Video Games Are Art
Editorials, Features | Gavin M. | October 11, 2009 at 6:37 pm
Art is a funny thing as some people can base their entire being on a specific piece while others may stare at it in bewilderment, puzzled as to why people care one iota about it let alone devoting an entire room of a gallery to it. I suppose that is why even the greatest minds of our civilization, such as Aristotle, have tried to classify what art is but still unsatisfied individuals remain. If we must derive a balanced meaning of the word art, then it should refer to aesthetics, expression, and emotion. With these standards, the remainder of this piece will outline why video games are a legitimate art form.
Other industries have had to deal with the label of not being high art, most notably film. Initially film was portrayed as derivative, based on photography and theater, and merely a passing fad. While the technology was admittedly primitive at conception resulting in a less than traditional sense of art, over time it was able to achieve that status and has never looked backed having penetrated nearly every demographic amounting to one of the preeminent art forms in the world. The history of film is strikingly similar to video games in that it was initially discredited but as the technology and skill of creators improved, so did the perception of the art form as it spread. What is striking is that it is often those in film that forget that their industry and video games share a similar history. It is commonly known that Roger Ebert, preeminent film critic, dismissed video games as a real art form because of structural problems,
“Anything can be art. Even a can of Campbell’s soup. What I should have said is that games could not be high art, as I understand it…Many experiences that move me in some way or another are not art…I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.”
The key error in Ebert’s logic is that he believes the structure of the narrative is compromised when the player makes choices, say in a RPG. The narrative is not lost; in fact it is totally accounted for, since the developers only allow the player to make choices in a confined manner giving the sense of story progression. In cases where player choices have an influence on the ending of a game, one must remember that these are all pre-conceived stories merely packaged in one box (Fallout 3) and not stories created by the player. It is interesting that such an experienced critic would dismiss one art form altogether while the form he advocates is notorious for producing artistically hollow abominations only fit for a straight to DVD release.
Aesthetic appeal is one of the commonly held tenets of art. Graphics, from the 1950s side projects made in national defense laboratories to the current generation consoles, have improved exponentially over the last few decades. Pixilated and indistinguishable characters have been replaced by photo realistic models. Environments are no longer non-existent or crude but now lush and detailed. Yet again, it is remarkable how similar the origins of film and gaming are for in truth gaming is hardly out of its infancy but has achieved so much so quickly. Aesthetic feats in films that amazed us like in The Matrix, Transformers, and Toy Story were the products of decades of evolution within film. We should not be so quick to dismiss the games of this generation and the past. When I look at my own experiences with games I think back to the first console game I ever played which was Altered Beast on the Sega Genesis. Altered Beast is a side-scroller with questionable visuals at best. Near the end of the Genesis’ life cycle there were games that looked far better such as Earthworm Jim and Comix Zone. These days, developers are even implementing effects to immerse players even deeper such as shaky cameras as popularized in Saving Private Ryan, lighting sources, and sun glare. This improvement in graphics is proof that beauty is an artistic priority of the developers.
Expression, or narrative, is also a mainstay in video games. The most impressive thing about it is the rate at which it has improved. In the past, games were often simple tennis or vertical shooting games without a story. While not yet on par with film’s classics like Citizen Kane, The Grapes of Wrath, or Gone with the Wind, games have been producing excellent stories since the early 90s with greats like the Monkey Island, Metal Gear, and Fallout series. Much of the reason why video games like Pong and Space Invaders did not have a real story is because the technology was new and enough to satisfy players. This is analogous to the silent film era as communicating a deep plot to the audience was often too difficult. But the lessons learned in film have also helped to enhance the narrative in games as developers have enlisted experienced writers, great voice acting, and downloadable content to extend your play if you didn’t get enough the first time through. This increased attention to expression is yet another tenet of what constitutes high art.
Without emotion a painting is just a canvas with paint on it and a movie is only a succession quickly displayed photos with voices. While I did enjoy Altered Beast, even Leisure Suit Larry had a more engaging story line. Nowadays many games have a story with twists and turns that make your stomach do summersaults. I have never really been an emotional guy, I may get a lump in my throat at a funeral, but crying is not one of my strengths. For example, the last film I got that lump in my throat from was Schindler’s List. Regardless, I still feel something while gaming and it is usually aggression and nerves. This usually happens when my character is low in health and the sound effect of a struggling beating heart is pulsing through my subwoofer or a pivotal decision is upcoming. For some reason this really gets my heart going. Anger is also one my most common emotions. Being a big hockey fan, I’ve played almost every incarnation of EA’s NHL series and if scored against like clockwork I will go off on that player, usually Henrik Zetterberg, and will berate his real life play and suggest that he receive the Lady Byng Memorial trophy for gentlemanly conduct this year. But there are people out there who experience things differently than me. Some cry. Perhaps this may happen when their favorite character is killed off. This is the ultimate emotional reaction a player can have to a game. There are so many things that developers must do to make you cry like perfecting facial expressions, movement, acting, proper storytelling, and music. But it happens. And this is what makes video games art.
Please comment with some opinions of whether you think Video games are arts or not? I’d like to know what you all think. No registration required to comment.
Tweet This
Digg This
Save to delicious
Stumble it
This article fing rocked not only did you capture the similarities between film and video games but i enjoyed how you showed the growth and evolution games.
well written article. all the artists that work on these games appreciate their genre being respected as true art, new mediums always are met with resistance.
Aesthetic appeal is definitely one aspect of art. However, don’t try and compare simplistic graphics to a lack of art. Games have not necessarily become more artistic or approaching high art as their graphics have gotten better. In fact, room for interpretation and empathy with characters has gone down when characters become more specific and vocal.
Also, saying silent films did not communicate a deep plot is foolish. A “deep” plot and a convoluted plot are not the same. The reason american films are the best in the world is because of our strong foundation in silent films – communicating as much as possible as fast as possible with no dialogue. It is why our films translate so well to other countries.
The original Donkey Kong is as much art as Metal Gear Solid 4.
Actually, the narrative structure is lost. When you give someone a choice, you’re signalling to them that you don’t care about structure or coherent narrative and all you want to do is entertain teenage power fantasies. Don’t believe me? Either all characters in gaming are sociopaths, or Niko Bellic (the one that wants a new life and is sick of killing people) has no excuse to mow down people in his car after the cutscene is over, and Gordon Freeman has no reason to be throwing computers at the head of the scientist delivering exposition, and nameless Fallout wanderer has no reason to be sparing one NPC and gutting the other. That’s poor characterization. Thanks, choice!
Our reactions to a piece of art may differ, but in every other medium, that piece of art that we’re reacting to is the same. There are choose-your-own adventure books and there are choose-your-own movies but no one would compare them to the great works of either of those media.
“If this isn’t arts, than what is it?”
An example of someone with an impossibly weak grasp on the English language.
It’s: If this isn’t ART, THEN what is it?
And the answer is mediocrity.
“The reason american films are the best in the world is because of our strong foundation in silent films.”
Haha. French, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Russian, Balkan, Taiwanese, German and Iranian films, among many others, are all better, especially today.
“It is why our films translate so well to other countries.”
People like being excited, Hollywood can provide excitement. That’s all there is to it. No art involved.
“The original Donkey Kong is as much art as Metal Gear Solid 4.”
So not at all?
Look, you can’t make parallels to film without first understanding film. The Matrix is not an aesthetic feat. Schindler’s List is a mawkish, manipulative, hollow film. Citizen Kane, Grapes of Wrath, Gone With the Wind are nowhere near the middle-of-the-road that medium has, let alone the top.
