Are Videogames Art? 242
Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?
Little boys (Score:3, Insightful)
I remember, just on the radio, how a professional personal ad writer said that an example of an unworthy person is "living in his mom's basement, playing Nintendo". Sorry, but that's the public's view.
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From a user review on IMDB: "A 60s all-girl rock band decides to get in the van and head to Los Angeles to try to make it big. And they find it is super easy, and they make connections fast, but fame and fortune comes at an expense.... Yes, this is the movie that is infamous for being written by Roger Ebert. Yes,
Re:Little boys (Score:5, Funny)
Ever seen MySpace? That's what kids end up doing if they're calling the shots. Fuckin' little losers.
Mark my words: you see a kid, you beat the crap out of the fucker until his nose bleeds for a week. Serves him right. And it doesn't matter if you don't know why you had to beat him, he sure as hell knows.
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And at the time, Shakespeare's works were essentially the dime store novels and sitcoms of the day...
There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic. Art, I propose, is just a label applied by self-appointed judges regarding their own arbitary tastes. The proper response is not to endlessly try to justify electronic entertainment as 'art' in the eyes of pretentious old men, but to note that their opinion does not actually matter. The next generation, no doubt, will have their own idea of art, and their own view of what will be culturally significant, and the scorn of today's judges have no meaning in this respect.
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
So your definition, as cynically as you offered it, is pretty much right on. Art requires artist and audience (these roles may overlap, or, as in much music, be separated further by tradition). That is all.
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Oh and John Cage's music 4'33" in my opinion is completely neutral, offering nothing or bad. If you could put every theoretical piece of music on a multi-dimensional tree, then the 4'33 would certainly occupy an important place in that tree. However, it lacks any of the enjoyment
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:4, Informative)
Did YOU ever study cage? Because you entirely missed the point.
Cage believed that there are elements of a musical performance that are entirely out of the composer's control, things that are random and spontaneous that nevertheless inflect what's going on on the stage. Every sneeze by the audience, every cough, every whispered conversation, every squeaking chair as an audience member gets up and leaves in disgust, ALL of it is in some way a part of the music you're listening to.
What Cage did was, to bring this passed-over element of musical performance to light, he wrote a piece of music that entirely accentuated the random sub-elements of performance by eliminating the music entirely, thereby making people more conscious of their immediate surroundings. THAT'S why 4'33" is important; it has nothing to do with this bullshit 'what is art?' argument.
Triv
Re:There's no such thing as art (Score:5, Insightful)
This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"
Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?
Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.
As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."
The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.
When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.
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This is the biggest myth of all - that technical skill is a requirement of good art. Technical skill may be required to execute some works of art, but only for secondary reasons. For example, a composer has a vast abstract space to explore when trying to generate music. By exploring the space of music playable by virtuosos they have vastly more options to discover good music than by exploring the smaller space of music playable by mediocre musicians. But the final re
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Don't get me wrong... I have no problem with artists doing weird things to get attention. Good for them. I just don't like that I am expected to bl
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What I'm saying about music is that you can have a musical composition and a musical performance. When you recor
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Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long,
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Yes, that is mostly correct -- except that the suit wasn't just planned, it actually took place. Mike Batt put a track called "A minute's silence" on an album called "Classical Graffiti". In July 2002 Cage's publisher, Peters, sued; in September Batt settled by making a donation to the John Cage Trust.
Put like that, it sounds monstrous. Well, it wasn't quite that simple: the catch is that on the albu
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That is bullshit. Simply the audience's involvement in an artistic discourse does NOT exclude it from being art. Interactive art forms have been around for more than a century, and to a greater or lesser degree ALL art is interactive. The artistic community accepted this long ago, there is not even really much debate in it anymore.
And how do you figure that a game has no meaning, no purpose, and no goal behind it's perception? Well, for one, "perception" is inherently relative, I think you mean "presentat
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Internet or BBS-based MUSH/MUX/MU*s (not MUDs, mind you) are often even better, as they involve the creative and often quite skilled collaboration of a bunch of writers together. I've read a few MU* logs that could be polished up and sold as a decent novel.
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Of course video games can be art. Movies can be art too, but many aren't. Both of these forms of media are so often filtered through corporate guidelines and commite
Or rather everything is art... (Score:4, Insightful)
I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic.
Maybe "everything is art" is closer to what you are getting at?
Wikipedia, as usual, as a good writeup on Defining art [wikipedia.org] ( Why the editors don't routinely include WP links on core concepts, is beyond me ).
My personal definition of art is anything that inspires without obvious utility.
*sigh* (Score:2)
Inspiring, useFUL, YET clearly art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallingwater [wikipedia.org]
Please try again. Your definition of art needs revision. Everybody thinks they can do better than philosophers who've been debating this since the dawn of civilization (and, likely, before).
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What about the Chrysler Building? Or houses by Frank Lloyd Wright? Or the Apple G5 [billnoll.com]?
I think it's pretty clear. (Score:2)
When a game designer says "I want to make the most intense RPG game ever", then it's a just a good game (potentially).
