Having once made the statement above, I have declined all opportunities to enlarge upon it or defend it. That seemed to be a fool's errand, especially given the volume of messages I receive urging me to play this game or that and recant the error of my ways. Nevertheless, I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art. Perhaps it is foolish of me to say "never," because never, as Rick Wakeman informs us, is a long, long time. Let me just say that no video gamer now living will survive long enough to experience the medium as an art form.
What stirs me to return to the subject? I was urged by a reader, Mark Johns, to consider a video of a TED talk given at USC by Kellee Santiago, a designer and producer of video games. I did so. I warmed to Santiago immediately. She is bright, confident, persuasive. But she is mistaken.
I propose to take an unfair advantage. She spoke extemporaneously. I have the luxury of responding after consideration. If you want to follow along, I urge you to watch her talk, which is embedded below. It's only 15 minutes long, and she makes the time pass quickly.
She begins by saying video games "already ARE art." Yet she concedes that I was correct when I wrote, "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets." To which I could have added painters, composers, and so on, but my point is clear.
Then she shows a slide of a prehistoric cave painting, calling it "kind of chicken scratches on walls," and contrasts it with Michelangelo's ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Her point is that while video games may be closer to the chicken scratch end of the spectrum, I am foolish to assume they will not evolve.
She then says speech began as a form of warning, and writing as a form of bookkeeping, but they evolved into storytelling and song. Actually, speech probably evolved into a form of storytelling and song long before writing was developed. And cave paintings were a form of storytelling, perhaps of religion, and certainly of the creation of beauty from those chicken-scratches Werner Herzog is even now filming in 3-D.
Herzog believes, in fact, that the paintings on the wall of the Cave of Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc in Southern France should only be looked at in the context of the shadows cast on those dark walls by the fires built behind the artists, which suggests the cave paintings, their materials of charcoal and ochre and all that went into them were the fruition of a long gestation, not the beginning of something--and that the artists were enormously gifted. They were great artists at that time, geniuses with nothing to build on, and were not in the process of becoming Michelangelo or anyone else. Any gifted artist will tell you how much he admires the "line" of those prehistoric drawers in the dark, and with what economy and wit they evoked the animals they lived among.
Santiago concedes that chess, football, baseball and even mah jong cannot be art, however elegant their rules. I agree. But of course that depends on the definition of art. She says the most articulate definition of art she's found is the one in Wikipedia: "Art is the process of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions." This is an intriguing definition, although as a chess player I might argue that my game fits the definition.
Plato, via Aristotle, believed art should be defined as the imitation of nature. Seneca and Cicero essentially agreed. Wikipedia believes "Games are distinct from work, which is usually carried out for remuneration, and from art, which is more concerned with the expression of ideas...Key components of games are goals, rules, challenge, and interaction."
But we could play all day with definitions, and find exceptions to every one. For example, I tend to think of art as usually the creation of one artist. Yet a cathedral is the work of many, and is it not art? One could think of it as countless individual works of art unified by a common purpose. Is not a tribal dance an artwork, yet the collaboration of a community? Yes, but it reflects the work of individual choreographers. Everybody didn't start dancing all at once.
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
She quotes Robert McKee's definition of good writing as "being motivated by a desire to touch the audience." This is not a useful definition, because a great deal of bad writing is also motivated by the same desire. I might argue that the novels of Cormac McCarthy are so motivated, and Nicholas Sparks would argue that his novels are so motivated. But when I say McCarthy is "better" than Sparks and that his novels are artworks, that is a subjective judgment, made on the basis of my taste (which I would argue is better than the taste of anyone who prefers Sparks).
Santiago now phrases this in her terms: "Art is a way of communicating ideas to an audience in a way that the audience finds engaging." Yet what ideas are contained in Stravinsky, Picasso, "Night of the Hunter," "Persona," "Waiting for Godot," "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock?" Oh, you can perform an exegesis or a paraphrase, but then you are creating your own art object from the materials at hand.
Kellee Santiago has arrived at this point lacking a convincing definition of art. But is Plato's any better? Does art grow better the more it imitates nature? My notion is that it grows better the more it improves or alters nature through an passage through what we might call the artist's soul, or vision. Countless artists have drawn countless nudes. They are all working from nature. Some of there paintings are masterpieces, most are very bad indeed. How do we tell the difference? We know. It is a matter, yes, of taste.
Santiago now supplies samples of a video game named "Waco Resurrection" (above), in which the player, as David Koresh, defends his Branch Davidian compound against FBI agents. The graphics show the protagonist exchanging gunfire with agents according to the rules of the game. Although the player must don a Koresh mask and inspire his followers to play, the game looks from her samples like one more brainless shooting-gallery.
"Waco Resurrection" may indeed be a great game, but as potential art it still hasn't reached the level of chicken scratches, She defends the game not as a record of what happened at Waco, but "as how we feel happened in our culture and society." Having seen the 1997 documentary "Waco: The Rules of Engagement," I would in contrast award the game a Fail in this category. The documentary made an enormous appeal to my senses and emotions, although I am not proposing it as art.
Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.
We come to Example 3, "Flower" (above). A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is "about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural." Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn't say. Do you win if you're the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?