From the very beginning, films had HUMANS. Charlie Chaplin? F.W. Murnau? Buster Keaton? Heard of them? That’s all you need for a great film. Technology isn’t yet powerful enough to emulate human expression, but some people can get around it. (Hi, Team ICO)
Expression isn’t about stories. Emotion isn’t about surface reactions like anger and sadness. Beauty isn’t about bright colors.
Games are not art, and they never can be, because all they want to do is entertain. They want to set up rules and objectives for you to follow. Can something interactive be artistic? Of course! But it has to stop being a game and start using the medium properly. We see a lot of this branching happening these days c.f. the Atari years – as you’ve noted. Now they just have to take the next leap. As far away from Nintendo and their puerile output as possible, thanks.
Nice article. I think the reason most people don’t believe that video games are art is that most of the artistic games out there are given 7-9 out of 10 reviews and sell less than more mainstream and popular titles. One good example would be the Silent Hill games, one of my favorite video game series. Maybe within 10-20 years more people would consider games to be on the same level as movies, or even considered high art, who knows. For all I know the video game industry could be dead, or radically different by then. The video game industry could even be something else than a video game industry. It could be downloadable games, or virtual reality or 3-D or some other new concept. Whoo, long post. Sorry about that. :3
Video games aren’t art. They’re video games. No matter how good or beautiful they are, they’re still games. Art is not a level of quality, it is a category of things. Art can be bad. Art can be good. But games are not art. Games are games.
I have no idea why anytime somebody makes something they think is good they want to call it art. Are you so insecure in what you do that calling it by its own name seems insufficient?
Games are games.
You lost credibility at, “If this isn’t arts, than what is it?”
From what I’ve found of art, definition-wise, all art has to be to be art is evoke a sense of beauty from the perceiver. Many games fail to do that at all, but games like Okami are moving. Okami was simply gorgeous to watch, delightful to play, and possessed a life-affirming sense of beauty that I rarely encounter even in traditional art media.
Nice Article, though it reminds me of a similar article I read several years ago, especially in the parallels between games and cinema (http://www.gamecritics.com/are-videogames-art).
As far as Smock’s comments, you are entitled to your opinion, but I can’t help but feel as though you are denying the venue of games as art through example and not through potential. It sounds as though you are saying “Games are entertainment; entertainment isn’t art.” Really?
Are movies not art because I found “The Hangover” to be entertaining? Does the whole medium of expression become nulled because some examples are (arguably) less artistically inclined than others? If all movies were made by Goddard, Herzog, or Kurosawa then it would be a dead media by now, cast aside by the hundreds of millions of us who aren’t ALWAYS looking for a “beautiful pastiche of emotion and aesthetics”. Sometimes we are in a playful mood, and we want a playful form of art to help us express our desire for levity.
I appreciate the sentiment that video games can’t be high art because of the active interaction between the player and the game, but I don’t put much weight in it. A plethora of modern gallery artists have stepped away from the tradtional passive connection between the art and the viewer, and moved towards something more interactive between the viewer and the piece, as well as using the piece as a vehicle of interaction between people.
I have more to say, but I needed to get that bit off of my chest. Cheers, everyone.
No they aren’t.
Clever and true.
*Writes about how video games are art*
*Includes only concept art and paintings tangentially related to gaming*
*thinks this is good proof*
“Games are not art, and they never can be, because all they want to do is entertain.”
This is more a reflection of your inability to let a given medium affect you. Art is not restricted to a particular set of mediums. Artists can work with anything. You cannot deny the artistic potential of a given medium because the creative potential of man is unlimited.
You don’t play a game like Bioshock. You experience it, and it moves you. There are moments that are so beautifully crafted that you have to pause and catch your breath.
If I were to denounce music as an art form because most of it is bubblegum crap, that doesn’t say anything about the potential of the medium for art, but rather the potential of the medium for profit. But there are developers who are artists and their work transcends entertainment.
Cheers.
I am a strong proponent of the (some) video games are (good) art perspective, and I think this article makes a poor case for it. Detailed environments, stylistic artwork and well designed characters makes a game esthetically pleasing it doesn’t make it (good) art. I find that most big budget games depict generic and immature esthetics and values with their stereotypical big boob girls, big gun males, their extreme good or evil polarization and their cheap drama which pass of as deep because the standard for video game narratives are so low.
The art isn’t in any of the games named in your article. It’s in quirky, creative independent releases such as bit.trip, vib ribbon, Braid, Rez and Flow. It’s in the simple genius of puzzlers like Tetris, Lumines, Intelligent Qube, Landmaker or Rotohex. It’s in the haunting loneliness and majestetic bosses of Shadow of the Colossus, in the quirky, childish and colorful fun of Katamari Damacy or the sterile, subtle darkness of Portal.
Are video games art? The game data (meaning the programming) may not be, but games have plenty of art in them. Anyone who can’t see the artistic contribution to the design process especially in today’s video games is probably blind.
The article is the same as all other “games as art” articles, pretty shallow and useless. Graphics don’t matter to art and the complexity of a story doesn’t either. Not only that but games will always be beneath books and film for telling a story so at best you could argue games are art but an inferior art.
However, I disagree with Ebert’s claim about art. “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.” Different people can look at the same painting, read the same poem, and watch the same film and come up with very different interpretations and meanings. It also doesn’t matter what the author intended the meaning or interpretation to be. It’s the same way with different people playing the same game and having wildly different experiences.
In my opinion these “games as art” articles are looking in the wrong direction. Video games are much more similar to the culinary arts. A chef basically does what a game designer does, creates a pleasant experience for whoever he’s serving. In this way the difference between an artistic game and a non-artisic game can be though of as analogous to the difference between a gourmet meal and fast food. Basically, is the flavor of the meal actually unique and deep or does it just have a bunch of grease and sugar which humans love? Is the game intellectually fulfilling or does it just play off some basic human instincts like addicting “RPG” aspects, tits, and gratuitous violence?
Another thing to consider is that eventually video games are going to evolve into actual virtual worlds. Currently the closest things we have are primitive MMOs like Secondlife, WOW, and EVE but eventually they’ll actually become other worlds and game design will become architecture on an epic scale. Then we’ll be asking if universe creation can be considered art.
Can someone tell me where the pictures are from
Thanks a lot.
They are really good
Go to deviant art.com.
Hey, I’m pretty creative!!
Since defining art is completely subjective, one can’t really say whether or not it is or isn’t. Just like art can’t be graded (Since it may be a masterpiece to one person and a piece of crap to another), it also can’t be defined. Art is whatever the person observing it believes it to be.
It’s pretty terrible the author doesn’t give credit to the ARTIST that produced every painting in his post (with the exception of the girl with the sword).
http://orioto.deviantart.com/
I share a similar hangup with a few other commentators on this post…
This article takes a bothersome approach of suggesting a linear evolution of the art of games over time. From the graphical prowess to the audio quality to the depth of plot, etc, these are all potential tools in the artistic process of game design – they are NOT the art of video games any more than cadmium yellow is the art of painting – games are art, and we are constantly taking the art of games in new directions.
I’m kicking myself for not saving the link to a wonderful article I read that presupposes that games are art, and conjectures that we are currently in a period similar to the development of modern art in painting, transitioning from a Birth period (Cave Drawings – Pong) to a Renaissance period (Mona Lisa – Shenmue [haters at the door]) to a Modern Art period where the medium has existed and thrived long enough to branch into many viable forms that may or may not incorporate the elements of their predecessors.
