I went to Steve Johnson’s book signing event at the Harvard Bookstore tonight. (I’ve blogged about his book here.) He talked engagingly for 30 minutes and then took questions. So, I asked: While some books clearly count as art, could the same ever happen to some video games? He replied that, yes, he thought so, but it wasn’t going to be via narrative. It will be more like architecture, he said, in which the aesthetic value has to do with building complex and beautiful places. He thinks The Sims and Sim City by Wil Wright approach that degree of aesthetic quality already. He also points out that it took a hundred years for Dickens to be appreciated as more than a writer of entertainments. (I’m still not convinced about Dickens, but bought Little Dorrit while I was there on Steve’s recommendation.)

There’s no doubt that video games (e.g., Myst) can be pretty. But beautiful? The truly remarkable thing is that we don’t even know where to look. As Steve says, the first game we’re willing to call art may be architecturally beautiful, but I think it might instead be narrative. Or some mix that hasn’t been discovered yet. We may well argue as fiercely about whether it’s a game as about whether it’s art.

That’s what makes this such a wonderful time: Our ignorance is so thorough and our capacity to be surprised is so deep.

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By the way, it turns out that Steve is the next speaker in the series that brought me to Naples and Capri. Lucky students, lucky Steve!

And one of the grad students, Gianluca Baccanico, has just launched his own English-language blog where he is going to explore the ideas in the book he;s writing.

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