ALEX SPENCER
The Outer Limits
Journeys to the farthest reaches of interactive entertainment
Can games be art? Apologies to anyone who’s just suffered a flashback to the pop-culture wars of the mid-’00s, but that’s not how I mean it. That matter has surely been long settled – indeed, in an academic talk, at the very event where this question begins swirling, it’s proposed that videogames might constitute a ‘total’ artform, the Gesamtkunstwerk sought by Wagner in the 1840s. Lest we fall down that rabbit hole, though, I should be more specific. The event in question is Somerset House’s Now Play This exhibition. The question in question is: Can games function in the context of traditional art, framed on a gallery wall?