In my opinion, at the heart of this argument is a MUCH older argument – are games art? To clarify my definition of a game, it is something that is designed to actively engage its audience into its form with an aim of encouraging playfulness and curiosity within an objective.
Traditionally, we have dismissed games as low-art at best, and mindless zombie-tude at worst. Whether it be Chess, Basketball, or Space Invaders, games occupy a part of our mind that wants to engage with a set of rules, or more loosely, an environment. The stirring of emotions is a given – everyone has seen/been a fanatical sports fan who has screamed at a television when his/her team has succeeded or failed. Is that enough to make it art?
I’m as confused as anybody else. But I’d like to give a shout out to “that guys dick”; he’s pretty creative.
The game data (meaning the programming) may not be
Spoken bye someone who has never programmed anything in their life.
Programming is an art form. In the same way that 10 painters will have 10 different paintings of the same landscape, 10 different programmers will have 10 different ways of programming the same thing. True it is not are that is meant for the general public, but programmers who look at other’s programs are often impressed or curious at the reasons that a person chose one way to do something over another.
“I can’t help but feel as though you are denying the venue of games as art through example and not through potential. It sounds as though you are saying “Games are entertainment; entertainment isn’t art.” Really?”
By definition, this is true. So, no, I’m not wrong in saying what I said. This is why we have two different words for art and entertainment.
“This is more a reflection of your inability to let a given medium affect you. Art is not restricted to a particular set of mediums. Artists can work with anything. You cannot deny the artistic potential of a given medium because the creative potential of man is unlimited.”
GAMES ARE NOT A MEDIUM. They are a part of the INTERACTIVE MEDIUM. Your’re mistaking them for the only possible means of expression, and you’re absolutely 100% wrong to do so. This is akin to having a debate over the artistic merit of commercials (one subset on visual media). Ads, those clips that try to manipulate you into buying things. Yeah. Not art.
“You don’t play a game like Bioshock. You experience it, and it moves you. There are moments that are so beautifully crafted that you have to pause and catch your breath.”
Um…no. You play Bioshock, because Bioshock is an incongruent GAME where the story misaligns with the gameplay. It doesn’t matter how many coats of paint you slap over it, you’re still a mass-murdering lunatic who, upon entering a strange undersea city, pops a needle into his arm. The writing was embarrassing, there were plot holes a plenty, and the only time I had to pause was to reload so’s I could blow off s’more heads.
“If I were to denounce music as an art form because most of it is bubblegum crap, that doesn’t say anything about the potential of the medium for art, but rather the potential of the medium for profit. But there are developers who are artists and their work transcends entertainment.”
If you were to denounce music, I’d laugh. If you were to denounce pop because some people had it in their heads that pop was the only way to express yourself through music and they thought it was a medium in and of itself, I’d be right there with you. Exploitation films are not art. Pop music isn’t. Games aren’t. BUT: Films are. Music is. Interactivity is.
“However, I disagree with Ebert’s claim about art. “I believe art is created by an artist. If you change it, you become the artist.” Different people can look at the same painting, read the same poem, and watch the same film and come up with very different interpretations and meanings. It also doesn’t matter what the author intended the meaning or interpretation to be. It’s the same way with different people playing the same game and having wildly different experiences.”
Wrong. I already explained this. All those people are responding to the same film/painting/poem. With loose/no controlled narrative, people are responding to different things. No coherency, no vision, no artistry. He’s right. What these developers are really giving you is a way to become an artist (creator), only you don’t get as much freedom as they do because you live within their code.
“Are movies not art because I found “The Hangover” to be entertaining? Does the whole medium of expression become nulled because some examples are (arguably) less artistically inclined than others? If all movies were made by Goddard, Herzog, or Kurosawa then it would be a dead media by now, cast aside by the hundreds of millions of us who aren’t ALWAYS looking for a “beautiful pastiche of emotion and aesthetics”.”
If all movies were made by Godard then yes, the mediUM would be dead. But if it were all quality? Then no. Art and humanism is the norm. That’s what we all experience ALL the time. That blockbuster crap does not deserve to be on the same planet as Kurosawa or Mizoguchi or Naruse. It’s all fake feelings, fake emotions and outlandish stories. It’s what’s fed to you, and people think it’s a part of them, but it’s not. Nothing in life happens or feels like it does in Hollywood films.
“Sometimes we are in a playful mood, and we want a playful form of art to help us express our desire for levity.”
Yup. That exists. It’s not called entertainment. It’s called humanistic art.
“I appreciate the sentiment that video games can’t be high art because of the active interaction between the player and the game, but I don’t put much weight in it. A plethora of modern gallery artists have stepped away from the tradtional passive connection between the art and the viewer, and moved towards something more interactive between the viewer and the piece, as well as using the piece as a vehicle of interaction between people.”
There’s a way to have interaction and consistency. See: flOwer, Shadow of the Colossus, Ico. There’s a way to fail horribly. See: Valve, Bioware, Ken Levine.
Oh, and programming is not art. It’s a skill. The more appropriate comparison is not to 10 painters but to 10 cobblers, or 10 locksmiths, or 10 car mechanics.
@Smock
So it’s not art because you don’t like it? “Blockbuster crap” isn’t art because it doesn’t touch you the way that a Godard film might?
What if I told you that I find everything he’s ever done to be superficial and inept at conveying emotion, and that Star Trek was a better example of true human behavior. Who are you to tell me that Star Trek isn’t art, because it has to be fake, because it had a big budget and was successful.
Your points have merit, until you start saying that the definition of art is based on quality. Because it can’t be.
I posted this comment on Digg. Thought I’d cross post it here.
I don’t think videogames should be considered works of art at all. Lets say I painted a painting and stepped back and looked at the finished product. This painting would be something that means something to me. I would have used colors I liked and it would have content and subject matter that spoke to me. Then I could take that painting and turn it to the world and people could look at it, criticize it, admire it. Some people would get it and some people wouldn’t while some would project their own interpretations on it. The meaning of the painting would change with each viewer.
Now, lets say, that instead of painting a picture just for me I decided I wanted to paint a picture that would appeal to the maximum amount of people purely for commercial gain. So I would round up groups of people in different age groups and ethnicities and give them surveys and find out what they all had in common. What colors overlapped in all these groups? What types of imagery appealed to people across the board? Then I take this information from my focus groups and paint a picture that has no meaning what so ever to me but that is pleasing to the largest possible group of viewers. Then sell it to make my living.
I wouldn’t call that art at all. And that’s exactly what videogames are. They’re commercial vehicles that don’t have a choice but to make money. I think most people who play games and have an emotional reaction don’t really understand that they’re just having the emotional reaction that they are supposed to have at that point in time. Its a 100% guided experience. Whatever you’re feeling at any given time was preplanned by someone else. This part of the game is supposed to make you feel sad, that part of the game is supposed to make you feel tense, this vast landscape is supposed to make you feel isolated and alone, this tight corridor is supposed to make you feel claustrophobic, etc. There is nothing subjective about it at all. There is nothing of yourself you can project onto the game. It’s someone else’s vision and you are along for the ride. The best you can do is appreciate the imagery and maybe identify with the protagonist.
Hideo Kojima makes the same claim. He doesn’t consider himself at artist because his games are planned from the very beginning to be blockbuster titles. All of the assets from the art work to the music are custom made by his team to be mass produced and appeal to the biggest amount of people to sell the maximum amount of units to make the most $$$ they can. After all, hes just trying to make a living. Even gems like Shadow of the Colossus and Okami are not exempt from this.
Godard doesn’t touch me. He’s energetic but completely lifeless.
