My Console Collection by Flickr user Sarah

It’s widely reported that able-bodied young men, without college degrees are underemployed and unemployed in record numbers. Despite this hardship, one recent study has found that these young men are actually happier than their equivalents were 10 years ago. The source of their pleasure? Much of it may come from playing video games instead of working. The “real-world” jobs available to them do not provide the sense of achievement or community that can be found through gaming, so many of these young men are choosing to live at home, in a virtual reality (nearly three quarters of the drop in work hours for this group is accounted for by increased time spent playing video games). It seems like bad news, but perhaps the implications of this retreat from the workforce are not as dire as they seem: inventive researchers are working with gamers to find cures for disease.

Can the Quality of Art be Quantified? Arts Council England is betting on it. The government agency recently announced a plan to have all of its National Portfolio Organizations (NPO) that receive over £250k per year must adopt and adhere to the Quality Metrics program, a standardized measurement approach designed to consistently and meaningfully measure artistic quality. These grantees are required to participate in a number of annual evaluations and engage in regular peer review, regardless of art form and organizational structure. Despite significant concerns raised in a post-pilot evaluation of the platform, the program is moving forward – for now. The news has sparked quite a row from UK artists on Twitter, and even incoming ACE Chair Nicholas Serota has expressed skepticism. In other quantification news, a new algorithm predicts the likelihood that a book will become a bestseller and, thanks to Apple’s iBeacon, many of the world’s major museums are using big data in their attempts to improve their visitors’ experiences.

High Culture and Pop Culture Converge. BBC2 is dropping an unorthodox bomb in this autumn’s rating wars: high culture. The British television station will shelve its usual schedule of repeats, to air poetry, dance, and documentaries on Saturday evenings. This new focus on culture will feature contemporary programming rooted in traditional forms and narrative (for example, a twist on WH Auden and a production by a performance artist who merges hip-hop, poetry and theatre). Through the creation of a “cultural destination” for its viewers, BBC2 may well provide the UK’s artists and arts organizations with invaluable opportunities and exposure.

The Connected Future of Fine Art? We suppose it was only a matter of time before “hacking” would come for classical art forms.  In August, the Dutch National Ballet premiered Night Fall, a new ballet choreographed by Peter Leung – not for the stage, but for virtual reality (VR).  Viewers need only a VR-compatible device to experience the “goose bump-worthy” performance, the first of its kind, as technology enables the performers to embark on an instant global tour. Meanwhile, the Tate Britain launched the IK Prize-winning online initiative Recognition. The program employs artificial intelligence to match the Tate Britain’s iconic collection with photojournalism from the contemporary 24-hour news cycle. It is designed to provoke new questions about art and life.

