BBC Debate: Games Aren't Art ... Yet

[duchaked]

see --> Bastion

but yeah...if broken furniture and rocks can be considered art, video games shouldn't be a stretch at all...

 

[ComradeJim270]

Wait... so if art is "things that allow us to ask profound questions about who we are, how we live and the state of the world around us", then doesn't the mere question of whether something is art arguably meet that criteria? I mean, just by being there, it's provoked a discussion of aesthetics. Even if Mr. Eshun might disagree on that point, he did give a definition of art that contains (intentionally or otherwise) the subtle implication that something could be art for one person but not for another. I imagine there are many things that are able to make only some people who encounter them "ask profound questions about who we are, how we live and the state of the world around us".

 

[Strazdas]

Are there games that are art? yes
is majority of games art (by his definition asking profound questions)? no.
can games be made as art? yes

 

[Plinglebob]

Personally I agree with him. While I do think that some games could be called works of art while still keeping a straight face, and games should be considered art in a legal sense, the majority of games put out are meant to excite and titillate us for X period of time and in that regards they have the same artistic value as Porn. I have no problem with this seeing as I'm fine with people making/playing games for this reason just like I have no real issue with those that enjoyed Transformers 3 (and who doesn't enjoy porn).

I don't have any problem with games just meant to titillate us either. Enjoy what you want, I don't care, if you liked Transformers 3 then more power to you.

This does not mean, however, that we should not strive for more. That's a big issue I think is with this whole "games as art" stuff going around, if we can convince everyone (and most importantly ourselves), then we can move past the whole titillation phase and make games that are more than just that.

The problem is whenever these arguments come up people just go "Games Are Art!" and think thats the end of the argument and this is where the danger lies. As long as people insist that the Titillation is art, people arn't going to be encourged to strive for more. This seperation is starting to happen within the community, but so far the number of well received and highly publicised/noticed "Arthouse Games" is almost non-existant. As long as the majority of people who make and/or enjoy games applaud the titillation, the public won't take us seriously.

The thing about the "it took film 40 years to become recognized as an artform!" that I don't think works for me anymore is that the world is a much faster place than it was all those years ago. Technology is unfolding at astronomical speeds, new technologies are always introduced. I dunno, it still doesn't mean that we shouldn't push for more.

But also, that argument seems to come from this thinking that developing mediums are on a set timeline. Video games may be a budding artform like film, and while it may take some queues from film, that does not mean it will develop so similarly to it. There's a lot more that video games can do that films will never be able to do, and we have to push for that.

You have to remember that in this 40 years 2 things happened. The first is that the "old guard of art", who came about before film existed, slowly died or left public life and were taken over by those who had lived the majority of their life with films. These people were more accepting of film because it wasn't a "New fad" to them, but part of life. While this is happening with games, its still going to take time for us to get our equivalents of Orsen Wells and Roger Ebert.

The second is films broke away from just being "Plays on Screen" and started to use techiniques that are unique to cinema (editing, camera tricks) to get emotion from the audience. Someone else has gone over it better, but essentially a game isn't art just because its cinematography, story, music etc are all artfully done. There has to then be something that only a game can provide. 2 contrasting examples for me are Bioshock and Flower (GO BUY IT!!).
Bioshock is considered as art because of the design of Rapture, players emotion for the Little Sisters etc, but if you turned it into a 6 hour film with the player instead being an actor, you would see the same thing and feel the same emotions because all the tricks Bioshock use are cinematic.
Flower (GO BUY IT!!) on the other hand is considered art and I would say should be held up as the landmark people should be striving for. Turn Flower (GO BUY IT!!) into a six hour film and while people would say its very nice to watch, there wouldn't be any emotional involvement or connection. However as a game we are given a direct connection with the petal and start to project onto it in a way that could never happen in film. This makes it a great example for games as art.

