Poll: Can multiplayer games be art?

[tlozoot]

Depends how you define art.

An artistic single player game would be like putting you in the shoes of a character in a great book/film. Most multiplayer games would be likened more to sport, unless the game put multiple people as likened to multiple roles in a great book/movie.

 

[Syrus Vikeruce]

Mm... Nah I don't think so.

Don't get me wrong I love multis, namely Star Fox Assault, 'Splitters 3, Smash Bros, even Halo and of course Goldeneye 64. But is it art?

Nah more of a sport to me really.

 

[random_bars]

Depends how you define art.

An artistic single player game would be like putting you in the shoes of a character in a great book/film. Most multiplayer games would be likened more to sport, unless the game put multiple people as likened to multiple roles in a great book/movie.

I see your point. But, would you consider something like Team Fortress 2 or Brutal Legend to be multiplayer art? Seeing as the people you play as, and the characters involved, are actual people with personalities, rather than just generic space marines or whatever.

 

[Ldude893]

Hell yes they can.

 

[moretimethansense]

Games. Are. Art. no exeptions

Though there are different levels of artistic merit.

 

[lukemdizzle]

I can't think of any really good examples (besides MMOs) but potentially yes. in the best games narrative is presented subtly through the environment and I don't see why the same can't be done for multiplayer. It also depends on how you define a multiplayer game. if you call spore of little big planate multiplayer than those are great examples.

 

[Lilani]

Of course, we just have to get more creative. The actual PLAYING of most multiplayer games probably isn't art,

No.

There aren't any elements inherent to multiplayer itself that might be artistic, at least not in the current gaming paradigm. One could make a game with artistic merit and then just stick two players in it rather than one, but then it's not multiplayer that makes a game artistic, is it?

I do see artistic potential in multiplayer games, but perhaps not so much in the actual playing of them. The "playing" of just about any game, especially multiplayer, is about as artistic as looking at a painting in a museum. It's not the viewing that is considered artistic, it's the art itself.

So of course there is plenty of artistic potential. Apart from the general aesthetics, there are gameplay mechanics to be taken into account, sound design, and not to mention the storytelling possibilities.

Now, art generated through actual multiplayer action depends entirely on how much the players are given to work with and how much they want to work with it. For example, there could be a game where teams work to paint or build things, or generate haikus within a time limit. I think there are far too many things possible through video games to answer something like this with a straight "yes" or "no."

 

[ProfessorLayton]

You say this as if sports aren't an art...

 

[tlozoot]

Depends how you define art.

An artistic single player game would be like putting you in the shoes of a character in a great book/film. Most multiplayer games would be likened more to sport, unless the game put multiple people as likened to multiple roles in a great book/movie.

I see your point. But, would you consider something like Team Fortress 2 or Brutal Legend to be multiplayer art? Seeing as the people you play as, and the characters involved, are actual people with personalities, rather than just generic space marines or whatever.

No. Team Fortress has good visual design. I wouldn't call that the same as art. A match of Team Fortress is a contest - a sport or sorts. What commentary on the human experience does a match of Team Fortress have?

I'm not sure that competetive multiplayer can have artistic merit. I think it might be possible to craft an artistic interactive experience with multiple players as participants, but I think it'd have to be small scale.

People have been debating what makes 'art' for centuries though. To me, it's something that causes us to think about things. While I have fun with Team Fortress, it doesn't have any sort of lasting, profound, emotional effect. The Heavy I play as might be a loveable simpleton who affectionately gives his mini-gun a name but....so what? It doesn't matter in the long run. I wouldn't say the experience is artistic. Fun, yes. Artistic, no.

 

[tlozoot]

Just to add a few things to my above post:

I agree with Roger Ebert.

Bang. Contentious, yes? Ebert said that art requires authorial control, and that player agency allowed in video games negated this, and as such...no art. Ebert is wrong, but not, I think, in his main jist. I too belive that art needs authorial control. Games, of course, do have authorial control. Player freedom is an illusion.

You may think that you entered that room and decided to go and pick up that wrench, all on your own free will, but truth is that good designers would have used expert positioning as well audio and visual cues to lead you to that wrench.

In multiplayer this is simply much more difficult to do. I guess you might have the odd moment in multiplayer where something strikes you and makes you think, but these would be few and far between, and happen by sheer coincidence. If competetive multiplayer is art, it's only very rarely, and by sheer chance, in the way that would shrivel when compared to authorial art.

Hmmm....this topic has made me think quite a bit. In the end though 'art' is subjective, and there's no real answer. The above posts are simply my own interpretations.

 

[gallaetha_matt]

I don't see why not. If you define art as any piece of work that evokes an emotional response, then yeah, multiplayer games are art. Even if that emotional response is just rage and swearing if you're X-box Live.

But to say that a video game isn't art because of the emotion it generates is like saying that Michelangelo's David isn't art because it made your wife leave you. There are plenty of solid works of art designed to make you angry - like every exhibit in the Turner gallery.