Are videogames art?

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Are videogames art?

Is anything?

(Administrator) 2010-04-22, 10:04 #1

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Subject: Are videogames art?

Acclaimed movie critic Roger Ebert recently said that games aren't art, while a game producer (Kellee Santiago) said they were. Honestly, the opinions of two people I don't care about don't mean much to me, especially when they're taking positions without agreeing on the foundations of the discussion.

Penny Arcade said it best: If a hundred artists create create art for five years, how could the result not be art?

The fundamental question relies solely on what you think art is. For me, art is in everything people make, and the example I like to use is a lowly hand tool: the hammer. Chances are you think of a hammer and envision a tool that's not the same as the next person's. Is it a claw hammer? Ball peen? Perhaps it's a 5-pound sledge, or a carpenter's hammer, etc etc. Never mind the differences in application or the hammer's reason for existance, there's a thousand ways to make each one. When a man builds something, he thinks about how it's made, what it's for, how it should feel, how much it should weigh, etc.

The decisions made while creating something result in art. That is, as far as I'm concerned, the whole point of the discussion. If you can't agree on the foundation, if you've no common ground, or common vocabulary, then you're wasting your time.

Of course video games are art. What isn't?

BLEARGH

2010-04-22, 14:01 #2

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Anyone who says that video games aren't art hasn't played Resident Evil 4.

2010-04-22, 17:30 #3

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The fact that debate still exists is a symptom of the youth of the medium. There's only been forty years of video games, whereas there's been 100,000 years of painting. While I'm firmly in the games-can-be-art camp, I can concede that games might not reach enough people to be properly received as art. Most art can be enjoyed passively, whereas a game requires participation.

I think the most compelling argument in favor of games as art is the ability to discern distinct styles. It's now possible to distinguish a Houser from a Miyazaki from a Suzuki from a Will Wright. More importantly, you have other game developers who imitate all four of those, and who are recognizably doing so.

I hasten to add that games don't have to be art. Some are just porn, and others are just empty and pointless. This is the mistake a lot of gamers make when defending the medium, when they insist that *all* games are art when clearly that's not the case.

2010-04-23, 05:52 #4

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The primary difference between a movie/book/painting/picture and a game is that the former list are complete items that will not change no matter how much I click my fingers or move my shoulders, while games are inevitably different every time because of user interaction.

Games are like a paint pallet. Sure, someone who is very talented could produce an audio/visual experience that one may consider art. But toss that same game into the hands of a novice or two year old child, and it becomes an audio/visual display in failure.

Though it all comes down to where we want to draw the line of what is art. Lawrence has the bar set pretty low in that everything is art, and others have it set much higher. I feel most games have components that fall under being art when viewed by themselves, but I do not agree that the sum product necessarily exceeds or equals the cost of the components. To me, games are tools towards generating self entertainment much like that of a paint brush allows me to paint pictures.

This post was edited 2 times, last on 2010-04-23, 06:04 by Gord.

2010-04-23, 07:11 #5

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I don't know if I agree necessarily that games constitute a medium upon which a player could make art. The best games fool us into thinking we're having a unique experience, when in fact we're seeing very carefully planned, deliberately organized events and presentations. We think that we've achieved a great victory over the villain, when in fact we were supposed to anyway. Everybody who made it to the end of Grand Theft Auto IV saw (mostly) the same events and had only a slightly different experience from one another.

You do address the participation point I made (poorly) earlier. Because games are interactive, you can't just sit and take it in like you can a nice Matisse or a great Ramones song. It takes many hours for you to get through a game experience that might approach art, and where my previous paragraph's point breaks down is that your experience with a game is going to be incomplete if you don't finish it. And given the statistics about how many people don't finish an RPG or adventure game after buying it, the artistic merits of games aren't looking too good in that light. What good is art if the majority of its consumers only ever see half of it?

(Administrator) 2010-04-23, 13:10 #6

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I can't tell the difference between 'some, but not all video games, are art' and 'since I don't like them or approve of their content, they're not art.'

That always seems to be other peoples' dividing line: If they don't like it, and didn't hear all their lives that it's art, then it's not.

BLEARGH

2010-04-23, 17:35 #7

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Quote by NFG:
I can't tell the difference between 'some, but not all video games, are art' and 'since I don't like them or approve of their content, they're not art.'

Try this substitution: 'Some, but not all movies, are art.' /Amadeus/ is art. /Mom and Dad Save the Universe/ is a movie that nobody would consider art, or even bad art. And excluding it from art in no way denigrates the work of the actors or the writers, and I'd bet even money that none would be offended either. It's not an indictment of the whole medium to recognize that some movies are made without any artistic intent or merit.

It works for other media as well. The Mona Lisa is art, whereas that generic seascape from Sears is just a wall decoration. A Frank Lloyd Wright house is art, in a way that a prefab condominium is not. Shenmue on the Dreamcast is most definitely art; Strip Fighter II on the PC Engine is most definitely not.

