Help! Games as Art, Discussion

[The_Splatterer]

Hello Escapist! Long time reader first time poster...
For my final year of school before i can go off to university i have decided to do an "extended project qualification" which is essentially whatever i want it to be, so i figured i could easily write an essay if it was on what i love, games. So i just wanted to some opinions and examples on what i was going to write my essay on:
Are video games an Art Form?
I have a couple of examples in my head but i was looking for your opinions fellow escapists, and more importantly, why your game makes it an art on par with every other kind out there - and why this shows that games are an art form just like movies and books.
Thankyou

 

[jebus4you]

I wouldn't really call games an art form. I play games because they are fun and challenging.

 

[Jerubbaal]

Before you start this discussion, you should set out a very clear definition of what actually constitutes art. Otherwise, people will be calling things art because it fits their own personalized definition of art.

 

[The_Splatterer]

Before you start this discussion, you should set out a very clear definition of what actually constitutes art. Otherwise, people will be calling things art because it fits their own personalized definition of art.

Thats the first hurdle i've found with my project! It's difficult as you said because art isn't defined, which is why i'm trying to say art form, as although different people have different tastes of books or films, it's generally accepted that those are art forms.

I wouldn't really call games an art form. I play games because they are fun and challenging.

But i watch movies because they're fun and enjoyable but they're generally considered to be art forms. People look at art in galleries for fun also.

 

[HumpinHop]

>first time poster
>154 posts

Yes, albeit an emerging one. Painting, Photography, Music, Theatre, Dance, etc. have been around for centuries if not millenia, while the idea that games are more than just shoot'em-ups is fairly new.

I always thought art was something created that elicits a reaction or an emotion. There are video games that can terrify you just as any R.L Stine novel. We've felt compassion for characters that don't even speak, just as we would for those in a theatrical play. There are hundreds of parallels you could draw, but the issue is the people who have preconceived notions regarding video games, largely people 35 and older. I think over the next decade we should see a growing acceptance as more games like Shadow of the Colossus or Uncharted receive coverage.

 

[AyreonMaiden]

God Mode Challenge.

> Write this project without a single mention of ICO or Shadow of the Colossus for an Achievement.

Facetiousness aside, Ernst Gombach once said "There is no art, only artists." I've always found that frame of mind to be very interesting because it feels like at once, art has no rules and yet it does...

But as far as games are concerned...can you perhaps reference the point that "interactivity = NOT ART" and refute it? That's one frame of mind to consider once you nail your definition of "art..."

 

[GiantRaven]

I didn't know you could hand in an essay that consisted entirely of the word 'Yes.'

 

[Radeonx]

It's just as much of an art form as film, music, or painting.

 

[CthulhuMessiah]

Some are. BioShock, Metal Gear Solid 4, Mother 3, and Heavy Rain are. Kane and Lynch 2 IS NOT.

 

[GiantRaven]

Some are. BioShock, Metal Gear Solid 4, Mother 3, and Heavy Rain are. Kane and Lynch 2 IS NOT.

Your reasons for this are? You don't get to cherry pick different works in a medium and say some are art whilst others are not.

 

[manic_depressive13]

I think that a game's interractivity can be very effective for conveying emotion. Unwinnable sequences can be particularly moving: see the finale of Crisis Core and that sequence in the Starcraft II campaign where you play as protoss against zerg. They give you control of a protagonist/ faction and make you struggle against an infinite horde of enemies, and you always struggle to survive even when you know it's useless. By placing you in the shoes of those doomed to lose, a game is able to convey a sense of desperation and need to survive. I feel that this level of emotional involvment and empathy, if done right in a game, cannot really be rivalled by any other medium, and the ability to evoke a desired emotion, such as helplessness, is what qualifies something as art.

 

[Loreley]

I think that most every game is art in some way our other. Some of it might be really bad art (which is always an opinion), but that doesn't challenge its status as an artistic work, just as a bad picture is still, by definition, a piece of art. Hell, even an empty picture is art, as modern art has included such things.

I would also argue that the interactivity and immersion levels of game are the things that set it apart from many other forms of art. Maybe that's also why so many people have a problem accepting that they are art: They are too different from the traditional forms. However, all they really are is a combination of different art forms in a new way. We've got writing, voice acting, visual artists and people who do the "stage (level) design", like in a theatre. [That's just if you need to translate gaming for the occassional 90 year old professor who can't tell a computer from a microwave; I've certainly had to.]

Theatre is incidentally the one form that in its modern variations often tries hardest to break the fourth wall and involve the audience, a feat that is inherent in gameplay. So I don't see why handing the audience "Yey or Nay" cards, so they decide which end of the play is performed when they are prompted, is art*, but being interactive in a game suddenly prevents it from being art.

*As once happened to the audience in a play of "Antigone" I've been at.

 

[Kekkles]

I believe an art form is the portrayal of a moment from the mind of the artist at it's most absolute form. Art has the most variable definition and is seen differently to everyone. For instance all forms of music is artistic, be the song about Love or brutally massacring an individual, it's your taste whether you like it or not but it's still the portrayal of an artist's image. The greatest works of art can bring draw you straight in within an instant and can grip you right through to the end (in all cases a part from Photography/Portrait since there really is no end). So really games are an art form but most are more mass-produced, much like stock-pictures you buy to hang on a wall.

There's no choice whether or not a certain game is art depending on your personal taste. It still is.

IMO.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

Hello Escapist! Long time reader first time poster...
For my final year of school before i can go off to university i have decided to do an "extended project qualification" which is essentially whatever i want it to be, so i figured i could easily write an essay if it was on what i love, games. So i just wanted to some opinions and examples on what i was going to write my essay on:
Are video games an Art Form?
I have a couple of examples in my head but i was looking for your opinions fellow escapists, and more importantly, why your game makes it an art on par with every other kind out there - and why this shows that games are an art form just like movies and books.
Thankyou

The easy answer is "yes", not just because the interactivity and immersion in games are a burgeoning art form all their own, but because a lot of gaming encapsulates existing and recognized art forms such as narrative and short film. But the problem with writing about this as an academic essay is you're going to first need to define "gaming" and then define "art", and that can be a tedious and exhausting business at the very best of times.

It's easy to take something like Human Revolutions and break down all the ways in which it is a game, but is "The Path" a game? What about "The Endless Forest", or better yet "The Graveyard"? Technically they are, but how do you connect "The Graveyard" with, say, "Sonic the Hedgehog" and put them both under the umbrella of "gaming"?

It's easy to take something like Bioshock or Planescape Torment or Silent Hill 2 and break down all the ways in which they contain very obvious examples of conventional "art", but what about Tetris? Or Peggle? God, what about chess? Chess is a game. Is chess art?

What about self directed narratives, such as those found in MMOs? What about pure player expression, as in a game like Minecraft? Where does that factor in?

Really, I'd find something easier and less controversial to write an essay on, like gender politics or religion or something.