Arguments to classify Games as Art.

[alliedlama]

Didn't yahtzee say something about this? I'm sure he quoted oscar wilde or whatever, saying that "art is useless" and games are just as useless as other types of art...
something like that anyways...

 

[veloper]

Games are not art because unlike art, games are held to high standards and you don't have to drop a million to play one.

 

[Nazz3]

Games are art, even more art that paintings, music, books etc, because it combines them all. Story, characters, graphics, map, music...

 

[ProfessorLayton]

According to Merriam-Webster, art is the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects. That sounds like video games to me.

 

[crypt-creature]

Games are not art because unlike art, games are held to high standards and you don't have to drop a million to play one.

Ah, no. Games are not held to high standards, they are held to popular demand or originality. Just like art.
Art isn't that expensive, fine art might be, and a certain artists might charge more. A lot of it, however, is not that expensive.

Not it is not. Great games that sell millions haven't necessarily got an artistic idea behind them. In fact, I think most of them have not. Modern Warfare 2 may be a great game, but I doubt the makers really wanted to express something. Similarly, not all paintings are meant to inspire or convey an idea. Most of them are merely decorative. As such, it can be said that making a game or a painting isn't necessarily art, but only the medium as several others have said. My choice of words could have been better, I apologise for that.

They pretty much nailed it.

 

[Fightgarr]

Here's the big issue:
Art has no concrete definition.
It doesn't matter what dictionaries or wikipedia or what-have-you say: there is still no all-encompassing, accurate definition for what art is. Lacking that definition, fitting games into that definition is equally pointless to trying to fit anything else into that definition.

 

[DoctorObviously]

I see some games as pieces of art. Why? Because the definition of 'art' to me is that you've created something very few people in the world can do. Metal Gear Solid 4 is a good example for this (imo, twats).

 

[Code Monkey]

I actualy did a school paper on this, and my main point was that art is something created by man, that hopefully inspires emotions. I don't know about you, but I felt way more emotions running from a necromorph in dead space than looking at a painting.

You might argue that it is nothing but entertainment, but isn't that what Books, plays, movies, paintings, (etc) are?

 

[Utarefson]

Art=Result of creative thinking

That's my definition.

 

[Cyberjester]

Well, I don't know if all games can be classified as art to be honest. I mean, it can be argued that all creativitism can be art but when something is no longer original for the umptenth time, I don't believe it can be classified as art.

Really, it has to be original.

But there's no such thing as original. I've seen some good looking games with good storylines. But you can break it down to the basic "move here, shoot this" in a different setting.

Someone did a study a while back in music, discovered that all possible combinations of music have been used up already.

Original is just something that hasn't been used in a while to make it "fresh".

Not it is not. Great games that sell millions haven't necessarily got an artistic idea behind them. In fact, I think most of them have not. Modern Warfare 2 may be a great game, but I doubt the makers really wanted to express something.

You may have missed the recent furor on this site, was just before RapeLay got in the headlines again. Going on about how you got to kill civilians in a level in the game. Off topic, it's surpising that it got past Aussie censors...

On topic, they quite definitely wanted to express something there. I'll leave you to guess as art means different things to different people. Yes, I wouldn't list the story as the greatest piece of literature around, the game repeated itself and the script sucked. Visually it was excellent and the writers tried to make a point with it. *shrugs* It sure beats Counter Strike. =P

I'm sorry, but haven't we long known that games were, if not art themselves, a medium for it? Shadow of the Colossus? Final fantasy? MYST?

This.

Art means different things to different people.

For example; Graffiti. Some you find that shows real talent and can express an apreciation for, others think it is just mindless vandalism.

So, art can vary so very much from person to person.

This.

May be one could see gameplay or athmosphere as a games way of presentation. But moste games are lacky in this area due to homogenized controlls. Let's say rightclick for alternate fire, wasd to move. It would make for a much better artistic statement when you had to move with a and o in game whose message is about life and death. But it would suck as a gameplaymechanic. So we kind of have the problem of a homogenized medium, which I personally can't solve. May be one of you has an idea.

So the DS? Wii? Eye Toy? Light guns? Natal? Etc, etc. They've been trying different methods of controlling games for a long time now. Some of them have worked, others have worked quite well, others are still to come. But if you change the gameplay mechanic, then the player is more learning how to control the game, so the story and visuals don't come across with as big an effect as they could.

First time I played F.E.A.R. was excellent. I'd been reading H.P. Lovecraft (O.T. C'thulu calls..) so was in the right mood to play it, I knew the controls because I've played shooters before. The directions were easy enough to follow, which meant I had the full effect of the game, story, visually, aurally, mentally.

Changing the gameplay mechanic has it's advantages, but it loses out in the long run.

And of course there is the ongoing killer-argument of "Well, anything is art." People see pictures of toiletts and cans, believe toiletts are Art. I am no expert on this, but I know that no constructive discussion can be made with the premisse: Well, it doesn't matter at all.

Well, toilets can be art. *shrugs* See someone give one a steampunk or cyberpunk makeover. Or do it in a modern artistic way.

