PrepTest 145, Section 2, Question 9
Columnist: Video games are not works of art.(53 more words not shown)
The conclusion of the columnist's(13 more words not shown)
- AMost video game(12 more words not shown)
- BAn aesthetic experience(15 more words not shown)
- CFor something to(12 more words not shown)
- DTypically, video game(7 more words not shown)
- EPlayers' choices that(20 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Can't the artist control the choices a player gets to make? A game can let a player choose an outcome while its creators design the available paths, images, sounds, and responses. Interactivity doesn't obviously remove the creators' control.
Let's accept the columnist's requirement for art: the work must produce an aesthetic experience controlled by its creators. The problem is showing that video games fail that requirement. The passage tells us the games are interactive, then treats that as incompatible with the required control. But does any input from a player rule out artistic control? That connection hasn't been supplied.
What we’re looking for
We need an assumption that makes the conclusion follow. It should rule out combining the two: an interactive experience cannot also be controlled by the artists. Then the games' interactivity would disqualify them under the columnist's own rule.
Working the answers
- A
The creators' intentions aren't part of the stated test for art. A work could satisfy that test without being intended as art. Also, 'most' creators wouldn't establish a conclusion about all video games. This doesn't supply the missing conflict between interactivity and artistic control.
- BCorrect
An aesthetic experience cannot be both interactive and controlled by its creators. Video games are interactive, so they cannot produce the artist-controlled experience the columnist says art requires. That gives us the requested conclusion.
Notice what we have and haven't established. B doesn't say games produce no aesthetic experience. They may produce a rich one. The assumption says that experience lacks the particular kind of control required by this argument's definition of art.
- C
A new requirement doesn't disqualify video games unless we know they fail it. The passage even allows that a game may produce a rich aesthetic experience. Requiring richness therefore doesn't establish that games are not art or resolve the question about control.
- D
A player usually not being a game creator doesn't tell us how much control the creator retains. The designer might still control the available choices. And a statement about what 'typically' happens wouldn't rule out every game, as the conclusion requires.
- E
The argument focuses on player choices that do affect the outcome. E tells us about choices that don't. Calling those ineffective choices irrelevant leaves the actual question unanswered: can the consequential choices coexist with artistic control?
More Sufficient Assumption questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Sufficient Assumption questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.