Logic: Why Mass Effect is not Art.

[drummond13]

I reject your definition of art and replace it with my own.

And thus is the crux of the "Games As Art" debate.

This.

It's not art to you, OP, because, by your definition, art does not include games. By other people's definition of art (almost all of which differ on some level) games ARE art. Both views are equally valid as there is no real indisputable definition of what classifies something as art.

This isn't really a debatable subject. You may as well talk about your favorite color and all of your logical reasons as to why it is superior.

 

[Tanakh]

I don't think gamers will benefit from letting developers label anything off the shelf as "art". I know we love our games but this art debate is just their little way of derailing the quality issues of their games.

I don't think it matters. EA/Bioware create games to make money, nothing wrong with that, they are companies; in the list of priorities making art is maybe a 1/1,000,000 what is worth making money.

What we can't allow is to accept bad products because they are "art", especially not products that are as standard and cliched as ME 3. Think about it, wich franchise is less original and risky this days CoD or ME? If they risked something and ended up with crap, like Schafer or Molyneux here and there, fair enough, but if you are going to make a AAA run of the mill bluckbuster i expect you to stick to the script, not pull up some crap to create controversy and keep your franchise DLC market alive at the end and then call it "art" when the shit hits the fan.

 

[peruvianskys]

1 and 2. That is pretty fucking arbitrary right there. You may as well say cars can't be art because you drive them, or plays because there is more than one artist. All pretty fucking arbitrary.

3. Ah, because every story is the same every reading for every individual. And if that isn't so then the work isn't art. So Melville is not a true artist since many of his works read entirely differently the second time around thanks to the many layers of irony. And consequentially Moby Dick is not art. All those thousands of literary essays written over the years wasted. Thank you OP for freeing Engish majors around the globe from ever having to write about that book again.

What he's saying is that it can't be considered an expression of artistic vision because the experience is determined by the player and not the artist.

There are certain aspects of any game that can be considered artistic, like character design and such, but that doesn't render the entire experience art; in the same way, you could have a hand-crafted chess board, but the actual game "chess" is not art. Soccer is not art either. Beer pong is not art. Anything that satisfies the human need for play is not art. It's still worthwhile of course, but the category is different.

This isn't really a debatable subject. You may as well talk about your favorite color and all of your logical reasons as to why it is superior.

This is a silly statement. The value of art is definitely subjective, but the definition is not - or, at least, it isn't to nearly the same degree. It's perfectly reasonable to set a definition for what constitutes "art." Otherwise you have a society where dipping tennis balls in mayonnaise or sitting naked in a meat-lined fake ovary carries the same designation as the Mona Lisa.

 

[Tanakh]

What he's saying is that it can't be considered an expression of artistic vision because the experience is determined by the player and not the artist.

Ahhh... mate, in all the artforms the experience is determined by the creator (and performer if applicable) and the receptor. When I hear Mozart's K626 my experience is radically different to yours.

Edit: It's not even a new idea, it has been in art appreciation 101 forever now.

Dobule Edit: Damn, now i remember i need to convert that Mozart collection from ape to mp3 to hear it on the road.

 

[Unsilenced]

Movies aren't art because, unlike plays, the "performance" only happens once, and can be copied a million times over with no additional artistic effort. An important part of performing arts is how an individual group performs it differently each time, but with movies that's not the case. No matter many times I watch a given movie, it will have the exact same actors delivering the exact same lines in the exact same way.

Also, unlike paintings or sculptures, copies of movies are still considered the movie. A photo copied Picasso is not a Picasso, but a DVD of a movie is still a movie. Music is different because the song, the actual notes, is something entirely different from a given recording of said song. Listening to an MP3 of a song is like watching a videotape of a play. That one version is not the song, because it can be sung by different artists at different times all over the world. The same song sung twice is the same song. The same movie filmed twice is not the same movie.

Basically, movies are not art because, as we all know, art is defined by a random collection of arbitrary features of other mediums, and not any sort of higher philosophical idea.




Wait, what were we talking about again?

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

"Art" is a completely meaningless word, as it's definition is completely subjective, and varies from person to person. Therefore, arguing about what does or doesn't constitute art is as constructive as arguing over what the best color is.


SEE ALSO: What I said in the last "Games are/aren't art" thread:


In my opinion, something can't be considered art until it has badgers in it. So obviously games (and actually, most things) are not art. Unless they have badgers in them, of course.


