How much longer until videogames are accepted as an art form or beneficial to society?

[Piction Froject]

Stupid topic is stupid, Art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder, it is not an idea that is accepted by society as a whole, and anyone who thinks otherwise is an ignorant sheep who enjoys farmville and thinks that playing it religiously makes them a gamer. (or those people who think that mastering CoD makes them gamers, enjoying social entertainment such as MMOs or online halo matches are not gamers, they are people who enjoy social entertainment.) In short, art is what you think art is, not what Harvard says it is.

You know I never specified what art is but some people in history have.
Paintings to someone are just a bunch of colors and lines and shapes to make a picture.
Poetry, many lines of characters then combined to make what we call words then combined with other words to make them rhyme. Also we give meaning to words.
Writing, ditto to what i said above but this form the words are put in a way to portray a story, some people don't like books because it's boring.
Dance, to someone it may just look like a person who is flailing their body parts around.
Now games simply just lines upon lines of code, I do not believe it is anything more but with the above examples you can see that art is what someone's opinion is and I believe games are an art because they combine several of these examples to fit an audience who would not usually access those other media. I appreciate your opinion but please stupid is just a word with a very negative connotation so don't use it on my threads.

 

[Adventurer2626]

I say 10 years. Not all videogames will be art but most new art will be on an electronic medium and some "games" will be more artistic interactive experience than game. Some are getting to the point of being a playable book instead of something you try to get a high score in.

 

[spartan231490]

There is no "the game" several very good artistic games have already come out. I think it's like "Extra Credits" says, we have to stick to our guns and stand up for the genre if we ever want it to be accepted.

 

[Jamboxdotcom]

- snip "The Game"

-snip "The Game"

-snip "The Game" -snip "The Game"

Gah! And so... I lost the game!

Did you guys really have to spell it out like that? Did ya?!

so... the "Messiah of Games", maybe?

'cause, you know, that would have been less cliched?

 

[MasterV]

To reply to your question, dear OP, I tell you this:

Just as soon as devs realise they should stop being douchebags and creating more fun games as opposed to thei personal masturnbation

And just as soon as we realise we should stop being dicks to everyone just because they don't understand us.

 

[Piction Froject]

Art is in the eye of the beholder. A media's benefit to society should not be a factor in its overall quality.

True it should not but sometimes it has a benefit that it was not meant to have and society prospered from it. Like news originally was word of mouth, and surely never was meant to inform the masses of dangers. Yet that is what it does. Again it should not need to benefit society but it doesn't hurt either.

 

[Iron Mal]

i was saying that to a large degree, games are not accepted as having any true merit by the majority, because there is a substantial majority of people who are too closed-minded and focused on negative aspects of games that they will never acknowledge games as art. because, let's face it, whether you liked the game or not, Portal was art. it should have had enough appeal that anyone could stand back and look at it and say, "yes, this is art." but that didn't happen, which i believe to be for the reasons i stated above.

Part of it is to do with people who are unwilling to accept video games as anything other than tools of evil that corrupt children, but part of the blame also rests with us.

Picture a stereotypical gamer, sad sight isn't it? Socially retarded, lives in his mom's basement, screams at the computer when he loses (always male as well by the way), lives on cheetos and soda, only contact with women is through the medium of pornography, is probably an obsessive and is clearly not a healthy or well adjusted individual.

Either that or the 'hardcore' gamer who lives to get a higher score, berates others for not being as 'l33t' as him (again, always male), has anger issues, is incredably petty and childish.

We know people like this and worse (failing that we can easily go onto Youtube to find videos of people who call themselves gamers who make the rest of us look bad), they may be a minority but unfortuneately, they are the people that the media has the most exposure and contact with.

Then you have to remember all the stories and studies that have been made that claim or suggest that video games are harmful and warp people into the above stereotype, we may laugh them off as ridiculous and biased but to a public of concerned people with little actual contact with gamers...these claims all seem frighteningly real. Do you think that the average worried parent (who's only experience with video games is likely to be Pacman and Space Invaders) is going to care in the slightest about the artistic merit behind games like Heavy Rain, Bioshock and Mass Effect when they'e bombarded with stories and reports of how Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto are going to twist their precious baby into a ruthless and merciless killer?

 

[Clockwork Scarecrow.]

Not for a long time. We're talking a few decades here, I'm gonna guess 3 decades

 

[conflictofinterests]

1) I lost. :<

2) This sounds like the beginnings of a cult.

3) ANTHROPOLOGISTS SHOULD BE ALL OVER THIS. I KNOW I AM.

