[Psudo]

BartSimpson wrote:

Video games ARE art! My goodness, any one old enough remembers thinking how breathtaking it was the first time they got to look at Myst.

Holy crap, Myst was beautiful! I remember getting distracted from playing it sometimes just to stare at and listen to the ambiance.

It doesn't hold up at all. If you play it today, even the Masterpiece Edition with improved graphics, it looks like a bad comic strip. Unlike, say, the first Final Fantasy or Tetris, modern players simply cannot get the experience past players remember from Myst.

Let's see, how to tie this back into the games-as-art debate... Do other art mediums age so badly? I've seen old movies (Rear Window! Harvey!) that are still a blast to watch decades later. But maybe that's only because it's the timeless ones we remember later, while all the crap is forgotten. As mentioned, some games are timeless, too. Tetris, Space War, etc.

I've been pretty much out of the gaming scene since 2001; how many new games really try to achieve that timeless quality? Or is it as I remember, everyone trying to outdo each other on graphics and ignoring beauty of form and function?

SparcVark wrote:

Should every game strive to convince doubters that it is "art", even if this results in a large number of games that fail to entertain?

I don't think the question is whether "every game" should, but rather whether there is art as a subset of games. People paint and sing for reasons other than art, too, but there is no doubt that painting and singing can be art.

[SparcVark]

Well, if I was going to make the argument for a video game being "art", I'd need to make the case that the game in question achieved artistic excellence using qualities that were inherent to it being a video game. For example, a "game" that had the player press one button, then replayed "The Godfather" wouldn't count, even if you regard the movie "The Godfather" as art.

So a game can't be "art" just because it has a good story. If you can tell the story just as well as a book or movie, then the game as such isn't bringing anything to the table.

So, what do games have in their favor that other media lack? I'd say that the interactive nature of games allows well-made ones to let the player identify more closely with the story's protagonist. As an example, we'll take ICO.

The story of ICO is pretty darned simple. A boy with horns (Ico) is locked in a castle as a sacrifice, is freed from his cell by accident, and has to escape from the castle. The game starts when Ico gets out of his cell, and goes from there. Shortly after the game starts, he finds a girl being held prisoner in the castle, and breaks her loose. For the rest of the game, the player controls Ico as he tries to get out of the castle with the girl, Yorda. Most of the gameplay involves figuring out how to climb around the castle to get out, with the interesting wrinkle that you have to figure out a way to get both characters out. Some of the gameplay challenges center around areas that Ico can navigate easily, but the less athletically gifted Yorda can't. Also, shadowy supernatural creatures periodically attack trying to carry Yorda away, and Ico has to fight them off with whatever's at hand (usually a stick).

The art design is excellent, the controls are simple and intuitive, and there's just the right amount of AI provided for Yorda so that she seems to react appropriately to what's going on. Most puzzles require you to use the castle's environment more than box-pushing, and the game is short enough that they don't reuse content or start getting stale.

The plot could be written on a 3x5 card, and wouldn't make much of a short story or movie unless padded out until it no longer represented the source material. What does the game have going for it? Well, at least for me, it skillfully identified the interests of me, the player, with those of the main character - how am I going to get myself and Yorda out of here? What are these things that keep attacking? I don't think the same material could be made as effective using other media. What made it so memorable was the very fact that it was a game.

[dodobird]

Trying to define something as art is an excersise in futility. Defining as art does not make it more beautiful or creative. Defining it as art does not change nor bring it into existence. The statue of michalangel's David did not change when people viewed it as art. The mona lisa existed before someone said, "This is art".
Art is distilled in its creation, presented in its medieum, and consumed by the observer.

No one has to be in the woods when a tree falls for the nature of sound to exist.

[PublicAnimalNo9]

Art is nothing more than the simple act of creating something for the pure joy of creating. If your "audience" enjoys it too, even better. And to be honest, I've played more than a few games that were certainly more artistic than some of the crap that pretentious fops get all worked up over.

As for the critisism about LOTR, I can understand the perspective there as I'm not usually one for excrutiatingly minute details in my stories. BUT, in LOTR's case, those details helped to bring the World of Middle Earth more to life, for me anyway lol
To me, those details were integral in helping to define the story beyond its immediate settings and plot line. Tolkien's ability to provide these details while maintaining the relevancy of them within the story itself was artistic to me.

Ultimately though, art gets defined by the observer. I've seen some AMAZING graffiti art that the pretentious fops wouldn't even take a side-long glance at.

Now, let's take a look at an historical vs modern example, cuz we have to ask one major question, does the medium MAKE something art? For centuries now, there have been paintings of nude women adorning various art galleries around the globe, and it's considered art. BUT, Playboy, which is pretty tame really, is considered to be soft core porn. Both mediums use the same subject, so why when it's a photograph in a magazine, is it considered to be pornographic?
Of course, that question is moot if you believe pornogrpahy is art

[JJ]

I think SparcVark's comments are bang-on. Even in this very thread itself, people often mistakenly believe that the inclusion of artistic elements within a product means that product itself is art. When I was talking with my friend Graham I used the analogy of a blender. There are artistic design magazines where you can see pictures of blenders. But that doesn't mean the blender itself is art, only that some elements of its physical design are art. The literal contraption that chops up your food is not art.