Art is quality. I don’t like (admittedly few) creations that are art, and I like plenty of creations that aren’t, like video games and Indiana Jones. So unlike someone who thinks that whatever they like must be art (see: video games-as-art proponents), I’m separating my opinion from fact.
“Who are you to tell me that Star Trek isn’t art”
The voice of reason.
Your argument works as conjecture and nothing more. In reality, we differentiate between blockbuster CRAP and art. I know where you want this to go, but blockbusters are not bad art and they are not low art. They are not art at all. What they are is the product of someone’s “creativity” with the intent to make tons of cash. Not enough to be art. A tip for the future: commercial success and a big budget won’t stop something from attaining artistry.
“Whatever you’re feeling at any given time was preplanned by someone else. This part of the game is supposed to make you feel sad, that part of the game is supposed to make you feel tense, this vast landscape is supposed to make you feel isolated and alone, this tight corridor is supposed to make you feel claustrophobic”
Bingo. It’s the same with a lot of popular, critically acclaimed films. (Kane is one.) I laughed when someone told me they didn’t want to live in a world where Hitchcock’s Rear Window wasn’t art. I spared him the knowledge that he was already living in it.
“Even gems like Shadow of the Colossus and Okami are not exempt from this.”
I have to agree that Shadow was tuned towards mass appeal, and Ueda’s insistence on including those silly time trials and unlockables annoyed me, but outside of cutscenes, the work practically invites audience projection. Sparse world, sparse narrative. However, the faults it has are the result of its attempt to break free from the monotony of uninspired, meandering, Nintendo-esque drivel, and for that it should be lauded. Luckily Last Guardian is tending towards Ico.
Art is subjective. Completely. And thus, the definition is subjective, by this logic. If someone drops a pencil on the floor, and calls it art, you can’t say it isn’t. Because to them, it is art. Maybe to you, it isn’t art. But that doesn’t then make it fact that it isn’t art. It also doesn’t make it fact that it is.
My point in this isn’t to argue with you, because the argument is mute. It doesn’t exist. There is no possible way to define art, and have it be an actual standard by which we measure. Because it depends on the individual. Even if 2 million people agree on a definition, there’s still plenty more who don’t. It can’t be defined, or graded to any degree of definity.
“Art is subjective. Completely. And thus, the definition is subjective, by this logic. If someone drops a pencil on the floor, and calls it art, you can’t say it isn’t. Because to them, it is art. Maybe to you, it isn’t art. But that doesn’t then make it fact that it isn’t art. It also doesn’t make it fact that it is.”
Hey now. None of that. You’re getting into some very dangerous ‘nothing means anything’ new age hippy crap. When you’re talking about art there actually is a ‘there’ there. There is a higher plane of expression we can call art. But, to include videos game in that plane is kind of like taking art and pulling it down a level. In a way I would agree with you. If videogames are art then nothing is not art.
“Much of the reason why video games like Pong and Space Invaders did not have a real story is because the technology was new and enough to satisfy players. This is analogous to the silent film era as communicating a deep plot to the audience was often too difficult.”
It’s really hard to find the worst analogy the author makes but I think this is the least apt/most laughably ratarded.
Haha, my purpose wasn’t to pull a “What is here. Isn’t it just there, without a T” sort of thing. Rather, I’m trying to point out that it all falls under the realm of creativity. For instance, your point that making a piece of art for yourself and showing it to people is different than making a piece of art for other people and showing it to them. I don’t think it is. Just like musicians like Kurt Cobain who “hated” commercialism, yet took the time to record their stuff and allow people to put it out there. If it’s art, and not meant to be commercial, why not just play by yourself in your room?
It’s tough to measure intent behind art and proclaim it as such because of said intent. And it’s also tough to say that “this part in a game is meant to make you sad”, because you can’t be sure that was the intent of all the people who worked on it, or “artists” if you will.
I apologize for the ancient Greek philosophy though!
@ dave
the author was trying to compare the humble technological beginnings of games and movies…pong/space invaders/silent film…how technology has helped to deliver a narrative the way we know it today.
“My point in this isn’t to argue with you, because the argument is mute. It doesn’t exist. There is no possible way to define art, and have it be an actual standard by which we measure. Because it depends on the individual. Even if 2 million people agree on a definition, there’s still plenty more who don’t. It can’t be defined, or graded to any degree of definity. ”
The argument is not MOOT and definity isn’t a word. Definiteness is what you’re looking for.
Now, there is a way to define it, and it is completely objective, but it’s not quantifiable, so people have trouble wrapping their heads around it. The individual doesn’t decide what art is and isn’t. The qualified do. They do not include the 3rd grader who drops pencils on the floor. You want culinary advice? Don’t ask the person without tastebuds, ask the 3 Michelin Star restaurant’s Chef. Too absolute? Ask the person who’s cooked before instead of their daughter, who bakes make-believe cookies in her plastic oven.
With art, you want people who’ve experienced the things being depicted – who can vouch for them emotionally, not mentally. You want people who’ve felt as complex as Bergman’s best. The manjority of the video games as art proponents – adolescent and 20-somethings – simply aren’t up to snuff. One just has to step aside and realise that there are people more experienced and more qualified to judge than oneself, at this point in time.
And that “modern” (and postmodern) ideology is impossibly stupid. “Anything can be art” pisses all over the works of Shakespeare, Faulkner, namedrop #3 and namedrop #4. You get the idea. This bear coming second in a modern art contest confirms it:
http://writenow.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/bear-wins-art-contest/
Even a bear can be CREATIVE. That’s the word you’re looking for. Keep away from art.
“If it’s art, and not meant to be commercial, why not just play by yourself in your room?”
Art enlightens the masses, and getting it out to people often involves money. It doesn’t make it commercial; it’s just reality. It’s still a tough sell. When something is specifically designed to make money, then you can call it commercial.
“It’s tough to measure intent behind art and proclaim it as such because of said intent. And it’s also tough to say that “this part in a game is meant to make you sad”, because you can’t be sure that was the intent of all the people who worked on it, or “artists” if you will.”
When the evidence mounts, we can make solid conclusions. Games are not at all subtle enough for more of this conjecture. When they want to pull your strings, they’ll write their intentions in big bright lights.
First: postmodern is crap. Yet, books/movies/songs/etc. may have vestiges of postmodernism and still be art.
Also, something may be ART and still be ENTERTAINING. They aren’t the same, yet they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. Overlap is possible.
And yes – video games IN GENERAL are a business. MOST are designed by a creative mind with one eye always firmly on the bottom line. However, the same commercialism applies to movies and books. There’s a difference between creating something to sell and creating something as an expression of some inner ideology you have which later goes on to sell, making millions upon millions of dollars. Many games (and movies, and stories) are created with no intent to commercialize at all (in games, these even have a name: FREEWARE).
Still, a freeware Pac-Man clone is not art. An exercise in learning how to use Java is not art. A violent, exploitative game is NOT art.
But don’t you dare lump all games together, or all movies, or all books.
Halo 3 isn’t art. It has artistic ASPECTS: the levels were created in emulation of particular aspects of nature, the characters endured countless redesigns to achieve an overall creative goal/message to convey to the world, but the actual GAME is – kill aliens. The end.
Also, Bungie knew it would sell. They had to create the game world in a particular way so as not to displease their fans who expected certain things out of the Halo universe. Catering to an audience immediately makes it NOT art.