(Administrator) 2010-04-23, 19:01 #8

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See, what you've said is exactly what I'm saying. A movie you don't like isn't art, but Amadeus is? I don't like Amadeus (I probably don't like the Universe one either). Is Aliens art? I'd say so, my dad would disagree.

Drawing a line based on merit or critical acclaim or any other reason is just subjective bullshit, isn't it? It's a great way to end up splitting hairs on all the movies fall on the dividing line. As far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter if an artist fails and makes something bland, it's still art. It doesn't matter if anyone likes it. Street Fighter's art. Is Fighter's History art, being such a knockoff of the former that Data East was sued over it? Custer's Revenge is art, despite it being the worst kind of dreck I've ever seen.

And Strip Fighter? Come on, that's far more fun than the snoozefest Shenmue is.

BLEARGH

2010-04-24, 07:13 #9

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You're making a faulty assumption here. Let's try this again, but with the specific example of the Frank Lloyd Wright house. The home you're living in right now is probably not considered a work of art, but a functional piece of architecture. Similarly, Mom and Dad Save the Universe is a functional motion picture that generates ticket sales and home video rights, but isn't art because there isn't that additional quality of artistic intent in it. I like the movie fine, but I feel that I'm able to distinguish it from The Godfather, which is unambiguously art whether or not you like it.

I happen to love the hell out of Strip Fighter II. It's funny and bawdy and hilarious in both intentional and unintentional ways. But it's a poor parody, and it's full of bugs, and just barely meets the criteria for software that could be released commercially. But more importantly, it doesn't say anything. It doesn't even say anything trite or juvenile, which is what you usually get out of amateur art. I can like it and still see that it's not art, the same way that I can enjoy Oneechanbara as a game that isn't also art. That you don't like Shenmue doesn't negate that it had a respected auteur driving its development, and a message that questions the effectiveness of violence and the purpose of revenge. Artistic intent has a message, and not all games have it.

(Administrator) 2010-04-24, 08:25 #10

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You're making a distinction about artistic merits without any basis beyond your opinion. Let's try this:

A man makes a toy car, it's cranked out by the thousands, shoved into a blister pack and labeled Hot Wheels, and they're sold around the world. It's basically a blue metal shell over a standardized metal base with the cheapest wheels imaginable attached to it. You might not consider it art, it probably wasn't created with any kind of artistic intent.

But the guy who's got four thousand hotwheels cars in his collection, who reveres the things and builds massive display cases and documents their every detail - I bet he thinks they're art.

You're trying to define artistic merit by your own criteria, and I don't buy it. Australian cinema was, for a long time, a series of shock flicks that would be repulsive to most mainstream movie goers in North America. Now, in retrospect, they're considered art. The local highbrow channel just ran a series of shows about them, putting them in their proper cultural context.

Because of my experiences I have come to believe these things:

One man's rubbish is another man's art

Art does not require intent - you can make art accidentally

There is no defining line for not art

What is widely regarded as crap today may be art tomorrow

Given all these things, which I cannot believe anyone could disagree with, I can only reach one conclusion: the things we make as humans are art, whether you like it or not.

BLEARGH

2010-04-24, 09:52 #11

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I don't know if I can agree that all human creations are art. Some things are merely functional. Those things can be incorporated into art, but I don't know if we logically loop them into the same Venn diagram circle by themselves. Can a plastic bottle be art? Only if Andy Warhol paints four of them different colors and puts a frame around them, but at that point there's intent involved.

I have only a passing knowledge of the Australian cinema you cite, but I can see that they were always art. As you noted, there's social and economic context that goes into how they were made and how they were (and are now) perceived. There's no such context in our plastic bottle, which exists only to store liquid. It could be specially shaped (like the wonderful Hello Kitty water bottle) but short of that, it's not art and never was.

Many games are only functional, and Ebert's argument holds true for them: You put in a quarter, you score points, you die, the arcade operator makes money. That's Asteroids. What happens when your space battle becomes a thinly veiled commentary on the futility of the cold war conflict? That's Missile Command.

I'll concede that it's a fuzzy, indistinct line, but I think that's possible to see some games that are far over that line to not be art. To me, it's logical and only somewhat subjective. And again, it has nothing to do with what I like or dislike. I also take exception to your example of the model car, as it's intended to depict a real car and therefore has artistic merit. And that real car itself has artistic design was almost certain a factor in its creation. Unless it's an AMC Pacer or something.

(Administrator) 2010-04-24, 17:12 #12

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The way I figure it, if you cannot draw a line between art and function, if there's no solid way to say "At this point, this carefully delineated and described point, it becomes art" then there's no point even categorizing them separately. Why bother with rules if they're subject to interpretation at every step, with every observer and adjudicator?

Bottles ARE art. Coke bottles have unnecessary curves, and Duck toilet goo has a graceful curve at one end. Is a bottle of bulk cola any less art 'cause it lacks the same curves? It certainly appeals less to me, but what's the dividing line? Who decides which curves are necessary and which are frivolous?

How is Asteroids not art? Stark vectors, ligne claire representations of real objects given flickering life. How is that not art?

BLEARGH

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