Games as Art--- Why do you think so?

[OmniscientOstrich]

'Once a soup can became art, all the rules went out the window.'

- Dogbert

Yeah, as people have perennially will continue to state; art is purely subjective, when people are garnering money and reputations not for their actual talent but through the validation of overly analytical bearded tossers who attribute profundity to works that are utterly banal (my username is a dig at this very kind of behaviour) then I really don't see how anyone can have the sheer audacity to write off an entire medium as being not worthy of an already nebulous term.

 

[kyogen]

I presume that everyone on this website would say that games are art (me included), my question is why do we think this. I'm a philosophy student and I want to write a paper about why videogames should be considered art. I just want to have a discussion about why we think that games are art and get some tangible reasons to write about.

Thanks

Games are an expressive medium and thus have the potential to be art. Not all games are art. Not all books, films, sculptures, or paintings are art, either.

For your paper, have a look at:

Homo Ludens (Johan Huizinga)
Man, Play and Games (Roger Callois)
Unit Operations (Ian Bogost)*

*UO focuses specifically on video game criticism, but have a look at this guy's other books as well since his PhD is in Philosophy and Comp Lit and he's also a small indy developer

 

[Xeno-the-Hedgehog]

I see most art as fitting two basic criteria; someone deems it worth creating, and someone deems it worth their attention, even if only momentarily and subconsciously. It's value is determined by how much attention it garners and how passionate its creator(s) are in making it. A video game is the epitome of this logic. So much work goes into the creation of something whose sole purpose is to keep its players' attention for extended periods of time, from the concept stages to level design and programming and everything else, how could it not be considered a form of art?