But then, why is Citizen Kane considered the greatest movie of all time? Orson Welles used new filming techniques (like angling shots upwards from a hole in the floor to convey power/dominance… a film trick that Leni Riefenstahl had used years earlier in her Olympics documentary). Welles told a story of power that had already been conveyed in numerous books before he set it to celluloid. So really, he just retold a tired story with a new medium using recently discovered techniques. However, Citizen Kane came out in 1941. Here we are in 2009, and we still haven’t improved? Really? We can’t top a movie from over sixty years ago? If that’s the case, maybe we aren’t trying hard enough. Or maybe all the good ideas have already been so overused that all that is left is the trite of the summer blockbusters.
The argument that games cannot be art because they take the player on a preselected journey is just silly. Movies and books are the same way, if not more so, because there you have a simple point A and point B. And with GOOD art, everyone will get something different out of it, no matter what the artist intended. If he thought, “Oh, let’s make a manifestation of the inner suffering of womankind on a 4′x3′ canvas,” and then Joe Blow say it and felt so empowered that he went and aced his interview, who are we to stop him? We are merely critics. And the problem with so many critics is that, while they may know the history about what they speak, they often have no real experience with the creative process of the art in question.
And it’s so much easier to destroy than create.
So, let’s break it down one more time:
Something created with the sole purpose of selling is not art.
Art is a creative expression of… something.
Movies/books/video games are all ways of telling a story in a different manner.
Not all movies/books/games are art.
Not all movies/books/games are created with the sole intention of selling.
Broad generalizations like “Video games are art” are as helpful as other definitive statements like “All Jews have money” or “All democrats/republicans are morons.” They are merely said to promote an argument.
Video games can have artistic aspects without they themselves actually being a work of art. See: sports games, especially.
Finally, I’m wrapping this up because I’m tired, but in response to your final comment, “Games are not at all subtle enough for more of this conjecture. When they want to pull your strings, they’ll write their intentions in big bright lights.”
Yes, that’s true. But it is NOT the games fault they have amateurish storytelling. It’s the storyteller’s fault. Even Bioshock, described by many (not me) as the pinnacle of video game storytelling, is completely LAUGHABLE when compared to establish media such as books, which have been around for thousands of years.
The movie Up made me cry. Was I supposed to, at the least, have an emotional reaction to it? Probably. Games are the same way. Just because they don’t make me laugh or cry doesn’t make it the games’ fault. It’s the game designer’s fault.
When we have real artists creating the games we play (and don’t even get me started on the title “game” either… that denotes “fun” and should be adjusted – perhaps back to “interactive fiction” – if we ever expect them to be taken seriously as an art form, because “game” just has far too childish of a connotation), then we can finally play through stories worth telling and worth listening to. Until then, there’s a lot of Wii shovelware decimating our “games are art” debate. Thanks, Nintendo, for giving fuel to our opponents that say games have nothing to offer society.
They do. You’re just doing it wrong.
Nick S. I can relate to some of what you’re saying, but you’re wrong when it comes to wiiware. The poor wiiware doesn’t kill the good, and increased restrictions on wiiware liscenses would surely reduce the amount of art in video game form. The downloadable services of the current generation have revived the arty games.
On another note: presenting narratives isn’t the raison d’etre of video games as a medium and I doubt that it’ll ever be. IMHO a prerequisite for (good) art in game form is that the producer fully accept the form of structured interactivity and doesn’t try to make a movie hybrid.
Spot on Mr MB. Most of the discussion assumes that the ‘can games be art’ question has a relation to the mediums ability to tell stories. Which misses the point as much as judging comics as storyboards for films, or books with pictures. Or judging film as recorded theatre. To do so is to judge the medium as if it were a different one. I don’t agree that games are simply the non-art subset of interactive media because the act of PLAY should be compared to the act of READING or the act of LISTENING – it is the way you can experience the medium.
In anything interactive the challenge from the artist’s perspective is to keep the user motivated to interact. A purist could certainly argue that use of story in a game can be a sign of weakness in the game as art because the game has to resort to narrative-based motivators to continue the interaction – continue playing and then you’ll get another piece of the story. This, as opposed to I want to keep playing because there is something aesthetically pleasing in the act of interacting.
Someone compared games to architecture and that, in my opinion is a much better comparison. Indeed, it is world-building. Not just world designing but the very physical laws that apply in that world as well. Play is what motivates you to explore the world, just as in architecture it’s a mixture of function and appearance that motivates appreciation of the work.
In the above discussion there was also a tendancy toward art=representation. Suggestions that to be artistic it must replicate or mirror ‘real’ human emotion. Under that conception, abstract art is always going to struggle to be validated.
All games, from chess & monopoly to civilisation to tetris are attempts to model the world – not physically as with sculpture but at best model processes that occur in the world. They often necessarily require a level of abstraction and it can be through that very abstraction that ‘the new’ or something revelatory can be found – but only found through the act of play. Modelling forces through the world, modelling how a battle will play out, modelling potentialities of thought. a good character based game will lead you as best it can to begin to *think* like the character you are.
I think the new Batman: Arkham Asylum is a good example of that; I entered a room, I assessed the situation given the tools at my disposal very much as I *imagine* batman would.
World of Warcraft allows you to customise the controls itself – as such it succeeds very much as a game about character customisation because, while you are relatively limited in your physical customisation, your ability to customise the ways your character is most likely to respond to any given situation – you shape the very synapses of your avatar’s brain.
“Art’s role is not to render the visible, but to render visible (the invisible forces in our lives)” – Francis Bacon
I don’t see how means of production has much bearing on the debate. Certainly some games are made purely, cynically, for profit. But even in many profit driven games many if not most of the individuals involved in the creation will not be seeing their role as money makers. Thus there are components of the game that *could* be art at least. I don’t see any harm in saying this part of X game was a truly artistic moment, even if the bulk of the experience is crap.
Either way it’s moot because many games are produced and have been produced by indie means with nothing other anything other than distribution and subsistance as the goal – thus games can be art with a small caveat that industry has distorted the medium somewhat.
I’ve been linked to this article by a uni mate who I told this story to. I am currently learning to be a level designer/ character modeler and so for my A level Art I tried to use 3d scenes and animations. I could not have got a worse reaction from my teachers, who considered anything in this medium to be some kind of science and as apart from art as a phyisics lesson. I have never understood this view but in a semi happy ending the year I left the teachers were forced to accept all kinds of digital art (including some game levels) in their class and an animation club took root. A bit late for me yes but at least people are starting to cotton onto the idea. In my mind 3D is even more of an art form than say, traditional painting. You have different levels on both sides but a good 3D artist can create a world that pulses with life whereas a painter can only atempt to imitate that.
As much as I would like to get involved in the indepth discussion which is going on here (intresting arguements both ways), I simply would like to throw out a couple of things:
Okami – Quite definately gaming copying art and therefore creating art in a new medium. To deny the artistic qualities of the content bringing together Japanese history, myth and style all into a controlled envoriment is madness.
Team ICO – creators of derelict enviroments that convey solitude without a word of suggesting. In both games (and more than likely the third) players ended up caring for a companion without any understandable communication.
Art in my opinion is something that can convey different meanings and encourage a varitey of emotions to different people, the greatest example is the Mona Lisa, is she smiling?
Art is produced by talent to be appreciated by society, Painting and so forth is art, Music is an art, architecture is an art, why deny something that is interactive and combines all these elements into one is art?
However like all art there are some attempts that are simply getting by on appealing to the common demoninator and not pushing the medium, there are those that try something new and fail to be recognized and there are the undesputed masters of the trade.