These three are just a small selection of games, she says, "that crossed that boundary into artistic expression." IMHO, that boundary remains resolutely uncrossed. "Braid" has had a "great market impact," she says, and "was the top-downloaded game on XBox Live Arcade." All of these games have received "critical acclaim."
Now she shows stills from early silent films such as George Melies' "A Voyage to the Moon" (1902), which were "equally simplistic." Obviously, I'm hopelessly handicapped because of my love of cinema, but Melies seems to me vastly more advanced than her three modern video games. He has limited technical resources, but superior artistry and imagination.
These days, she says, "grown-up gamers" hope for games that reach higher levels of "joy, or of ecstasy....catharsis." These games (which she believes are already being made) "are being rewarded by audiences by high sales figures." The only way I could experience joy or ecstasy from her games would be through profit participation.
The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic. I repeat: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."
Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form. Nor did Shi Hua Chen, winner of the $500,000 World Series of Mah Jong in 2009. Why aren't gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves? They have my blessing, not that they care.
Do they require validation? In defending their gaming against parents, spouses, children, partners, co-workers or other critics, do they want to be able to look up from the screen and explain, "I'm studying a great form of art?" Then let them say it, if it makes them happy.
I allow Sangtiago the last word. Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.
So i Just finished reading this article by Robert Ebert, who argues that video games can not, and will never be, an art form.
One of his main points is that the difference between art and games is "you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome," and when it doesn't have points or rules, then it ceases to be a game and turns into a representation of a story or novel.
For some reason, probably because my viewpoint on this subject is limited, i cannot agree with him. The games that he was referencing were less on the artistic side (save for flower, but that is my opinion), whereas there are many games out there that i would personally consider artistic due to factors such as graphics and overall story.
What do you guys think? Are video games/Can video games be a form of art?
The guy is a dinosaur. He is from a certain era, and he will never be able to grasp certain things. He has probably never even played a video game in his life.
On April 25 2010 00:01 Brad wrote: The guy is a dinosaur. He is from a certain era, and he will never be able to grasp certain things. He has probably never even played a video game in his life.
Yeah, from the way that he wrote this, it seems like he never has played a video game. He went off examples from the games mentioned in that presentation, and no other games.
On April 24 2010 23:56 TwilightStar wrote: Lol...?
I stopped reading after he agreed chess is not an art.
This guy is a pure tard.
Uhm I really dont see chess as art either.
But the thing is, except for the "winning" argument, Ebert doesn't really have any objective arguments at all. He just says that the movies are more advanced in artistry, and these games are pathetic. Great. Way too make a good argument.
Is music considered art? Yes. Are drawings considered art? Yes.
Well guess what, video games got both of these and a whole lot more. Also there's already games that are not about winning. Ever heard of a Sandbox mode for example? But Mr. Ebert doesnt know that because he never played a video game.
I think the man's a pretty decent movie critic, but I don't get why anyone would talk about something he knows nothing about.
Braid is awesome btw., really one video game that I would consider art.
I'll have to agree to his point that a game is not art, because it follows guidelines that are not in touch with what defines art. That being said, art is a major part of games, design-wise, story-wise and i'm sure some programmers would call their script structuring art as well. But anyhow, my point is, a game is far more than "just" art, as it encompasses far more than a piece of art would.
That's just stupid. Anything done well enough can be art. Broken Sword and the Last Express are art in the same way as the Maltese Falcon and Gosford Park, and he gave both of them 4 stars. He's probably somewhat warped cause he's old and seen so many terrible video game to movie conversions.
He doesn't seem to acknowledge that certain games go for being immersive rather than challenging.
EDIT: Oh, and I probably would consider Chess art. But maybe that's just me.
My art teacher used to say that art is anything we do to make expressions tangible (It sounded more "pro"). I think that is one of the best and most memorable things I've learned in highschool, lol. So I do think games can be works of art.
A long time ago I thought about this and came to the conclusion that video games can synthesize different artistic mediums and have many art-like qualities, but they are not really art. Then again, "What is art?" is not really that important of a question or distinction IMHO.
I don't feel like elaborating much more, so I'm going to quote a "plot/story guide" on ICO by PeterEliot. Everybody is mentioning SoC, but really ICO would be a better example for anyone taking up the "games as art" argument. It's an interesting perspective from someone who likes video games and understands art in a way that most readers probably do not. For the most part, I would agree with his claims. Full guide is here. Section three I'm quoting below.
And with that I am done. I hope I have in some way added to your enjoyment of the game. If you came to this exercise thinking that ICO, despite its rich atmosphere, is rather thin in story, and I have helped you change that opinion, I should deem the exercise a success and be most content. I wish however to warn you against the opposite error. That is, I don't want you to get the idea--not from me anyhow--that this unassuming fairy tale is a masterpiece of Shakespearian proportions. Throughout the exercise I have invoked great works of literature to illustrate some aspects of the game, but the comparisons were to show how ICO draws from similar principles, and never to suggest that its merits rival those masterworks'. *For its medium* ICO is very unique, very sophisticated, and I wish there were more games like it. I have not seen a video game tell a story so skillfully and seamlessly. Thus ICO's brilliance as a work of fiction is, to a fair extent, comparative--it shines because the storytelling in other games is so dull. I have scrutinized it as I have never scrutinized another game because it is the only game I know that even warrants that sort of treatment. Before ICO, I had seen stories in games that were entertaining as diversions, but they never made me want to study what made them entertaining. They did not have enough for a study, unless one meant to study bad storytelling.
