ABSTRACT
Videogames are one of the most significant developments in the popular arts in the last fifty years, and a great deal of philosophical interest arises from their artistic employment of computer technology. Insofar as technological and formal developments make videogames distinctive as an artistic medium, this distinctiveness arises from their interactivity. Some have doubts, however, about the usefulness or accuracy of describing videogames as interactive. Videogames are games, and calling a game interactive seems redundant. Thus interactivity is tied up with the ontological issue of videogames as multiple instance works, because videogames seem to be work types that necessitate the interaction of a player before they are instanced as tokens. Because recent videogames depict their games in representationally rich ways, the principal strongly interactive artistic structure in many videogames is the gameplay itself. The interactivity of videogames has an impact on how they are evaluated for their artistic qualities, because gauging the artistic qualities of videogames demands repeated playings.