Or if you want the very simple version: if a black line on white canvas counts is art apparently and gaming is far more appreciated….
this is truly one of the my least favorite discussions out there. blah blah blah. who cares? if you enjoy games, you enjoy games. if you draw pictures, you draw pictures. if you render images, you render images. if you want to call the fecal matter you flung at a wall art, it is art. anyone that argues against anyone else who chooses to call something art is making a decision to argue. congratulations. you can argue. you are probably the type of person who argues that [insert your least favorite musical genre here] isn’t music/art. that is because you are unintelligent and don’t realize that your taste doesn’t dictate the status of a given work. it just dictates how tasteless you are. deny all of the artists in the world their status; art will be produced all around you, nonetheless. neither its fans nor its creators will be seriously affected by the childish debates of lesser minds.
I think everything you look at or listen to is art, including pop music, pokemon and porn.
I like the article. There is no doubt in my mind that one day most everyone will agree that games are art, in the same way that people now agree that movies are art. However, I disagree that the turning point is when games are able to tell emotionally packed stories. Why are stories necessary for art?
In the forward of some book I have long forgotten, Stephen King writes about what the difference between a hobby and art is. What makes a Van Gogh or a piece by Mozart art and not your grandmother’s quilt? Why is putting together model airplanes a hobby and creating large, abstract, metal structures art?
I like my definition of art, “a hobby that one can be snobbish about.” Once you start feeling pretentious about something, it becomes art. Once you can begin deconstructing it, it’s art. So in many ways games are already art, for those of us who care.
Nick, stop lumping in games with film and literature. They are not 3 different media. The comparison is games/exploitation films or TV commercials/choose-your-own advernture books.
They are the artistic dregs of their respective media.
What I’ve been saying all along is that it is possible to have meaningful interactive art, but that video games, which are merely the evolution of chess and the like, are NOT the way to go. Commercials want to sell you things, choose-your-own books want to entertain your fantasies and games want to have fun.
NO games are art just as NO Tv commercials are art. They can never be. If something you play on your Wii or Playstation is art, then it’s not going to resemble a game.
“When we have real artists creating the games we play (and don’t even get me started on the title “game” either… that denotes “fun” and should be adjusted – perhaps back to “interactive fiction” – if we ever expect them to be taken seriously as an art form, because “game” just has far too childish of a connotation”
I agree that game has adverse connotations, but it’s wrong to say that these things (the Bioshocks, the GTAs) aren’t games. Interactive fiction works very well for artistry in the interactive medium, but that would refer to something that breaks free from the rulesets and objective-based gameplay imposed upon gaming (like flOwer).
“I don’t agree that games are simply the non-art subset of interactive media because the act of PLAY should be compared to the act of READING or the act of LISTENING – it is the way you can experience the medium.”
You don’t agree that a travel brochure can be read and that a radio commercial can be listened to?
The act of INTERACTION is what we should focus on, not play.
“Under that conception, abstract art is always going to struggle to be validated.”
As it should. Abstract art simply has one image stand in for a concept. If an artist is incapable of portraying that concept and doing it justice, they shouldn’t receive acceptance. That’s not to invalidate abstract art, because some works are successful. Others, like Braid and the free indie games online are not.
The “games” people list as examples of art are trying as hard as they can to break away from gaming and everything that comes with it.
“that is because you are unintelligent and don’t realize that your taste doesn’t dictate the status of a given work.”
I find this very funny. Something is art (dictation of status) because one crap-flinging baboon says so, but if someone says it’s not, and it clearly isn’t, then they’re tasteless and suddenly no one can dictate the status of a work. Talk about lesser minds.
Frankly, that argument that anything anyone deems to be art is art is readily dismissed.
“I think everything you look at or listen to is art, including pop music, pokemon and porn.”
So art is meaningless? Then why would people strive for the acceptance of gaming as art? Why, it could be in the great company of pop music and porn if we huffed and puffed hard enough!
“There is no doubt in my mind that one day most everyone will agree that games are art”
Start doubting. I’ll reiterate. Gaming is to interactivity as tv commercials are to film.
I also grow weary of this revisionist history where games are justified because their ancestors in Chess etc. are actually modelled constructs/akin to architecture/were always considered art. They were never considered art. Get over it. If you can’t break free from the gaming mould, you’ll never have art.
Crappy art is still art. You can whine and say that games are a terrible example of art, but they are still art. People can complain about how terrible, lazy rap music detracts from music as an art, but it is still classified as such.
@ Smock
I think the growing frustration at your posts is due to your stated belief that the merit (as judged by yourself) of a project dictates its recognition as art. You make definition statements without providing any sources but your own say-so, and I don’t think you hold the magic wand that dubs one thing as purely art and another thing as purely entertainment (for better or worse). It’s a bold claim that denies the existence of an artistic experience for someone else on the mere grounds that you personally did not have such an experience, which only seems to reinforce Dylan S’s stance that art is purely subjective, because I doubt anyone here has exactly the same art-judging standards in literature, music, film, photography, etc.
It becomes very cumbersome when you make statements like this:
“Nick, stop lumping in games with film and literature. They are not 3 different media.”
A short trip to dictionary town identifies each of these as different forms of media. They are also subsets of a larger set “mass media”. A house cat is a form of life that is a subset of a larger set “vertebrates”. I am not going to drop a rich history of structural subsets in language because of the new definitions you have shared on this thread.
“Gaming is to interactivity as tv commercials are to film.”
Gaming? – or game design? Big Difference. I don’t think you are Pablo Picasso when you score a headshot in Halo, but I think this guy makes some evocative games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M4ynOKem4M (despite his camera shyness), and The New Museum seems to agree: http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/411
So does it only start to be art when it’s all done by one person?
“I think the growing frustration at your posts is due to your stated belief that the merit (as judged by yourself) of a project dictates its recognition as art.”
A mistake right off the bat. Never once did I say that it was I who judged them, but obviously I’m more qualified than you are considering that I at least understand that there is a practical distinction to be made. I’ll direct your objections at having one person deny something its artistic merit at those who claim that one person can affirm artistic status. That’s the “if someone says it’s art, it’s art” people, in case we weren’t clear. This computer is not a flowerpot because I say it’s a flowerpot. That’s just not how things are. Accept it. Move on.
“A short trip to dictionary town identifies each of these as different forms of media. They are also subsets of a larger set “mass media”. A house cat is a form of life that is a subset of a larger set “vertebrates”. I am not going to drop a rich history of structural subsets in language because of the new definitions you have shared on this thread.”
This is a pointless objection. What do you gain from saying that games are a medium (ignoring for a minute that they aren’t)? It doesn’t change the point I’ve reiterated often: they are the dregs of interactivity just as exploitation films are to the visual medium and adventure books are to the written word.
It would pay for you to actually take that trip to dictionary town. No one here has provided evidence that anything can be art – like those silly examples about dropping a pencil on the floor and flinging fecal matter. However, according to Webster, art is: high quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
Google the definition, it’ll show up in the book.
“Gaming? – or game design? Big Difference.”
Same thing.
“I think this guy makes some evocative games: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2M4ynOKem4M (despite his camera shyness), and The New Museum seems to agree: http://www.newmuseum.org/exhibitions/411 ”
Ah, yes, modern art. Where the artists are so incredibly inept they have to rely solely on the audience to supply the “meaning” of a work. Let me reintroduce you to the award winning artist from Bear County, USA: http://writenow.wordpress.com/2008/08/25/bear-wins-art-contest/
“So does it only start to be art when it’s all done by one person? ”
Like films, right? *sigh*
As for Dylan, your point has already been dismissed. Wallow in your own filth if you will, but don’t try to pass it on as fact.
Just because video games are created with the same tools used to make websites and Microsoft Word – thousands of lines of code and various programming languages – doesn’t invalidate them from being art.