The site http://www.stranger-mag.com/ is a good example. I found it last night looking up silly laws and it has some nice artwork throughout the site, the designs for the logo, etc.

http://alanadale.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/paul-smith-mini2.jpg
Here's a mini with the Paul Smith stripes, a classic car with a new look. Not the best example, but you get the idea? Calligraphy means merely writing your name can be a work of art. It all depends on your perspective and context.

Popart is about quoting things. That's why it is funny, when the Simpsons rip on the godfather for the onethousandth time. Games don't quote anything, expect themselves. I'm not sure weather every Halo-clone out there can be seen as pop-art or weather it's just a mass-product.

Some games go beyond the norm and make up something new. Bioshock for example.

"I am Andrew Ryan, and I'm here to ask you a question. Is a man not entitled to the sweat of his brow? 'No!' says the man in Washington, 'It belongs to the poor.' 'No!' says the man in the Vatican, 'It belongs to God.' 'No!' says the man in Moscow, 'It belongs to everyone.' I rejected those answers; instead, I chose something different. I chose the impossible. I chose... Rapture, a city where the artist would not fear the censor, where the scientist would not be bound by petty morality, Where the great would not be constrained by the small! And with the sweat of your brow, Rapture can become your city as well."

That's pretty good for an fps.

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Portal_%28game%29
Or Portal, so many great one-liners I can't think of any to quote. Although "The cake is a lie" was an overnight meme that you'll still find references to. I'll still sing that song too, Still Alive is the best video game song I have ever heard so far. Well.. NeoTokyo has an excellent classical-esque soundtrack, I highly recommend it if classical music is listed as a like. Fallout 3 had an excellent soundtrack to listen to, and a great intro vid. Story was ok, visuals fit the dreary look. Heh.. As if to illustrate my point, my music player just started playing the main theme from Skull Monkeys.[/quote]

What are your arguments (still not sure about the use of that word in english, always thout it meant a discussion as a whole, but I looked it up)

It means both. =P Argument can be the discussion as a whole, like saying the debate. Or it can be the points raised in the discussion. Depends on context, but yours was perfect.

 

[Exterminas]

I'm not sold on motion-sensor-systems in their current state as a revolution in gaming. They currently miss out the whole story point. I mean, foumbling a wii-controller around to simulate tenis might be entertaining, but hasn't much story involved. There are games like dead-space-wii, which I haven't played, because I am a PC-Übermensch, which actually have some story, but in which the controlls aren't really connencted to the content.
I think that is simply because this technology isn't that developed, yet. May be once we will be able to feel a simulation of a coold steel wall, the impact of a cracked skull or the soft fur of a rabbit, which appear in a motion-sensor-game.

 

[robinkom]

Even cash-in games like Halo clones have a level of art to them... there are, after all, artists that have to design everything you see. That's not what is being debated though, we're looking at presentation.

I think, perhaps, I have to be more biased in saying that games are art simply speaking as an artist. If you haven't a creative bone in your body, you're probably not going to see it the same way; you're perceiving games as mere devices of entertainment to pass the time. Truly creative endeavors of any medium seek to invoke emotion from the audience, RPGs are the foremost genre for this. I feel that games that are able to effortlessly immerse you into their worlds and really relate and feel for it's characters are all part of being true works of art; Poor writing can ruin a good game concept. Combined with stimulating visuals (a subjective point) this makes for a complete package.

 

[MasterMongoose0]

Braid.
Brutal Legend (strike that: anything by Schafer).
Legend of Zelda: OoT
Metal Gear Solid 1/2/3/4
Uncharted 2
Windwaker
Metroid Prime
Shadow of the Colossus
Okami
Assassin's Creed 1/2

These are your friends. Study them. Figure out the intentions behind their creation and the effort that went into them

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

So... My first own thread here. I want to write down an idea of mine, about how to classify games as art. I am fully aware that this topic has been discussed a lot on this board, but I faced the problem that people weren't making real points, just said "Yeah, they are".

I'm studying german literature, so I will try to link games and literature:

When it comes to narrative texts, say novels, non-lyric-tales some scientists cut a text in "histoire" (french for story) and "discours" (french for talking). That means simply that there is the stuff, that you are told, the story, the histoire, and the way it is told, the discours.

When it comes to games you face the porblem that there is basically the same histoire as in books, and accordingly the same rules and mechanismns. To explain that: Things that belong to histoire are things like character motivation (are they acting acording to their feelings or their reason, or because of their faith, or unontrolled?) and story structure (exposition, conflict, climax, solution).

But the discours, the way it is presented, is kind of laking in games these days. Barely a game uses complex symbolysm or metaphors. Beeing a mainly visual medium gaming faces the same problem as movies, metaphors and images are easy on paper but kind of hard to put on a screen.

May be one could see gameplay or athmosphere as a games way of presentation. But moste games are lacky in this area due to homogenized controlls. Let's say rightclick for alternate fire, wasd to move. It would make for a much better artistic statement when you had to move with a and o in game whose message is about life and death. But it would suck as a gameplaymechanic. So we kind of have the problem of a homogenized medium, which I personally can't solve. May be one of you has an idea.

