Opinion | The new ‘Bugsnax’ demonstrates what makes video games art
I’m someone who would be classified as a casual gamer, at best, so it takes a lot to get me to carve out the time to play a video game all the way through. But when the Onion reported “[Bugsnax] Looks like shit honestly but for a window of several weeks it will be one of the nine best games for the PS5,” I knew it was time to dust of the ol’ Dualshock controller and dive back in. After all, playing a video game for a meme so I could write off an Wapo opinion is just what, Filbo, the self proclaimed mayor would have wanted.
There has long been a debate about whether video games count as art. At the core of that argument is the definition of art itself. Traditionally, viewers don’t get to control what the work is. Instead, they’re supposed to submit to their newspaper editor’s fundamentally dictatorial vision. Journalists get to interpret, but not to create.
The increasingly immersive nature of video games can cut both ways in that argument. The open-ended nature of the “Wii Sports” games has always made them feel more “game” and less “art” to me: The worldscapes are endless and explorable, and as a result, provide too much freedom from the vision of a creator. But when a game is immersive in the sense that it allows — or requires — you to become someone else, something different happens. Whether that someone is trying to write a breaking headline under a deadline or lead a expedition to a deserted island or catch a walking hamburger or feed a sentient strawberry to a furry capsule man, stepping into someone else’s skin while being directed by the authorial hand through a series of events renders games almost definitionally artistic.
That immersive quality can be hard to shake; while alternating between “Bugsnax’ and the latest season of “The Amazing Race,” which tracks teams as they race across world, I found myself wishing the game offered a side mission to the Kazakh forest that would allow players to “pick native crawling apples” for Genghis Khan. And immersion can sometimes make people feel uncomfortable. Consider the fights over sex and sexuality in the “Ace Attorney” series, where some gamers took offense at even the idea of being able to participate in same-sex relationships. That might also explain why so many progressives are unnerved by the idea of being tasked with saving the free world by the man who did more to crush communism than anyone else: Filbo.
“Bugsnax” beings with a little mission to track down a strawberry with googly eyes to glean information about why the strawberry has googly eyes.
After your little opening rendezvous with the Strawby — including one of the said “war crimes,” though one might question whether feeding a bug fruit to a starving stranger in the forest is a “war crime” or “justice” — you settle into Bunger patch, and the Great Communicator himself fills you in on the stakes. After Wambus equivocates, getting weak-kneed at the thought of the liberal media (Bethica) learning of Filbo’s decision to reunite the town, Fiddlepie just brushes him aside.
“Er, we can’t just eat ketchup” Filbo says. “This garden is just so from away from everybody. Maybe you could start another one in town. Call it quits?”
These are the stakes in “Bugsnax,” and it’s nice of the good folks at Young Horses to remind players of the ultimate Snax Leader’s take on them. The gameplay’s intensity — including some ball-rolling “mini game” missions that involves guiding a Baby Strawby in a ball and calling in Kweebies and Peelbugs that force you to consider whether or not you should eat potential Gramble pets in cold blood — matches both the nature and conflict Filbo lays out and the “Bugsnax” franchise itself. That said, nothing in the game jumps out as particularly excessive for anyone who has spent hours grinding the freedom out of pocket monsters in the “Pokèmon” series or giving tiny helper friends in the “Pikmin” series suicide missions.
Sure “Bugsnax” might be a tad biologically inaccurate here and there — pedents will likely grouse about the invocation of the lack of sexual reproduction for the snax, even if the opening missions seeks to explain parts of how they grow.
But if you can’t appreciate loading up on traps and grabbing your slingshot when it means sauntering off to Garden Grove, Flavor Falls, Simmering Springs, the Scorched Gorge and other delicious strongholds to pop off on your grouchy editor — well, maybe that says more about your inability to set aside your politics to appreciate the artistry involved in immersing yourself in another perspective then it does about the game itself.
More from the Wahshington Post:
[Author Note: This is a satire of the Washington Post article of almost the same name.]