As SparcVark said, it's only art if the fundamental properties of the item itself, in this case the "gameness" of the game, are artistic.

If you haven't read yet, I posted a new blog essay about another aspect of this discussion, the argument-within-the-argument about games as art. Mainly, is this even a serious discussion?

[dodobird]

What stops the blender from being art? Is it the original intent of the creation? Is it because you cannot, or have not taken the time, to perceive the beauty and creativity of the object? The amazing amalgamation of science, mathimatics, and human inginuity that have miraculously come together to create the object. Or is it simply that you believe that by viewing something such as this as art or recognizing that others might percieve it that way somehow dimminishes all art. So much so that we must establish an elitist view of art to somehow protect previous great works and control future ones?

The thought that an arbitrary check list we create in our head can somehow dictate to the world what is or is not art is ridiculous. Art is not science nor is it mathimatics. There are no universal constants that dictate what is or is not art. I often believe that a robot would have a better chance at defining art then a human because a robot would recognize that there are no objective algorithm that can be created from viewing the patterns of our universe. Then give up the persuit as pointless and recognize the object for its existence and then if cabable admire it for what it is not what it may or may not be.

My problem, is when you say video games can NOT or can NEVER be. What you ARE diminishing is the people who create, the object or medium in question, and the people who would view it as such. To me, to do that to someone infringes on thier right, if only slightly, to freely define themselves, their creations, or their views. So that to make these statements is immoral and wrong. Not only that but we are limiting ourselves on how we can and should percieve the world around us.

[xerxes]

PublicAnimalNo9 wrote:

Art is nothing more than the simple act of creating something for the pure joy of creating. If your "audience" enjoys it too, even better. And to be honest, I've played more than a few games that were certainly more artistic than some of the crap that pretentious fops get all worked up over.

As for the critisism about LOTR, I can understand the perspective there as I'm not usually one for excrutiatingly minute details in my stories. BUT, in LOTR's case, those details helped to bring the World of Middle Earth more to life, for me anyway lol
To me, those details were integral in helping to define the story beyond its immediate settings and plot line. Tolkien's ability to provide these details while maintaining the relevancy of them within the story itself was artistic to me.

Ultimately though, art gets defined by the observer. I've seen some AMAZING graffiti art that the pretentious fops wouldn't even take a side-long glance at.

Now, let's take a look at an historical vs modern example, cuz we have to ask one major question, does the medium MAKE something art? For centuries now, there have been paintings of nude women adorning various art galleries around the globe, and it's considered art. BUT, Playboy, which is pretty tame really, is considered to be soft core porn. Both mediums use the same subject, so why when it's a photograph in a magazine, is it considered to be pornographic?
Of course, that question is moot if you believe pornogrpahy is art

The difference is this: if your pictures are in black and white, it's art; colour then it's porn.

[Dragom]

I would put forward that the game "Chrono Trigger" was art, even if it's pointless to display it on a wall.

[Psudo]

I can see that for Chrono Trigger somewhat. For example, I beat the end guy but I feel like I never finished it. That's something typical in the nature of art; you can study it for years and still find something new.

[SparcVark]

Sorry to be AWOL from the discussion for so long. To answer your second blog post and comments on this thread, JJ, I agree with you that the debate thus far is not serious. "Yahtzee" Croshaw has a good article on the subject at Escapist Magazine. He is the first person to point out that Roger Ebert is basing his judgement of video games on watching gameplay videos on YouTube - if games do have a claim to being art through the additional dimension of player interactivity, you'd never catch that unless you were playing the game yourself. He ultimately punts on the question, saying that "art is subjective". Maybe this is as close as we'll get to an agreement.

Why aren't the arguments serious? I think that part of it is that gaming is still kind of a subculture less mainstream than movies, and part of it is that we live in fundamentally unserious times. On the first point, even in this thread people have reacted to "video games are not art" as though it was "I think you're an inferior person". I happen to disagree with Roger Ebert on this point, but I'm surprised anyone would take his comments as a personal slight. The number and demographic variety of people who play video games are both increasing, but there's still a strange underground vibe to some of the discussion of them. I don't know why so many people who make and enjoy games have this sense of inferiority, but it does seem to poison discussions of them.

On the second point, I spent part of last weekend visiting the Chicago Art Institute, and as usual their modern wing depressed the hell out of me. Nothing from about 1950-60 forward seems to exhibit any sign of technical skill, with the exception of photography. Between the stereotypical "postmodern" argument against the idea of standards and the increasing fragementation of popular culture, I think that serious discussion of *anything* is getting harder.

[web2010designer]