So back to the rant that made me cranky.

Do games have to be fun to be successful? Almost certainly.

Does this mean that every game needs to push the same emotional buttons? No.

Let’s back up.

There is something that is holding back the idea that video games could be art. What is holding back the idea that games can be art is the simplistic notion that they will not succeed until they can do what the movies can do. This is, I’m not afraid to say, utterly stupid.

Video games will never have the capacity to tell a story as well as a well-crafted Scorsese film. They will never have characters as strong as those found in a Donald Westlake novel. They will never have the pacing as masterfully handled as an Alan Moore graphic novel. Simply put, interactivity gives too much control away to compete with master storycrafters.

I work at Bioware. We work harder to bring the art of narrative to video games than perhaps any other company in the world, and in my opinion we excel at it, and Bioware’s devotion to pursuing story-based gameplay is one of the reasons their games are among the best in the business.

All this being said, narrative is a red herring in the discussion of games as art. Let’s put it this way: can oil paintings succeed without great cinematography? Can classical music be great without a killer screenplay? Can a Ming vase be great without compelling characters? These are very silly questions.

Each artistic medium has its own rules for what makes that particular craft capture the viewers eye and imagination. For video games, narrative is an exceptionally powerful tool – one used exceptionally well in Knights of the Old Republic and Starcraft, for example. But I posit that many games without story, games like Civilization and Minesweeper, are elegant, artful games with barely a lick of developer-provided narrative. The art found in these games is less about what you find in a movie theater, and more about what you find in an ancient Chinese puzzle box.

So what makes for an artful video game?

There are many opinions as to what makes good art. I keep coming back to a simple idea – the films, books and television that I consider art is the stuff that lingers. The stuff I reflect upon afterwards. The films that surprise me, like Usual Suspects. The graphic novels that challenge my world views, like V for Vendetta. The songs that become deeper and more intricate the more times I listen to them.

Good art is interactive. It is not a passive thing that slides off the viewers experience. It involves the viewer, and is made richer by his involvement and his point of view.

Why is the Mona Lisa a great piece of art? Because the viewer is left wondering, “why is she smiling?”

Video games can be art then, certainly, because while it will never do other things as well as film, television, novels, photography or oil paintings, it is perhaps the best medium in existence for interactivity. Certainly, there are video games that are not very artful – but this is also certainly true of a lot of films, television, novels, photography and oil paintings.

The art to be found in a video game is the interactions – how a player interacts with the game, and what sort of feedback he gets in return. Thus, the art is in the mechanics, the systems, the simulation.

There are many, many places to go from there – some may find more art in systems that are very naked and easy to manipulate, such as a fine game of Magic: the Gathering. Others may find awe and wonder in simulations designed to mimic reality and hide the mechanics. Even others may be most intrigued in the art of how multiple people can share or impede each other in the same system. These are all techniques or tools for the notion that the interactivity is the art.

Think again to the Chinese puzzle box.

Why are Bioware games considered among the best story-telling games in the world? Many reasons, including some traditional ones (a focus on characters and cinematography, for example). But one lost on many observers is Bioware’s insistence that the narrative is interactive – the player must be able to make choices, and the choices should matter.

So where does Fun fit in?

I happen to subscribe to Raph’s theory of fun, at least as it pertains to video games. His theory is that fun is what happens when a player encounters a game system, is challenged by it, learns it, masters it, and then takes it to the next level.

Put another way, ‘fun’ is the result of successful interactivity. And if you start with the idea that interactivity is the basis for art in games, then it stands to reason that, not only is it possible for fun games to be art, it is very likely that games that will be considered great works of art will be fun.

Saying that a game needs to be fun is kind of like saying that a movie needs good dialogue and direction. Sure, you could have a great movie without a spoken line, but don’t kid yourself, it will be an anomaly.

The trick is that ‘fun’ is not a simple, one-note emotion inside of the game space. Nicole Lazzaro, for example, is a game researcher who describes several different kinds of fun inside successful games: easy fun (the joy of interacting with an environment in a non-threatening way), hard fun (meeting a challenge, being frustrated) social fun (helping someone) and schadenfreude (smacking them down).

And this is still very coarse in texture. The mindless fun in Diner Dash is nothing like the cerebral fun of a game of chess. Raiding in WoW pushes vastly different buttons than nailing a drum solo in Rock Band. Players frequently find different kinds of fun in the same places – playing with Half-Life’s gravity gun is very different than running some Team Fortress.

Arthouse favorite game Braid is a work of genius not because of a social message, or a gripping narrative, or stirring characters, or even great art. It’s fascinating because it has interesting, novel mechanics. Which, when you figure them out, are fun.

Even more interesting is Brenda Brathwaite’s experimental game, Train. Train is a board game where players try to maximize the number of passengers on their train. They are given no prior clues, but at the end of the game, they are told that the passengers they were loading up were Jews heading to a concentration camp, and that no one wins. This is an interesting case: most people are shocked, and feel guilty about the fun they had playing the game. It is doubtful that the game would be fun if the players played it a second time in a row. It’s all very ‘meta’ in the whole games and fun discussion.

That being said, the whole message would be lost if the core game interaction of loading passengers wasn’t fun.

You can tell a narrative in your game, as in Mass Effect, or discuss a philosophical point of view, as in Bioshock. The story can be core to your interactions, or it can be window dressing. Doesn’t matter, the game still needs to be fun.

You can have the mechanics of your game teach an important lesson. Consumerism and success doesn’t necessarily make your life easier (the Sims). Nuclear war may result in a pyrrhic victory and destroy the earth (Civilization). Killing terrorists won’t necessarily make us stronger (September 12th). In all three games, the lesson comes not from preaching, but from interacting, which is a far more powerful way to learn something. But if that interaction’s not fun, the messages will never gain traction.

The games industry needs more kinds of games. It needs to reach more markets. The lifeblood of the industry will continue to be to find more kinds of interactions and systems for players to experiment with. It needs to tap into a wider shell of emotions. It could stand to explore more adult themes. It would be nice to see more games teach real-world relevant knowledge, or encourage players to explore deeper philosophical divides.

But to do what the original ranter suggests? Where’s the fun in that?