And of course there is the ongoing killer-argument of "Well, anything is art." People see pictures of toiletts and cans, believe toiletts are Art. I am no expert on this, but I know that no constructive discussion can be made with the premisse: Well, it doesn't matter at all.

Popart is about quoting things. That's why it is funny, when the Simpsons rip on the godfather for the onethousandth time. Games don't quote anything, expect themselves. I'm not sure weather every Halo-clone out there can be seen as pop-art or weather it's just a mass-product.

Now... Wall of Text ends. What are your arguments (still not sure about the use of that word in english, always thout it meant a discussion as a whole, but I looked it up), when you want to declare Games as Art.

You're on the right track here, although of course a few people (postmodernists) will contend that everything is art. Personally, I think Aristotle offers the best meditation on the definition of art: "The difference between a historian and a poet is not their utterances being in verse or prose, but that one speaks of what has happened, and the other of what can happen."

So essentially to apply this argument to gaming, anything that attempts simply to present the aspects of the game (the artwork, the story, the gameplay) within a periodical context is not art. Anything which attempts to reach beyond that and into our own lives is art. GTA IV is an example of a game that is very deliberately trying to be considered art (in a very pretentious fashion), by establishing a gameworld which is quite clearly a satirical representation of New York, and attempting to make us consider meaning - I'm thinking particularly here of Nico's conversation about religion in the first chapter. An example of a game that is not art is more difficult to define. A paradigm would be Tetris, since the falling blocks are restricted to the context of the game and don't really appear to symbolise anything else. For a more recent example, pick any game which has the name "Tom Clancy's" attached to it and you'll have an experience that can't really be considered art. Unlike his novels, where he attempts to explore the motivations of various characters and imbue the reader with the values of patriotism (and arguably sexism, but I won't go into that here...), the games bearing his name generally just throw you into the action and focus on your objectives. The experience doesn't lend itself to drawing meditations connecting it to the wider world.

That said, there are always exceptions to the rule; and I have to agree with postmodernism in saying that much of art is defined by the user. For example: a game such as Halo might seem to most people to be fairly disconnected from our own world and steeped in its own context; but at the same time I'm sure you could make a fairly convincing argument that the Halo Rings are a metaphor for nuclear weapons. Look at Yahtzee's brilliant review of Bowser's Inside Story: yet I'm sure the story developers at Nintendo didn't intend to incorporate the kind of Marxism he managed to deconstruct the game into. Reader-response is a huge part of it, but so too is authorial intention, and often many of these intentions are subconscious. Consider for example zombie games: very rarely nowadays do you get a zombie game where the zombies just exist, there's always some kind of scientific research or evil megacorporation behind it. The developers may not have had the intention to make a point with this kind of story thread, but still they're reflecting a subconscious prejudice that all science can be abused and all power corrupts.

And then there's an even bigger problem with analysing games as art: as an extension of the reader response theory, how do you measure the individual player's contribution in terms of artistic merit? Someone who simply plays an rpg by number crunching is not responding artistically, but someone who constructs an alternate identity for their character that finds a way to reflect their own personality and experiences is having an artistic response. And you really can't judge these things without observing them, and quantifying them is even harder. For example, most people who play WoW degenerate into number crunching and macro spamming, but there are several servers devoted to RP. Does this mean the entire game can be classified as art? It's very difficult to define.

 

[veloper]

Games are not art because unlike art, games are held to high standards and you don't have to drop a million to play one.

Ah, no. Games are not held to high standards, they are held to popular demand or originality. Just like art.
Art isn't that expensive, fine art might be, and a certain artists might charge more. A lot of it, however, is not that expensive.

A triple-A title requires a team of skilled designers, illustrators, animators, etc. for a year or more to make. The end result will be criticized over any flaw and if the metacritic score is lower than 8 it prolly didn't sell.

For about 50 bucks or less, if that isn't high standards, nothing is.

A bunch of talentless hacks can never make a succesful game. Art is the exact opposite.

Art critics do not consider the work of talented illustrators art, but if looks like something a 3yr old can produce, it may be considered art, depending on WHO made it.

The real art in art is selling rubbish for much. How much it sells for is how good the art is. Examples of this are everywhere. I suppose that takes skill too, a different kind of skill.
Me, I value the illustrators and 3d modelers, those people who are not "artists", but who practice a real craft.

 

[EliteFreq]

It's written, it's designed, it's put together to immerse the participants. Some games are art. Others are purely entertainment. Others are ways to grab money. Sometimes a combination.

 

[Slash Dementia]

Someone drew the characters. [/thread]

Someone wrote the musical score.
Someone wrote the script.

I don't know how people don't believe it's art... Oh well.

 

[LeonLethality]

-snip-
Gentlemen, my point has been made.

I was going to say this but since you beat me to it... I SECOND THIS NOTION!

 

[Jaranja]

Art=Result of creative thinking

That's my definition.

That can form a lot of grey areas.