Now, just about every person who is deep into gaming seems to believe that video game is as competent an art form as any. If he is a fan of ICO, he may point to it as his proof. Some people who share a similar view have even paid *me* compliments along the line of "I'm glad someone is finally treating video games with respect they deserve" or "It's great that you take your games so seriously." I am not and I do not. My regard for ICO is a very poor indicator of my opinions on video games in general. I think most video games, even those that boast beautiful visuals and grand epic themes, are severely awkward as art works--lacking any kind of unifying mandate apart from their all-important pursuit of "fun," which seems to me no more artistic than baseball or poker. I have often heard video games validated as art in words like these: "Video gaming is art because any creative human activities, especially those not essential to the immediate necessities of survival, can find artistic expression. Why should games be any different?" And that is right of course. But I wonder if we are asking the right question to begin with. By the most generous definition of art we are almost constantly surrounded by art and doing things with artistic implications. Even a silly doodle scribbled in a notebook during a boring lecture counts as art. But surely we knew this already? Surely the question we ought to be considering is not "Is it art?" but rather "Is it good art?" Let me recast the question in a different mold. None will deny that poetry is an art, and a much respected art. But is there such a thing as bad poetry? Of course there is. In fact an enormous portion of it is unreadable. So when we declare poetry an art form we are not really paying poetry as a whole any compliment. Like most creations art can be wonderful or terrible or merely mediocre.
And that is my problem with all this heated debate over whether video games constitute an art form. People speak as if they were bestowing some great honor upon games by calling them art. But art is a value-neutral term. When we say "This pottery is a work of art" we are not praising the pottery; we are stating a fact. The pottery may be a sublime work of art, or it may be an execrable work of art. Of course, should we be moved to exclaim "My goodness, this pottery is a work of art!" then we most certainly are praising it. But that is only because we are all along meaning to say it is a *good* work of art. We have merely left "good" unspoken--unspoken but clearly implied by the tone and the context.
The game industry has not produced many--if any--sublime works of art or it would not be struggling so much for respectability. Literature and music are better received as art forms because those fields have produced across centuries numberless masterworks whose enduring beauty and relevance have been tested and proven; works which allow the audience into the profoundest depth of the human genius. Until video games do the same, and I am not sure it will happen, the genre will continue to suffer the stigma of low-grade entertainment.
Look at popular comics for instance: it has been around for a century and has been far more successful than video games in cultivating its distinct brand of artistic integrity, but it fares only slightly better in finding acceptance as a meaningful art form. Recent popular comic artists have tried to improve its reputation by a number of tactics--rendering superhero comics in classic media like oil and pastel (some examples of which are quite skilled), injecting philosophical and social commentary into the drama, waiving two-dimensional heroes and villains in favor of rounded characters, shifting from flagrant optimism to increasingly dark and "mature" outlooks, and so on. All these have made popular comics more interesting, but where earning greater artistic validation for the genre is concerned they were more or less doomed to failure from the beginning. A tragic, complex, philosophical, photorealistically rendered BATMAN is still BATMAN--the exploits of a handsome young billionaire who protects the streets of Gotham by nightly donning a skintight bulletproof outfit, a cape and a mask with fake horns so he can go about manually beating up criminals. If there is a difference, it is that this reinvented BATMAN expects the kind of respect which the series' own nature denies, so that where it was merely silly before it is now pretentious. I often perceive the same pretentiousness when a gamer declares his pet title artistic or profound--as if grand pantheistic talks about a planet's life force saves it from being a role- playing game whose goal is to equip your characters for better combat moves, as if cramming a game full of religious and metaphysical allusions makes up for its being similarly crammed full of giant fighting robots and fetching sex symbols, as if turning the story into a treatise on some philosophical theme excuses the poor storytelling.
Some people may object that the flaws listed above do not really fall under the criteria of the so-called gaming art. Gaming art, I have been told by some, is about the ingeniousness of gameplay. I could not understand what this gameplay was and tried looking it up. None of the dictionaries I owned had the word. So I gave up on defining gameplay, but from what I have learned since it has to do with the cleverness, depth, and enjoyableness of the rules that make up the game. Superior gameplay makes the fun more enduring and rewards the skills of the player. Just a few weeks ago I saw a footage of someone completing a whole SUPER MARIO game in a matter of minutes. He did not make a single mistake. He blazed through the levels like a tiny 2-D god, killing all the enemies and getting all the points and making all the jumps at exactly the right times and not slipping or getting hit even once. It was like seeing a Karate master who so clearly saw through the opponent's moves that he was impermeable to them. It was impressive. So that's what those SUPER MARIO fans were always telling me about, I thought. (I had played the game myself and knew how hard it was.) I wondered if this might be what they mean by gaming art, and if this sort of gameplay indeed has artistic merits.
