bideo ganes, art, and narratives
4th of July, 2025disclaimer: this post is going to be all over the place, this is more of a thought dump rather than a structured and well-thought out piece.
games. video games. we've all probably played one at least once. and we've all might heard about the argument of "are video games art?". it's died down over the years and, frankly, i am not sure where most people stand on the question. i, however, know where i stand on the question. and recently, i've been thinking a lot about (video) games and the unique medium they create for artists.
games have existed for a long time. take the royal game of ur as an example. but before we can answer the question of: are games (and more specifically, video games) art? we need to answer the unanswerable question of: what is art?
while plenty of definitions have existed throughout history, for this blog post in particular, i want to focus on art that tells a story. that has a narrative. it can be a story with no character, no plot, but it has to tell you something. it needs to have some juice in it. of course, art encompasses many more facets than just narration, but i've been thinking about narratives in video games in particular, so let's talk about that.
so, is the board royal game of ur art? by our standards, not really, though i do believe it to be art, just not one with a narrative. however, the first non-video game that has a narrative that comes to mind is the all-famous: Dungeons and Dragons. although, DnD is, of course, not the first table-top roleplaying game (TTRPG), but it is one i'm most familiar with. so what distinguishes TTRPGs (and video games) from the more "standard" mediums of narration (books, films, etc) that make them so unique and interesting?
consider a book (or a film, or anything that tells a story). it is already written, the author has laid down their idea, their story. it is a completed game. you might read it, you might not. whatever it is that you do will not change how the story ends. it's a closed narration. and that medium of a closed-narration has been one of the only choices for many, many years. of course, creating a story with a friend is similar to a TTRPG, it's an open narration, one without a pre-destined path. but unless you had the author in your room to talk with them and "re-write" the story, you were only able to enjoy the story as it goes along. you were a passenger, simply observing. and it was good as it was the only way to imagine stories to go for a long time.
then came the age of computers and the internet and the accessibility of games expanded. you didn't need to gather friends together to play a TTRPG and create an open narration, a story without end. instead, somebody could write a half-finished story, a story that did have endings or branching paths and choices, package it, and send it to you over the internet, so you could enjoy it even the author of that story was not in the same room as you. this is also the thing that separates TTRPGs and video games - one is fully opened, it has no specific ending and you can do and change pretty much anything in them. the other, video games, are limited in that ability. you can't do "literally anything" in them, you still have to follow the rules, you still have to get to a specific ending or endings. still, that was a drastic change from the standard narration medium and they grew much more popular than the more niche TTRPGs. pretty much everyone knows what video games are, but not everyone knows what "dungeons and dragons" or a "TTRPG" are. the internet and computers have allowed to mass distribute and create and share semi-open narration stories.
with these characteristics established, let's talk about three video games that i've played, have enjoyed, and have thought about quite a lot (from the perspective of narration): The Stanley Parable, The Beginner's Guide, and (out of all games) Minecraft. we'll start respectively.
i believe The Stanley Parable perfectly encapsulates the essence of the narrative possibilities that video games allow. Davey Wreden (the creator of TSP) has taken the standard model of a narrative: introduction of the hero, a call for adventure, the grand reveal, and the happy ending; and he has turned it upside down. what if you take a book, but instead of being in the passenger's seat, you were driving? what if you took a story and said, "this is boring, i don't want this," and instead went somewhere entirely else? a problem that many dungeon masters meet is that often players want to create their own story. often, they wander off-track because wandering off-track is interesting and that's what games and open narratives are about. if a book is like listening to a mad and rambling monologue from the author (which is very enjoyable too), open narratives is like being in a mad and rambling conversation with the author. of course, TSP is NOT an open narration. it's a semi-open narration. you get all the endings and that's it. you can't "create" a new ending. you can't "create" a new video game. although, perhaps you can? we'll get to that later with TSP: Ultra Deluxe Edition.
so, TSP became, in a way, a staple for the genre. you have a narrator, who tells you, the player, to do a certain thing. and then you, as the player, do the opposite, because that's what humans do. this call-and-response between the narrator and the player can be seen in many video games since TSP. of course, that is not to say that all of them are copy-cats of TSP, many of them are unique and take new and different approaches to the genre. but, in general, this is what video games are about. they are about giving you choices, giving you the wheel and making YOU drive. even in games that are not narration style (like TSP) we still see that. Undertale, Clair Obscur: Expidition 33, etc, etc, all make you make decisions. because, after all, a story-driven game that doesn't let you change or affect the story isn't going to be good, right? right?
enter 'The Beginner's Guide', the second game created by Davey Wreden. The Beginner's Guide feels like the opposite to The Stanley Parable. if TSP "revolutionised" narration by breaking it from its mould, making a "half-finished" story and letting the player do the rest, The Beginner's Guide goes back to the narration roots. it's a book wrapped in a video game. it goes back to monologuing. it goes back to telling you a story and you being an observer, unable to change its course. but the voice lines and the ability to see what Davey (or the Narrator) is talking about make it a more intimate experience. i believe that Davey, in both of his projects, has managed to show video games in a novel way. we've already discussed how TSP was novel and showing what game can present, but TBG shows the players that games don't have to be interactive (i.e. being able to change the narrative) in order to be entertaining. sometimes, sitting back and listening and walking around is all you need. it's like being in a call with a good friend, listening to them tell you a story, while hopping around in Minecraft, doing nothing.
speaking of Minecraft, let's talk about it. it's a sandbox game where you can do anything, gameplay-wise, within the limits and rules of the game. is Minecraft a narrative game? does it have a narrative? not in the traditional sense. however, it does have a lot of environmental storytelling. think Unpacking, for example, where the story is opened up to you not through text nor dialogue nor characters, but rather, through the items you find in each box every time you move. similar in that vein, Minecraft tells you a story, one that never tells you what it is about, but instead, you, the player, need to think up of one. you explore you world, see ruined buildings, abandoned cities, storage rooms. you see that somebody has been here before, you find old audio records, portals, chests. but never the person (or people?) who left that behind. and so your mind starts to wander. again, going in the same direction as all video games do: YOU finish the story. YOU interact with them, talk with the author.
and this interactivity allows for a deeper understanding of the art that video games present. it's much harder to ignore all the themes, and questions, and philosophy that video game often raise when you HAVE to make a decision. take the ending of Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. (MAJOR spoilers ahead). you are forced to decide whether you want to live in the fake world of the painting or to live in the harsh reality of the real world. when you are driving, you are forced to think about all of that, rather than passively observing and consuming the story that books and films present. video games allow us to create fake worlds and do fake trolley problems in them that often feel real. do you sacrifice that character? do you lie to your friend? do you kill one person to save five? in a book or film, you might disagree (or agree) with the main character's decision and carry on reading, but in games you question yourself. "what WOULD i do in this situation? what is the 'correct' choice? the least 'bad' choice?"
TL;DR: games present a unique medium for artists to express themselves by forcing the player to interact and participate in the conversation that games present, however, they can still present a "traditional" narrative, while preserving the intimacy and artist-reader interactions.
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