That’s like saying Shakespeare can’t be art because his stories are told in the same language that can be used to write a drunken suicide note.
Oh, and Mr. MB, there’s plenty of terrific WiiWare (ever play Lost Winds?). I was referring to the dredge of “Imagine” games and mini-game collections inundating the system with their low-quality, non-artful, near-unplayableness.
“Just because video games are created with the same tools used to make websites and Microsoft Word – thousands of lines of code and various programming languages – doesn’t invalidate them from being art.
That’s like saying Shakespeare can’t be art because his stories are told in the same language that can be used to write a drunken suicide note.”
Course not. Who made this argument? Shakespeare has substance. Games have as much artistry as Office 2007.
YOU made this argument, Mr. Smock.
Smock says: “In reality, we differentiate between blockbuster CRAP and art. I know where you want this to go, but blockbusters are not bad art and they are not low art. They are not art at all. What they are is the product of someone’s “creativity” with the intent to make tons of cash. Not enough to be art. A tip for the future: commercial success and a big budget won’t stop something from attaining artistry.”
So wait… it’s okay for you to say one kind of movie is art and another is “not art at all,” but two different kinds of computer programs – one for entertainment and one with utility – cannot be afforded the same consideration? That’s just… close-minded.
Art, by definition, has “intention” and “a message.” Movies can have these. Books can have these. Games can certainly have these.
Notice I say CAN. It’s not a necessity. “All games are art” is not a winnable debate. “Some games are art” is an incredibly obvious and easily backable argument.
Thanks Nick…I felt as though I was going to have to draw a Venn Diagram for this guy…
Confucius say: it take sharp wind to cut hot air
An important part of art to me is the idea of using the medium to communicate ideas and messages. Visual art like paintings use the medium of a still image in the sense that nothing is changing, you can take your time to look over and interpret the placement and depiction of images. A great example of playing with this device is the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel: the viewer is gazing upwards and seeing a glorious image of heaven. This is art to me – using the nature of the medium to present a message.
Likewise, cinematic art uses the fact that you are being taken through the piece at 24 frames per second, narrative is able to flow and characters can communicate with each other. We are then left to try to interpret their thoughts and motivations, which may lead us to the artists intended message or commentary. An great example here is Rashomon, where we see several contradtory rettlings of an event from several perspectives. In real life we can only observe events once, and from one perspective, but through the medium of cinema this can be changed and used for commentary – This is art to me. Cinema can also contain visual and music art in it’s cinematography and soundtrack, and it’s implementation of these.
The games that strike me as art are the ones that address the notion that the audience has control to communicate messages. Bioshock deals with this rather poignantly, taking a sharp look at the nature of a lot of videogames where you follow your instructions without question. Metal Gear Solid 2 suddenly switches you from being a skilled veteran to an overconfident rookie whose only training is completing a simulation of said veterans previous mission. The experience slowly breaks down as plot points emerge. Players were left feeling confused, alienated, and ultimately angry. The character you are playing as is experiencing the exact same emotions. The game is addressing and interacting with the audience as a player in order to communicate ideas about what is happening with the narrative. To me, this is art.
A sad yet true fact is that any new form of entertainment takes quite awhile to be accepted by the masses as a form of artistic expression. You saw the same thing happen with film in the last century.
In response to the stance that games cannot be considered art due to it being a derivative of film/writing/painting and whatnot. Have you paid attention to how humans express themselves? Every step forward in artistic expression is an iteration and improvement on the previous step. Take film, for example, that most people here seem to agree can be considered art. Well you have the fact that it is a combination of the printed word (the script), music (the soundtracks played to evoke a stronger emotional response to the script) and still images shown in rapid succession conveying a sense of motion for the audience. Games bring all the artistic elements that were brought forward with film and add in the new element of interactivity. It is this combination of elements in a new and meaningful way that pushes games into the realm of art.
It strikes me that the people that don’t believe games can be considered art are the types that either don’t play or analyze games much themselves. Instead resorting to judging games based on who plays them, the younger generation. And yet it’s this younger generation that will define what is considered art in the coming years as the previous generation’s critics fade into obscurity.
Everyone ignored my point…..just like the ladies…..awwww I made myself double sad
@Yousif
Placing aside the misspelled words and overuse of hyperbole, the main reason I didn’t originally comment on your post was because the game-art examples you provided are on the list of games I constantly hear lauded as art. Don’t mistake me, I think that Okami and Ico are great titles, but they pop up in almost all of these types of articles, along with Bioshock, Katamari, The Metal Gear Solid games, and a slew of other games made in the past 5-10 years.
Where’s the love for older, ground-breaking titles like “Zork”, and “Prince of Persia”? I don’t want to sounds like a geezer, but denying the artistic form of these games because of their dated technology is like denying the art of painting now that we have digital graphics.
I wholeheartedly agree that video game design is a form of art, and whether you wish to refer to more mainstream concepts as “bad” art or “not art at all” is up to you. Let’s not get stuck on the same handful of games and the classic artistic conventions we see in them as the means we use to justify the medium as capable of achieving the somewhat snooty status of “art”.
Of course, if someone has never programmed anything, or drawn anything, or composed any piece of music, or designed a layout of a city, or arranged any scene for cinematography/animation, or written anything besides a status update, I can see how he/she might miss the wealth of artisanship that goes into making even the simplest tetris clone.
For the rest of us, there is definitely merit to this discussion.
@Mike D
Oh don’t get me wrong I’m an old school gamer and completely agree with you bringing up the older titles, but for the sake of argument I was using more recent examples.
My previous arguments were very short and just a quick nip into a great discussion, but after a scathing assault I feel I should be more involved.
The old school games do count as an artistic form, but have a different obvious appreciation. While 2D design is more akin to a painting with intricate design, 3D games are more reminiscent of a sculpted piece. Creating a world that is viewable in the third dimension and is beautiful from all angles is something very different to the creation of a 2D game.
I do believe both are art but to lump them in the same category of art is ridiculous. To further the argument for modern games is the inclusion of deeper more complicated plot lines and sound. All of these elements now blend together creating something that simply wasn’t possible in the past. To compare older titles to modern day is like comparing cave paintings to renaissance pieces (maybe a bit harsh). While the previous does have its few stunning examples that stand out today, the modern classics are greater in depth and appreciation.
As for you comment on the ‘wealth of artisanship in a simple tetris clone’, while simplicity can be art and the level of effort in programming is appluadable it doesn’t give the item the right to be held high. A 3000 page book can take huge amounts of commitment and skill, but this doesn’t necessarily make it a good book. Effort doesn’t equal art.
Ultimately art is subjective and one man’s shit on a wall is another man’s art. At the end of the day you can’t tell someone else what to think.
So we’ve confirmed that games CAN NOT be art, then. Glad to hear it.
The folly Nick and Mike made over and over again is in assuming that games are not for utility. But even if they weren’t, utility is to entertainment software as educational programming is to exploitation films. Art is a step above both of those categories. You both fail. F-
Games = NOT ART, ever.
Interactivity = ARTISTIC FORM, always.
The same thing did not happen with film last century. Film had substance, games never did and never will. They are evolutions of Chess etc. Those were never considered art and never will be.
Games are something you spent your time playing with, maybe even something you helped design. I can see how that incredible bias makes you want to justify your hobby/job, but it doesn’t need justification. Not everything needs to be artistic. Stop being so narcassistic.
It’s very funny that programming code is lumped in with composing music, painting and writing. Look at how foolish you sound. Programming is a skill. Not an artform. You write functional programs. That’s all. You’re not special. A cobbler is not an artist because he can put a shoe back together.
