Video Games Are Not A Universal Language

…at least, not quite yet

IF YOU DO NOT PLAY VIDEO GAMES, I WROTE THIS FOR YOU. IF YOU DO PLAY VIDEO GAMES, I KNOW YOUR ASS IS GOING TO READ THIS ANYWAY.

Right now, as this email hits your inbox, I am playing Mario Kart with the love of my life on my brand-new Nintendo Switch 2. I hope, assume, and pray you are all doing the same.

It is weird that not everybody plays video games. Many people played, more than ever before, and everybody certain has, at one point or another, engaged in digital play. Their influence is omnipresent and everything from OpenAI to Slack has its roots in videogame design. They have been formative artistic experiences for decades and have serves as a formative early space for at least three generations. Yet when it comes to adult discourse, we exist in at awkward crossroads where video games are the defining creative medium of our time, yet the standardized language with which we describe and analyze their form is not universally intelligible.

The frequency and fervor with which people ask, “Can video games be art?” seems pretty bizarre at first blush. They already are art, as much as any other medium is. Whether you believe all ephemeral media of a specific type ‘counts’ as art or not is a different discussion, but the fact remains that game development is a collaborative creative process that, definitionally, produces artwork some portion of the time.

To my eyes, the difficulty comes not in accepting this, but in showing it. Because video games are not just art - they are toys, they are test grounds for real-world technology, they are slot machines, they are hangout spaces. Those are the elements that are most familiar to someone who does not play games, and they are exclusively familiar in non-creative contexts.

Yet the principles of video games are everywhere. If a person has used Canva, or Duolingo, or TikTok, or Substack, they have built a vernacular of interaction with a digital object. Yet because these elements are intentionally (and sometimes maliciously) divorced from their point of origin, it’s still often difficult to explain a video game without the audience’s eyes glazing over in noun soup.

Thus such description usually involve copious tenuous analogies. The Last of Us is art because you can watch it like a movie. Disco Elysium is art because it’s written like a novel. Cuphead is art because it looks like a Max Fleischer cartoon. Those are easy examples to communicate.

But describing Shenmue? or Caves of Qud? Or Hyper Demon? Those are trickier, because that requires an implicit foundation for genre, mechanics, and tropes. Everybody engages in play of some shape or form across their life. Yet a direct form expressed How does someone read sheet music when half the notes are smudged out? How could they then judge the composition?

This is not a fault of games critique. There is a ton of great work on Youtube, worker-owned sites, zines, and the (distressingly rare) traditional gaming outlets. It is not that the readers are stupid, or the writers are too bogged down in specifics. It is just a frustrating truth that many concise formal descriptions and clear thematic analyses of interactive art require a level of buy-in where other mediums can rely, in large part, on cultural osmosis.

This is especially strange considering that play, in some form or another, is a foundational human experience. How do we not all share the language necessary to interrogate a video game, given that we interact with screens in all facets of life? given that the first thing we learn in educational environments is how to “play.”

This is not really a “problem” that can be solved with anything except time. What I am describing will cease being an issue in probably like a decade, when the iPad babies of Gen Alpha bring the robust vernacular and logics of gaming, which have already permeated their world via platforms like Roblox, to broader interaction. Terms like “one-shot” have already become common knowledge, just like “smash cut” or “key change.” In the same way you can offer highly formalist descriptions of what makes a film great with no concessions to the average person, you will be able to do the same with games.

So in the meantime, I wanted to do a little experiment, a little writing exercise to push myself critically. I want to describe my favorite moment in Elden Ring, a weird, mechanically dense, narrative obtuse 100+ hour long work, to a hypothetical audience, one who has not touched a video game in decades. I want to do so in a way that does not condescend to the reader or bore the Real Gamers amongst us.¹

I have been thinking about the game a lot following the release of its multiplayer spin-off. I want to share Elden Ring with people who do not possess the dexterity, patience or passion to really explore the text themselves. I will be describing as few mechanics as possible without foregoing the essence - I want you to know how the game feels to play more than how to play it. I have spent years failing to adequately explain to my loved ones why it is, like, one of my favorite works of art. Here is an excuse for me to try again.

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