This thread is silly.

 

[peruvianskys]

Ahhh... mate, in all the artforms the experience is determined by the creator (and performer if applicable) and the receptor. When I hear Mozart's K626 my experience is radically different to yours.

Edit: It's not even a new idea, it has been in art appreciation 101 forever now.

There's a difference between the reaction to the art and the presentation of the art itself. You and I may have different reactions to classical music, but we're simply interpreting a single, uniform piece in different ways.

An example of a piece where we would actually make two different pieces, not simply give rise to two interpretations, would be if an artist said "The sound of you getting ready to go to work this morning is my musical piece." Because the artist is not the one dictating the details of the performance, the "work" is by necessity devoid of artistic intent, unless of course the artistic intent was to demonstrate that lack of intent - but if that were the case, then the act of stating those parameters for the piece would be the art itself, not the actual sounds of us preparing for work.

 

[VladG]

This thread is silly.

Sigh... all of them are... Until one of them actually declares crotch-grabbing an art. Then I'll be all over that

*Captcha: "on the ball" .... See, even the website agrees with me

 

[Revnak_v1legacy]

1 and 2. That is pretty fucking arbitrary right there. You may as well say cars can't be art because you drive them, or plays because there is more than one artist. All pretty fucking arbitrary.

3. Ah, because every story is the same every reading for every individual. And if that isn't so then the work isn't art. So Melville is not a true artist since many of his works read entirely differently the second time around thanks to the many layers of irony. And consequentially Moby Dick is not art. All those thousands of literary essays written over the years wasted. Thank you OP for freeing Engish majors around the globe from ever having to write about that book again.

What he's saying is that it can't be considered an expression of artistic vision because the experience is determined by the player and not the artist.

There are certain aspects of any game that can be considered artistic, like character design and such, but that doesn't render the entire experience art; in the same way, you could have a hand-crafted chess board, but the actual game "chess" is not art. Soccer is not art either. Beer pong is not art. Anything that satisfies the human need for play is not art. It's still worthwhile of course, but the category is different.

That is a pretty specific and largely arbitrary need to single out. Needs like sex, communication, and hunger are fine, but play is a huge no-no. The fuck is up with that. And when did we stop understanding that the audience has always had a say in how they experienced art? Artists define the work, the work only posses a certain number of valid experiences based on how it is defined, and the audience experiences any number of these, as well as any number of invalid experiences brought about by faulty perception. All art, including games abides by this and any artist who tells you what their work really means is lying to you.

 

[MPerce]

I think the question we need to be asking here is not "is Mass Effect/the video game medium as a whole art?" We need to ask ourselves what we think defines "art" first.

Problem is, everyone has a different definition of art, because art, by nature, emotionally engages people. And everyone has unique emotions, therefore we will all have different things that emotionally provoke us. So we're going to have different definitions of art.

Mass Effect is a story that provoked a wide range of emotional responses from me. That makes it art in my books.

OP has the right to his/her opinion, of course. I'm just advising against blanket statements on such an emotional and individual subject.

 

[BreakfastMan]

This is a silly statement. The value of art is definitely subjective, but the definition is not - or, at least, it isn't to nearly the same degree. It's perfectly reasonable to set a definition for what constitutes "art." Otherwise you have a society where dipping tennis balls in mayonnaise or sitting naked in a meat-lined fake ovary carries the same designation as the Mona Lisa.

Or taking a photo of a crucifix in a jar of piss. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piss_Christ] Because, you know, that would just be silly.

 

[Syzygy23]

Art is whatever the fuck I say it is, how about that?

 

[loc978]

"Art" is a completely meaningless word, as it's definition is completely subjective, and varies from person to person.

This is where I disagree with a vast majority of people on this board. Art has a very concrete, but very broad, definition. The long and short of it is, if anyone considers something art, it is art. Any definition beyond that is personal, rather than technical... which renders it, yes, meaningless for the purpose of communication (which is the purpose of language).

So, OT: I'm certain that someone, somewhere considers the Mass Effect series art... therefore it is art.

This thread is silly.

This, I agree with.

 

[Snotnarok]

I'll just repost the same post I put in the other games are not art thread:

Writing
Music writing/composing
Concept art/3D artist/Landscape artist/general art
3D modelers/sculptors

Are you telling me all of these things, considered art in their own fields can go together and make something that's not art? That basically means you can take anything out of a game and it's art but in the game it's not.

