On the contrary, I feel like the video linked above does a good job of explaining that video games aren't really art and leaves me with a very "Yep, that's how I feel about it and I don't feel like changing my opinion on it" feeling. Certain elements of them might be, such as story or character design, but video games as a whole are products that are developed and publicized with the intention of making profit. Video games are usually made in the state of mind that the group of people who worked on it did their best to make it marketable and to appeal to a wide audience. The goal isn't really to express a vision or anything when it comes to video games. It's to make money.
I'm personally not up for arguing over this topic because it feels like a dumb thing to argue over, but it's not like you people have anything better to do than argue about dumb things or fap to hentai, so have at it!
I'm personally not up for arguing over this topic because it feels like a dumb thing to argue over, but it's not like you people have anything better to do than argue about dumb things or fap to hentai, so have at it!
However much it is my own opinion that video games can be art, the author of that video makes 2 very good points and does back them up really well.
However, I'm of the belief that video games can be art. Not all are, but some can be. However, for myself I do not look at the broad company that markets the game and publishes it, but rather the developers, coders, art designers, story writers, and so on and so forth, that are creating seperate pieces to be woven together into an interactive whole.
Halo comes to mind, and while many may hiss and boo at me for this one, I feel that the guys at Bungie are really passionate about their game. The gameplay matters very little for this actually, but I bring up Halo for a few reasons.
1) the story. Sure there are plenty who don't like it, go ahead have an opinion, however the writers have come up with an expansive universe that goes far beyond the games, and could rival many of the sci-fi books I see on shelves these days. There are stories centering around genetically enhanced super-soldiers. Civilians fleeing from an alien invasion. Religious turmoil and civil war amongst a galactic technology thieving empire. They all come together, all these points of views to make a massive storyline.
2) The music. Martin O'Donnell has his name pretty well known now, because of his work on the Halo games. He writes the music and has it performed, putting his heart into something that will hopefully inspire some sense of emotion in the player.
These are the two largest things that stick out in my mind when it comes to Halo as a video game, and art.
I'll also bring up Gears of War. One of the video's points was the lack of name attached to projects, but Cliffy B (I can't spell his last name, and I'm too arsed damn lazy at the moment to go find it) has his name spattered all across that project. It's his baby. He's made a good story in this series of a hopeless dystopian future. It shows in the music, the art direction, voice acting, hell even the game play has a sense of desperate battle for survival, even if it is amped up with Big budget explosions. I also bring up Gears of War, because I find even the marketing to be artistic. The teaser trailers for all 3 games I like more than many full fledged films (Halo has done similar things with the ODST live action trailer, and the Halo 3 'Landfall' series WETA helped with). They made cinematics specifically for those trailers, rather than doing what most other games do (which is pulling out pieces of cinematics and gameplay), each having their own tone, art direction, and of course excellent music to coincide with the mood presented.
Below are links to some of these videos I referenced.
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- Gears of War "Mad World" trailer
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- Gears of War 2 "Last Day" Trailer
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- Gears of War 3 "Ashes to Ashes" trailer
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- Halo 3: ODST "We are ODST" trailer with translation from Welsh Song and Hungarian dialogue
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- Halo 3 "Landfall". Pretty much a short film directed by the Neil Bloklamp who did District 9 and the ODST trailer linked above.
Re: Are games art? A popular debate that I've recently revisited
Seeing your argument, a popular quote comes to mind:
"Writing on toilet walls is done neither for critical acclaim nor for financial rewards. It is, the purest form of art."
Some of Claude Monet's best paintings come from the period where he focused on making pictures to sell.
I guess for a proper definition of art, that's hard, but I'll try to reason some of my thoughts.
Ok, first off, I'll give you some basic info about my relationship towards art. My great-grandmother taught Picasso pottery. My grandmother has delivered ceramic plates and platters to the Royal family of Norway. My grandfather is a sculptor and painter, his sculptures have won several national rewards. My stepmother works in silver and felt, and is one of the two founders of the FeltUnited internasjonal art project.
That's enough bragging, but my point is that I know a few artists. And I can tell you, that a LOT of what they make, starts as something like: "Oooh, that'd be cool." Then "Oh, what can this symbolize."
