Art game

Not to be confused with video games as an art form or video game art.

For other uses, see Art game (disambiguation).

An art game (or arthouse game) is a work of interactive new media digital software art as well as a member of the "art game" subgenre of the serious video game. The term "art game" was first used academically in 2002 and it has come to be understood as describing a video game designed to emphasize art or whose structure is intended to produce some kind of reaction in its audience. Art games are interactive (usually competitive against the computer, self, or other players) and the result of artistic intent by the party offering the piece for consideration. They also typically go out of their way to have a unique, unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty or complexity in design. The concept has been extended by some art theorists to the realm of modified ("modded") gaming when modifications have been made to existing non-art games to produce graphic results intended to be viewed as an artistic display, as opposed to modifications intended to change game play scenarios or for storytelling. Modified games created for artistic purposes are sometimes referred to as "video game art".

Art games are often considered a means of demonstrating video games as works of art.

Overview

A definition of the art game was first proposed by Professor Tiffany Holmes (School of the Art Institute of Chicago) in her 2003 paper for the Melbourne DAC Conference, "Arcade Classics Span Art? Current Trends in the Art Game Genre". Holmes defined the art game as "an interactive work, usually humorous, by a visual artist that does one or more of the following: challenges cultural stereotypes, offers meaningful social or historical critique, or tells a story in a novel manner." The paper stated that an art game must contain at least two of the following: "[1] a defined way to win or experience success in a mental challenge, [2] passage through a series of levels (that may or may not be hierarchical), [3] a central character or icon that represents the player." This definition was narrowed by Rebecca Cannon in an October 2003 paper where she highlighted the competitive, goal-oriented nature of the genre in defining art games as "compris[ing] an entire, (to some degree) playable game... Art games are always interactive—and that interactivity is based on the needs of competing [...] Art games explore the game format primarily as a new mode for structuring narrative, cultural critique." In an 2015 article, Columbian video game theorist Carlos Díaz placed importance on the "reflection experience" as an integral aspect of the art game. This experience can pertain to a variety of cultural avenues, but it transcends the medium and its structure.

Within the topic of the art game, further subdivisions have been proposed. In her 2003 paper, Holmes identified two common art game types as the "feminist art game" (an art game that generates thinking about gender and typecasting), and the "retro-styled art game" (an art game that juxtaposes low-resolution graphics with academic or theoretical content, and that creatively subverts the format of an arcade classic to support a conceptual creative agenda). In 2005, art theorist Pippa Tshabalala née Stalker broadly defined the art game as "a video game, normally PC as opposed to console based, that generally but not exclusively explores social or political issues through the medium of video games." She proposed two different categorical schemes to further subdivide the genre by theme and by type. Subdividing by theme, Stalker defined "aesthetic art games" to include "games that deal with using the game medium to express an artistic purpose," and she defined "political" or "agenda-based art games" as art games that "have some sort of ulterior motive other than aesthetics" and whose basis is in "using the medium of the computer games to bring an issue to the public's, or at least the art world's, attention in order to attract support and understanding for a cause." Subdividing by type, Stalker identified the "art mod", the "physical manifestation art game" (the player is involved physically in the game, often experiencing physical consequences, such as pain, for their actions), "machinima", and "3D real-time [art] game" (an art game that displays all the characteristics of a complete level-based commercial game, both on the programming and commercial side). The identification of art mods and machinima as forms of the art game conflicts with Cannon's definition of the art mod that highlights the non-interactive and non-competitive nature of these forms of media.

Distinctions are drawn in describing the art game as a genre compared to traditional video game genres (such as the platformer or first-person shooter). Rather than describing the game on a surface level, descriptions focus on the artistic intent, as well as the execution and implementation of the gameplay. For instance, Bethesda's 2008 release Fallout 3 is considered to be a role-playing game with first-person shooter elements, but it could also be considered to have elements consistent with art games—it implements moral player choices for the sole purpose of provoking emotion or thought in the player. There are several recent instances of video games that similarly involve the characteristics of art games, such as Braid and Undertale. Games like these aren't necessarily created or marketed under the classification of "art game", but are still created for artistic purposes that transcend their respective structures. The potentials and limitations of the medium are increasingly discovered as the video game industry develops, therefore resulting in the recent popularity of art game elements. If nothing else, the genre can be seen as a means to push the medium to its conceptual limit.

Since the development of these early definitions, art theorists have emphasized the role of artistic intent  (of author or curator) and further definitions have emerged from both the art world and the video game world that draw a clear distinction between the "art game" and its predecessor, "video game art". At the core of the matter lies an intersection between art and the video game. Easily confused with its often non-interactive sibling art form video game art, and the concept of video games as an art form (irrespective of artistic intent), the essential position that art games take in relation to video games is analogous with the position that art film takes in relation to film. ACM SIGGRAPH opened an online exhibit "The Aesthetics of Gameplay" in March 2014, featuring 45 independently developed games selected via a nomination process, where the mechanics of gameplay are, in part, tied to the visuals and audio of the game. Greg Garvey, the curator of this exhibit, compared this to the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk where the work attempts to encompass other art forms, though as Garvey comments, the "merger of interaction with the aesthetics" drives these games beyond this concept.

