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“obligated to address questions allergic to mere entertainment….In my humble estimation, no video game has yet crossed the Rubicon from entertainment to true art.” Here I was trying to say that what distinguishes one work of art from another is primarily intelligence, which is as multivalent as art itself. Artistic or creative intelligence can express itself formally, stylistically, emotionally, thematically, morally, or any number of ways. Works of art we call masterpieces typically run the table on the many forms artistic intelligence can take: They are comprehensively intelligent. This kind of intelligence is most frequently apparent in great works of art created by individuals. Unity of artistic effect is something human beings have learned to respond to, and for obvious reasons this is best achieved by individual artists. Many games—which are, to be sure, corporate entertainments created by dozens of people with a strong expectation of making a lot of money—have more formal and stylistic intelligence than they know what to do with and not even trace amounts of thematic, emotional, or moral intelligence. One could argue that these games succeed as works of art in some ways and either fail or do not attempt to succeed in others. “True” art makes the attempt to succeed in every way available to it. At least, I think so.
    My ambivalence goes much deeper, though. A few years ago I was asked by a magazine for my year-end roundup of interesting aesthetic experiences, among which I included 2K Boston’s peerless first-person shooter
BioShock
, which, I wrote, “I would hesitate to call…a legitimate work of art,” even though “its engrossingand intelligent story line made it the first game to absorb me without also embarrassing me for being so absorbed.” Seeing that halfhearted encomium in print, with my name attached to it, about a game I adored, obsessed over, and thought about for weeks drove home the plunger of a fresh syringe of shame. Was I apologizing to some imaginary cultural arbiter for finding value in a form of creative expression whose considerable deficits I recognize but which I nevertheless believe is important? Or is this evidence of an authentic scruple? On one hand, I love
BioShock
, which is frequently saluted as one of the first games to tackle what might be considered intellectual subject matter—namely, a gameworld exploration of the social consequences inherent within Ayn Rand’s Objectivism (long story). On the other hand, what passes for intellectual subject matter in a video game is still far from intellectually compelling, at least to me, and I know I was not imagining the feeling of slipping, hourglass loss I experienced when I played
BioShock
ten hours a day for three days straight. If I really wanted to explore the implications and consequences of Objectivism, there were better, more sophisticated places to look, even if few of them would be as much fun (though getting shot in the knee would be more fun than rereading
Atlas Shrugged)
. When I think about games, here is where I bottom out. Is it okay that they are
mostly
fun? Am I a philistine or simply a coward? Are games the problem, or am I?
    I came to this once-embarrassed, formerly furtive love of games honestly. Because the majority of the games I have enjoyed most as an adult tell stories, I was always comparing those stories with the novels and films I admire. Naturally, I found (and find) most video-game stories wanting. But this may be a flagrant category mistake. For one thing, no one is sure what purpose “story” actually serves in video games. Games with any kind of narrativestructure usually employ two kinds of storytelling. One is the framed narrative of the game itself, set in the fictional “present” and traditionally doled out in what are called cut scenes or cinematics, which in most cases take control away from the gamer, who is forced to watch the scene unfold. The other, which some game designers