Note the order. First aestethic, then meaning.
But does that make it something other than art?
No, it's most definately art.
I can tell you, that from the tears of people looking at the exhibits.
I guess my definition of art is something that stimulates positivecomplicated feelings. I say complicated because a picture of a naked woman getting fucked in several holes may in some cases turn me on, but I wouldn't call some of those pictures art. And I'm aware that a lot of people here probably disagree with that point, 'cause this is a forum dedicated to an hentai artist after all. But in my view, it was his posts down The Spiral that made him an artist.
But even that definition is incomplete. There are plenty of art innstallations around the world that gives you negative thoughts and feelings, and then make you think.
It's interesting that when discussing art, people will never agree, because there's a lot of people that think different things is art.
Some people think a skeleton strung up on cows entrails is art. And others (like me) do not.
But for the people that do think it is art, you cannot well disprove them, because feelings are subjective.
Re: Are games art? A popular debate that I've recently revisited
Games are not art in the same way paint on paper is not always art. But they certainly can be. Even the big names in gaming can show definite artistic elements, though you might not call the entire game art as a whole. The indie scene especially can be frequently artistic though.
(Didn't actually intend to do an "indie art games" post, but these were the ones that came to mind. I might see if I can pick out more examples in mainstream title next.)
I actually only ever played the demo of Braid, but it was instantly obvious how much thought and care went into creating this game. Both in it's style, and the entire theme of the game.
Kyntt is all about exploration and atmosphere. Whilst it can feature highly challenging game play depending on the individual design of each map, there are many worlds created by it's community which are purely for exploring and discovering what lies on the next screen. Nifflas designed Kyntt to be just as much an experience as much as a game.
Minecraft is pure creativity given shape in pixelated blocks. It's art on a programming and design level. The views created by Notch's various map generators can be art in themselves. Players are then free to dig up, reform, refine, and rebuild it in any way they see fit.
(link for big image)
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Touhou is a million beautiful ways to die. If your as bad at the games as me at least. Intricate patterns of death perfectly complemented by music designed for each scene and character. These stills just can't do the full intricate motion of some of the spell cards justice. The way ZUN talks about his games and his thought process while planning them is very much that of an artist. For me, the games certainly match the "stimulates positive complicated feelings" criteria suggested by Wonderboy. When I achieved my first clear of of one of the games without continues and earned the real ending, I sat in stunned shivers for over half an hour listening to the credits music and thinking about life and death before I finally moved. Sounds damned silly I know, but it just had that effect on me.
Re: Are games art? A popular debate that I've recently revisited
Wall 'o text time.
I'm of the opinion that games are, or at least can be art.
Having studied Aesthetics as a Philosophy student, I can offer a little insight into the definition of Art. What we actually studied was why we value art, not what it is, but the two are related because we value art because of what makes it art.
There are all sorts of theories out there of course, but here are three of the biggest:
Art is art because it informs us
Art should portray the truth, or be a convincing or faithful imitation of reality.
Art is art because it expresses emotion
Art is moving, or otherwise captures a mood or feeling.
Art is art because it creates aesthetic pleasure
Art invokes an aesthetic enjoyment of 'form': balance, structure, proportion, harmony, wholeness, etc.
I'm not here to offer support or critique for any of these, though both exist for all 3. But I do think that they can all be applied to games.
Games can inform us, certainly. Whether it's actually useful knowledge or just random trivia, many games contain facts and information about the world. Likewise, they can also be accurate (or at least faithful) representations of reality. COD: Modern Warfare for example. While not being all that accurate in its depiction of real life modern warfare, it certainly contains some elements of reality, and is closer to it than many other games. It would be enough to provide a good understanding of warfare to a person who had never experienced it.
Games are also capable of expressing emotion. If it's done right, touching scenes like a character's death or the reunion of two seperated lovers (if you're into that sort of thing) can invoke the characters' feelings, or at least some kind of feeling, in the player. There are dozens of examples of this, so I won't give any. I'm sure you're all capable of filling in the blanks.