To explain the answer I came to, I want us to consider an illustration that may at first seem odd. I want us to consider ballet and gymnastics. Both words call to the mind the image of petite graceful young ladies in form-fitting attires. Both disciplines use the human body as the vehicle of their ideals. Both a ballerina and a gymnast spend year after year in rigorous training to achieve the utmost grace and efficiency of movement. Both must possess passion and commitment as well as talent in prodigious degrees if they are to succeed. We call ballet an art and categorize gymnastics under athletics. Now would you not say this is a most unfair distinction? What doe the gymnast lack against the ballerina that she is labeled an athlete but not an artist? Does she lack training, competence, zeal, even beauty? No; she uses the same medium for her skills and works just as hard if not harder. In fact if you are at all like me you probably find gymnastics much more spectacular than ballet. So why the distinction?
The reason is in the nature of the disciplines. Ballet pursues beauty, while gymnastics aims at nimbleness. Physical agility of course contains an element of beauty. Naturally some gymnastic competitions include artistic dimension as a part of the evaluation criteria. But every gymnast understands that her work is first about pushing the body to the limits of agility and second about expressing beauty. Consequently we say, and rightly, that the gymnast *demonstrates* and the ballerina *performs*. A gymnastic demonstration can and should have an artistic aspect, but that is not where its focus lies. If by gaming art we mean no more than a very clever and efficient way of yielding pleasure, a kind of mental gymnastics as demonstrated by the Super Mario expert--well, that may or may not be art, but one thing is for sure: if it is art, it is a kind of art that will be taken seriously by none save its own devotees. Any art in SUPER MARIO or TETRIS, or even in go or chess, is doomed to enjoy no recognition outside their circles of fans, however global those circles may be. For it is the mark of the great arts to be *relevant* to some essential aspect of what it means to be human. That is why they always find a broad audience to acknowledge, even if they do not fully appreciate, their value. I appreciate ICO because, much more than any video games I know, I find it full of that worthwhile and pleasurable relevance which I have found in good literature, music and paintings. But a gamer who praises the art of ICO, or the art of any other titles for that matter, ought to remember that far superior art of similar kinds abounds outside the field of gaming. Else he may risk the nearsightedness of a child who thinks himself a fine poet because he is versed in nursery rhymes.
There are plenty in which you can't. Dwarf Fortress is amazing, but there is no victory. You simply watch your kingdom destroy itself and fall, as all empires do.
Also, in Starcraft you never "win" on the progamer scene. All the players have to keep improving and playing creatively to win. Even the bonjwa have fallen from their status.
This guy's writing is nothing but biased and angry. The overemotional and confrontational style just sounds like the usual internet troll trying to get attention.
This article is stupid, don't even know what was this guy's point... Flaming, bashing and his hate towards games, that's all i saw from his "article", no reasonable arguments at all.
Even though that is true that games are not an art form, why should they be? They are "sportlike", sport is not an art, it is competitive and requires other set of skills than art. Computer graphics, music (aka components of game) may be an art (and quite often are) but why would one ever consider looking at games as an art
What do we mean when we call games art? That the game designer creates a work of art to be appreciated by the gamer? That the gamer creates art when he plays? Any good definition of art is insanely broad, and often will afford even simple things like placing gateways in any pattern at all to be artistic, and likewise, arranging game rules and elements in any particular way.
The question is not whether games are art in a broad sense or not, but whether you, as a person, think they are great art or not. It makes about as much sense to argue about whether music is better than painting or not. Obviously the guy who wrote that article thinks that nothing about games is as artistic as the well known and well established arts, but it's nothing more than an opinion. So it's ok, he can hold that opinion, and we can hold ours, whatever it may be.
Personally I think that games can have artistic merit, but that it is mostly irrelevant.. Because all of us at teamliquid know that games are about WINNING, not having fun, and art is generally incompatible with that kind of competition. When progamers place buildings they don't often draw flowers or interesting patterns with them, they space them for optimum movement and close packing because it will increase their chance to win the game.
As far as game developers doing art, I think most of them that have tried did a pretty lousy job, and I'm not surprised, because they are game developers, not artists. A common example of an "art game" is Braid, and I won't say that Braid is bad, because I think that for the audience it targets, it's a really nice game. I will however say that the claimed artistic side of it.. just isn't there. Perhaps the CLAIM that an ordinary game like Braid is a work of art can be considered a great work of art itself, but not the game alone, in my opinion.
A real art game would be seem like a novelty to 99% of gamers, it probably wouldn't be very fun. It sure as hell wouldn't be "flower" either.
Flower is another one of those "the claim is the art" things, except that this time the artistic claim is that flower is a game and not a demoscene.
Pat on the back to the first person to provide an objective definition of art! W/O that definition, art is whatever you say it is -- that is, art is whatever anyone says it is.
I think video games can be an art form, but it's still in a very very early state.
Cinema started to be really acknowledged as an art form only in the 50's, with the french New Wave. There's many movies with artistic value made in the 20's, 30's, 40's, but the vast majority of them were made for pure entertainment, nothing else.
Today, the game industry is pretty much the equivalent of the 20's in cinema. Braid would be Metropolis, we're still waiting for Citizen Kane.
videogames are art the same way movies are art, they use a combination of several skills some artistic some not (like a movie) and create a final product that is a entertainment experience for the user (like a movie) and we consider movies artistic
just define art as something like "constructed or arranged sensory experiences that induce emotional impact and/or deep thoughts" and then go play any game with an immersive story, and there you go.