Finally, the gaming industry is a mess right now and its never going to be taken seriously until itself, and the media surrounding it, stop acting like idiots. Remember, this is an industy that can't even do an awards show without acting like children and pandering to the popular titillation. We need the industry as a whole (people like EA and Activision) to start taking more risks with more experimental lower budget games and the support around gaming (retailers, reviewers) needs to start encouraging those that play to try the riskier stuff. Until the big studios get involved, its never going to happen.

 

[Plinglebob]

Oh just to inform everyone outside of the UK: BBC Radio 4 is considered the 'older generation' radio show. They usually blab on and hold debates and when a topic that they don't understand nor have any desire to comes on they usually waffle about how ridiculous it is and rip it to shreds all the while giving little pats on the back to each other about how great it was in their day.

I suppose I'm just gonna have to take the bait and ask do you ever actually listen to radio 4? I find it hard to believe that a station that has a program about the tactics of anonymous and the legality of hacktivism (Click On, Monday 31/10/11 4:30pm) with previous programs doing things a history on social networking starting from Colleges in the 60s and 70s could be called what you said. If anything, its a damn sight better use of the licence fee then the crap on Radio 1.

I think you've just proved my point, they talk. A lot.

Its radio, of course they talk a lot. Are you missing the point of the medium here? Personally, I'd love to see the presentors holding up pictures and Radio 3 to air some interperative dance, but I think some of the impact of the piece would be lost.

And getting back to the earlier post of mine you quoted, okay, he said they are not art. Fine that is his opinion, good for him.
Educationally, they are all classified and taught under the banner of art, that's the line that has been drawn and I object to in the UK. Understand me now?

Yes, but I think its wrong to bring it up when the point of the thread is to discuss what 1 person said about games being art after they made a clear distinction between "entertainment" and "art". If this thread was about things as art as a whole then I'd have no issue with what you said. Don't forget, the Arthouse scene in each of the areas you mentioned (literature, film, music, comics) have Art and Entertainment happily sitting side by side with equal weight being given to both in the media and in the respective industries and the majority of the general public can easily distinguish between the two. In gaming, the Art and Entertainment are considered to be the same within the industry and media as well as in the general public. Until this seperation happens and a greater balance between games for art and games for entertainment is met, its never going to happen.

 

[BrotherRool]

I'd agree with him, the most art like games so far have been mainly of the 2d flash game variety, things like One Chance, In the Company of Myself etc and none of them have quite reached it. I haven't played SoTC so I can't really know where to place it, but I'd guess that whilst a lot of it is getting arty, the actual Colussus battling gameplay seems to be there for gameplays sake and not to be thematic and thought provoking.

As story and gameplay gets tighter together, we will get closer to the real potential

Wait... so if art is "things that allow us to ask profound questions about who we are, how we live and the state of the world around us", then doesn't the mere question of whether something is art arguably meet that criteria? I mean, just by being there, it's provoked a discussion of aesthetics. Even if Mr. Eshun might disagree on that point, he did give a definition of art that contains (intentionally or otherwise) the subtle implication that something could be art for one person but not for another. I imagine there are many things that are able to make only some people who encounter them "ask profound questions about who we are, how we live and the state of the world around us".

I'd agree but that question hasn't been posed by a game I'm aware of. For a game to be art the question has to be posed not only by one part of the design but by all of it. A film isn't art until they think how the shot composition and editing affects the whole and a game isn't art whilst the gameplay is there for gameplays sake.

It'd be easy to make a game that poses that question though and pretty fun. Well worth thinking about

 

[agent_orange420]

missed a trick there. make computer games art in the uk art council eyes, give all the little studios the ability to apply for art council funding. i would certainly like to see more games being made by independents rather than this years version of such game by big company. UK used to have loads of great companies
Gremlin (lotus turbo challenge, normality)
Psygnosis (shadow of the beast, lemmings, destruction derby)
Bullfrog(syndicate)
all gone the way of the dodo, and im sure its the same the world over.

sure, everyone could um and ah over the issue, wait for the very stuffy art critics to eventually decide its an official art form (only when there is a new medium to not let into the very elitist club) or indie developers could benefit from monies to help with the costs of staying afloat, like the grants indie film directors can get to help with getting their films out there.

