Art games are a subgenre of video game where the point of the game is to highlight the making of or use of art within the game or make the player feel specific emotions. Art games are different from usual “serious” video games that are focused on combat, story, levelling up, etcetera. Art games often have unconventional and unique looks to them that set them apart from other video games and are regularly praised for their aesthetic beauty. Art games are one of the best ways to understand games as art because they have expressed purpose in showing how video games can become artwork.

Flower was created by a team of developers that felt that many video games were not making players feel as many emotions as they could. They decided to make a game that removed any gameplay elements that didn’t contribute to the player’s emotional experience they wanted them to have (in the case of Flower, only positive feelings) and created the game. In Flower, you control a flower petal being blown by the wind by moving the controller. Flying close to other flowers can make more petals follow you, and you can power windmills and bring life back to dead fields. There are no enemies, health points, or time limits. Flower is simply made for players to experience positive emotions and enjoy the music and colours in the game. Flower went on to be showcased in the Smithsonian Museum in a video game art exhibition in 2012.

While it’s easy to talk about games as art when it comes to their graphics and music, another kind of video game has also been argued as art - empathy games. These video games are focused on making the player have a truly emotional experience while playing. Empathy games often deal with difficult social topics, such as sexuality, illness, and poverty. Empathy video games are seen as a form of art in a less understandable and tangible way than other aesthetically “beautiful” games, but their emotional storytelling and experience for the players is seen as a form of art all the same.

One of the most recent empathy games made is called Papo & Yo. In the game, players step into the shoes of a young Brazilian boy named Quico who is running from an alcoholic and abusive father. Quico ends up in a dream-like favela, a low-income Brazilian neighbourhood neglected by the government, after touching strange chalk drawings on the wall of his closet. There he meets a creature simply known as Monster who is normally playful and docile but can easily become enraged and destructive. Papo & Yo is an emotional roller coaster ride through the dream-like favela where sacrifices must be made for the greater good, and flashbacks to Quico’s abused past. Players experience a range of emotions from happiness and accomplishment to sadness and confusion as the full story of Quico and Monster unfolds.

As technology continues to improve every year, video games become more and more complex - and more and more beautiful. Game designers are able to make more intricate backgrounds, better soundtracks, and deeper stories. This lends more weight to the argument that games should be considered as artwork the same as other forms of media are. More and more, games that release make use of these incredible graphics and music to give us something truly moving, and truly beautiful. Not all gamers even notice because it is so usual now, but it’s part of what makes video games what they are today.

Okami blends traditional Japanese art and video game graphics into one aesthetically pleasing game, and even uses art to help tell the game’s story. You play as Amaterasu, the goddess of the sun in the form of a white wolf with red markings. A demon named Orochi is terrorising the land after escaping from where he had been imprisoned. It’s up to Amaterasu and a tiny artist called Issun to clear Orochi’s curse and restore the land to what it once was. Okami looks like an animated Japanese ink illustration. The Celestial Brush is a unique gameplay feature that allows the player to draw symbols on an on-screen canvas that can control elements of the game. The Celestial Brush is used for combat, puzzles, and in usual gameplay. Okami uses traditional art in a new way to tell its story, create its gameplay, and express a beautifully rendered final video game.