Culture vs. Terrorism. In September, France’s President François Hollande stood in the Egyptian Galleries at New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, and announced the formation of a $100 million fund to combat terrorist attacks on cultural sites in the Middle East. (He did not say how much his own government would be contributing to this “public-private partnership,” but did express hope that the Met’s donors would pitch in.) Hollande also referenced an upcoming (December 2016) conference hosted by the Louvre Abu Dhabi, which will focus on culture and terrorism. Although the preservation of cultural artifacts is integral to global human culture, it is interesting that France’s president advocated for the asylum of art works while its Prime Minister expressed reluctance to grant asylum to people.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Laura Sparks begins her term as the Cooper Union’s first female president in January.  Currently, she’s finishing her term as executive director of the William Penn Foundation; her replacement will be the foundation’s fifth head so far this decade.
• Heather Kim brings over 20 years of experience in higher education research to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in the newly created role Director of Institutional Research.
• Sir Nicholas Serota will leave the Tate, after 28 years (!), to become the next chairman of Arts Council England. Will significant government cuts to the arts prove challenging for the “virtuoso fundraiser”?
• Just four months after being reappointed by David Cameron, BBC chair Rona Fairhead will step down. Her successor has not been named.
• The Center for Arts Education is hiring a Director of Advocacy and Engagement.
• The Center for Artistic Activism is hiring a part-time Non-Profit Manager.
• The New York Public Library’s Library of the Performing Arts is hiring a Deputy Director of Research and Collections Services.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• The National Endowment for the Arts and the Center for Cultural Innovation released a long-awaited report on trends and conditions affecting U.S. artists, an update of a major, decade-old study and a centerpiece of Chairman Jane Chu’s “Creativity Connects” program. Meanwhile, new arts data profiles published by the NEA offer state-by-state perspectives on Americans arts participation. The data highlights a north-south divide in American creativity, and reveals that the percentage of American adults who read literature fell to at least a three-decade low last year, after a “long, steady decline.”
• A Los Angeles County Arts Commission literature review on public engagement in the arts, and reports from the Paul Hamlyn Foundation’s Our Museum program provide resources on cultural equity and inclusion in museums and beyond.
• Research commissioned by the UK’s Association of Independent Museums, Arts Council England and the Welsh Government shows that introducing admissions fees does not affect diversity, but may cause attendance to fall.
• The latest annual report from the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project focuses on institutional connections, resources, and working across disciplines for arts alumni. And a recent study from artnet suggests that the institution from which an artist receives an MFA has implications for career “success.”
• The National Center for Arts Research released its most comprehensive report to date on national fundraising trends. Meanwhile, a new study published in the Public Performance and Management Review suggests that arts donors aren’t influenced by high attendance.
• Partners for Sacred Places has released the results of an evaluation of its pilot program to match artists to historic sacred spaces.
• John Sedgwick and Mike Pokorny’s research on financial risk in the film industry challenges conventional wisdom on the peripatetic nature of box office predictions. And new research from the Journal of Political Economy investigates movies as a shared experience. Unfortunately, the latest report from the University of California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism reveals that Hollywood is all talk and no action when it comes to advancing diversity.
• A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance suggests a link between ballet and sensitivity to others. On the other hand, new research from Psychology, Public Policy, and Law reports that more people find lyrics threatening if they believe they are from a rap song, as opposed to a country ballad.
• Income inequality isn’t the only kind of inequality: using information from the National Center for Education Statistics, the New York Times reports that the educational inequality gap is narrowing for children entering kindergarten. And results of a new study published in the Review of Income and Wealth indicate that happiness inequality is on the decline.
• The Center for Effective Philanthropy released a comprehensive report on evaluation practices at foundations.
• A new study from the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis – Center on Philanthropy explores thirty years of nonprofit research.
• Research from Australia’s Art Gallery of New South Wales found that viewing art relieves anxiety in dementia patients and helps them to “stay in the moment.”
• A new book from Eric Booth and Tricia Tunstall chronicles the growth of El Sistema-inspired music education programs around the world. Not everyone, however, is convinced.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

• Who should be the next chair of the NEA? Barry Hessenius and Ray Mark Rinaldi trot out some possibilities.
• Penn Hill Group, which is working with Grantmakers in the Arts on federal arts education policy, has published a report that “provides an initial analysis of the people, process, politics, and policies that are crucial to the consideration of federal education and job training policies in the next Congress and Administration.”
• Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, who’s had an uneasy relationship with the city’s arts community, has been kicked out of office by a judge for a minor corruption charge. The judge’s decision is pending appeal.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Jeremy Nowak, the head of the William Penn Foundation who had joined from The Reinvestment Fund only a year and a half ago, has left due to “differences in approach” with the foundation’s board.
• Congratulations to Susie Surkamer, new executive director of South Arts.
• The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, which supports arts and culture in the Phoenix, AZ area, has named Clarin Collins research and evaluation officer.

