Last night I had a discussion on Twitter with Luke Dicken about game definitions, and why they matter. It reminded me of some strongly-held views I’ve had for some time about attempts to place games in a larger context: art, society, culture, et cetera.

I don’t care if games are a legitimate art form, medium or whatever. I don’t care if they have a pedigree going back to 1971, the 50s or the 18th century. I don’t care if they’re older than the novel, older than writing. I am not convinced, nor do I particularly care, that computer games are direct descendants from board games, children’s games or play in general. I don’t care if animals used play to learn before humans learned storytelling to transmit knowledge. I don’t care if play is an essential part of human culture.

If someone were to convincingly prove that computer games are not a legitimate art form, I’d still be making games. If someone could convince me computer games were a trivial hobby, I’d still be making games. If computer games were not derived from something else, if they had been invented ex nihilio, out of whole cloth, sprung fully formed from the brow of Nolan Bushnell or whoever, I don’t care, they’d be even more miraculous.

What unites most people making computer games is their passion. We want to make games. We know how to make games. We strive to make better games. But it makes absolutely no difference to me where we fit into other people’s questionable value systems. Fuck ’em if they don’t get it; they will die out anyway.

If we have to play power games to protect our medium, if we have to argue that games have cultural value in order to gain legal protection or subsidies: why not, it needs to be done. But let’s not mix that discussion with actually making games, with making people happy, with evoking emotions and giving people means to express themselves which are fundamentally new.

We’re working in the newest and most exciting medium in the world. That doesn’t make it a ‘better’ medium - I don’t even know what that means. It doesn’t make our lives easy. It doesn’t mean we bear less responsibility, that we don’t need to work hard to do better every day.

But it is a good thing, no matter what anyone else thinks.