If it would mean that we would get more companies making more varied games, to quote Robocop, 'I'd buy that for a dollar!'

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Game are art because they are, its like anything else. Just being made makes it art, you can not define art once you try to you lose the point of art at the start. Hell this grammarless text is art. Face it the moment you try and hold up something as superior art you lose creditability and the art loses whatever value that can be gained from it.

Stop denying that things can be art and focus more on what the deeper meaning is which is nothing more than poo gas...er.. opinion.

 

[MB202]

Guys, h's not saying games are not art. He's saying games haven't really proven themselves to be worthy of being called art. Now I know all of you are probably thinking about your favorite games and how it "disproves" his assumption, but really, can you blame people for thinking games are not art with so much crap that's being shat out by the industry?

 

[haruvister]

Games needn't aspire to art. Sport is fun, competitive, inventive, lucrative, addictive and popular, and no one finds the need to elevate that beyond what it is: a game.

 

[TheWizardWhoDunIt]

What is art? Art is a piece of work written and crafted with so much skill and consideration it becomes absolutely devastating to another's imagination; it is the pillar of another's inspiration and standardization of one's own writing. Art is beautiful, art is dangerous, art is ultimately destructive and consumptive--that is why it is akin to the Promethean flame in how much it gives and takes. Ulysses is art with little doubt; the mastery of the language--the meaning of every word, the impact of every symbol (letters and punctuation themselves, not the literary device), the melody a string of thoughts can make--is clear. The effect is profound. Shakespeare's plays are not wholly art, but a sizable portion is. One can try to reinvent his sense of rhythm for one's whole life. The ambiguous works, like Moby Dick, are what causes the confusion in the definition of the term, as the power of the book depends on one's previous learning. With my breadth of literature, I think Moby Dick isn't art; it doesn't have the sense of oblivion, a sort of all-or-nothingness to it. But there is certainly obfuscation.

So are games art? No, not currently. No game has ever influenced my own writing--not when I write plays, not when I write comic book, not when I write manga, not when I write scripts for videogames. Many of them lack the sort of genius that must go into art, the one explosive reactant that makes one say, "I must create a wholly new thing now." Art is powerful in that manner.

But why do gamers want games to be art? It's really a stupid longing. Moby Dick isn't art, but it is incredibly well-written and well-conceived and should be read more frequently. One of my colleagues called James Joyce a very good stylist; he's damn right. Joyce's only a stylist, not a storyteller. Reading Ulysses does not make me enjoy life. It does not make me realize some manifold truth. It simply destroys me, but I cannot analogize it. It will have no meaning as I continue as a person.

Let games be about good story and not about art. That's more important, really, in the real world, where one can take a story and tell it to good friends and have conversation on it. That's the best resolution.

Don't tell me Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are art because I tried to play both and both were incredibly boring. "Atmosphere" my hind. Take heed: whatever art is, it isn't boring.

 

[Jabberwock xeno]

"Lots of books, lots of TV shows, lots of films aren't art. That doesn't make them bad, it makes them really enjoyable.""

See, in this respect, he'd be right.

Art can be one of 3 things:

- Anything "artsy". Drawings, films, music, etc. In this defination, all video games are art.

- Meaningful. In this defination, just because something is "artsy", doesn't mean its art. A stick figure may be a drawing, but it doesn't make it art. Only SOME video games would be art.

- Subjective. What is and is't art is entirely subjective.

 

[Jumplion]

The problem is whenever these arguments come up people just go "Games Are Art!" and think thats the end of the argument and this is where the danger lies. As long as people insist that the Titillation is art, people arn't going to be encourged to strive for more. This seperation is starting to happen within the community, but so far the number of well received and highly publicised/noticed "Arthouse Games" is almost non-existant. As long as the majority of people who make and/or enjoy games applaud the titillation, the public won't take us seriously.