IN THE FIELD

• Take that, Roger Ebert: video games are art! New York’s Museum of Modern Art announced recently that it is buying up 14 classic games for inclusion in its permanent collection, including Tetris, Pac-Man, and Myst. If it’s good enough for MoMA, it’s good enough for me. Too bad advances in technology are disrupting video game store economics.
• Probably the most thorough English-language overview of the music scene in China that you’re going to find.
• I’m scratching my head a bit wondering how a midlevel employee who didn’t work in the finance department of the Woodruff Arts Center was able to embezzle $1.5 million out of the organization over a five-year period without anyone noticing before now. That’s a lot of per diems to lose track of.
• Who earns nearly $1 million a year for an arts organization and is still a relative bargain? Hint: he’s Venezuelan and directs a major orchestra. Culture Monster’s Mike Boehm runs the numbers.

BIG IDEAS

• The new issue of Stanford Social Innovation Review has a look back on lessons learned from the early years of impact investing.
• A deeper look into Google’s super-high-speed broadband experiment in Kansas City. If you care about infrastructure (and I imagine most Createquity readers do), you should read this.
• This epic article by Emily Badger on the Miller brothers’ experiment in crowdfunding real estate development is well worth the time invested.
• More from the Americans for the Arts Scaling Impact blog salon: Victor Kuo reflects on a collective impact effort in Cincinnati involving my sometime partner in crime arts funding, ArtsWave; Joanna Chin offers a very good wrap-up.
• Are management consultants worth the money? A thoroughly entertaining Freakonomics podcast investigates.
• Kris Putnam-Walkerly considers the role and rise of design thinking in philanthropy.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Slightly old news, but here goes: The NEA is partnering with the Bureau of Economic Analysis to measure the contribution of the arts to the national GDP. The arts were already counted as part of GDP, but we didn’t have a good way of isolating their contribution – the relevant figures were only counted once every five years, and categories were unhelpfully broad (combining performing arts with sports and recreation, for example). The main short term significance of this, as I understand it, is that it will be a boon to researchers doing economic impact analyses of the arts and creative industries. Congrats to the NEA research team on making this happen – I know they’ve been working for a while on it. Meanwhile, more recently, the NEA updated its very helpful “How the United States Funds the Arts” publication for 2012.
• Does Generation Y have unrealistic expectations about how much money they’ll be inheriting from their parents?

In all of her posts this spring, Kelly Dylla drew our attention to new ways of thinking about the relationship between organizations and their audiences in fun and lighthearted style. Kelly wins the award for champion juggler, as she managed to move her family from Los Angeles and Seattle and start a demanding new job as VP of Education and Community Engagement for the Seattle Symphony in the midst of her fellowship. Despite this, she took on what was probably the most challenging Arts Policy Library assignment to date: 500 pages and nearly a dozen separate publications all analyzing the NEA’s 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Here are Kelly’s posts:

• Earlier this year, Dutch airline KLM announced a “social seating” scheme designed to facilitate matchmaking among plane passengers. In Won’t you be my neighbor?, Kelly considers whether the model could be applicable to the arts.
• Teaching artists are experts in making the arts familiar to diverse constituents, Kelly argues, which is Why Teaching Artists Will Lead the Charge in Audience Engagement.
• In All You Can Hear: The SPCO’s Netflix-Style Membership, Kelly analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of a new buffet-style approach taken by the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.
• Arts Policy Library: 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts. Since 1982, the National Endowment for the Arts has been tracking arts participation rates across a number of “benchmark” indicators. But is a lens from 30 years ago the best way to understand audiences today? Kelly unravels the reams of text to find out what’s really going on with arts participation.

A modern Renaissance woman, Jackie Hasa continually impresses me with the breadth of her interests and knowledge. When she’s not landing consulting contracts by day, she’s organizing gaming festivals and helping emerging leaders connect by night; her  excellent contributions to the blog ranged the gamut from a two-part post on the promise of games and the limits of gamification to an image-rich meditation on small-scale placemaking. Below are Jackie’s contributions to the conversation:

• Written as part of Jackie’s Fellowship application, SOPA/PIPA and the Decentralization of Protest considers the role that aritsts played in the dust-up about internet copyright controls earlier this year.
• In Parklets: Coming Soon to a City Near You, Jackie provides an accessible and visual introduction to the little-known phenomenon of tactical urbanism called parklets, and urges more intentional involvement of artists.
• In Games and the Arts in the 21st Century: An Introduction, Jackie points out the huge audiences games of all kinds are drawing, and argues for their relevance as an art form. She elaborates on these points in Beyond Gamification: Alternative Models for Games in Arts Organizations, which draws a distinction between intrinsic and instrumental purposes for games and describes how arts organizations could potentially interact with a number of specific gaming subgenres.
• Finally, Arts Policy Library: Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions has Jackie wrestling with a key WolfBrown study that is one of several commissioned by the James Irvine Foundation to better understand arts participation. As such, it’s best read in conjunction with Kelly’s Arts Policy Library piece above.

A hearty thanks and toast to Kelly and Jackie for their hard work these past few months! Applications for the fall 2012 Createquity Writing Fellowship will open later this month.

Gamification of Life (Jul ’11). Photo by VFS Digital Design.

In my first post on games and the arts, I wrote that the massive growth of the video games industry in the last 20 years is motivating the integration of game dynamics with all sorts of products and services. While games that take place in the real world have a long history (e.g. sports, board games), new forms are emerging as the lines between our online and offline lives continue to blur. A number of arts organizations are considering mobilizing games in the service of increased ticket sales, improved audience participation, and outreach to new audiences, but these so-called “gamification” efforts typically fail to take advantage of games’ full potential for creativity. This post provides a few paths forward for organizations interested in really delving into this rich world. Good games are hard to make, but done well, they can help arts organizations achieve their missions—and help them rewrite the rules for audience engagement.

Gamification: Scratching the Surface

Gamification refers to any system that uses game design elements in a non-game context, usually to encourage some desired real-world behavior like participation in market research or the achievement of health goals. In essence, gamification takes an act usually valued for its intrinsic qualities—play—and exploits it for an instrumental purpose. Its proponents claim to be able to make a game out of literally anything, a powerful idea that understandably excites arts organizations looking for new, innovative business models. Because instrumentality fundamentally defines gamification, though, these schemes can result in an experience that isn’t really very fun or engaging. For instance, the Brooklyn Museum’s tagging game to crowdsource collection indexes might help it organize its objects, and the Sydney Festival’s scavenger hunt-style mobile app might help its attendees navigate their offerings, but neither use game mechanics as more than a thin veneer over experiences that may (or may not) already successfully engage participants. Ultimately, many uses of gamification are as superficial as credit card rewards programs; cultural critic Ian Bogost has even suggested the name “exploitationware” to critique gamification’s more addictive qualities and removal of any expectation of actual play.

There’s nothing wrong with arts organizations using points and other game rewards as part of a toolkit to boost attendance, reach fundraising goals, or solve a host of other potential problems. However, those sorts of programs don’t take advantage of the intrinsic qualities of games that encourage creativity in players. In The New York Times, Sam Anderson quotes Frank Lantz, the creator of the iPhone game Drop7, describing why gamification doesn’t tap into games’ full potential as works of art in their own right:

He said that real games are far too fragile and complex to be engineered by corporations and that their appeal goes much deeper than reward schedules. “It’s as hard to make a really good game as it is to make a really good movie or opera or hat,” he told me. “Sure, there’s mathematics to it, but it’s also a piece of culture. The type of game you play is also a part of how you think about yourself as a person. There’s no formula that’s going to solve that equation. It’s impossible, because it’s infinitely deep and wonderful.”

Drop 7, photo by Dan Callahan.

Complex, well-executed games intrinsically provide both structure (in the form of rules) and the creative freedom to experiment (as participants explore ways to win through play). As experiences, they are playful, interactive, and also provoke participants to think through unfamiliar systems—a characteristic that runs directly counter to the mindless quality of most gamification efforts and aligns games more closely with challenging artworks. Games can be immersive, aesthetically interesting experiences that investigate many of the same sociological, cultural, political, and formal questions more traditional artists address. By investing in games for their intrinsic rather than instrumental qualities, arts organizations can serve their missions in a fresh way while engaging audiences primed to reflect on more commercial gaming experiences they’re likely already having. Fortunately, the broader culture of gaming provides plenty of fodder for an organization looking for models beyond compulsive point rewards.

