A video game is understood in 21st-century media art and digital humanities not merely as mass entertainment, but as a powerful artistic medium capable of critiquing and reconfiguring contemporary society, politics, identity, and technology. Positioned at the intersection of computer science, art, the humanities, and the social sciences, it is a highly complex cultural artifact. Its significance extends beyond gameplay to include source code, ROM cartridges, platforms, developer records, and package art, all of which contribute to its impact on social experience and popular culture history.
At the same time, the recognition of video games as art has been marked by conflict with established art institutions. A central point of controversy was the claim that video games can never be art, based on the idea that games contain scores, rules, goals, and victory conditions, and require active player interaction. From this perspective, games differ fundamentally from traditional art forms associated with a singular vision by an individual artist. The debate became a watershed moment in discussions of how a new medium establishes cultural and aesthetic legitimacy.
Within media art, video games are not limited to objects of play. They have been transformed into works that expose code and interface, incorporate modding and hacking cultures, serve as sites of political intervention or memorialization, and operate as enduring social and economic platforms. Game engines are also used as movable film studios that contain camera, set, actor, and physics within software, leading to practices such as machinima and game-engine cinema. In this broader context, video games are increasingly understood as infrastructures for worldbuilding and the production of social landscapes.