In Ian Bogost’s article, he argues that “game is art” is an obsolete concept.  Instead, he advises that we coin a different term and argues that the word “proceduralism” appropriately represents innovate indie titles such as “Braid to Passage.”  Bogost starts his article off by tracing back some art movements in history.  He brings up localized movements in Europe, Futurism, Gothic style, Post-impressionism, Pre-Raphaelites, and the Renaissance movement.  In bringing up these movements, Bogost makes the point that the idea of art is ridiculous because it “means something monolithic.”

Bouncing off that idea, Bogost then talks about the innovations and art movements in games. Bogost talks about how one cannot merely look at the superficialities of “game art,” but much search deeper, towards the aesthetic games trends in game art development.  In this way, Bogost hopes that there will be more discussions of the developing conventions, styles, and movements of games that participate in a broader concept of art.

Bogost talks about “proceduralism,” and defines the word through the charactertization of the style represented through three individuals–Jason Rohrer, Jonathan Blow, and rod Humble.  These three figures, according to Bogost, define “proceduralism” because they have made a distinctive style that have “embraced deliberately and successfully” art in the form of games.

The elements that these three have in common include procedural rhetoric and introspection.  Bogot utilizes Rohrer’s Passage and The Marriage as examples of how these games post questions and simulate specific experiences that rarely point players to certain answers.  Moreover, Bogot talks about the abstraction of instantial assets, subjective representation, and authorship.  His reasoning states that player agency in games leads to distinctive interpretations of player experience.

In “proceduralist” works, meaning is generated through the knowledge that a human being set the work’s processes into motion.  Proceduralism, Bogot says, is a contradiction to the “conventional wisdom in game design.”  By stating this, he means that video games focus on the realistic simulation of experiences, but on the other hand, proceduralism offers the metaphorical treatment of ideas.  As a result, proceduralism allows for user introspection, thus it exposes the subjective truth of the individual creator.