This brings me to another subject that I've seen crop up, mainly that somehow "art games" and "fun games" are inherently separate. There is no reason why a game can't be both artistically motivated and entertaining ("fun" and "entertaining" are two different things, which I think is a very important distinction to make.)

I'm not asking for more pretentious, snooty games where the creator is all "I want to make an experience, man." but I am asking for developers to think more critically about what they put into their game and create richer worlds and experiences with their games.

You have to remember that in this 40 years 2 things happened. The first is that the "old guard of art", who came about before film existed, slowly died or left public life and were taken over by those who had lived the majority of their life with films. These people were more accepting of film because it wasn't a "New fad" to them, but part of life. While this is happening with games, its still going to take time for us to get our equivalents of Orsen Wells and Roger Ebert.

It will take a while for sure, and if I may delve into yet another topic briefly, that's why I think the whole "auteur" method of game design (people like Ken Levine or Cliffy B, who basically are the face to the company and have their visions put forth) should be attempted more often. Video games are definitely a team effort, but other times you need the focus of a single person to guide that team. A faceless, bureaucratic company like, I dunno, EA will probably not produce the Citizen Kane of gaming, but a person who strives for that achievement like, say, Ken Levine would provide that accomplishment with a face.

The second is films broke away from just being "Plays on Screen" and started to use techiniques that are unique to cinema (editing, camera tricks) to get emotion from the audience. Someone else has gone over it better, but essentially a game isn't art just because its cinematography, story, music etc are all artfully done. There has to then be something that only a game can provide. 2 contrasting examples for me are Bioshock and Flower (GO BUY IT!!).
Bioshock is considered as art because of the design of Rapture, players emotion for the Little Sisters etc, but if you turned it into a 6 hour film with the player instead being an actor, you would see the same thing and feel the same emotions because all the tricks Bioshock use are cinematic.
Flower (GO BUY IT!!) on the other hand is considered art and I would say should be held up as the landmark people should be striving for. Turn Flower (GO BUY IT!!) into a six hour film and while people would say its very nice to watch, there wouldn't be any emotional involvement or connection. However as a game we are given a direct connection with the petal and start to project onto it in a way that could never happen in film. This makes it a great example for games as art.

This is absolutely true about Flower. And yes, I did buy Flower, and I teared up at the end. Don't ask me why, I really have no idea, but it call just came together and I started tearing up. A really magical game if you're in the right mindset.

However, I completely disagree with Bioshock. There are plenty of methods Bioshock used that just cannot be replicated by film. The whole "would you kindly?" part of the story could only have been done through gameplay, basically subverting every player's expectation and questioning free will. The atmosphere, the progression, the twists and turns, while you could very well make a movie out of it, I don't think it would be nearly as effective if it was. This is why I have so much respect for Ken Levine, he is a damn smart person and I doubt that any other developer could have done the same thing he did with Bioshock (and in the future with Bioshock: Infinite).

Video games definitely need to start pushing what is unique to them rather than just pushing for more "cinematic gameplay". In this regard, I really do feel that story should take center role in making games. Story is the central mechanic that every other medium works by, why not video games? Not only that, but developers seem to be obsessed over trying to mimic Hollywood instead of pushing their own unique features to bring out new ways to develop story in games.

Finally, the gaming industry is a mess right now and its never going to be taken seriously until itself, and the media surrounding it, stop acting like idiots. Remember, this is an industy that can't even do an awards show without acting like children and pandering to the popular titillation. We need the industry as a whole (people like EA and Activision) to start taking more risks with more experimental lower budget games and the support around gaming (retailers, reviewers) needs to start encouraging those that play to try the riskier stuff. Until the big studios get involved, its never going to happen.

I agree with this so hard.

So, basically, I agree with everything. I just felt like exercising my fingers.

