Imagine a medium that conveys issues still present today; racism, religious values, patriotism, and rampant capitalism. All of this while set in a beautiful city in the sky. Sounds like a book by a famous author, no? What if I told you there is stunning visual direction with beautiful uses of color to make a scenery that immerses you into itself. Now it sounds like an Oscar winning movie, right? Wrong. This is Bioshock Infinite, a game recently released by 2K games and developed by Irrational Games. Bioshock Infinite proves why games can be an art.

I always like to think that different mediums have different types of immersion to their story. Movies and TV shows have shallow immersions. They spoon-feed everything to you and don’t allow you to slow down and take in what is happening; you move at the movie’s pace. Books, have a higher immersion. Books allow you to slow down, re-read a page. Good books don’t spoon-feed you everything. You are allowed to visualize what you think the characters and setting look like.

Then there are video games, which in my opinion have the highest level of immersion out of these mediums. While video games do spoon feed you the visuals, they tackle an aspect that is very, very hard to achieve through movies and books. Video games establish interactivity. You control your player and the actions that he or she commits. While many games are linear, like Bioshock Infinite, other games like Skyrim, Fallout, Far Cry, and countless others are open world. Open world games allow you to move freely around the games world. They allow you to pick when you do the main missions and also which side missions you choose to do. Which people you choose to help. These choices that the player has to make immerse them further into the game. In my opinion, the more immersed someone is in a medium, the easier it is to convey and teach your point.

The first reason video games can be an art is the visuals. With the level that PC gaming is at graphically, and the level that console gaming will be at when the PS4 and new Xbox will come out allows game developers to push the limits graphically. Beautiful scenery is not just reserved for the movies and TVs anymore. Games like Sleeping Dogs, Hitman, Far Cry 3, and the recent preview of Battlefield 4 show how games continue to produce beautiful video games. Bioshock Infinite is no exception. Bioshock Infinite sets you in a bright, cheery city in the sky with floating islands. Beautiful colors of the patriotism are able to make you feel immersed in scenery that could be considered art alone. You’re able to walk along the city and see the segregated stalls. The detail that they add in Infinite makes it feels real.Though this art alone is not enough to set video games apart from the beautiful scenery in movies. The extra aspect that video games have through immersion is what makes video games unique.

Slight spolier alert warning, it isn’t that bad though. 

In the story that Infinite tells, you are placed at the fair and are called up as you win the raffle. You are given a baseball as an interracial couple is brought up on stage and you are told to throw them at the couple. Though I won’t ruin what happens next (to be honest I haven’t gotten past that point either) the fact is that movies and books cannot put you in that position. For the choices made in this game are choices you make, and they feel real. But this does not just apply to Infinite. In fact, there are games that exemplify immersion even more than Infinite. Games like the Mass Effect series and the Witcher series are engineered so the choices that you make directly effect the outcome of the game. Infinite is able to push their ideals to the player through this immersion.

You may be thinking about other games; Call of Duty, Boarderlands, SimCity and say that these games aren’t art. You’re right. Just like all movies, TV shows, and books are not necessarily considered art. Not all video games are considered an art. You will have your “Twilight” movies and books and your “Jersey Shore” TV shows but that does not take away from the “Grapes of Wrath” and “Le Miserables” that are art. In the same way, you cannot let Call of Duty take away from the beauty in Bioshock Infinite.

Bioshock Infinite is a beautiful game and has received top reviews from virtually every single game reviewer. That feat is only accomplished by the classics of video games. I believe that Infinite will be used as a benchmark for games in the future that aim to accomplish a higher meaning. I hope that the quality of gaming in Bioshock Infinite is just the start. I hope that it paves the way for many more games to come. These games give more than just the story, they give the same themes and big topics found in the classics of books. I think that Bioshock Infinite and the topics it brings up will be talked for years to come,  but for now, just play it.