New Game Subgenres and What They Can Offer

A number of relatively new subgenres can provide inspiration for game experiences that allow audiences to play as creative agents. Below, I’ve provided a short list of subgenres along with examples of how an arts organization might use them. As with any new project, the target audience should drive an organization’s decisions, since they hold varying levels of appeal for different groups.

• Role-Playing Games (RPGs) have their modern roots in Dungeons & Dragons, which was first published in 1974. These pen-and-paper games are essentially interactive fiction, in which the players determine the story collaboratively. To do so, players take on different roles and powers defined by the game master as s/he interprets the gaming guide, a set of rules defining the fictional world they inhabit, challenges to overcome, and possible player actions. The game evolves as players take turns, accomplish tasks, and interact with the fictional world. Video games that require players to choose an avatar as part of a fantasy or science fiction story are often based on tabletop RPGs. They have also given rise to the live action role-playing game (LARP), a theatrical variation that takes place outside the home and often involves elaborate costumes and battles with fake weapons.
  • Why an arts organization might create one: By taking on specific roles, audiences can engage with complex histories or present-day cultural landscapes. For instance, players at a museum could become artists in a particular collaborative (like the Bloomsbury Group) and create alternate histories of the artists’ work and lives through gameplay. A theater group could include well-known local performers as roles in the gaming guide—and then invite those performers to participate in the game by acting as the game master. RPGs tend to be most rewarding to play when participants feel welcome to riff on their roles, so organizers need to be willing to cede control of the game narrative to the players.
• Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) are related to RPGs, and are similarly characterized by a fictional narrative. However, ARGs cultivate a deeper suspension of disbelief because they tend to take place over many weeks, and gameplay is interspersed with more everyday, “real world” activities rather than being governed by a text-based guide. Plots are often cloaked in mystery, and designers tend to run things from “behind the curtain.” In an ARG, instead of turning the page to find out what happens next, players must solve puzzles or find clues hidden in the real world, which then unlock communications from (often virtual) fictional characters that move the plot forward. ILoveBees is one of the most famous examples of this sort of game.
  • Why an arts organization might create one: Among other things, ARGs can take people all over cities to solve puzzles and perform different tasks, scavenger hunt-style. They can be useful if an organization would like audiences to visit partner venues, and demonstrate connections between disparate places or ideas through the ARG narrative. Because of the fictional plot, ARGs are also an opportunity for organizations to tell a story—it just has to be engaging enough that audiences want to discover the next piece.
• Blended Reality games take integration with the real world a step further. Rather than focusing on the fictional “layer” over reality, in blended reality games, the game world is our world, and play takes place without the intervention of characters or invented plot devices. Games like SFZero (which I have worked on) define themselves more as an “interface” for the player’s city than an alternate reality.
  • Why an arts organization might create one: These sorts of games have similar applications to ARGs, but don’t necessitate the creation of a fictional world. Rather than veiling the gameplay in a custom-made fictional plot, designers use our everyday fictions and symbols to color the game. In Paul Ramirez Jonas’s Key to the City, participants used keys to unlock dozens of doors throughout New York (many of which were at museums), endowing the normally symbolic gift of city keys with real-world consequences. Blended reality games can help arts organizations encourage participants to think critically about their everyday behavior in a more explicit way than an ARG.
• Augmented Reality Games use the camera, tilt sensor, GPS, and accelerometer features in handheld systems to interact with real world conditions. Players can kick a virtual soccer ball through their iPhone camera, or fight other players for territory using a GPS map of their locations.
  • Why an arts organization might create one: Depending on the audience, arts organizations may prefer to use technology to spur engagement in a game, and the use of smartphones can allow participants to play anywhere, in a much more casual way than most of the other game types listed here. Following the ARstreets graffiti game example, arts organizations could create augmented reality games that allow players to reimagine already-extant murals, change the marquees of concert halls, or design a building for an empty lot. The augmented reality game can be viewed as a genre unto itself, but it’s also possible to integrate augmented reality features into other types of games. For instance, in an alternate reality game, rather than finding physical clues in a gallery, a player could simply hold up his or her phone to the space and reveal a message hidden virtually. Creating a system that works well and offers substance beyond a “cool” tech factor would require a significant investment of resources, though.
• Serious Games engage with the real world through the lens of a particular pressing problem. As with Jane McGonigal’s World Without Oil, these games often use elements of ARGs and crowdsourcing techniques to engage players to find solutions for in-game problems that hopefully have implications for the real world.
  • Why an arts organization might create one: A film festival presenting a particularly political series of documentaries might like audience members to gain a better understanding of the problems presented by working to solve them. Serious games can be created to find solutions to any problem, but engagement often depends on finding a sufficiently compelling problem and framing it well. Serious games can also cross the line into gamification if their design relies too heavily instrumental tools like adding up points and achievements, and less on intrinsic qualities like player imagination and interactivity. For example, American Public Media’s Budget Hero gamifies balancing the federal budget in a closed, virtual setting and has successfully garnered over 6,000 comments. If those commenters could work collaboratively toward their budgets, or in a more open-ended way, a different, less gamified experience would result.
• Big Games or Street Games tend to eschew heavy use of technology or fictionalized narratives and (as the names suggest) bring together masses of people to play in public spaces like streets, parks, or malls. Big game designers often borrow heavily from playground games like tag, hide-and-seek, or scavenger hunts, but view the site-specificity of the city environment and act of playing as an adult as potentially transgressive. Because these games usually necessitate the presence of an organizer or referee, they tend to take place in festival format, as exemplified by IndieCade, igfest, and Come Out and Play (which I work on in San Francisco).
  • Why an arts organization might create one: These sorts of games are often cheap to produce, and work nicely with a lo-fi maker/DIY aesthetic. They can help transform socially rigid spaces like galleries, theaters, or offices, but may work less well if a more polished experience is intended.