"Art game" versus "game art"

Due to the contemporaneous improvement of graphic capabilities (and other aspects of game art design) with the trend toward recognition of games as art and the increases in video game art production and art game releases, discussions of these topics are often closely interleaved. This has led to the drawing of a number of critical distinctions between the "art game" and the various kinds of "game art".

In drawing a distinction between games with artistic imagery and art games, commentators have compared the art to sculpture and have emphasized the concept of artistic intent in the creation of the art game. This difference has been described by Justin McElroy of Joystiq as "the same [as that] between a sculpture and a building. Though a building/game can be aesthetically pleasing, an art game/sculpture is using its very structure to produce some kind of reaction." This same comparison has been used by Jenova Chen in an interview discussing art games and the prominence of non-games to the artistic gamer community. Along with expanding on the notion of art games as comparable to architecture in a 2010 interview with Nora Young for Spark, Jim Munroe stated that whereas video games such as the "art game" are shifting in the direction of the "high arts" within the realm of art generally, traditionally video games have occupied a position in the "cultural gutter" (making up the "low arts").

Another key distinction that has been made between art games and games with artistic imagery (and indeed all games viewed as art) is that art games are intended as artistic creations from the outset whereas traditional games are often commercially motivated and play-oriented. Thus the "game" portion of "game art" is merely the means to an artistic end. This has been expanded by some commentators to include the artistic intention of the curator as well as the original creator. This distinction also brings into focus the concept of "serious play." Graham Coulter-Smith of Southampton Solent University defines serious play as "a mode of communication that is not instrumental and not overbearingly focused on the linguistic model," a communicative medium that involves the concrete action of the participants rather than abstracts such as language. This holds significant implications for an artistic medium, as it facilitates communication of meaning through increasingly more empathetic and concrete means. Unlike other media, players of games must expend not only time but effort—in the form of problem-solving or the application of timed reflexes. This participatory element demonstrates that adding effort as an element in an art piece results in a higher degree of emotional investment, and therefore a higher potential impact of artistic intent on the participant.

In distinguishing between art games and video game art, the elements of interactivity and often competition (or goals) are frequently emphasized. Because art games are games and because games are interactive, definitions for the art game tend to require interactivity whereas video game art can be either interactive or non-interactive. Beyond this, the questions of whether competition, rules, and goals are intrinsic to games and to what extent "play" is even definable in the context of an art game raise thorny problems for critics who compare a game like chess to a game like Sim City and who question the playfulness of a game like Escape From Woomera. A number of commentators have included the concept of competition as part of the definition of the art game to distinguish it from video game art. An example of such a definition is offered by Professor John Sharp: "Artgames are games in the formal sense of maintaining the experiential and formal characteristics of videogames—rules, game mechanics, goals, etc.—as an expressive form in the same way other artists might use painting, film or literature." Thus game art pieces can be seen to employ traditional (non-art) games as the canvas or artistic medium whereas art games employ the formal qualities of the game as the artistic medium.

"Art game" versus "art mod"

The idea of a distinction between art games and artistic modifications to existing games is one that several commentators including Rebecca Cannon and Matteo Bittanti have found useful in further discussing the related topics. Using Tiffany Holmes' original definition of the "art game" as a starting point, Cannon emphasized that whereas art games "always comprise an entire, (to some degree) playable game" and may be made from scratch, art mods by definition "always modify or reuse an existing computer game but only rarely include a reward system, and if so, only when of thematic relevance." Likewise, whereas interactivity and playability are defining characteristics of the art game, they are often of no consequence for the art mod.

For Cannon, the nature of a work as a modification is not alone determinative of the question of whether the work is an art game or an art mod. Some modifications are "art games" despite being mods according to her definition. In addressing the potential for confusion on this point, she has stated that at the most basic level, "art games explore the game format primarily as a new mode for structuring narrative and/or cultural critique, whilst art mods employ game media attributes for extensive artistic expressions." Thus, whereas art games explore the game format, art mods explore game media and whereas art mods always exploit existing games, art games often replace them. Fluxus scholar Celia Pearce describes the art mod or "patch" as an "interventional strategy," referencing the Dadaist concept. She argues that the art mod is an example of this pseudo-vandalism involving subversion and reflection within the cultural context of video games.

Other art theorists including Pippa Tshabalala have rejected this narrow definition of the "art game" and have instead adopted a broad definition under the theory that the concept of the game is not limited to systems where the author has created rules and goals, but that games emerge whenever the observer self-limits play experience. Thus, observers experiencing the Jodi art mod, SOD (a modification of Wolfenstein 3D), can experience it as an art game as soon as they decide that their goal will be to progress to the next level.

History

Origins and first wave art games

The art game genre has emerged most directly from the intersection of commercial culture (specifically commercial video games) and contemporary digital art. In attempting to determine the earliest origins of the genre, however, art theorists including Tiffany Holmes and Greg Costikyan have identified its earliest roots in Dada and the collaborative drawing games of the Surrealist artists of the 1920s. Others have drawn still broader connections to literary games invented by the author for the reader in 19th and 20th century literature. By treating the game as a topic of artistic utility, these earlier art movements legitimized the concept of the game as an artistically explorable form and as more than simply idle amusement.