I think there are certain ways of defining the word "art" that would even include games with the strategic depth of chess/go/sc. you sometimes hear people talk the interplay between players in these sorts of games as a "dance," even.
On April 24 2010 23:52 blahman3344 wrote: One of his main points is that the difference between art and games is "you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome," and when it doesn't have points or rules, then it ceases to be a game and turns into a representation of a story or novel.
I sort of half-agree with the jist of Ebert's article, but this bit is not necessarily true.
The Endless Forest is an art game (or is it?) where there aren't any goals or points. And there isn't a story, besides whatever your own imagination can come up with. There are, however, activities, bits of interaction, things to explore much like a video game. You could say it's not technically a 'game', and that's probably true since it isn't goal-based... but what else would you call it besides a "video game"? An "Interactive artwork"? Well, that's not very specific, there are thousands of interactive art installations that are nothing like this at all. This is much more closer to a game of counterstrike than most interactive art...
Gravitation is undeniably a video game because there are rules and goals... but all of those rules and goals and constraints are symbolic of actual human emotion. The structure of the game tells you something personal about the artist and you can empathize/sympathize with him. I won't get too specific because you should play it and see, it's really short and a quick download.
if you make a new build order and successfully execute it, you have created something new and it can be considered art in my opinion. but if you just copy what other people do over and over again until you've perfected it, that's cool but it isn't art.
you know, oscar wilde said: "all art is quite useless"
or, in other words, anything that isn't utilitarian or doesn't provide some sort of function can qualify as art, that art has to be useless in a practical sense or otherwise it is something else
i've been thinking about that--would a newspaper photograph be art? it's an expression of something, but its purpose of creation is to be useful to a newspaper, so maybe not. would a video game be art? if its function is just entertainment, you could argue that all entertainment is useless to a large degree, and since so much work is spent on appearance/aesthetic/story (did i really just say modern video games spend a lot of time on story), i guess that would classify it as art.
what ebert is doing is making a pretty senseless delineation between art and "high art", which is never going to appeal to any sort of objective understanding, as well as considering player involvement in the experience as opposed to the medium, which seems a bit unfair
that said, i kind of like that ebert said it, if only because it might've made developers work harder to create a game that achieves more artistically
value judgments of art are never objective--anyone can call something good or bad, that's fine. if ebert doesn't think games are good art, no problem, but they seem almost certainly to be art to me.
I have to disagree with Ebert. I respect the man extremely well, and he is very intelligent, but I simply have to disagree. Take a game like Silent Hill 2 or 3 for example - this game has more symbolism ( http://www.translatedmemories.com/ ) then most movies (which of course alone doesn't make it art) and is very well put together and contains a strong atmosphere with an intelligent pacing, and is able to strike emotions extremely well. Since you can interpret this game in several ways, I consider it a form of art, though in a different sense that other art forms are interpreted (such as how movies are viewed differently from a painting, for example). I imagine movies at some point weren't considered art by the mainstream (though, i could be wrong).
warcraft and starcraft have numerous of concept art during their development, and then the units were modeled based on those arts. a game cannot happen without good artists
even those games based on animes are a form of art, because anime is based on manga, and manga is drawn by japanese artists
and there are games that are neverending and you will be playing forever if you dont quit, like WOW, WOW is a game that you beat up other players, but you cant win the game, eventually, the game will "win" you (you dont feel like playing it anymore)
His reason for dismissing video games as an art form is that you can win?
I would counter that by saying that the point of a video game is not to win. I can play tic-tac-toe against third graders and win all I want, but I play video games to give me an experience. An experience can consist of a philosophy, feeling, or an emotion consistent with what the game is designed to portray rather than just the objective of winning.
People also mention that video games are just a combination of art forms and that video games are defined by their inert objective rather than the material that makes them up. I argue that movies are just a game with the simple objective of reaching the end. You can't loose, but no one plays a video game to lose, you play it to get through to the end and experience the game itself. Just because I twiddle my thumbs while I experience something doesn't make it any less fantastic and amazing. Surely you don't watch a movie to experience different individual media aspects, why can't video games be considered art if movies are.
The definition of art is loose, but that doesn't change the fact that out of touch people like to degrade and defame a growing phenomena that they don't quite understand.
I allow Sangtiago the last word. Toward the end of her presentation, she shows a visual with six circles, which represent, I gather, the components now forming for her brave new world of video games as art. The circles are labeled: Development, Finance, Publishing, Marketing, Education, and Executive Management. I rest my case.
Its also worth of making a counter point to this statement that Ebert states as "resting his case". Apparently his claim is that videogames are just simply a form of corporations making money, and that videogames are a business - Which to a lot of cases (of course indie games are different) is true. However, the same damn thing can be said about movies - they are in many ways made to make money. But in many ways, they are a compromise between the artistic direction and message being sent to the viewer, be it an argument or a spectacle or just a way to entertain the viewer, and a way to bring in large profits (coughavatarcoughcough). Unless Ebert doesn't believe movies aren't an art form (which i know he does), he's a hypocrite.