Come Out and Play New York, photo by Kate Raynes-Goldie.

In addition to how a genre fits with a particular need, arts organizations should also consider playability and the nature of engagement in the game. These qualities define the game’s mood and level of accessibility, and help shape the game to a particular audience.

Playability. Playability might seem like an intrinsic characteristic of any game, but a spectrum exists here as well, as many games prioritize abstract aesthetics and concepts over lived player experience. Penn & Teller’s Desert Bus video game, in which players must drive a bus in real time from Tucson to Las Vegas—a journey that takes eight hours and cannot be paused—intentionally eliminates as much actual play from the game as possible. Many gamified activities also deemphasize play, though in the service of chosen outcomes rather than art. Some ARGs and LARPs focus on the fictional narrative over play.

Nature of engagement. The nature of engagement indicates the sorts of activities a player must undertake to play the game. These can range from the simple and easy to learn, as with Foursquare (just go somewhere and check in), to The Jejune Institute, a months-long ARG that required players to visit multiple sites around San Francisco, listen to a special radio station in Dolores Park, and obtain information from street performers, among other tasks.

Experimenting with Games – SFMOMA’s ArtGameLab and Beyond

ArtGameLab wall text, photo by Rusty Blazenhoff.

SFMOMA’s current ArtGameLab exhibition offers a fantastic sampler of many of these sorts of games in a museum context, created in part to “break down institutional barriers to experimentation by providing new models for presenting multi-vocal, crowd-sourced content.” While a step in the right direction, the art museum’s own “institutional safeguards” prevented a completely untamed game experience (and curator Erica Gangsei certainly recognizes as much). The exhibition lives up to its claim as a “lab,” posing questions about how games can work within a large institution.