At the Art History of Games conference in Atlanta, Georgia, Professor Celia Pearce further noted that since the Fluxus movement of the 1960s and Marcel Duchamp's art productions, procedurality has taken a central position in certain forms of art. The artistically motivated imposition of strict rules of creation for an art piece (in this case the restriction by the author to the format or medium of the video game) brought video games and art into a collision resulting in the first true art games. Although early game-like programs such as Conway's zero-player Game of Life (1970) were foundational to later art games, Pearce identifies the earliest true art games as originating in a small wave in the early 1980s with games such as Bernie DeKoven and Jaron Lanier's Alien Garden (1982). Other early art games from this period include Jane Veeder's Warpitout (1982), Lanier's Moondust (1983), and Lynn Hershman Leeson's Laserdisc games LORNA (1983) and Deep Contact (1984). Following this period of activity, art game production would see a lull until the end of the 1990s.

Video games were first displayed in the art museum setting during the 1980s, in retrospective exhibitions like Corcoran Gallery of Art's "ARTcade" (1983) and Museum of the Moving Image's "Hot Circuits: A Video Arcade" (1989). However, just as with the production of art games, the practice became much more common during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Exhibitions like the Walker Art Center's "Beyond Interface" (1998), the online "Synreal" (1998) and "Cracking the Maze - Game Plug-Ins as Hacker Art" (1999), shift e.V.'s "RELOAD" (1999), the UCI Beall Centre's "Shift-Ctrl" (2000), and several others in 2001 were among the first wave of video game exhibitions that popularized the concept. This expanded to exhibitions heavily featuring or exclusive to art game content in the early 2000s with shows like MASS MoCA's "GameShow" (2001) San Francisco MOMA's "010101: Art in Technological Times" (2001), the Whitney Museum's "Bitstreams" (2001), and the New York Museum of the Moving Image's "<ALT> Digital Media" (2003).

Rise of the "artist game"

Drawing from the modern traditions of the 1970s New Games Movement, where the playing of a game could be regarded as a form of performance art, art pieces such as Frank Lantz' Pac Manhattan, Blast Theory's Can You See Me Now?  and similar hybrid performance-art/art-games including Painstation (2001), Go Fish (2001), and Vagamundo (2002) came in the early years of the modern period of art game production. The burgeoning video game art movement also provided direct inspiration for art game development particularly in the creation of art mods. Art theorist Rebecca Cannon identifies the earliest example of a purposeful art mod to be Iimura Takahiko's 1993 AIUEOUNN Six Features (a modification of Sony's "System G"), although the transgressive capability of mods like Castle Smurfenstein (1983) had already been recognized during the first period of art game creation. Online artist collectives including Jodi.org and the Australian SelectParks soon began production of art games in the studio setting, repurposing older games through the use of interactive art mods.

The use of mods within art games became one of the primary tools for art game creators who designed games with a message, such as the addition of female characters to a traditionally male-centric game, or to force the audience to re-examine a familiar work in a different light. Consequently, the early history of art games is intimately connected to the history of commercial video games and the establishment of video gaming conventions, and significant events in the history of video games have corresponding significance to art games. This is true both in terms of the level of technological advancement that make up the substance of art games as well as by providing cultural touchstones (such as the classic arcade games and blockbuster titles from the 1990s like Doom and Myst) that art games may use referentially or as the subject of an homage. Art games of this kind have been defined by theorists as "artist games"—art games created by non-developer contemporary artists rather than by game developers. Typically produced on a smaller budget and with less technical (coding) knowledge than art games emerging from the game scene itself, "artist games" are often more explicit in terms of their artistic ambitions and commonly occupy "the grey area between modification and original game" because they are frequently based on classic arcade titles from the 1980s. Early examples of this kind of game include Thompson and Craighead's Trigger Happy (1998), Esc to Begin's Font Asteroids (1999), and Natalie Bookchin's The Intruder (1999).

As video games became increasingly common as a form of media throughout the 2000s, video games that deemphasized the game portion of the medium (such as serious games, non-games and art games) saw a rise in production. This in turn led to recognition of the game as a vehicle for ideas instead of simply an entertaining diversion. The term "art game" was first used in the scholarly setting by Professor Tiffany Holmes in her 2002 paper, "Art games and Breakout: New media meets the American arcade". Holmes presented this paper at the Computer Games and Digital Cultures conference in Tampere, Finland, and at Siggraph 2002, later expanding it by defining the term in a 2003 paper for the Melbourne DAC Conference. Further refinements to the definition were made by theorist Rebecca Cannon in her late 2003 paper, "Introduction to Artistic Computer Game Modification."

Rise of the indie art game

Beginning in the early to mid-2000s with games such as Samorost (2003) and The Endless Forest (2005), a strong overlap developed between art games and indie games. This meeting of the art game movement and the indie game movement brought art games to the attention of the video game culture at large, and sparked large debates regarding whether or not video games can be fairly considered as works of art, as well as a backlash against use of the term. These debates have in turn led to the retrospective determination of numerous older commercial video games (prior to the use of the term "art game") as art games. As indie art games have seen a dramatic rise in production in the late 2000s (especially from 2008 and onwards), indie game developers like Jenova Chen, Molleindustria, Jason Nelson, Jason Rohrer, and Tale of Tales have become established and "artist games" have become relatively less common.