Wrong again. To use your example, a cobbler is, in actuality, an artist to himself and other cobblers. To them, the true and proper skill of putting a shoe back together is an “art form”. This is what you don’t seem capable of understanding. Art is whatever the person observing it thinks it is. It is entirely possible that someone, somewhere, doesn’t believe that painting is an art, but rather a skill. They technically wouldn’t be wrong.
Also, are you trying to say that writing music isn’t a skill? Or that making a film isn’t a skill? They both are. Why then does the end product of both (The piece of music or film) get to be called “art”, even though both were born from a skill, and yet games aren’t allowed the same consideration? Games are simply evolutions of chess? Ok, then music is simply an evolution of basic sound, and film is an evolution of manipulating light.
You’re trying to take away the value of games to others by breaking them down to an unfair and basic level, which can be done to ANY of the things you list as being art. Just because you, personally, don’t find something “worthy” of the term art doesn’t suddenly make it not art. You aren’t special, you can’t do that.
Sure, not everything needs to be artistic, but everything “can” be artistic, depending on the individual. Games don’t have substance, ever? So Uncharted 2: Among Thieves has a story with the same amount of depth as Tetris?
Also, since your last comment, no one has agreed/confirmed that games aren’t art. Seems you’ve come to a consensus with yourself, and no one else.
@ Smock
Two weeks later, you came back to make a point that 60 other comments disagree with. Good job.
Let’s break down your “rebuttal” one paragraph at a time, shall we?
“So we’ve confirmed that games CAN NOT be art, then. Glad to hear it.” First, what?! Every single commenter besides you agreed, that while some video games certainly are not artistic in nature, the process of creating something where there was once nothing is definitely an artistic endeavor. Nowadays, especially, games share far more in common with movies (which you repeatedly refer to as artistic) than board games like chess (which you repeatedly refer to as not). It’s true, chess in an of itself is not art. However, the symmetry of the board is artistic. The pieces, whether handcrafted out of jade or manufactured with millions of other cheap, plastic game parts are artistic. The flawless victory of a grandmaster over a chess n00b can be seen as an art form. His understanding of the mechanics, refined by years upon years of practice, can be truly a sight to behold.
“The folly Nick and Mike made over and over again is in assuming that games are not for utility. But even if they weren’t, utility is to entertainment software as educational programming is to exploitation films. Art is a step above both of those categories. You both fail. F-” F- is not a grade. A simple F would have sufficed. If games are never for utility (def: “the state or quality of being useful; usefulness”) then why are they employed by the armed forces? Why is Microsoft Flight Simulator used by ACTUAL pilots to improve their flying? Why do race car drivers practice on Gran Turismo in the off season? Dur. Because they are a replication of reality to a T.
But, things designed solely with utility in mind are generally not art. Using your cobbler example (what is this, the 40’s?), a shoe is designed to be comfortable and long lasting. It’s not art. It’s a shoe. A tool for your foot to protect your little toesies! However, bright, colorful Nike and Adidas shoes CAN be art. They are designed and created with an eye on aesthetic value, to be pretty, to be cool, to be artistic. People do entire museum exhibits using shoes painted with pretty colors. They are no longer for utility, although they do possess plenty. Now, these “useful” shoes are also “art.” They are not mutually exclusive.
“Games = NOT ART, ever. Interactivity = ARTISTIC FORM, always.” You can interact with a kangaroo. That doesn’t make it an art. Training a kangaroo to do a backflip off a diving board into a pool of chocolate pudding would make you an artist of the kangaroo training world, however. Quit lumping “board games” in with “video games.” They are two distinct things. Also, some board games teach children things, so they have utility, despite being a “game.” And just putting words together with “=” signs doesn’t make them true. It merely allows you to make statements without justifying them.
“The same thing did not happen with film last century. Film had substance, games never did and never will. They are evolutions of Chess etc. Those were never considered art and never will be.” Again, statements without justification. Games and film are closer now than ever before (if that is your definition of art). See: Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy. I fail to see how Pong is the evolution of chess. They aren’t the same, and never pretended to be.
“Games are something you spent your time playing with, maybe even something you helped design. I can see how that incredible bias makes you want to justify your hobby/job, but it doesn’t need justification.”
“Not everything needs to be artistic. Stop being so narcassistic.” I separated the last two sentences because they rhyme, and that’s funny to me. You’re a poet and didn’t even know it! Despite the fact that you insult others for saying “mute point” as opposed to “moot point,” you yourself spell “narcissistic” incorrectly, despite the auto-spell check on Koku Gamer’s comment box. That is also funny to me.
See what happens when you ignore others valid, justified points and instead focus on their poor spelling and grammar? Anything less than perfection from yourself makes you look like a whiny, uneducated hypocrite.
People spend their time playing with their penis, despite the fact that they didn’t design it (WHY ARE YOU CROOKED???). That doesn’t need justification. “Games are art,” however, is a topic that needs justification because there are people like you trying to say they are not. So we’ll justify it with a clear, concise argument as opposed to focusing on commenters’ spelling.
Also, if you even mention one word that I may have spelled incorrectly, or one incorrect subject/verb agreement, or one of the numerous times I ended a sentence with a preposition, I will know that you ignored my points in favor of a childish ad hominem argument.
“It’s very funny that programming code is lumped in with composing music, painting and writing. Look at how foolish you sound. Programming is a skill. Not an artform. You write functional programs. That’s all. You’re not special. A cobbler is not an artist because he can put a shoe back together.” Why is this funny? The parallels between music and programming are obvious, even within your own argument. Let’s try some word replacement!
“Look at how foolish you sound. Song writing is a skill. Not an artform. You write beautiful songs. That’s all. You’re not special. A cobbler is not an artist because he can put a shoe back together.”
“Look at how foolish you sound. Movie directing is a skill. Not an artform. You create movies. That’s all. You’re not special. A cobbler is not an artist because he can put a shoe back together.”
“Look at how foolish you sound. Writing is a skill. Not an artform. You write books. That’s all. You’re not special. A cobbler is not an artist because he can put a shoe back together.”
Look at how foolish you sound, Smock. You can come back in two weeks and make another “mute” point, or you can go flame somewhere else. Nobody here is buying your feeble attempts at debate, because you haven’t PROVEN a single thing. Just so many words, falling on too-educated ears.
Not all games are art. Many are. Your sweeping generalizations will never convince anyone otherwise.
Smock makes some good points, but there are important inconsistencies here.
The presence of commercial interest does not preclude art. Shakespeare is art? Well, Shakespeare was trying to fill theaters.
And painters try to sell paintings. It doesn’t mean it is or isn’t art if something is designed to be sold.
Take a look at someone like JSG Boggs. Here’s someone who creates art to be traded as a commodity. He also makes compelling statements about art as commerce. And yet, he is an artist.
I agree that most games – if not all – are not art, and part of the reason for that is indeed their drive to please the masses at the expense of all else. But to say that commercial interest and art must be exclusive is incorrect. I’m having trouble imagining Jeff Koons, or Philip Glass, or anyone you choose to represent ‘art’ living in a mud hut, and not selling/performing their art for vast sums of money. It’s just a more rarefied and wealthier audience.
This is obvious. What people seem to forget is that the “masters” of art in previous centuries were at the forefront of art seen by the masses. How many times has the Mona Lisa been seen?
In our generation, the cutting edge is video games, websites and graffitti. None is accepted, but all have mass production and remembrance in the viewers. Everyone will remember Doom or Call of Duty, but will not know the average oil painter.
ShawNshawN