Labs are fantastic, but more fully realized game programs are the next step. While participatory art and activities of all kinds are slowly making their way into organizational settings, games represent an even deeper way to embrace contemporary, less hierarchical definitions of art. By offering an alternate set of behavioral rules, games present an opportunity for audiences and institutions to revise those that govern the presentation and consumption of art. Through games, organizations can rewrite what an arts experience really is, and recognize that changing the rules doesn’t have to be so scary.

So why is everyone suddenly talking about games? Put simply, the immense growth of the video and social gaming industry is inspiring innovators across many sectors to ask how they might hitch themselves to this rising star. In 2011, video and computer games became the U.K.’s biggest entertainment sales category at 40.2% of the market, beating out music and video. The Entertainment Software Association notes the following staggering statistics about the 2010 U.S. market:

• Consumers spent $25.1 billion on video games, hardware, and accessories in 2010.
• 72% of U.S. households play computer or video games.
• 42% of all game players are women. In fact, women over the age of 18 represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (37%) than boys age 17 or younger (13%).
• In 2011, 29% of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from 9% in 1999.

Note: Sales numbers provided here include console and PC sales only; the $25.1 billion sales total for 2010 provided by the Entertainment Software Association includes a broader range of video/online games.

The implications of this data extend far beyond the screens that limit video games to the virtual world—their newfound cultural ubiquity means that huge numbers of the population can now more easily recognize tropes and imagery from video games in real-world settings. The tools of the online gaming world (getting points for accomplishments, ascending in level, unlocking achievements, and participating virtual social circles) have become powerful ways to engage an audience for any organization, whether an arts nonprofit or a private company.  Foursquare is just one well-known example of this phenomenon, as participants receive points and other rewards for visiting a particular venue in real life.

Academics and game designers have generated a number of theories about the power of these kinds of games. Jane McGonigal, probably the most visible representative of this cohort, has made a name for herself arguing that games can literally make the world a better, happier place by harnessing their power in the service of solving real-world problems, from bodily injury to oil shortages. In his review of her recent book, Reality Is Broken, Ian Bogost argues that games allow for engagement with real-world problems by providing complex modes of inquiry rather than clear solutions. Finally, folks like Jesse Schell imagine a terrifying future in which nearly every activity we undertake is part of a game in which we accumulate points via specially-designed sensors. These are powerful ideas, and they are continuing to gain traction as technology allows for the omnipresence of games in our lives through smartphones, ultralight computers, tablets, wireless internet, and even Schell’s toothbrush sensors.

While games can clearly serve numerous social, educational, or marketing goals, the debate over whether they might form a legitimate arts genre rages on.  Roger Ebert famously thinks not, and undoubtedly not all games should be considered art, since most are created primarily as products to be sold to a mass audience. However, more and more institutions are placing at least certain kinds of games on the art pedestal. In just the past few years, Georgia Tech has co-hosted an Art History of Games conference, the Computerspielemuseum (Museum of Computer Games) opened in Berlin, and the Grand Palais in Paris hosted the Game Story exhibition; in May, MoMA will host a program titled “The Game as an Art Form.” This proliferation is rooted in games’ fundamental resemblance to conceptual art in which the audience, or player, is integral to the work. One can cite a range of work in this vein, including Yoko Ono’s instructional Grapefruit, Allan Kaprow’s performances, a great deal of the art produced for Burning Man, and Punchdrunk’s ongoing Sleep No More production. Other pieces like Manchester street artist Filthy Luker’s playable Space Invaders installation pay more direct homage to popular games.

Filthy Luker's Space Invaders installation. Credit: Duncan Hull.

Arts organizations stand to gain a great deal from refining their relationship to video and real-world games. As games industry growth outpaces already-recognized art forms like music and video, institutions should certainly incorporate games into a larger marketing or audience engagement strategy to stay relevant. But beyond that, arts organizations can positively affect the trajectory of games in culture through serious investment in programs like commissions, residencies, or cross-sector collaborations. When music and video became dominant entertainment forms, they were embraced and challenged by artists willing to push the boundaries of popular practice, and arts institutions can and should encourage the same evolution in games.