What game(s) do you consider art?

[DesertMummy]

This has probably been posted like a gazillion times already, so sorry in advance. The long and short is, what game do you think is art? Personally, I would have to say the Mass Effect, and Fallout games. What do you guys think?

EDIT:Just to clarify, you can't say every game. Yes, I understand that all games technically qualify as art. However I an talking about like what game or games do you consider a Mona Lisa of games, something to convince a video game virgin that the medium is art not simply something to kill a couple of minutes with. Also, loving your guys answers! Keep then coming!

P.S. I forgot about Half-Life 2 and Bioshock. Those are also on my list.

 

[Kahunaburger]

All of them. Just like all books, all movies, etc are art by definition.

 

[blankedboy]

Fuck it, I'm linking.

http://nifflas.ni2.se/?page=Knytt+Stories

Download it. Absolute masterpiece. Endpost.

 

[nbamaniac]

I would not go as far as calling them pure art, but here are my 'artsy' games.

Ico
Shadow of the Colossus
Mass Effect
The Witcher 1 and 2
Plants vs Zombies
Super Meat Boy
Braid (didnt finish that confusing heck of a game)

 

[JMeganSnow]

I actually don't think of a game as an artwork. I think of it more like a gallery where you have to do a bunch of stuff before you can get to the artwork. It's possible that a game might yet change my mind on this, a game in which all the elements are fully integrated and only separable in an abstract sense, but I haven't seen that game yet. The reason why I make this distinction is that I don't think the mechanical aspects of games (the "game" part as opposed to, say, the animations, visuals, sounds, music, dialog, voice acting, writing, etc.) are art yet.

However, there's a precedent for art with a utilitarian purpose: architecture. So games may one day actually become unified works of art in their own right.

 

[Avaholic03]

I guess you could argue that all games have some artistic merits, but the one that most immediately springs to mind for me is Psychonauts. Especially the bullfighter level.

 

[Judgement101]

Stranded 2. It's a survial.....game.

 

[WorldFree55]

I got a huge list. I'll just say a few like Star Wars: KOTOR, Elder Scrolls Oblivion, Fallout, Half-Life, Fable (mostly 1 and 2), Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Bioshock (despite my dislike for it), and many older games even like Mario (no matter how repetitive the story itself is), Zelda, Super Metroid, Donkey Kong.

Again, my list is huge, but just a few on the top of my head.

 

[ckriley]

Planescape: Torment.

And I'm not trying to be trendy or cliche by saying that. Kind of like how everyone loves Blade Runner today even though the movie was a box office and critical flop when it first came out and it seems to have aged like fine wine. (Although, I can honestly say I loved it back in 1982.)

But I digress. PST was the type of game where you actually spent the majority of the time READING the game rather than playing it. That's how involved the text dialogue was and how deep the story was. And the end of the game was just...whoa...

 

[Xixikal]

Shadow of the Colossus.
Inspired by the work of De Chirico, absolutely stunning.

 

[Kalikin]

It's art if it has:
Visual expression - if paintings, drawings, sculptures are art, why not digital images?
Music - It's there to elicit some kind of feeling. Music in itself is usually considered "art".
Narrative - clearly stronger for some games than others.

You could also add to the list, "has a deeper meaning", or, depending on the art theorist and the era, "serves no purpose other than itself", but by this stage it's pretty clear that every video game is made up of elements that are individually, almost universally, called "art". It's just up to you to decide whether being made up of artistic elements constitutes the whole being art.
My answer is: Yes, in every instance, whether you look at Shadow of the Colossus or Just Cause 2.

 

[Sleepy Sol]

A personal favorite of mine, Eternal Sonata. Though I consider many games art, but I wanted to give an answer not yet given here.

 

[MercurySteam]

I never played the original American McGee's Alice, but Alice: Madness Returns looks like it could qualify.

 

[Shoggoth2588]

It's art if it has:
Visual expression - if paintings, drawings, sculptures are art, why not digital images?
Music - It's there to elicit some kind of feeling. Music in itself is usually considered "art".
Narrative - clearly stronger for some games than others.

I disagree: Books don't have music and only certain ones have visual expressions. Paintings are also relatively silent. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words but before the advent of motion pictures, it took tapestries to show off a narration in a single work. Operas and, musicals (show tunes, etc...) have all three though.

Anyway, I look at it like this. If Piss Christ and, Chocolate Christ are considered art than so is E.T. on the Atari 2600 and, Custer's Revenge. If those two examples of gaming's past are art than so too are any of the other games that have been released before and since.

 

[trooper6]

All of them. Just like all books, all movies, etc are art by definition.

I agree with Kahunaburger. They are all art.

Now, they may not all be good art. But bad art is still art.

 

[Kalikin]

It's art if it has:
Visual expression - if paintings, drawings, sculptures are art, why not digital images?
Music - It's there to elicit some kind of feeling. Music in itself is usually considered "art".
Narrative - clearly stronger for some games than others.

I disagree: Books don't have music and only certain ones have visual expressions. Paintings are also relatively silent. It is said that a picture is worth a thousand words but before the advent of motion pictures, it took tapestries to show off a narration in a single work. Operas and, musicals (show tunes, etc...) have all three though.

Yes, of course, I should have been more clear.
Visual expression, music and narrative are all individually art, so if something has any one of them and is called art, it makes sense that something with all of those elements is also art. So a book is still art, while only typically having narrative.

EDIT: Huh, something went wrong the the quote there... Ah well, it's not hard to figure out - top paragraph is what I want to reply to, bottom paragraph is me.