the video. One thing I heard GF reviews talk about it is how video games can utilize many aspects of American culture and entertainment. You have people who write the scripts and come up with the ideas. Voice actors or motion capture artists that bring characters to life. Composures who move you and bring emotion to the different worlds.

I think something to note, is the level of commitment required to participate in video games, as well as the spectrum of seriousness which different video game genres belong to. For example, watching a movie is generally a 4 hour commitment at most, including driving to and from the theater. A song usually only takes 3 minutes of your time, an album about 40 minutes on average. In comparison, a lot of “serious” video games require tens, if not hundreds of hours to fully consume and appreciate. Not only does this make video games more niche and harder to evaluate, it also relates to a more complicated social trend of increased isolation in modern times, which can often be attributed to the amount of entertainment available to us in the 21st century. Hence, the commitment of video games appeals more to people who would generally spend less time socializing or working on professional or personal accomplishments. This inevitably links video games to a perceptively “less productive” population, and therefor deemed as “lower brow”, less influential and less culturally significant. As always JJ, great video, lots of research, good thoughts and probing questions that made me think deeply about the subject.

I imagine it's the very nature of the medium that makes the difference. A videogame, by being a game you play, is much more a thing you do than merely experience, and explaining how you do something occupies a much difference space than recounting a plot or character, be it from a book, movie, or even a sport. One would make a reference in a piece of media to another piece of media, but one wouldn't likely reference a specific series of actions, which is what video games are made up of.

as a gamer, this was a very interesting watch lol. I very much think games can be a narrative medium just like tv/movies/books/etc, it's just that it is a subgenre of games that remain interactive (thus still games), but are focused on the story pillar of the game. Once again the problem of clear boundaries in a fluid world rears its head, since those types of games can be akin to collaborative story telling of old, but I'd say one would be hard pressed to find folks claiming they are not games.

There are words for people who watch movies, cinephile, or people who listen to music, audiophile, but even those words have a sort of high culture connotation, and only apply to a select type of almost obsessive person. I do find it interesting that there isn’t an equivalent word with similar connotations to those as far as I know for video games.

One point that JJ was close to making that I wish he elaborated on was the fact that most "video game" sales and revenues come from mobile games, which are designed to be short and cheap. This will influence people's perspective on games, since lots of people here in this comments section think of games like RDR2 and The Witcher 3 when thinking of "video game'", but don't understand that the public at-large will think of candy crush, flappy bird, and other games that don't deserve to be understood beyond their surface-level simple gameplay.

Is it possible that the Times counted merchandise sales to the Video Game sector?

I think games, like other media, have many very niche and specific subcultures built around specific genres (i.e. fighting games, MOBAs, rhythm games), but unlike movies or tv, in addition to monetary investment, the time investment cost that it takes to fully get into the subculture is much higher for many people. Where you could just binge a film series or listen to a couple albums, becoming a proficient, say, StarCraft player cannot be achieved in a weekend, and I think that contributes a bit to the lack of journalistic coverage and respect they get. I think the time is vestment cost just may not be worth the ROI of writing a both timely and well thought out article. Even IGN reporters have been seen writing a review when they don’t even finish the game sometimes.

I don’t think looking at the number of times a song was streamed is an accurate comparison. If someone buys one copy of a game, they are going to just play it one time if they like it, but if someone really likes a song, they are going to stream it multiple times. Saying a song has X number of streams isn’t easily comparable to the number of times someone buys the right to use an item as much as they want.