O, this is bad news. Since I wanted to be an artist but I suck at drawing, I picked up video games as a way to creatively express myself and make beautiful virtual art. It feels wrong to even talk about the weird parameters the guy uses to categorize what can be an "art form," when I can't for the life of me understand why anyone would care in the first place if games were considered an "art form." Basketball isn't a sport because it involves throwing something through a hoop, what other sports involve that!? I don't see how the ability to "win" can stop something from being an "art form" just because others don't have have that characteristic.
The answer to whether or not video games are art depends completely on what exactly it is that you would define as "art"... Personally, I feel that they can be simply because they are products that evoke emotional responses through visual, audio, and story elements (no different from a movie) according to what the developers want to express.
On April 25 2010 03:33 lOvOlUNiMEDiA wrote: Pat on the back to the first person to provide an objective definition of art! W/O that definition, art is whatever you say it is -- that is, art is whatever anyone says it is.
Art is a work created for the sake of expressing/communicating ideas and emotions to an audience, thereby opening a two-way dialogue between artist and observer.
In short, Ebert is a moron for saying video games are not art. Maybe a run-of-the-mill senseless shooter game would not qualify as one, but any great game is a work of art. Metal Gear Solid Series, Final Fantasy series, Planescape Torment, etc. Every one of these games sought to convey a message, feeling, experience, etc to their gamers and evoked a great deal of two-way communication. To say people who play games do not react and respond to the stories is ridiculous.
Just because you can "win" a game, doesn't disqualify it as art. Winning a Final Fantasy game doesn't mean you "got" everything the game was about. Just as winning Xenogears doesn't mean you suddenly understand all the symbolism/metaphors involved in the story/characters.
Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.
Wow, this is such skewed and biased interpretation of braid. Mr. Epert should at least fucking trying playing Braid before he cites it as a failure at art. The man should just stick to film.
The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic.
What kind of fucking moron reviews a game without playing it? Somebody needs to sit him down and force him to play this shit or shut up.
Okay, attempting to define 'art': The word itself comes from the Latin root 'ars' meaning a skill, craft or art. We still use the word art in this same context in English, such as in "state of the art", "martial arts" and "artisan". In essence, playing a video game (which I think we can all agree is a skill, albeit probably not a very useful one) can be considered an art form. Video games also definitely contain "art" (graphics/music/possibly storyline).
However, there is that more modern meaning to the word "art", which sort of defies definition. What is the purpose of this art? Entertainment? Video games provide this. Creativity? Some video games provide this. Intellectual stimulation? Not many video games do, but then again a lot of "art" doesn't do this either.The fact is art means different things to different people, and it seems that as long as one group of people consider something art, then it is. So I guess video games are art.
Games are not art. The article is retarded and as biased as 99% of the response here. Maybe I will explain myself after a good night of sleep. In one line. Video Games are equivalent to Games or sport. Chess or Soccer are not art, video games are not art.
On April 26 2010 09:04 0x64 wrote: Games are not art. The article is retarded and as biased as 99% of the response here. Maybe I will explain myself after a good night of sleep. In one line. Video Games are equivalent to Games or sport. Chess or Soccer are not art, video games are not art.
I will be interested to hear your explanation. Considering the fact that there are so many different types of video games, I find it difficult to swallow such an all-encompassing statement. Sure you could make an argument that a Counterstrike match may not be art, but I would be interested in why you wouldn't believe that a game like God of War isn't.
On April 26 2010 09:04 0x64 wrote: Games are not art. The article is retarded and as biased as 99% of the response here. Maybe I will explain myself after a good night of sleep. In one line. Video Games are equivalent to Games or sport. Chess or Soccer are not art, video games are not art.
I will be interested to hear your explanation. Considering the fact that there are so many different types of video games, I find it difficult to swallow such an all-encompassing statement. Sure you could make an argument that a Counterstrike match may not be art, but I would be interested in why you wouldn't believe that a game like God of War isn't.
The argument that Ebert is making is something a lot of people are misunderstanding.
Ebert is saying the game system is not an art, there is no expression. The system of pressing square for quick attack, the system of immortals hardcountering roaches, the system of the rules is not an art.
This can leave room for the fact that the story, the ART direction, the soundtrack - those can be art. However, the game of chess and the chessboard is not art - it's the player who expresses himself through the decisions and his strategy is what comes off as art.
This is failing to realize that the game system itself is the creation and expression of its developers. Making music with a guitar is art, but so the guitar itself due to the creative labor behind it. Ebert's argument runs under the assumption that the game is something people work within without taking into account the fact that the game itself is the product of someone's work.
Does it have to be an art to be meaningful? I never thought of videogames as artistic works, yet that never stopped me from enjoying them. The fact that this guy says that games can't be art doesn't go farther than evoking a "so what?" from me.
Oh well Catch]22 said it earlier. The guy in the article is just a troll.
Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.
Wow, this is such skewed and biased interpretation of braid. Mr. Epert should at least fucking trying playing Braid before he cites it as a failure at art. The man should just stick to film.
The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic.
What kind of fucking moron reviews a game without playing it? Somebody needs to sit him down and force him to play this shit or shut up.
Whoa, criticizing people for reviewing stuff without trying it? Are you aware of the forum you're on?
cannot understand why a film critic can't see the art in video games...however Art is a hard subject to talk about but in this case I see video games as a form of installation art. you interact with it and the mediums can be anything in technology.