Discussions over the commercial viability of art games have led to speculation concerning the potential for the commercial video game industry to fund the development of "prestige games" (games that are unlikely to be commercially successful but whose artistic vision marks them as important to the development of the medium). These considerations are generally regarded as premature, as the concept of "prestige" hasn't yet taken hold for publishers as it has for developers in the nascent industry. Consequently, publishers are generally unwilling to take on commercially risky high-concept games the same way that major film studios (who often have arthouse divisions) might for art films that could enhance their prestige. The need for adequate funding to produce high quality art games has been recognized by art game creators like Florent Deloison and Mark Essen, who in 2011 joined designer game firms where individualized art games can be commissioned as luxury items by art patrons for a substantial price.

Criticism of the term "art game"

Alongside the growing use of the term "art game", numerous members of the video game culture have reacted negatively to its application. Critics have noted that the term turns away a certain segment of the gamer population who reject the notion that games can be works of art, and who equate "art games" with elitist gaming. This kind of reaction has in turn caused some game developers to reject the use of the term to describe their games, instead using terms like "not-game", "un-game", or simply refusing to accept any categorical label for their work. Some common criticisms of the term include:

• A view from some within the gaming community that describing a game as an art game means that it's pretentious and not fun.
• A view that those who play and enjoy art games (known as "art gamers") are snobby and not to be emulated.
• A view that the term "art game" needlessly introduces the distinction between high art and low art within video games where it has never existed previously.
• A view that the term "art game" is over-broad and that it is incorrectly used synonymously with "indie game" thereby improperly co-opting the concept of innovation when innovation itself is not art.
• The idea that the term "art game" implies an exclusive claim to artistry within the medium of the video game and that art games are therefore superior to other forms.
• The idea that works today labeled as "art games" lack the formal properties to properly be called games or art at all.

List of arthouse games

See also: Video games as an art form § List of artistic video games

The following list is a collection of examples of video games described as "art games" or "arthouse games" by game designers or critics.

20th century

• Alien Garden (1982, Bernie DeKoven/Jaron Lanier, Atari 800/C64) - Described by its creators as video game art, the game ranks among the very earliest examples of the art game.
• Warpitout  (1982, Jane Veeder, arcade) - An interactive art project programmed in Zgrass for SIGGRAPH '82. The game is housed in an arcade cabinet, and was described by the artist as an "artistic video game". It has been exhibited at the Ontario Science Center.
• Lifespan (1983, Flyghts of Fancie, Atari 800/C64) - A surrealistic pastiche of five episodes leading the player through events representative of the human experience from childhood to death.
• LORNA (1983, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Laserdisc) - An interactive movie where players use a remote control to determine the outcome of the eponymous Lorna's life.
• Moondust  (1983, Jaron Lanier, C64) - A video game that is generally considered the first art game, it has been used as an art installation in numerous museums including the 1983 "ARTCade" exhibit at Corcoran Gallery of Art.
• Deep Contact  (1984, Lynn Hershman Leeson, Laserdisc) - An interactive movie about the relationship between intimacy and technology in which players interact with a female character's body parts via a touch screen that changes the story based on the body part that is touched.
• Deus Ex Machina (1985, Mel Croucher, ZX Spectrum/C64/MSX) - Based on "The Seven Ages of Man" from the Shakespeare play, As You Like It, this game charts the life of a defect as it evolves within the machine from inception, through growth, and eventually death.
• Trigger Happy (1998, Thompson and Craighead, PC/web) - A deconstruction of Michel Foucault's "What is an Author?", this retro-styled art game pays homage to Space Invaders. As the text of Foucault's essay filters in from the top, the player "deconstructs" it by shooting the words which in turn are hyperlinked to Yahoo search inquiries on the linked word.
• Font Asteroids (1999, Esc to Begin, PC/web) - A wry commentary on information overflow on the internet where users select information itself as the enemy. Presented as an homage to Asteroids, all textual content from a URL of the player's choice is used to take the place of rocks and break apart into prefixes, suffixes, and roots.
• SOD (1999, Jodi, PC) - An aesthetic art game hinting at private emotion by deconstructing Wolfenstein 3D, turning it into a Kafka-esque series of abstract black, white, and grey images where it is difficult to determine what to shoot.
• The Intruder (1999, Natalie Bookchin, PC) - Low-art elevated to "high art" in a retro setting. An experimental adaptation of Jorge Luis Borges' 1966 short story, "La intrusa" where two brothers fall in love with the same woman and decide to kill her to resolve their conflict. In the game, players must compete for the female in a Pong setting and then act out aggressive behavior in a first-person shooter setting to progress. The piece invites gamers to see how popular games perpetuate masculine ideologies of spatial conquest, combat fantasies, and sexual domination.
• Vib-Ribbon (1999, Masaya Matsuura, PS1) - A music game starring a wireframe bunny.