Anyways, I'm not certain we'll get a 'perfect storm' of a game as soon as we'll get ethnologies written in game format. Ethnologies are typically written accounts of a culture. No, it does not get more specific than that, because ethnologists want to capture every aspect of any particular culture that they can. In the olden days these accounts were basically journals of some guy's time in some place (Quite frustrating when you take into consideration people in the olden days were a) not scientific and b) very racist/sexist/etc.)
Nowadays ethnologies are compilations of one's field notes in a form reminiscent of a Wikipedia article: Complete, concise, making note of all sources, grouping together relevant topics.

What an ethnologist is trying to convey, there is no better way to convey that I can think of than a videogame, in which everything is integrated as it would be in that society and one can participate as one of the people.

 

[josephmatthew10]

AMEN, BROTHER! (If people thought about it or were shown the best games they'd reconsider; Ebert did, so there's proof the older generations can appreciate games if the medium is shown and explained to them properly.)

 

[eljawa]

it never happened to movies, why should it happen to video games.

I mean art films exist, but how many have you actually seen

 

[GeorgW]

"The game" (which you just lost) will never come. It's not about the games, it's about the medium and humanity's resistence to change. What will make games recognized as art is just a matter of time until all the old ppl are dead.

 

[Dfskelleton]

When we stop making Halo over and over and start trying to make games similar to Portal, LIMBO, Bioshock, (possibly) Street Fighter IV's focus attacks, and Silent Hill 2.
Or maybe never.

 

[conflictofinterests]

i was saying that to a large degree, games are not accepted as having any true merit by the majority, because there is a substantial majority of people who are too closed-minded and focused on negative aspects of games that they will never acknowledge games as art. because, let's face it, whether you liked the game or not, Portal was art. it should have had enough appeal that anyone could stand back and look at it and say, "yes, this is art." but that didn't happen, which i believe to be for the reasons i stated above.

Part of it is to do with people who are unwilling to accept video games as anything other than tools of evil that corrupt children, but part of the blame also rests with us.

Picture a stereotypical gamer, sad sight isn't it? Socially retarded, lives in his mom's basement, screams at the computer when he loses (always male as well by the way), lives on cheetos and soda, only contact with women is through the medium of pornography, is probably an obsessive and is clearly not a healthy or well adjusted individual.

Either that or the 'hardcore' gamer who lives to get a higher score, berates others for not being as 'l33t' as him (again, always male), has anger issues, is incredably petty and childish.

We know people like this and worse (failing that we can easily go onto Youtube to find videos of people who call themselves gamers who make the rest of us look bad), they may be a minority but unfortuneately, they are the people that the media has the most exposure and contact with.

Then you have to remember all the stories and studies that have been made that claim or suggest that video games are harmful and warp people into the above stereotype, we may laugh them off as ridiculous and biased but to a public of concerned people with little actual contact with gamers...these claims all seem frighteningly real. Do you think that the average worried parent (who's only experience with video games is likely to be Pacman and Space Invaders) is going to care in the slightest about the artistic merit behind games like Heavy Rain, Bioshock and Mass Effect when they'e bombarded with stories and reports of how Manhunt and Grand Theft Auto are going to twist their precious baby into a ruthless and merciless killer?

I have noticed the only games my mom can cite when she berates the gamers is indeed Grand Theft Auto.

I tell her Portal, Mass Effect, Bioshock and Fallout, but they don't stick in her mind like GTA does.

 

[Mullahgrrl]

if Portal wasn't "The Game", there never will be one.

and to answer your question: not until there are no more religious (or otherwise closed-minded) zealots out to cockblock the whole world.

How then do you explain movies?

There are still people who would laugh in your face if you called movies art.

 

[blackflare]

well id say that gaming will be accepted as an art form when the goverment admits that gaming dosent made killers are already killers there fucked up in the head to begin with. As for me i believe its already art its the only kind i can stand.

 

[deathbydeath]

when people as a whole realize that games have to the potential to tell detailed, unique, and engrossing stories that can explore the human experiance and challenge us to think hard about deep and difficult things.

 

[deathbydeath]

it never happened to movies, why should it happen to video games.

I mean art films exist, but how many have you actually seen

quite a few... quite a few

 

[vivalahelvig]

When Duke Nukem Forever comes ou.....wait, cant use that anymore.

When Half-life 2: Episode 3 comes out.

 

[Woodsey]

How are films or music particularly beneficial to society (other the stimulating the economy)? Why are you people so focused on entertainment products being labelled art? To justify yourselves being entertained?