 

[Plinglebob]

This brings me to another subject that I've seen crop up, mainly that somehow "art games" and "fun games" are inherently separate. There is no reason why a game can't be both artistically motivated and entertaining ("fun" and "entertaining" are two different things, which I think is a very important distinction to make.)

I'm not asking for more pretentious, snooty games where the creator is all "I want to make an experience, man." but I am asking for developers to think more critically about what they put into their game and create richer worlds and experiences with their games.

Ok, I agree Bioshock was probably a bad choice with regards to Gameplay art vs Cinematic art because I completely forgot the "Would you kindly" How about COD:Modern Warfare 1 instead?

Regarding this point, I agree. Something can be a great piece of art as well as entertaining to the masses, but its something hard to balance and unfortunately the industry swings wildly between the two.

 

[Jumplion]

This brings me to another subject that I've seen crop up, mainly that somehow "art games" and "fun games" are inherently separate. There is no reason why a game can't be both artistically motivated and entertaining ("fun" and "entertaining" are two different things, which I think is a very important distinction to make.)

I'm not asking for more pretentious, snooty games where the creator is all "I want to make an experience, man." but I am asking for developers to think more critically about what they put into their game and create richer worlds and experiences with their games.

Ok, I agree Bioshock was probably a bad choice with regards to Gameplay art vs Cinematic art because I completely forgot the "Would you kindly" How about COD:Modern Warfare 1 instead?

Regarding this point, I agree. Something can be a great piece of art as well as entertaining to the masses, but its something hard to balance and unfortunately the industry swings wildly between the two.

I would say the first Modern Warfare game really was something special, and while I can how it would fit in your example, certain aspects of it (like the nuclear bomb scene where you're walking in a destroyed landscape before you die) are something special to games. The other Modern Warfare games, though, are pretty much Micheal Bay films in game form.

 

[Sofus]

I don't see how the Mona Lisa or any other painting for that matter, can be qualified as art either. Astronomy is however a vast enough concept that it can make my mind wander.

Then again, Piero Manzoni placed his shit in a jar (or was it canned shit.. oh who cares) and it was declared art.... yeah whatever.

 

[LesPaulLover]

I registered to this site after stumbling upon this article. All I have to say is this: "The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim."

If you think a game like "Skyrim" isn't art then, quite frankly, you're ignorant and I have no desire to talk to you anyways.

 

[2012 Wont Happen]

This is all rubbish. All entertainment is art

that's bull, entertainment IS art

False. Entertainment is entertainment. Art is something that has meaning.

For example, pornography is not art. I am incredibly entertained by pornography. Especially if it focuses on hot red head and Asian women. However, while very entertaining, it is not art.

Incorrect. Entertainment IS art. Art does not have to have any logical or thoughtful meaning behind it.

So are you saying that the lesbian golden shower porn I watched a couple days back is art? If so, more power to you I guess. However, while it was very entertaining, I doubt you could find three percent of people who would say it could be considered art.

 

[KingPiccolOwned]

This is all rubbish. All entertainment is art

that's bull, entertainment IS art

False. Entertainment is entertainment. Art is something that has meaning.

For example, pornography is not art. I am incredibly entertained by pornography. Especially if it focuses on hot red head and Asian women. However, while very entertaining, it is not art.

Spoiler: Alan Moore dissagrees with you.

Also possibly NSFW. [link]http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Comicbook/LostGirls[/link]

 

[procrasty]

Games needn't aspire to art. Sport is fun, competitive, inventive, lucrative, addictive and popular, and no one finds the need to elevate that beyond what it is: a game.

but if you view games as a meduim there is no reason they shouldn't "aspire"* to be art, sport might not be trying to be art, but it fits into the bracket of physical activity, and in that regard, you can see dance as the art end of sport.
if you view games just in terms of technically what they are, interactive computer programmes with an end goal, there is no reason why that can't be used as art.


*not really sure about the ue of this term, i think it's a mistake to regard art as a value judgement, which i think is where a lot of the anger stems from. it's not, it's just a different thing with a different aim.