21st century

2000–2005

• Lullaby for a Dead Fly (2000, Mouchette, PC) - A player clicks on flies to kill them. Each click is a life-or-death choice. The musical background is Mouchette's song, "You clicked on me, you killed me."
• Pencil Whipped (2000, Lonnie Flickinger, PC) - A first-person shooter where all textures are made to look like pencil drawings on paper and all sound effects were produced by the artist.
• Sissyfight  (2000, GameLab, PC/web) - An illustration of ruthless social climbing, this multiplayer game allows users to fire off words instead of bullets. Set in a California playground setting, female player characters use teases to drive other players out of the playground.
• a maze@getty.edu (2001, Tiffany Holmes, PC) - Commissioned by the J. Paul Getty Research Institute, the game is a combined maze and Breakout-based commentary on the power and prevalence of high-tech surveillance technology in modern life that uses surveillance images as bricks in a Breakout setting.
• Go Fish (2001, John Klima, PC) - A first-person shooter in which victory releases a real-life goldfish into a pool of others and a loss releases the fish into a pool with the carnivorous Oscar. The game is intended to highlight and question the banality of the fact that in the game you are making what are presented in-universe as conscious decisions to end a life.
• Painstation (2001, //////////fur////, arcade) - A 2-player Pong-based game where scoring by either player subjects both to electrical shocks, whips, or burning. The game is intended to demonstrate physical consequences of in-game acts.
• Rez (2001, Tetsuya Mizuguchi, PS2) - A music game designed to create the effects of synesthesia for the player. The game was inspired by the artistry of Wassily Kandinsky and has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2002 "Game On", the Smithsonian's 2012 "The Art of Video Games", and the 2012 "Game Masters".
• Invaders! (2002, Douglas Edric Stanley, PC) - A political art game making reference to the September 11 attacks.
• Pac-Mondrian (2002, Prize Budget For Boys, PC) - A game that merges Pac-Man with the works of Piet Mondrian.
• Q4U (2002, Feng Mengbo, PC) - A Quake mod based on Roland Barthes' "Death of the Author" where the player hunts cloned copies of Mengbo himself. The player also holds a plasma gun and a video camera (intended to illustrate that both devices are used "to shoot subjects as quarry").
• Tropical America (2002, OnRamp Arts, PC) - A collaborative bilingual art game with black and white woodcut graphics. The game explores the El Mozote massacre.
• Vagamundo (2002, Ricardo Miranda Zuñiga, mobile arcade) - Based on Donkey Kong, this mobile game focuses on the plight of the Mexican immigrant.
• [domestic] (2003, Mary Flanagan, PC) - A simulation of the author's childhood memory of escaping from a burning building.
• 911 Survivor (2003, Mike Caloud/Jeff Cole/John Brennon/Aaron Kwon, PC) - A simulation of the suicide of a civilian trapped in the burning World Trade Center towers.
• Escape From Woomera (2003, Escape from Woomera Collective, PC) - A political art game addressing issues and implications of Australian detention centres, particularly the Woomera Immigration Reception and Processing Centre. The game is based on the Half-Life engine.
• Graf War (2003, Andrew Waer/Joe Callahan/Eric Cho/Sky Frostenson, PC) - A Half-Life mod set in a California subway system where the goal is to spraypaint as much of the map as possible without being located by the police who use lethal force to stop you.
• Left to my Own Devices (2003, Geoffrey Thomas, PC) - A personal narrative about loss loosely based on Elisabeth Kübler-Ross' five stages of grieving.
• Samorost  (2003, Amanita Design, PC) - A video game that employs organic and wooden materials in its presentation.
• Mudcraft  (2004, Brian Winn/Jason Tye, PC) - A nonviolent real-time strategy game based on creatures made of mud.
• Neon (2004, Jeff Minter, Xbox360) - A music visualization program.
• Waco Resurrection: C-Level (2004, Eddo Stern, PC) - A 3D game dealing with the Waco Texas Massacre and the Branch Davidian leader David Koresh. In the game players take the role of Koresh as they attempt to defend the compound from government agents and from other, rival Koreshes.
• Electroplankton (2005, Toshio Iwai, Nintendo DS) - A free-form music game considered to be the first art game for the Nintendo DS.
• Façade (2005, Michael Mateas/Andrew Stern, PC/Mac) - An artificial intelligence-based interactive novel making use of natural language processing.
• Killer7(2005, Capcom, GameCube, PlayStation 2) A surreal horror neo-noir on rails action adventure game with a cell shaded art style. The game's story deals with themes of political extremism and the division of western and eastern cultures.
• mono (2005, Binary Zoo, PC) - A paint-based multidirectional shooter.
• Samorost 2 (2005, Amanita Design, PC) - The sequel to Samorost, this adventure game also employs organic backdrops.
• Super Columbine Massacre RPG! (2005, Danny Ledonne, PC) - A video game exploring the Columbine High School massacre whose exclusion from Slamdance '07 led to a partial boycott of the event for anti-censorship reasons by numerous high-profile indie developers.
• The Endless Forest  (2005, Tale of Tales, PC) - Originally commissioned for an art exhibition, this game is an Massively Multiplayer Online game in the broader sense of the word. As stags, players roam around the forest and interact—though not by words, but by sounds and body language. Players are recognizable by their unique symbol and customized appearance, but are otherwise anonymous.

