The argument of whether video games are an “art” has raged for what feels like eternity. Scholars have debated in great philosophy halls over whether Call of Duty is a product to be bought, consumed and discarded or whether its art to be dissected and talked about for years to come, and I’m finally here to solve it for the sake of everyone: They are art. They use a medium to communicate themes, ideas and stories, making them art, for better or worse.
This whole argument over whether games are art seemed to really explode around the 2012-2015 era with the release of a lot of games that mainstream critics love to hail as the indication that games are finally art now. This is obviously fallacious, not just because a lot of these games that critics loved I tend to view as pretty overrated but the definition of “art” doesn’t denote quality. Something can be bad and still be art: that would just make it bad art. Yes, video games are nowhere close to effectively communicating themes that several films and books portray consistently, but that doesn’t mean there’s no value in the ideas and themes presented in works that many would consider low brow like… y’know, video games, specifically Helldivers 2.
Many tend to view the “Games are art” argument from a perspective of the “real” artsy games being games with engaging, mostly linear stories and great visuals, which I frankly view as a really one dimensional and boring way to illustrate your point. Think about film for a second, think about when it was new; how revolutionary it was that you could SEE the thing that’s happening, even hear it after a bit of development. Now we have an interactable medium and the games that everyone lauds has timeless masterpieces that showcase the best of the genre are games that… cut out as much of the interactivity as possible. To say games like The Last of Us or Red Dead Redemption are “movie games” is a bit of an exaggeration, but the slight at them isn’t without merit. Even if I still personally love both Red Dead Redemption games, what is truly the extent of its “intractability” within the confines of its story? It boils down to having a long scene of dialogue between two or more characters, engaging in a HEAVILY scripted gameplay sequence where you have little room for experimentation, and then caps it off with another long dialogue scene. That’s every mission of Red Dead. Transferring the story of Red Dead Redemption to a TV show, or a very long-winded movie would lose very little in terms of what the story is trying to convey. Hell, The Last of Us DID work as a TV show, in some ways better than it did as a game!
The real artistic value in gaming comes from, in my opinion, games that can only effectively be games. Choice heavy games, like RPGs such as the Fallout titles or the genius Disco Elysium. Stories that NEED the medium to convey themes effectively, such as Bioshock (Imagine that ending if you weren’t in control of the main character the whole time!). And, the latest truly new innovation in storytelling in the gaming space, Arrowhead’s Helldivers 2.
Helldivers 2 is an online, 4-player co-op shooter set in a satirical universe where all of humanity is under the banner of “Super Earth”, a totalitarian dictatorship masquerading under the guise of “managed democracy” and adhering to values of peace, freedom and justice by way of merciless conquest of other races and crackdown of any dissent within its own race, even goin so far to have real Thought Crimes. To draw a comparison, think something similar to Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers, or a more comical version of the Imperium from Warhammer 40k. There is no single-player story mode. No cutscenes to speak of in fact. No real characters, no dialogue, nothing to indicate that this is what mainstream critics hail as indicators of “true art” in the gaming space.
The story of Helldivers 2 is told through the Galactic Map, a map screen showing the persistent progress of the ever-ongoing Galactic War at the core of Helldivers. From this map, players can observe the ever-changing frontlines of the galactic war; planets are conquered, lost, destroyed or fought over all in real time by other real players, with the developer provided “major order” providing a short-term objective for the playerbase to work towards.
In this way the story of Helldivers is told less in the way of a traditional game or movie, and closer to a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, with both player and gamemaster reacting and responding to the other’s choices. If the players are doing too well on a particular front, the powers that be may deploy a new type of enemy, reinforce the front or open up an entirely new front, sparking debate among the playerbase on where to deploy the limited resources–and personnel–they have.
Consequently, this opens up a very unique mode of storytelling; every single mission played is canon within the confines of Helldivers 2‘s universe. Every deployment, kill, death, and mission failed or succeeded helps or hinders the in-universe war effort, with thousands of simultaneous stories taking place across the galaxy of hard-fought victories or heartbreaking defeats. This free-form, asymmetric method of storytelling also transcends the game itself; Reddit becomes a public forum in which different battalions debate where to focus resources, what planets to shore up and what fronts to sacrifice for the long-term war effort. Propaganda art from different users is spread around, voicing rallying cries to the playerbase to keep up the good fight. Some even go as far as to write lore for their fictional battalion of Helldivers.
If you want my opinion, THIS is the future of storytelling within the medium, at least in multiplayer settings. Forget long winded cutscenes, codexes hidden in the menu and boring seasonal narratives; make every player a character. Force the playerbase to work together for both material and narrative rewards. Lean into external sources like forums and social media to spark conversations that have in-universe effects. Make EVERY player’s actions canon, instead of something like Destiny where technically only your actions are “canon” even though every other person playing has done the same things you have.
Helldivers 2 is a glimpse into what the future of the medium can be when it comes to narrative, and judging by community feedback, an incredibly promising one. Its one of those games that can ONLY be effectively conveyed as a game. Making a Helldivers movie would lose so much of what makes that game compelling. While bigger live service games continue to churn out a seasonal narrative that nobody actually cares about, Helldivers 2 has carved out its own niche in the oversaturated live service market with an innovative take on a live service narrative, and I hope that it will be iterated on in the coming years.
