Video Games Are Art

There is considerable discourse regarding the status of video games as an artform, a narrative art, a form of play, or any combination of the preceding, and many have turned to literature from film, animation, game, and media studies to further these claims. When considering approaches to teaching arts multiliteracies, these ideas of video games as arts, narratives, and/or sites of play can serve to further pedagogical goals. This chapter explores three approaches for teaching arts multiliteracies via video games: teaching around, alongside, or through video games, where video games are either physically absent, directly utilized, or created as learning. Methods explored within these approaches include gamification and game-based pedagogy, game-inspired student works, community field trips to video game performances/exhibitions, edutainment games, video games which serve as an artistic medium, demonstrations, immersive “real-world” video game production programs, game designs toward social justice, and interdisciplinary collaborative opportunities in video game creation.