2006–2010

• Airport Security (2006, Ian Bogost/Persuasive Games, PC) - A game arguing that American airport security policy has little to do with security.
• Armadillo Run (2006, Peter Stock, PC) - A transportation puzzle game making use of everyday objects.
• Calderoids (2006, Prize Budget For Boys, PC) - A space shooter that merges Asteroids and the work of Alexander Calder by replacing the titular asteroids with Calder's kinetic mobiles.
• flOw (2006, thatgamecompany, PC) - A spare action game based on life as observed through a microscope lens. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2010 "Game (Life): Video Games in Contemporary Art" exhibit at The Firehouse Gallery.
• Line Rider (2006, Boštjan Čadež, PC) - A puzzle game in which the player can draw the track for the character.
• LocoRoco (2006, Tsutomu Kouno, PSP) - A tilt-based platformer.
• Ōkami (2006, Clover Studio, PS2, Wii) - a video game created in the sumi-e style.
• Toribash (2006, Hampa Söderström, PC/Wii) - A third-person turn-based tactical martial arts simulator using physics-based attacks.
• game, game, game and again game (2007, Jason Nelson, PC) - A Flash-based absurdist game, one of the first to combine poetry with art in a game interface.
• The Marriage (2007, Rod Humble, PC) - An abstract metaphor expressing the artist's idea of how a marriage feels in terms of colored shapes that the player can manipulate with a mouse.
• Torrent Raiders (2007, Aaron Meyers/Corey Jackson, PC) - A space shooter in which the real-time game elements reflect the activities of a real-world bit torrent swarm. The game's setting is the ad-hoc networks created by bit torrent users.
• Aether (2008, Edmund McMillen/Tyler Glaiel, PC) - A video game that employs a unique visual style and atmosphere.
• Akrasia (2008, GAMBIT, PC) - A game tackling the issue of inner demons related to addiction.
• Between (2008, Jason Rohrer, PC) - A game about consciousness and isolation. Winner of the 2009 IGF Nuovo Award.
• Braid (2008, Jonathan Blow, Xbox 360/PC/PS3/Mac) - A video game that enables the player to "rewind" the game at will. Designed as a deconstruction of classic video games. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2010 "Game (Life): Video Games in Contemporary Art" exhibit at The Firehouse Gallery, and the 2012 "Game Masters".
• Camera (2008, Yareyare, PC) - A desktop simulator where the real-life player's actions with a mouse causes the in-game player's hand to move correspondingly.
• Coil (2008, Edmund McMillen/Florian Himsl, PC) - An instructionless autobiographical game presenting two parallel stories with an emphasis on exploration.
• Glum Buster (2008, CosMind, PC) - An action adventure game on the topic of daydreams.
• Gravity Bone (2008, Blendo Games, PC) - A cinematic spy game featuring cubical characters. Winner of the GameTunnel Best Arthouse Game 2008 award.
• I Wish I Were the Moon (2008, Daniel Benmergui, PC) - A love story between a boy and girl where the player must manipulate the background until all endings have been unlocked.
• LittleBigPlanet  (2008, Media Molecule, PS3) - A puzzle-platformer based on user-generated content.
• Nom 3 (2008, Bong Koo Shin, cellphone) - A simple puzzle game exploring the concept of post-Valentine's Day loneliness.
• Passage (2008, Jason Rohrer, PC/Mac) - A meditation on death. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2010 "Game (Life): Video Games in Contemporary Art" exhibit at The Firehouse Gallery, and the Museum of Modern Art in March 2013.
  • Gravitation (2008, Jason Rohrer, PC/Mac) - A spiritual sequel to Passage, this game expresses the artist's conflict between work and fatherhood. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2010 "Game (Life): Video Games in Contemporary Art" exhibit at The Firehouse Gallery.
  • Life is a Race! (2008, cactus, PC) - A one-button satire of Jason Rohrer's Passage.
• Randy Balma: Municipal Abortionist  (2008, Mark Essen, PC) - A raw and oversaturated dissection of the concept of abortion taking the form of 4 disjointed but thematically linked minigames.
• Seven Minutes (2008, Virtanen Games, PC) - Platformer as nihilist philosophy. A 2D platform game in which you are given just seven minutes to play.
• Tension a.k.a. The Void. (2008, Ice-Pick Lodge, PC) - A Russian adventure game.
• The Eggyard (2008, Yxxa Zu/Monochrome, PC) - A mashup using Custer's Revenge as the basis and Dizzy from the eponymous series as the hero.