Games can create aesthetic enjoyment, too. Of course, what does and doesn't create aesthetic enjoyment can vary from person to person, but that doesn't mean they won't find it in a game. Avatar got huge amounts of praise for it's CGI. Lots of viewers, we can assume then, experienced aesthetic pleasure from the CGI. Games have CGI too. Uncharted 2 also recieved heavy praise, much of it directed at the CGI. WoW is often praised for it's huge, "awe-inspiring" game world. Again, there are lots of examples.
As for the video Obe linked, from what I can tell the guy was saying that games aren't art because the creator's intent was to make money, and create a commercial product (correct me if I'm wrong here, people.) Well, there are two problems with that. One other theory floating around says that the only reason we value art at all is because we can earn money from it. Again, not offering support or critque, but I'm putting it out there. But more importantly, any attempt to refer to the artist's intentions or state of mind faces an objection known as the 'Intentional Fallacy'. The objection makes two points.
First, it contrasts the public, accessible nature of the art, which we all experience when we play the game, view the painting or listen to the music, with the private nature of the artist's mind. Each of us knows our own minds first hand, in a way that no one else can. Thus, we cannot infer from the artwork the state of mind of the artist. We can never know what they intended when creating the artwork.
Second, it emphasises the distinction between the artwork and the mind of the artist. They are distinct in that it's the artwork we experience, respond to and should be thinking about, not the artist's mind. So the artist's intention is irrelevant to our interpretation and aesthetic response to the work.
The objection concludes that when making judgements about an artwork - interpreting or valuing it, we should do so entirely on the merits of the artwork itself, not in terms of the background which contributed to it's creation.
In which case, we should judge if games are art based on their content, not their creators. And for the reasons stated earlier, games can and do contain elements which would make them art.
Re: Are games art? A popular debate that I've recently revisited
Good arguments Bartnum, however I must point out that Modern Warfare isn't that realistic. For something much closer to Modern Warfare play Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising.
However you also pointed out it could be a good imitation of reality, for those who've not experienced war, Call of Duty would indeed give a little more understanding to the experience.
Re: Are games art? A popular debate that I've recently revisited
Art is a difficult thing to define, and personally I'm willing to leave it up to personal opinion.
If *I* was defining art, though... I'd honestly have to quote one of the less precise supreme court decisions: "I know it when I see it." This, I feel, should be considered a necessarily (if not not sufficient) criteria for determining art.
That is to say, however art is defined, someone familiar with the definition should be able to consider something and place it authoritatively in either the "art" category or the "not art" category. This means that intention and monetary gains can't be part of determining if something is art.
Video games... I can see no reason that video games couldn't be art. I think the easiest way to establish this would be accept two points:
1.) Movies can be art. This one should be reasonably trivial, I don't think anyone seriously argues that movies can't be art. Especially of note here is that while the soundtrack of a movie can be art on its own, it can also be considered as part of the movie as a whole.
2.) A book can be art. Again, arguing that it would be impossible for a novel to be art would be quite unusual.
From the second one, we should further establish that it should be possible for a CYOA story to be art. At the most basic level, one need simply write the same book twice, with the main character making a single different at the climax.
Print the book with instructions to go to page A if you want the main character to make one choice and page B if you want the main character to make the other, and it's a CYOA book. If each novel taken on is own is art, you'd have to do some serious arguing to convince me that it couldn't be art taken as a whole. Once you've established that, a "real" CYOA novel is just doing this several times. It would certainly be extremely difficult to write a novel with dozens of choices where every individual path would qualify as art in its own right, but in principle it would be possible.
And then consider that - on a most basic level - a video game could be considered a series of choices set to video. It's just that you don't explicitly "turn to page A", and of course the total possible number of choices makes rendering all the video in advance unfeasible.
My final point: some have stories, music, and even have visual images designed to be beautiful. Referring back to the "movies" point, while the soundtrack of a game (and the story, and the visuals) could be considered as art separately from the video game as a whole, they should also be able to be considered as but part of a larger work that itself could be considered art.
I would certainly agree that most video games aren't art... but I find it hard to accept that even in principle a video game can't be art.
