Video games can never be art.

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:21 PM, iamabe said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:14 PM, vasio said:

Video-Games contain art but can never be considered artworks on their own, capisce?

 

.. why?

 

you're limiting the definition of art to the content of games, the character designs, the music, the existing mediums that are currently accepted as art. so, just because a game has rules and can be beaten, it means it can never be considered a work of art?

 

if anything, I think it's more in the zeitgeist of 21st century art that a game is a multimedia experience that is not merely observed or taken in but participated in. Its beauty is activated by the participatory, reciprocal nature of gamer/game.

 

and look at it from the perspective of a game developer, the "artist" of a game. Programming games isn't an exact science. It involves lots of human variables, an understanding of psychology, cause and effect, game theory, etc. You could argue that crafting a game is "more an art than a science".

Because that's not how we judge art, okay then let's consider that video-games are valid artworks on their own, what criteria would you use to compare Mario Bros to Uncharted as both individual pieces of art?

I think it depends for whom the game is made. If it was for adult people, who dabble in art or some other intellectual stuff then it would soon catch their intention.

But most games are kinda still made for younger people or at least people with some escapism whish.

yeah but thats on cracked.com

@chengod

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:32 PM, vasio said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:21 PM, iamabe said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:14 PM, vasio said:

Video-Games contain art but can never be considered artworks on their own, capisce?

 

.. why?

 

you're limiting the definition of art to the content of games, the character designs, the music, the existing mediums that are currently accepted as art. so, just because a game has rules and can be beaten, it means it can never be considered a work of art?

 

if anything, I think it's more in the zeitgeist of 21st century art that a game is a multimedia experience that is not merely observed or taken in but participated in. Its beauty is activated by the participatory, reciprocal nature of gamer/game.

 

and look at it from the perspective of a game developer, the "artist" of a game. Programming games isn't an exact science. It involves lots of human variables, an understanding of psychology, cause and effect, game theory, etc. You could argue that crafting a game is "more an art than a science".

 

Because that's not how we judge art, okay then let's consider that video-games are valid artworks on their own, what criteria would you use to compare Mario Bros to Uncharted as both individual pieces of art?

What criteria would you use to judge Handel's "Messiah" with Renoir's "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette"?

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:34 PM, Z_B_Z said:

yeah but thats on cracked.com

 

@chengod

ergo "populist".

i dont get the argument

its like people who say movies or paintings they dont like arent art

i feel like if someone made something with their imagination, they took it from their imagination and they put it in a physical form for other people to experience, that is art.

when did cracked get so serious?

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:39 PM, MAXIMUS MISCHIEF said:

 

i feel like if someone made something with their imagination, they took it from their imagination and they put it in a physical form for other people to experience, that is art.

lol wtf ban this guy jr

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:39 PM, MAXIMUS MISCHIEF said:

i feel like if someone made something with their imagination, they took it from their imagination and they put it in a physical form for other people to experience, that is art.

agreed. i am not really sure why Santiago in her TED talk all of a sudden has this strange diatribe about how games should be considered to be MORE than people do now---but it does give me some of that suspiciously marketing-hype-flavored aftertaste. why would she need to convince anyone of this. wants to boost Flower's sales with some frickin slideshow? this article by Ebert is just a reaction on the Santiago talk and he does raise some interesting stuff in it... shame about the inflammatory title though.

Also I should add that Santiago's TED talk is one of the weakest things I've ever seen, she could have been much more convincing in her argument.

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:36 PM, chenGOD said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:32 PM, vasio said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:21 PM, iamabe said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:14 PM, vasio said:

Video-Games contain art but can never be considered artworks on their own, capisce?

 

.. why?

 

you're limiting the definition of art to the content of games, the character designs, the music, the existing mediums that are currently accepted as art. so, just because a game has rules and can be beaten, it means it can never be considered a work of art?

 

if anything, I think it's more in the zeitgeist of 21st century art that a game is a multimedia experience that is not merely observed or taken in but participated in. Its beauty is activated by the participatory, reciprocal nature of gamer/game.

 

and look at it from the perspective of a game developer, the "artist" of a game. Programming games isn't an exact science. It involves lots of human variables, an understanding of psychology, cause and effect, game theory, etc. You could argue that crafting a game is "more an art than a science".

 

Because that's not how we judge art, okay then let's consider that video-games are valid artworks on their own, what criteria would you use to compare Mario Bros to Uncharted as both individual pieces of art?