• The Graveyard (2008, Tale of Tales, PC) - A simple but highly artistically detailed game about an old woman visiting a graveyard. This was first game to be funded by the Flanders Audiovisual Fund.
• The Night of Bush Capturing: A Virtual Jihadi  (2008, Wafaa Bilal, PC) - A political art-piece.
• WTF?! (2008, Robert Nideffer/Alex Szeto, PC) - An RPG-style response to Blizzard's 2004 World of Warcraft.
• You Have To Fertilize the Egg (2008, Kianis, PC) - A sequel to Kianis' earlier game, You Have to Burn the Rope.
• And Yet It Moves (2009, Broken Rules, PC/Wii) - A single-player puzzle platform game set in a paper-themed world. Resembling a paper collage, background elements and characters consist of ripped paper, and the nameless player character appears as a cutout pencil line-drawing on white paper.
• Blueberry Garden (2009, Erik Svedäng, PC) - 2D puzzle platformer. Winner of the Seumas McNally Grand Prize at the 2009 Independent Games Festival.
• Don't Look Back (2009, Terry Cavanagh, PC) - A retro-styled platform game presenting a modern interpretation of the Greek legend of Orpheus and Eurydice.
• Earth (2009, Alexis Andre, PC) - A Space Invaders-themed game with a message.
• Eggregor8 (2009, Antonin Fourneau/Manuel Braun, NES) - An exploration of the "combined spirit", this 8-player collaborative version of Pac-Man requires all players to provide simultaneous input into Pac-Man's movement on the game screen.
• Every Day The Same Dream (2009, Molleindustria, PC) - An existential game that addresses the topics of labor and alienation.
• One Chance (2010, Dean Moynihan, PC) A puzzle game with multiple outcomes that can only be played once.
• Evidence of Everything Exploding (2009, Jason Nelson, PC) - A platformer-based poetry game.
• Flower (2009, thatgamecompany (TGC), PS3) - Game designed to arouse emotions to the gamer and does not follow normal gameplay. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2010 "Game (Life): Video Games in Contemporary Art" exhibit at The Firehouse Gallery, the Smithsonian's 2012 The Art of Video Games, and the 2012 Game Masters.
• Flywrench (2009, Mark Essen, PC) - A vector-based game that was shown as an exhibit in New York's New Museum.
• Judith (2009, Terry Cavanagh/Stephen Lavelle, PC) - A low-res retelling of Béla Bartók's opera, Bluebeard's Castle, with an emphasis on control.
• Lose/lose (2009, Zach Gage, PC) - A space shooter where enemies are linked to actual files on the player's computer. Killing an enemy results in the deletion of the associated real-world file.
• Sidequest: Text Adventure(2009, The Guardians of Tradition, PC) - An examination of the text adventure genre.
• The Path (2009, Tale of Tales, PC) - An experimental game in which the player uses different characters to unfold the narrative in a "Little Red Riding Hood"-inspired environment.
• Today I Die (2009, Daniel Benmergui, PC/iPhone/iPad) - A somber puzzle game in which players must choose from a selection of words to change lines from a poem, and their choices affect the scene and ending.
• Cart Life (2010, Richard Hofmeier, arcade) - A gray-scale game depicting the trials and tribulations of four street vendors in a town modeled after the artist's hometown of Eugene, Oregon.
• Limbo (2010, Playdead, PC/Xbox 360/PS3) - Platform-puzzler game using film noir-like monochrome visuals and subtle ambient environment sounds as the player guides a boy through a dark and scary forest to find his missing sister. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the Smithsonian's 2012 "The Art of Video Games".
• Nidhogg (2010, Messhof, PC) - a two-player fencing game. Winner of the 2011 IGF Nuovo Award.
• Norrland (2010, Jonatan Söderström AKA Cactus, PC) - An exploration of life in Sweden.
• Recurse (2010, Matt Parker, PC) - An action game commissioned by the NYU Game Center for its "No Quarter" art game exhibition. The player in this game becomes the cursor and the exhibition room becomes the playing field, causing the player to move about in the real world to control the game.
• Sleep Is Death (2010, Jason Rohrer, PC/Mac) - An adventure creation game requiring the creator to be present to respond to the players' actions in near real-time.
• Sunshine (2010, Kyle Gabler, PC) - A game where the player guides a flower's growth toward the sky while avoiding falling rocks and humans (who can be turned into flowers).
• Thomas Was Alone (2010, Mike Bithell, PC, PS3) A platform game composed entirely of geometric shapes, overlaid with narration.

