Honestly, OP, I feel the same way. Essentially any argument for "GAMES ARE ART" can essentially boil down to "I like this game, therefore it's art" or "this game is beautiful and deserves to be framed and hung in a museum, hence it's art." Always makes me want to facepalm, mainly because of this:
I am going to say that games are inherently interactive, but most games--especially the ones usually credited as "art" (e.g., Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami)--are only interactive in the sense of a book: the only thing the user does is turn the pages. Sure, people can play it for the other media that games contain, but it doesn't make sense commercially to buy a game (~60 USD) for writing (book: ~15 USD), cutscenes (movie: ~5-15 USD), artwork (museum: ~0-15 USD), or music (CD: ~10 USD).
What we should be looking for in games is adding in more interactivity in the gameplay rather than trying to pump out more polygons than the last title released. This arguably, comes down to either one of two things: either increasing the number of states available to the player (think endings), or increasing the number of pathways to reach a certain state. I'm not saying that these two ways are the only solutions, or that they fit in with the definition of true interactivity (the second one, especially, uses the idea of "foldback," or branching pathways that rejoin to give a false sense of interactivity), but they're simply suggestions for making games into an artform with its own redeeming qualities.
Okay, so enough of the theory. The two people who are probably reading this probably want examples if they aren't sharpening their pitchforks for me not calling Shadow of the Colossus art. So what games are art, then? To me, the only one that actually captures the true idea of interactivity (that I have played; I'm not evaluating games that I haven't touched) is Minecraft: think of the number of states you can achieve in that game, the number of monumental sculptures you can make. You can't, can you? The number is practically infinity, limited only by your imagination and resources available for you to use. This is the kind of path we need to be taking with games, not constantly trying to improve the eye candy.
Other games don't capture the essence of interactivity as well as Minecraft, however, but I feel that they're worth mentioning. Games with open-world sandboxes, like Oblivion, do have some degrees of interactivity, but start to fail when the users begin to expect to be able to do things that aren't possible within the game (e.g., joining the Imperial Guard or the Necromancers in Oblivion). Games that use foldback to achieve interactivity (like Alexander Ocais' flash game Loved) have their hearts set in the right place for trying to achieve interactivity, but, as stated above, also fail when the player realizes that the outcome of events is the same (or relativity the same) regardless of input.
How interactive games are is certainly up for debate: are linear turn-based RPGs interactive because of the ways the player can handle battles, or are they more like books in that the gameplay is only a vessel for the story progression? Are driving games (either realistic or mascot) interactive? What about brawlers? Hack-n-slash? Adventure? It really depends on what game is chosen, but this is what we need to look at when we try to discuss games as art, not how well the sound was designed or how the art design forms a coherent, visually beautiful piece.
Obligatory TL;DR: It's hard to call games as a whole art when these pieces of "interactive software" have less interactivity than programs like Notepad. While the ability certainly exists, and individual examples do work as art pieces, it's hard to call an entire medium "art" based on a few, select titles
This isn't a new idea (Chris Crawford brought it up in his 2003 book The Art of Interactive Design), but it's an argument that is still as true and relevant today as it was when Crawford posited it (and it might even be older than him!). He calls games "interactive software" (which is a designation he gives most software, like Word), but not interactive solely in the sense that a book is interactive because you turn the pages. His theory is based on a simple feedback loop of thinking, listening, and speaking between two actors. It's a little more complex than that, but for sake of space I'm not going to go into the theory in this post.Stilt-Man said:
I am going to say that games are inherently interactive, but most games--especially the ones usually credited as "art" (e.g., Portal, Shadow of the Colossus, Okami)--are only interactive in the sense of a book: the only thing the user does is turn the pages. Sure, people can play it for the other media that games contain, but it doesn't make sense commercially to buy a game (~60 USD) for writing (book: ~15 USD), cutscenes (movie: ~5-15 USD), artwork (museum: ~0-15 USD), or music (CD: ~10 USD).
What we should be looking for in games is adding in more interactivity in the gameplay rather than trying to pump out more polygons than the last title released. This arguably, comes down to either one of two things: either increasing the number of states available to the player (think endings), or increasing the number of pathways to reach a certain state. I'm not saying that these two ways are the only solutions, or that they fit in with the definition of true interactivity (the second one, especially, uses the idea of "foldback," or branching pathways that rejoin to give a false sense of interactivity), but they're simply suggestions for making games into an artform with its own redeeming qualities.
Okay, so enough of the theory. The two people who are probably reading this probably want examples if they aren't sharpening their pitchforks for me not calling Shadow of the Colossus art. So what games are art, then? To me, the only one that actually captures the true idea of interactivity (that I have played; I'm not evaluating games that I haven't touched) is Minecraft: think of the number of states you can achieve in that game, the number of monumental sculptures you can make. You can't, can you? The number is practically infinity, limited only by your imagination and resources available for you to use. This is the kind of path we need to be taking with games, not constantly trying to improve the eye candy.
Other games don't capture the essence of interactivity as well as Minecraft, however, but I feel that they're worth mentioning. Games with open-world sandboxes, like Oblivion, do have some degrees of interactivity, but start to fail when the users begin to expect to be able to do things that aren't possible within the game (e.g., joining the Imperial Guard or the Necromancers in Oblivion). Games that use foldback to achieve interactivity (like Alexander Ocais' flash game Loved) have their hearts set in the right place for trying to achieve interactivity, but, as stated above, also fail when the player realizes that the outcome of events is the same (or relativity the same) regardless of input.
How interactive games are is certainly up for debate: are linear turn-based RPGs interactive because of the ways the player can handle battles, or are they more like books in that the gameplay is only a vessel for the story progression? Are driving games (either realistic or mascot) interactive? What about brawlers? Hack-n-slash? Adventure? It really depends on what game is chosen, but this is what we need to look at when we try to discuss games as art, not how well the sound was designed or how the art design forms a coherent, visually beautiful piece.
Obligatory TL;DR: It's hard to call games as a whole art when these pieces of "interactive software" have less interactivity than programs like Notepad. While the ability certainly exists, and individual examples do work as art pieces, it's hard to call an entire medium "art" based on a few, select titles