 

What criteria would you use to judge Handel's "Messiah" with Renoir's "Dance at Le Moulin de la Galette"?

 

So in your view, Mario Bros and Uncharted are like two totally different art genres altogether... I just don't understand what's there to be gain by considering games as artworks, it's like arguing for the sake of arguing, we came up with definitions for a reason, a game a is a game, you judge a game by the gameplay and the art in it, that's it.

Not at all. I'm saying that criteria for judging any other piece of art could be applied to judging games.

Fine...what criteria would use for judging Bob Ross (the hippy painter) with Renoir?

Or Madonna with Beethoven?

Considering games as art - what is there to gain? Well beyond the idea that the people who created the games might be treated in a different light, there is the notion of cultural capital.

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:12 PM, chenGOD said:

Considering games as art - what is there to gain? Well beyond the idea that the people who created the games might be treated in a different light, there is the notion of cultural capital.

and it is pathetic to try that with a slideshow on TED or a twitter or a facebook. they should just keep working and improving on what games they do now, which are kinda neat but nothing really that groundbreaking..

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:02 PM, iep said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:39 PM, MAXIMUS MISCHIEF said:

i feel like if someone made something with their imagination, they took it from their imagination and they put it in a physical form for other people to experience, that is art.

 

agreed. i am not really sure why Santiago in her TED talk all of a sudden has this strange diatribe about how games should be considered to be MORE than people do now---but it does give me some of that suspiciously marketing-hype-flavored aftertaste. why would she need to convince anyone of this. wants to boost Flower's sales with some frickin slideshow? this article by Ebert is just a reaction on the Santiago talk and he does raise some interesting stuff in it... shame about the inflammatory title though.

so murder, psycho killers and stuff, that's art right??

of course it is not, alll the world is wrong if they think of art as something that takes care or imagination or comes out of an head, so as are wrong the people who think that art is simply something that makes you feel something, that's completely ridiculous!

  Quote

so murder, psycho killers and stuff, that's art right??

yes it most likely is to them.

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:12 PM, chenGOD said:

Not at all. I'm saying that criteria for judging any other piece of art could be applied to judging games.

 

Fine...what criteria would use for judging Bob Ross (the hippy painter) with Renoir?

 

Or Madonna with Beethoven?

 

Considering games as art - what is there to gain? Well beyond the idea that the people who created the games might be treated in a different light, there is the notion of cultural capital.

I think video-game artists are already seen in a different light today, concept art a few year ago didn't have this mainstream following as it has now, there's tons of video-games artbooks.

What criteria would I use? Well for starters I would maybe start with the mood and feelings I get from just looking at both paintings, then I would look at the color harmony, try to see what sort of composition they used, if they applied golden ratio, etc... ok I get where you're going but both artworks don't require the interaction of the viewer, even with interactive art there isn't any goal, to me it's like a puzzle, it isn't art even if the player is just putting the pieces together to form a painting.

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:12 PM, chenGOD said:

Not at all. I'm saying that criteria for judging any other piece of art could be applied to judging games.

 

Fine...what criteria would use for judging Bob Ross (the hippy painter) with Renoir?

 

Or Madonna with Beethoven?

 

Considering games as art - what is there to gain? Well beyond the idea that the people who created the games might be treated in a different light, there is the notion of cultural capital.

Maybe there's nothing to gain from this discussion on the side of video gaming but it has everything to do with the current state of art.

I dunno if this has already been mentioned in the thread, but what would happen if someone just put a game-console and game in an art museum, and allowed the museum visitors to play it?

POOF! Art.

Or?

  On 4/21/2010 at 12:01 AM, Root5 said:

I dunno if this has already been mentioned in the thread, but what would happen if someone just put a game-console and game in an art museum, and allowed the museum visitors to play it?

 

POOF! Art.

 

Or?

Been done a million times but in the name of "Relational Aesthetics."

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:23 PM, iep said:

  On 4/20/2010 at 11:12 PM, chenGOD said:

Considering games as art - what is there to gain? Well beyond the idea that the people who created the games might be treated in a different light, there is the notion of cultural capital.

 

and it is pathetic to try that with a slideshow on TED or a twitter or a facebook. they should just keep working and improving on what games they do now, which are kinda neat but nothing really that groundbreaking..