2011–2015

• iCarus (2011, Sir Realism, iOS) - A textless game in which the player takes the role of a grieving father as he draws in his sketchbook to advance the plot.
• Ruins (2011, Cardboard Computer, PC) - A dream-like conversation-based game centering on animal rights with a dog as the hero.
• Scrape Scraperteeth (2011, Jason Nelson, PC) - A game intended to serve as an introduction to art games.
• Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (2011, Capybara Games, iOS/PC/Mac/Android) - An independent game prioritising experience over gameplay. The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2012 "Game Masters".
• Swashbuckel Ur Seatbelts (2011, Famicom, Xbox Live Arcade) - A surreal pop culture mashup involving pirates.
• Sweat Life (2011, Brian Handy, PC) - A minimalist game on the topic of the difficult life of the sweatshop worker.
• Ulitsa Dimitrova (2011, Lea Schönfelder, PC) - An exploration of homelessness and poverty in Russia. Set in St. Petersburg, the player must spend all of his time obtaining vodka and glue to be traded for cigarettes.
• Art Game (2012, Pippin Barr, web) - A browser-based flash game in which you play as an artist making art for a show at the Museum of Modern Art.
• Bientôt l'Été (2012, Tale of Tales, PC) - An art game based on the work of Marguerite Duras and other French literature.
• Dear Esther (2012, thechineseroom, PC/Mac) - An "interactive book" that consists entirely of walking around a virtual island while listening to narration.
• Journey (2012, thatgamecompany, PS3) - A game of exploration which includes an online component, allowing a player to experience the game with another, otherwise unidentified, player, considered to be an "interactive work of art". The game has been displayed in art exhibits including the 2012 "Game Masters".
• Papo & Yo (2012, Minority, PS3, PC) - A platform-puzzle game about a child, abused by his drunk father, who escapes to a surreal landscape; the game serves as an allegory for the abusive childhood that Vander Caballero, the game designer, had gone through himself.
• The Unfinished Swan (2012, Giant Sparrow, PS3) - A surreal adventure game in which a young boy wanders through a colorless picture book dreamscape following a swan. As he does so, color is gradually introduced to the game.
• Walden, a Game (2012, Tracy Fullerton, PC) - An exploration of Henry David Thoreau's Walden.
• Proteus (2013, Ed Key, PC) - A first-person exploration of an uninhabited island.
• Antichamber (formerly Hazard: The Journey of Life) (2013, Alexander Bruce, PC) - A first-person puzzle-platformer exploring non-Euclidean geometry.
• Gone Home (2013, The Fullbright Company, PC/Mac/Linux) - A story about a girl who comes home from travel abroad to an empty house and searches, discovering her sister's lesbian relationship and family troubles in the process.
• Kentucky Route Zero (2013, Cardboard Computer, PC) - A point and click adventure game without puzzles or challenges, and with the main focus on storytelling and atmosphere.
• Papers, Please (2013, Lucas Pope, PC/Mac) - The player takes the role of a checkpoint officer in a fictional Soviet Bloc country, verifying passport information, but as the game develops it forces the player to make moral and ethical choices between his family and their welfare, and those immigrants attempting to pass through.
• Ennuigi (2015, browser game, PC) - The game relates the story of Luigi's inability to come to terms with the lack of narrative in the original Super Mario Bros. as well as add metafictional commentary.

2016 onwards

• That Dragon, Cancer (2016, Ryan & Amy Green/Josh Larson, Ouya, PC) - An adventure game dealing with a family coping with the discovery that their four-year-old son has inoperable cancer, reflecting on developer Ryan Green's own experiences in dealing with his young son's terminal brain cancer.
• The Witness (2016, Thekla, Inc., PC, PlayStation 4) - An exploration game developed by Jonathan Blow, aimed to have players learn how to solve maze-like puzzles with minimal instruction and instead learning from visual clues and the environment.
• Everything (2017, David OReilly, PC, PlayStation 4) - A game that allows the player to move and control any object they see in the game world, developed in an attempt to explore the philosophy of English philosopher Alan Watts.

See also

• Art film
• Auteur theory
• Game studies
• Video games as an art form
• Video game art

Further reading

• Bittanti, Matteo. Gamescenes: art in the age of videogames. Johan & Levi. 2006. ISBN 978-8-86010-010-8
• Bogost, Ian. How to Do Things With Videogames. U of Minnesota Press. 2011. ISBN 978-1-45293-312-2
• Clarke, Andy and Grethe Mitchell. Videogames and Art. Bristol: Intellect Books. 2007. ISBN 978-1-84150-142-0.
  • Cannon, Rebecca. "Meltdown" from Videogames and Art (Clarke, Andy and Grethe Mitchell, eds.). Bristol: Intellect Books. pp. 40–42. 2007.
  • Stockburger, Axel. "From Appropriation to Approximation". Videogames and Art (Clarke, Andy and Grethe Mitchell, eds.). Bristol: Intellect Books. Pp. 29, 34-35.
• DeFanti, Thomas A. "The Mass Impact of Videogame Technology." Advances in Computers. Vol.23. Pg.137. 1984. ISBN 0-12-012123-9
• Greene, Rachel. "Chapter 3: Themes in Internet Art" in Internet Art. Thames & Hudson. Pp. 144–151. ISBN 0-500-20376-8
• Holmes, Tiffany. "Arcade Classics Span Art? Current Trends in the Art Game Genre." Melbourne DAC 2003. 2003.
• Jansson, Mathias. Everything I Shoot Is Art. Link Art Center: LINK Editions, Brescia. 2012. ISBN 978-1-291-02050-2
• Kierkegaard, Alex. On the Genealogy of "Art Games". Insomnia Books. 14 March 2011.
• Sharp, John. A Curiously Short History of Game Art. Georgia Institute of Technology. Proceedings of the International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games. pp. 26–32. 29 May – 1 June 2012.
• Stalker, Phillipa Jane. Gaming In Art: A Case Study Of Two Examples Of The Artistic Appropriation Of Computer Games And The Mapping Of Historical Trajectories Of 'Art Games' Versus Mainstream Computer Games. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. 2005.