Q9 - Columnist: Video games are not works of art

[mshinners]

Question Type:
Sufficient Assumption

Stimulus Breakdown:
Work of art = experience created by artist
Video games are interactive
Therefore, video games can't be works of art.

Answer Anticipation:
Since video games are interactive, and the author treats this as proving they can't be works of art, the answer will state that being interactive stops a video game from being a work of art. What is a work of art? Something that has an experience created by the artist. The answer should say, more or less, that anything interactive can't be controlled by the artist who made it.

Correct answer:
(B)

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Out of scope. Intention doesn't matter to reality. What the creators intend doesn't define whether something is or is not a work of art. As an example, I intended to make pancakes yesterday, but I instead actually created bricks of charcoal.

(B) Bingo. Interactivity and artistic control, according to this answer, are mutually exclusive. If this is true, video games can't be art, since they are interactive and therefore can't have experiences controlled by their creators, which is a requirement of art.

(C) Out of scope. The stimulus is about aesthetic experiences, not necessarily rich ones. Additionally, the aesthetic experience the argument cares about is a controlled one, and this answer doesn't distinguish between those that the artist controls and those that the artist doesn't.

(D) Out of scope. It doesn't matter who creates the games, just whether the creator can maintain control of the experience.

(E) Out of scope. The argument talks about choices that do affect the outcome of the game, not choices that don't.

Takeaway/Pattern: When a Sufficient Assumption questions concludes that something doesn't fit into a category, check the definition of the category and the description of the thing. The correct answer should set those two at odds.

#officialexplanation

[jenoh82223]

But I was wondering is it not that if people can create video games themselves, they will be able to control the aesthetic value so it can be work of art?
Doesn't this make (D) tempting?

[moshemeer]

Had the same question was torn between D and B? Can any of the LSAT experts help clear up why D is wrong further?

[mshinners]

Had the same question was torn between D and B? Can any of the LSAT experts help clear up why D is wrong further?

Our argument essentially breaks down to:
P - A work of art requires that the artists control it.
P - Video game outcomes are affected by players.
C - Video games are not works of art.

The gap being that if players can affect the outcome of a game, the the artist can't control it.

In order for (D) to work as an answer, it would have to guarantee the conclusion. First off, that "Typically" at the front of it creates some issues, as it's speaking in generalities. That's not strong enough to support a strong conclusion, such as the one that we have. Additionally, even if every video game is created by a player, it's absolutely not the case that the only person playing that game is the original creator. It's baked into the reality of the question that almost all video games will be played by someone other than the creator, even if the creator herself is also a player.

After all of that, even if there is a perfect split between players and creators (i.e., we remove the "typically" from this answer), it still doesn't get us to the conclusion. Even if video game players don't create video games, we have not yet bridged the gap between affecting outcome and lack of control. Without bridging that gap, we don't have an answer.