 

[zehydra]

2) Interactivity is a quality of sports and competition, not art.

This is perhaps the most important reason for distinguishing mass effect, or any video game, from art. The ability to interact with a medium, to change, play, or compete with it, excludes it from being art. Tennis is not art, it is a sport. The people who created tennis are not artists. Monopoly is a game, not art. The people who created monopoly are not artists. Admittedly those who created the board and figurines are artists, just as those who created the landscapes and textures in Mass Effect are artists. But Mass Effect itself is not art, it is a game that uses art to immerse. Monopoly is not art, it is a game that uses art to immerse. The inevitable response is "But a violin can be played, is a violin not art?" The difference here is that when a violin is played it creates art, music which can be recorded and enjoyed later. I would relate that to someone creating machinima from a game. Both music and machinima are art, but the violin and mass effect, the tools used to make the art, are not art in themselves simply for having been the tool used to create.

This is incorrect. There is no reason why Art cannot be interactive. You haven't explained why art must be fundamentally non-interactive.

The only fundamental quality of art is this: The evocation of emotion. The way to discover what Art is, is by asking why Art exists in the first place. Art, through all of the undisputed arts, is that which causes the experiencer of the art to have emotion. It is that which exists for the sole purpose of emotion. Sports ARE art, although they are bound by objective rules, (like points), such that it is easily objectively asserted that one player or another is "better" than another. It is difficult to objectively define "better" in the context of Music, Paintings, etc.

 

[zehydra]

Logic has no place at all in any discussion about art, regardless of the point of view being expressed. I won't even go into the fallacies of the OP's individual points.

Well, logic does come into play when we need to define Art. That is, whenever we define art, we are defining it to be some set of things. We need logic to make sure that we don't run into contradictions with our definition.

 

[peruvianskys]

That is a pretty specific and largely arbitrary need to single out. Needs like sex, communication, and hunger are fine, but play is a huge no-no. The fuck is up with that.

Did I somehow claim that play was bad? Play is incredibly important and obviously I wouldn't be here if I didn't love video games. Both games and art, among other things, are essential parts of the human experience.

And when did we stop understanding that the audience has always had a say in how they experienced art? Artists define the work, the work only posses a certain number of valid experiences based on how it is defined, and the audience experiences any number of these, as well as any number of invalid experiences brought about by faulty perception. All art, including games abides by this and any artist who tells you what their work really means is lying to you.

The difference, as I said before, is that the audience interprets the piece differently instead of the piece somehow actually being different for each person. Picasso's Guernica does not look different to each individual; it is simply interpreted differently. This is not true for ME3, let's say, where the experience is actually different and thus not capable of carrying a true artistic vision. It would be like painting a portrait and leaving stick-on clothing for people to choose each time they viewed it; if the creator isn't in control of even the most basic methods of access and experience, then artistic intent is nonexistent.

We play games for different reasons than we patronize art. That's the bottom line. They are so clearly, clearly different in both form and function that I cannot honestly understand why anyone would attempt to compare them.

The only fundamental quality of art is this: The evocation of emotion. The way to discover what Art is, is by asking why Art exists in the first place. Art, through all of the undisputed arts, is that which causes the experiencer of the art to have emotion. It is that which exists for the sole purpose of emotion. Sports ARE art, although they are bound by objective rules, (like points), such that it is easily objectively asserted that one player or another is "better" than another. It is difficult to objectively define "better" in the context of Music, Paintings, etc.

Art exists because people needed a way to best express what it means to be human. We created art so that we could make sense of our emotions and experiences. We created Mass Effect 3 so we could shoot robots and play as another character. A game is not art, whether it is soccer or Uncharted or chess or strip poker or anything else. You're absolutely right that the best way to understand what makes "art" is to ask why "art" was made in the first place - the only problem is that once you do that, you can't honestly say that we had the same reasons for painting The Hands of the Peasants that we did for making Killzone 2.

 

[distortedreality]

Logic has no place at all in any discussion about art, regardless of the point of view being expressed. I won't even go into the fallacies of the OP's individual points.

Well, logic does come into play when we need to define Art. That is, whenever we define art, we are defining it to be some set of things. We need logic to make sure that we don't run into contradictions with our definition.

Who says our personal definitions of art can't be contradictions?

Seems like someone is missing the point of art entirely.