Why is it pathetic to do so using those media? Those are the new forms of communication, and they will only gain in cultural capital. It's easy to dismiss twitter and facebook as mere timewasters,but they can serve real value in creating and expanding the "imagined community", especially in the face of globalization. Indeed, blogs and facebook have already done that to a certain degree. facebook for example in the Iranian elections. blogs as forms of "life narratives" (case in point baghdad burning, which was a blog about the Iraq invasion from the persepective of a young woman inside Iraq at the time) then being turned into books and developed as cultural artifacts.

TED talks feature some of the most respected intellectuals, engineers, scientists in the world, and the elite class do take note of what goes on at those talks, clearly or we wouldn't be having this discussion in the first place.

It's also entirely possible to use those forms of media as means to counter the hegemony of the cultural elite. Nothing pathetic about it at all.

i'm not dismissing websites like that at all, TED is great ...but this developer is clearly better off improving their games instead of opening up all kinds of fundamental discussion

  On 4/20/2010 at 10:25 PM, Z_B_Z said:

are there any video games made that are intended to be art from the outset? seems like that would be financial suicide.. i mean, would there even be a market for art games? seems like your average gamer couldnt give two shits about what art is or isnt and never will. could there ever be a game magazine equilvalent to film comment? is my thinking misguided?

yeah, there are a lot of indie games that are considered "artsy." take "the path," for instance. there's no real objective. the entire thing is a take on little red riding hood and how long you explore simply determines what things you will encounter at grandma's house (a twisted version of reality depending on the specific traumas of each girl).

but i don't really know the definition of art vs nice aesthetics and ideas, so it might be that the game is not art at all. but, you know, it could all depend on the intent of the artist, so if an artist says, "yes, this is art, because..." then i suppose it is.

  On 4/20/2010 at 9:51 PM, Yegg said:

lol, good! AbEx sucks anyway.

oh shit, video games killed painting?

To start; to me art must stand the test of time, be original and be thought provoking/emotionally engaging in some respect. Maybe I am coming from a great-art perspective? This is mainly random thoughts and I am still on the fence (although NEVER is just silly).

I think Ebert's closing comments on taste are quite on point actually. Many games that gamers throw up to defend primarily have you popping an endless stream of enemies heads and doing "find a and bring to b to get to point c". Fallout 3, Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid etc etc. Anything with that amount of violence isn't going to be considered tasteful art, and you could say the moral choices that are thrown in the mix make it even less tasteful as you have an excuse to kill children, nuke towns, pop civilian heads etc etc. Also the derivative nature of games like Bioshock to me it wasn't even worth playing as a game, let alone considering whether it will stand the test of time. Once you have played System Shock 2 do you really need to play Fallout 3? Have we not had a fix of shooting people in the face and fetch quests yet?

What is special about videogames to me is gameplay and peak experience of skill and concentration, which is most likely closer to something like sports. And as much as I would like to argue art of gameplay, I think that this is not really possible, as much as I admire Miyamoto, Romero and Carmack (just for Doom), whoever the hell made Street Fighter 2's control system and fighting engine...

Max Payne, Rez, Braid and Bioshock did not invent their environmental aesthetic: although pretty, to me does not make them art. GTAIV is an amazing human achievement - but not art.

ICO, Shadow of the Colossus are certainly epic and great games but I don't see them standing the test of time as cultural masterpieces or anything. (possibly the best contenders for games as art though). At least they have a unique aesthetic (to me anyway)

Fallout 3 and other games might have an emotionally engaging story for some (I would argue otherwise). It is a matter of taste and in just about all cases similar stories have been done better, years ago, without adding hours of grinding and head popping. The state of stories in games is pretty damn laughable and they are aimed at 12 year old boys seemingly.

I do have concessions and these are so IMO: Super Mario Bros and Pac Man probably have the strongest argument as being art but that is mixing in the nebulous gameplay requirement, and pretty much ignoring emotional engagement. But I think the iconic cultural impact probably counts, as well as the graphic design/music. (And I might almost argue Street Fighter 2 but that would be a challenge). Vib Ribbon and Rez are others I might argue at some level (probably from an installation point of view). But yeah, in comparison to film....

So in conclusion eBert is wrong (imo), but only just and I hope to play some more amazing games in my life, but I suspect he is bang on in the short term. Most games that people seem to find emotional affecting are pretty much -city

can i just add that the only video game that i can with certainty call art is planescape: torment.

i bet nobody ever let their child die of malnutrition to look at a Cezanne.

games>art

(and so for that matter does heroin)