First of all, I think it's the experience that should be compared, the experience of playing a game versus other forms of expression, as opposed to the creation of them. Can playing games games give you the same things, or as good, as other kinds of art?
Videogames are designed to give stimulance to the human brain, in a more strict and controlled way (even if the objective of the game is more towards the free type). Compared to other artforms, it's a rather shallow stimulance, kind of like baby food which comes in baby portions and is easy to swallow. They just fill a void. I love playing games but a game in itself won't make me think anything worthwhile. This isn't to say that it's a waste of time because just having fun is also important.
Arguing about definitions is totally meaningless, but I can see where the guy in the article is coming from.
Edit: I think that the interactive element of games creates a sort tunnelvision, because you always have a task to focus on. This decreases the potential for reflexion which is an important aspect of art. If you take away this, is a game still a game?
On April 25 2010 04:36 Rekrul wrote: this whole discussion is retarded
the definition of art is different person to person
i guess koreans think it can be
real art yo~
If some paint splashed on the canvas or a stool with one broken leg is considered art, why more complex things shouldn't?
But you're right about the definition of art varying incredibly. For me, most things that are considered modern art are just "art". Doesn't mean that for some they're masterpieces without equal.
The primary goal of some video games can be expression -- the creators are expressing something via the game. Art can be interactive. The form that interaction takes can be a game.
honestly I have a pretty low standard for art and I believe there's pretty much an art to everything people do.
in terms of "high art," with things such as music, film, paintings, etc I think videogames fit in. It's just a generation gap. Some games have low artistic quality to them (such as like gears of war or sport games or something) but then that applies to every medium. Videogames have the ability to move people emotionally in ways no other medium can. Sometimes it's only a trickle or a glimmer, but as videogames evolve, they will be able to carry heavier and heavier emotional impact.
I think in time it will be clear that there are clearly different types of games, and sometimes games are just games (like starcraft or battlefield), but there are also games like shadow of the colossus or half-life that are more of "interactive fictional experiences" or something than a game. Honestly when you think about it's quite bizarre that most games have single player story modes AND multiplayer modes.
To sum it up: videogames are art, there's just a large generation gap (much like when film was 1st invented). There are some games (such as SC) that just strive to be games/sports and other games (such as shadow of the colossus) that strive to be stories or experiences.
i believe art is a very easy thin to understand art changes with time even today art has changed art however i believe is something that can last a lifetime and is worth looking at /playing over and over but can videos games be art based on what most time have considered art i believe games are art just due to the things that are art in the old times a art was a painting depicting something graphics are moving paintings so number 1 number 2 is art is a depiction of ones imagination games are created by imagination with people in a studio number 3 art is a depiction of life,nature taking into effect that paintings sometimes are fictional does not games depict life as it would be if those things were actually being involved therefore with those 3 reasons i can honestly say games are art not will be /can be
I believe that in terms of a videogame being art, it is most greatly expressed as the game being the creastion of a "world." Now this obviously varies from between games; the world of the soccer stadium in FIFA to the post apocalyptic american wasteland of Fallout 2. So i think this viewpoint requires a bit more thought, since it doesn't directly apply to all games. I think it applies very well to RPGs, action games, and even RTS's. So I will continue:
The game world is therefore an amalgamation of several elements: characters, histories, stories, places, objects, and actions. The player takes the role of a character at some point in the history of this world. In Starcraft, the world is the galaxy and the history is the intertwining meeting of the three races, and the player plays the role of the Commander (Overmind/Executor) as the story unfolds. The game is then a vehicle for the expression of this world, complete with all elements, in which the player explores, competes, searches, fights, interacts - in which he plays.
Using this description, one metric for measuring the artistic merit of a videogame would be the completeness or richness of a world. Obviously, since art is (largely) subjective, players might disagree on a certain game being "better" than another as a piece of art. However the interactive aspect of videogames confounds this line of view - what if a game had created a thoroughly imaginative, thought provoking, and beautiful world, but had abysmal clunky controls and the player was therefore unable to enjoyably play? A good game will balance all of these elements.
I think a good example of a game as art of the sort i am speaking of is Morrowind. Here we have a hand crafted world, with unconventional environments, a complex story, a hero and villain, and a large variety of places. The game is also resplendent with history and stories, legends, poetry, myth and song that provide the careful in game reader an abundance of material to digest and embrace - were he to take the time to find and read the scores of in-game books. The story is presented but need not be followed: the player is free to go and do what he pleases, within the limitations of his character's development. The world is open, mysterious, and varies from hostile and oppressive ashlands to rolling hills and fields. Yet several flaws in the game, which are perhaps so sore because they are so easily avoided, mar such a creation. The poor dialogue and large absence of voice acting make interaction with characters mundane. The combat system is unintuitive to many, making one of the games primary activities unengaging. The alchemy and enchanting systems are easily abused, turning the player into a demi-god within minutes.
Another issue with games is the limitation of technology. Paint and brush hasn't changed too much for a while, but there is a huge difference in the toolset of the NES and the XBox 360. If games are to be judged as art, there must also be some qualifier that is independent of the technological sophistication of its production. We should be able to compare Super Metroid and ICO regardless of when they were made, much as we can compare Jacson Pollock to DaVinci, were we so inclined.