Sometimes a game gets created for fun (and no particular purpose) but in retrospect could be considered art. An example of this might be kkr
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What you say would have been controversial 100 years ago. This was explored by the Dada movement. (Is a urinal with writing on it art? How about a defaced postcard of the Mona Lisa?)
What's happened in the intervening time is that fine art has been distinguished from commercial art. Most of the people who can draw and paint "realistically" (i.e. those who are able to faithfully draw what they see; there are notable exceptions) are not part of the fine art community. They're doing advertising, architect
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from dictionary.com:
The fine arts are those which have primarily to do with
imagination and taste, and are applied to the production
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Why do you mention boys in particularly?
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Stigmatized, yes (Score:4, Insightful)
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They never ask if something is as/more worthy of art status than, say, Battlefield Earth? The reply may be that it's not a
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Keeping genres tied together helps a little. There has never been a video game number one - one game that all gamers absolutely praise above all others...
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It's following still astounds me today, as I figured years ago that it's popularity would have waned with the new games/systems.
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Lol, that's funny. In a very similar way, I would suggest that FF8 and FF9 are FAR better... and I would suggest that "The Third Man" is, without a doubt, Orsen Wells' best film. It's all aesthetics. All these titles are fairly succure as the pinical of their respective genre... and by genre I don't just mean video games and film, I'm talking Japanese RPG and Wellian film (I know Third Man falls under Neo-Noir, but what the fuck genre is Citizen Cane?). Similarly, Citizen Cane is FAR FAR more wellknown than
Art vs commerce (Score:5, Insightful)
Because movies, of course, are made for no more reason than pure artistic expression...
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Games as Literature (Score:2)
http://www.thegamechair.com/2006/02/03/games-as-li tera [thegamechair.com]
Of course they are (Score:2)
"Good art" is another question entirely.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi_sabi [wikipedia.org]
Most video games are good at adding more, as in higher resolution graphics, fas
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I think the problem is contextual, right now we can't see them as art, because we live in a time when art is
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That's true for all forms of art.
You can write me off as a pretentious old dude who "doesn't get it," but I still say video games could be art but aren't yet. Where is the Ingmar Bergman, the Picasso, the Public Enemey? Sorry I just don't see it yet.
You hold the keys to open your eyes and unlock your mind. Nobody else can do that for you. Prejudice towards an entire artistic medium is not pretention, it's decrepitude.
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grim fandango?
katamari damaci?
drowned god?
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They aren't. Neither is anything else. "Art" isn't a property of an entity; no object has the power to touch us on the subconscious or any other level, it is us who reach out to touch it. "Art" is in the eye of t
1900s 3 D stereoscope post cards come to mind (Score:2)
Note lasting value does NOT equal boring, I predict that the Sex Pistols, Radiohead, Spike Lee movies, Public Enemy and the art
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Look at this whole discussion. Everyone is offering their opinion about whether games are art or not. Seems to me that they are all referring to their personal understanding of what art is, and that those understandings do not neccessarily meet. In other words, this very discussion seems to point towards art being relative.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Mont h [wikipedia.org]
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar
http://en.wikip [wikipedia.org]
p.s. not just genre snobbery (Score:2)
http://www.ithaca.edu/news/release.php?id=394 [ithaca.edu]
There are such a thing as standards, until video games grow up and get some standards and move beyond sophomo
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True, but what constitutes "art" is, itself, subjective. I used the 'narrative' example as an easy one (I thought) no one would argue with.
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Not really.
Art is anything that conveys emotion from the artist to the audience.
-The artist can also serve as the audience. (a diary)
-If there is no emotion, it's not art. (a police log)
-If the emotion does not penetrate the audience, it's not art. (elevator music)
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You missed the bit about about art being a conveyance of emotion. An open grave may trigger an emotional reaction in a person, but that's not art, it's a hole in the ground. A photo of an open grave that can convey the photographer's emotions to an audience is art.
Art must instill emotion, not simply incite.
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Almost, but not quite...
"Good art must instill emotion, not simply incite."
There you go. Perfect.
Just being 'art' doesn't make it 'good'. There's plenty of terrible art - but it's still art. If a piece of music doesn't instill emotion in you, is it then not music? If an open grave instills emotion in you, it it then art?
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That said, what defines "art" is subjective. Is art 'art' regardless of popular belief? Is something 'art' because a person believes it to be art, or is art 'art' regardless? Must are evoke emotion, or is that simply a by-product of some art? If something is 'art' is it art to everyone, or just those that beli
Well... (Score:2)
Of course video games are art (Score:2)
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Number of pages? Budget? (Score:4, Insightful)
Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art (Score:2, Insightful)
The definition of art, for example, does not quite cover things like the gameplay design, the AI, and the game mechanics. Can anyone here actually consider the game Pong as art?
The word 'art' is all about aesthetic prope
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Feel free to replace the word 'art' with paintings, movies, statues, sculptures, etc.
Art is subjective. This whole question is pointless.
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Just because a movie can be art, doesn't mean that moving pictures => art. Is an infomercial art? Is a self-help book literature? What about a cooking book or a chemical catalogue?
