A good chance to have your say on what games are art.

[Mumonk]

What I consider an artistic element is what the developer puts in premade for you. It is created by the developer, not you.

A game like Minecraft, while it does have a few artistic elements, the bulk of the game is you creating things. Things that you create in the game do not count as artistic elements.

The quality of an artist is in the eye of the beholder, in my opinion.

I think its time we agreed to disagree. You seem to think that only the prerendered worlds that have been laid out before you in a game can be considered art.

I think ANY game and anything in said game (including the WAY you play it, and whether it be linear story based or a sandbox "do what you want" based) that makes you feel something, can be art.

/shrug......Different strokes for different folks.

 

[Cowabungaa]

I'd say videogames as a medium can preduce works of art, games aren't art per definition.

Of course, games are art... For example, the final fantasy series, fahrenheit.

But the one game i can truly call art is Heavy Rain.

The graphics and weather effects really make you feel like your in the mddile of a tropical storm... And the story is one that can't be beaten.

It has such an emotional storyline which in my mind is one of the best games of 2010.

OK, I know I'm wading into a minefield here, but...

If you're holding Heavy Rain up as an artistic achievement in gaming, all you're doing is pretty much proving that either (a)gamers have no sense whatsoever of what makes good art, or (b)gamers are so desperate to have our medium accepted as an artistic medium that crap like Heavy Rain is held up as a high achievement when if Hollywood made a story like that, with that quality of voice acting, critics would rightly skewer it and it'd get a rating on Rotten Tomatoes that would put it right up there with Battlefield Earth, Showgirls, and Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever.

David Cage is a pretentious ass, a title he seems hell bent on wrenching away from Hideo Kojima as the biggest pretentious arthouse ass in all of gaming. To see people hold up his craptastic game as some kind of artistic marvel makes me seriously wonder if gamers have ever seen any actual movies that didn't star Michael Cera or Monty Python.

Watch Schindler's List or Forrest Gump or any other movie that clearly establishes film as a legitimate, indisputable art. Compared to any even halfway competent movie, Heavy Rain looks like a four-year-old's crayon drawing hanging in the Louvre.

Then again, you can hardly compare games and films on artistic grounds. They're both very different mediums who invoke a reaction from it's audience in a completely different way. Hell, games do so in a way never done before in the history of media. But the old guard, who often judges what is or is not art or what is 'good art', isn't used to it and doesn't know what to do with it. You can't just apply movie-standards to games, just like you can't apply sculpturing-standards to movies.

Also, Battlefield Earth was bloody hilarious. Cavemen flying F-16's, oh brother.

 

[Mumonk]

If I yell at you and insult you and piss you off, that's not an artistic monologue, I'm just being an asshole.

That's what a lot of comedians and musicians do, that's how they become famous, they use shock value. But a lot of them are considered artists. You might say "but those comedians suck, they aren't artists!" just like your Minecraft comment, but then your not proving its not art, your just proving you don't like it. Are is subjective and abstract. You take away what you want from it.

I would sooner hang a crudely drawn smiley face on a dirty napkin that my son drew for me on my wall, than something like the Mona Lisa.

 

[Fenreil]

I literally just voted and saw this topic

I was disappointed, but not surprised, to find that Mirror's Edge wasn't in the running. I know that everyone has differing opinions on it, but it's one of the only games that I play just for the sake of playing it. I just can't get enough of the absolutely beautiful environments and unique gameplay.

 

[KalosCast]

That's what a lot of comedians and musicians do, that's how they become famous, they use shock value. But a lot of them are considered artists. You might say "but those comedians suck, they aren't artists!" just like your Minecraft comment, but then your not proving its not art, your just proving you don't like it. Are is subjective and abstract. You take away what you want from it.

I would sooner hang a crudely drawn smiley face on a dirty napkin that my son drew for me on my wall, than something like the Mona Lisa.

Missing the point again, dear.

All art consists of two things, the form and the content. In your example of your son's drawing, you're forgiving a lot of the things that are missing in the form (low quality materials, lack of shading and general technical 'polish') because the content speaks more deeply to you, in fact the content is probably intended for you and you alone. Form is the technical physical aspect of art, the materials, the technique, the medium itself.

However, in the case of Minecraft, there is no content, no bigger idea. There is nothing the creator was trying to say, no emotion he was attempting to express or elicit from his player-base. It's entirely form without content. It's no more art than a good view in a national park. Hence why it's like an unfinished lego set. Sure, what you do with it might be awesome, and they might be very well-constructed legos that entertain you for hours, and hell, what you make with it could very well end up being the most beautiful artistic masterpiece the world has ever seen... but that has nothing to do with the set itself. Especially considering that the world is randomly generated, saying the world is art is like saying my grilled-cheese sandwich having a pattern that kind of looks like someone who might be Jesus if you squint right is art.

In the case of these comedians and artists, they do have a point that they're trying to say. It's pretty hard to work with a total lack of example here, but generally inciting people like this is to bring their attention to something, share or express a pain from their own lives in a way people can relate to, or something of the sort. Me coming up to you in the street and yelling at you is not equatable to that in the slightest.