Anyway i'm rambling now and should probably finish writing my lab report! :p
This argument reminds me of those stickers that stupid art kids slap on everything (garbage cans, bus stops, stuff that's clearly not art) that say 'this is art'.
I highly doubt any of these so called critics/experts have ever completed a game/touched Starcraft. Its easy to see how adults view video games as just being mere puzzles, button smashing and just entertainment. That being said, games like flight simulators, soccer games, mindless violence and playboy mansion XXX should be excluded when actually viewing games as an art form. I dunno, but to me as long as games are able to evoke strong emotions/feelings in the player that was intended by the designers through story telling or etc - that itself is art.
I basically look as art as any sort of expression made through a medium that stimulates our senses and can illicit emotional responses. Something can be art or artistic, and really, I think it depends more on the intention of the creator, but a person can consider something like a video game to be artistic, regardless of if it was intended to be so.
I consider one of the bigger artistic developers to be Shigeru Miyamoto, only because of how he expressed his life through gameplay themes in the games he made, for example, with Zelda being about his love for adventuring as a kid and Pikmin coming about from his love of gardening. Also, he intends to give players an experience he wants to give (which is fun really), not necessarily one that market research tells him he should do (although I doubt that Nintendo ignores market research, because that's kind of dumb). That's really more artistic to me than a lot of games that take on a very strange visual theme or off-norm story, such as Braid or Okami (although I would never criticize a person's view of those games as artistic and I'm presuming that the creators didn't do similar things). That being said, I would consider Shadow of the Colossus art not because of it's visual style (which was just realism), but because of how the game's story and setting were established. It gives a very strong apocalyptic feel, and further emphasizes a great task entrusted on the protagonist, which is to save his beloved by demolishing massive monsters that caused civilization's demise (I think that was the premise, it's been awhile) to presumably rebuild humanity. This entire epic sense of responsibility is only magnified by the fact a deity is watching over you and giving you words to use as guidance to your next task.
But see, that's just how I view these things. Ebert is obviously just not open-minded to games as art. Which is fine, but I don't particularly like how people try to objectively define art. While I did give a definition, it really doesn't matter, because if you feel something is art, it can be art to you, and that's all that matters. I don't see why people get so upset when someone doesn't think of games as art (or anything else as art); that is no sole reason to be playing games. If you are just playing games because they are/could be art, then you really aren't even treating them as art, and doing a disservice to the argument you're making. I can understand if you feel insulted, but someone's opinion isn't something to be insulted over, especially when he gets paid to tell his opinion.
That person who wrote that article is clearly sub-educated in video gaming, therefore for this atrocity against gaming he should be sentenced to play video games for at least 2 years.
If we take a game as a whole - game rules, graphics, music everything joined with a storyline form a homogenic harmonic picture. This is indeed an art.
If we take game rules alone, then it's not that easy to make statements, whether it's art or not. Basketball rules were clearly never considered an art as well as we could say about a lot of video games. However if you make something extraordinary it could be considered an art. For example I could consider an art game to be when the rules are complex enough but simple at the same time while also balanced. But for every rule you may find an exception. And everyone can make his own personal judgements about something as vaguely defined as art.
One thing is for sure - where there is beauty, there is also art present.
The word "art" is highly ambiguous at best and meaningless at worst (much like the word "music"). Not everyone's definition of these words coincide, and neither is there a clear majority view. So Ebert considers games to fall outside his definition of art, and many here disagree because they hold a different definition. There's really nothing to discuss.
Yeah this guy doesn't know what video games are or what Art is.
Has he ever heard of an interactive piece or an installation?
EXAMPLE: Fumito Ueda, the lead game designer of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus, was a Fine art major and specialized in installations.
In fact, he has gotten many of his game ideas from his pieces. Example: one of his installations was literally a sandbox (bigger though!) with an air pump in it, interaction with this pump made it seem like a creature was burrowing through the sand.
I'm looking at a picture. Someone comes and tells me: "This isn't art". He's probably right. This isn't art. The picture doesn't seem to mind though. It's still here. It didn't change. I continue staring. The guy leaves.
the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.
i fail to see how that can't apply to video games, "artists" in general want to have their own cliche and don't like the idea of us impeding upon it
The discussion of whether something qualifies as being art has come up numerous times across centuries of discussion and thought. Art is traditionally associated with the act of creation or recreation of reality, which put it at a fundamentally, and culturally, high level, akin to philosophy.
Around the 1900s art saw a great shift, losing its association with pure principle. Instead it became a representation of ideas and/or social political statements. Rather than existing as a pursuit of an aesthetic principle, it became a means for dissemination of ideology. From then on, art has been applied and fused with many practical applications and its meaning has become more and more of an interpretive definition.
One recurring attribute of art is that it is always closely linked to the presentation or process through which the artist's intent is transmitted. Of course this is not the ONLY concern of the artist, but it is always prominent and is pursued to the fullest without compromising other concerns.
So can video games become art? Well that depends on whether you consider true "art" to be of the pursuit of a principle, or whether you consider "art" to be of a more diluted definition. In any case, I believe that video games can achieve the status of art through a balance of principle, that is, once a video game can fulfill its concerns as a video game (entertainment, marketability, profit) and as art (transmission of artistic intent through presentation), it will have become a work of art.
EPT
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