And yet we could create art in the shape of infomercials, and literature in the guise of recipe books.
The definition of art does not quite cover film development, typography or grammar for that matter. But w
I completely disagree. (Score:3, Interesting)
It is that achieves a satisfactory experience through the user's experience that is much more than one would expect when looking at all the pieces individually (sound, graphics, interface).
You could have a massively hyped game with great individual assets (think Daikatana), yet the composition and feedback loop with the user is decidedly lacking. Some character models could be very artistic, but the whole combined product is forced; dead.
Pong is the
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I consider games to be art because the design goals of them are to entertain, not to be useful. Pong is for having fun, not for demonstrating how balls bounce off surfaces.
Penny Arcade (Score:3, Informative)
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Almost always not art. (Score:2)
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Art is about expression of the self, about sharing an emotional experience with someone else. Movies, music, paintings and poems express a broad range of emotions and often in a profound manner.
Considering that games usually always contain "movies", music, "paintings" (ie hand-drawn or modeled artwork), and sometimes even poetry, it's hard to understand your objection. Not only do I think that video games fit your own definition of art, but also that your definition of art is too limited to really defi
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That is true of every single artistic medium. With movies, music, painting, poems, etc., you are simply cherry-picking the ageless masterpieces and forgetting the massive flood of raw sewage they float on.
Half Life 2 (Score:2)
What is Art? (Score:2)
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Sounds like Jean Baudrillard's take to:
Art is obviously subjective (Score:2, Interesting)
Also, there is an aspect of timelessness to art. Quoting Ebert (and his main argument)
The video game age is very young, and this perception
Can be but aren't. (Score:2)
That's the problem: Games could be art. And games that would be art, would likely be good games (unless you screw up the gameplay/interface part). But unfortunately: 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events - this is not art. This is craft, and a low craft. Industry. Production. Manufacturing.
Yeah, the "entertainment industry" is just that. Industry. Recent discussion about Episode 1 commentary [slashdot.org] was just about that - good plot well blending with the gameplay and th
Is $THING art? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've often considered that the thing which is most functional for its purpose is the best art. Think "chair." Four legs, seat, back. A perfect representation of "that upon which people sit," and you can actually sit on it.
So let's think about videogames. Are they art? Is Monopoly (the board game) art? Is chess? Is a paper airplane? Is masturbation? All these things entertain us, in one form or another.
Fact is, whether or not $THING is art is wholly subjective, depending on the person making the determination. Beyond that, there's whether or not $THING (which may or may not be art) is good art or bad art.
That's a whole other discussion.
Re: $THING = art based on its cost (Score:2)
Courts typically determine if something is "art" based on its cost. If $thing costs more than its utilitarian value, then its art. For instance, if $thing = Wal-mart chair, and if someone will pay me substantially more for the Wal-mart chair then it sells for at Wal-mart, $thing is art and I'm an artist.
The best real-world example I have found is a woman in NYC who has sex with men on videotape f
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I can see that as being a legal definition of "art." Following that, the question "Is $THING art?" is unanswerable, being that no context is stated. "Is $THING legally art?" is a question that can be far more easily debated, as would be "Is $THING relatively art?" (example: a sculpture is art, because there are a wide variety of similar historical examples which are almost uni
Define: art (Score:4, Interesting)
Art: The products of human creativity. (Source [princeton.edu])
Art: The expression of creativity or imagination, or both. (Source [wikipedia.org])
Art: The formal expression of a conceived image or imagined conception in terms of a given medium. (Source [k12.ca.us])
With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.
Re:Define: art (Score:4, Insightful)
Mankind has been try to define art for thousands of years, and, you know, I'm not sure you quite solved it with three links and a few sentences.
More Sport than Art (Score:2)
Zappa's View (Score:2)
Art is anything that somebody intentionally makes and then points at and says, "that's art."
That's it.
Are movies art? (Score:2)
Now how about 'Ace Ventura: Pet Detective'?
Interaction vs Art (Score:2)
So how does this apply to other outlets of human creation... like patents or copyrights?
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We'd need to know what the heck "art" is first. (Score:2)
being driven by sales (Score:2)
While I believe the creating process of a video games to be very close to what we'd call "art", and game design usually probably needs or involves a lot of creative thinking and production, I won't ever call any production process being driven by sales goals "art". It's just that, a production process, like factories do. Like parfume companies do, like cloth companies do. They produce products that are likely to be paid for by the masses in order to gain profit. Nothi
Stupid Distinction (Score:2)
citizen kane (Score:2)
Games as art (Score:2)
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That could be said for a lot of art that's being called 'art'. It's not so clearly defined, unfortunately. I am, however, inclined to call something that expresses a view of the world (like GTA or even V for Vendetta) art.
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Oh please. Go play classics such as Loom, Monkey Island, Ico, Ultima 7, and tell me there is no self-expression or critical thinking skills there.
Art is anything that creates an response , either emotionaly or intellectually, over it.
Since games _contain_ art (audio, video, etc) that makes them art. QED.
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Game Design is about the unholy trinity: Abstraction, Logicalness/Consistenc