Video games are usually made in the state of mind that the group of people who worked on it did their best to make it marketable and to appeal to a wide audience. The goal isn't really to express a vision or anything when it comes to video games. It's to make money.
By this definition, Games are not art, Movies are not art, and in fact, most famous "art" isn't art, since during the renaissance, "art" wasn't about having a message or saying something, it was about having a piece of display that showed your wealth.
By your own definition, many of the most famous pieces of art in the world are not "art". Hence, either nothing is art, or video games, even those meant to make money, can be art.
Just to add further insult to your theory. Cave Story, a very beautiful game with many artistic qualifiers, was originally released as freeware, no money intentions to be made. Which makes a game MORE QUALIFIED AS ART, by YOUR definition, than half the stuff in the Louvre.
/ultimateendthread. (based on the original assumption, there's no more discussion)
However, just to be complete in my post and genuinely put this topic to an end in every possible way.
There are all sorts of theories out there of course, but here are three of the biggest:
Art is art because it informs us
Art should portray the truth, or be a convincing or faithful imitation of reality.
Art is art because it expresses emotion
Art is moving, or otherwise captures a mood or feeling.
Art is art because it creates aesthetic pleasure
Art invokes an aesthetic enjoyment of 'form': balance, structure, proportion, harmony, wholeness, etc.
...
The objection concludes that when making judgements about an artwork - interpreting or valuing it, we should do so entirely on the merits of the artwork itself, not in terms of the background which contributed to it's creation.
In which case, we should judge if games are art based on their content, not their creators. And for the reasons stated earlier, games can and do contain elements which would make them art.
No more discussion of Call of Duty or Halo, they're shit on the artistic scale compared to this, and if one game qualifies as art, I've already proven my point.
I'm actually not trolling. Don't shoot the messenger. I just thought the video in the op was pretty thought provoking and well thought out. I even claimed that I didn't care to argue about something like this, I just gave a bit of a summary of what cirrus said in that video.
protip if I'm trolling my messages tend to lack caps and periods not to mention I never ever ever back up anything I say further than "lol stfu furry weeaboo nigger xd"
No more discussion of Call of Duty or Halo, they're shit on the artistic scale compared to this, and if one game qualifies as art, I've already proven my point.
Sorry for having our own opinions on the subject matter. Sorry that I can see more in some things than you can, because apparently you've got your head so far up Braid's asshole that you've tried to strike away the artistic quality of other games.
Also, I'm not about to rush out and play Braid based on some artistic quality alone. I will not be put down for not having played a video game no matter how good it is. So shame on you for trying to force a game down our throats by using shame of all things.
Also, I would love to point out how you came trouncing in here calling "troll" at someone who started a good thread and opened it for discussion, and then proceeded to claim that your arguments were the end of the thread and that no one else's opinion mattered.
Sorry for having our own opinions on the subject matter. Sorry that I can see more in some things than you can, because apparently you've got your head so far up Braid's asshole that you've tried to strike away the artistic quality of other games.
My purpose of dropping Halo/CoD out of the discussion was the off tangent it was leading towards about realism of CoD being a deciding factor on artistic quality. And as your successor posts,
This is why someone can say CoD or Halo is not art. Because as shiny and nice as it is, it is not, in itself, a piece of art, despite having beauty inside it (among other arguable artistic qualities). While a game such as Braid, which exists specifically for it's storytelling method and the fullness of what it represents, to not be called art, would be like saying the Mona Lisa isn't art because it's just paint and a canvas, or like saying that Romeo and Juliet can't be considered art anymore because it's reprinted in highschool textbooks.
What I'm saying is, the medium cannot decide if something is or is not art.
My purpose for stepping in here was to end the debate of if games can be art, because the answer is a resounding "Yes."
The discussion should, if it is to continue, simply be redirected into more of a question on which games are art.
p.s. my comment "shame on you", was meant as humorous barb, and encouragement to go play what is a very good game. Not actually berating anyone for not playing it. And if you call that intro post a good way to start a thread, I think I'll take your dislike of me as a compliment.
And now, I am out of here, as I'm not feeding the troll anymore.
