What will make video games fine art?

[briankoontz]

Fine art is art that considerably improves some of the people who experience it. There are already video games that qualify as fine art, and more will be made. Fine art is some combination of intention and accident - it takes a creator who wants to produce something worthwhile and a receiver who wants to experience something worthwhile, and both sides need to execute well to make it happen.

The profit motive greatly hinders the production of art since the motivation for producing for profit is the question of "what will the player buy?" instead of "what benefits the player?". There's nothing wrong with manipulating the player if the motivation is profit, unless that manipulation itself results in less current or future profit.

Some video games have always been fine art, and likely will always be.

 

[Keiichi Morisato]

Nothing will make video games into fine art as of this typing. In order for something to be a work of art, the artist must plant the idea that their work is art. In my opinion, video game developers and game journalists don't know anything about art. They're trying to plant the idea that video games are a work of art, but can't fully articulate a reason why video games are art. The best reason these people want video games to become art so badly is for the medium to be taken seriously, which is kind of a bad reason. Art is supposed to take people out of their comfort zone and expose them to new ideas. Art is also supposed to provoke a reaction out of the the viewer. Just to be clear, when I'm talking about art, I'm not referring to Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh, or Andy Warhol;

I'm talking about Judy Chicago and the Dinner Table:
http://cdn.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/images/Dinner-Party_428-wide.jpg
Or Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573
Or the Red Square:
http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Drama/visualarts/avant-garde/red_square18.html

That's what's considered art in the art world. Video games like The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls may look work of art, but sadly they're not considered fine art. Both games are more interactive movies than works of art.

what is so bad about "Interactive Movies"? there is enough room in the world for these kinds of games. i don't like CoD, but i still think that the franchise does have some merit. i don't like Platformers, but i think they have merit. just because you don't like story driven games, doesn't make a game not art. as you said art is to take us out of our comforts zones, and The Last of US does that beautifully, with it's brutal combat, and in vocative story, and the gameplay is there is enhance the story. i can guarantee you that the game's story would not have had it's impact had it been a film. and if The Last of Us is an interactive movie, then so is The Walking Dead.

 

[lacktheknack]

Nothing will make video games into fine art as of this typing. In order for something to be a work of art, the artist must plant the idea that their work is art. In my opinion, video game developers and game journalists don't know anything about art. They're trying to plant the idea that video games are a work of art, but can't fully articulate a reason why video games are art. The best reason these people want video games to become art so badly is for the medium to be taken seriously, which is kind of a bad reason. Art is supposed to take people out of their comfort zone and expose them to new ideas. Art is also supposed to provoke a reaction out of the the viewer. Just to be clear, when I'm talking about art, I'm not referring to Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh, or Andy Warhol;

I'm talking about Judy Chicago and the Dinner Table:
http://cdn.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/images/Dinner-Party_428-wide.jpg
Or Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573
Or the Red Square:
http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Drama/visualarts/avant-garde/red_square18.html

That's what's considered art in the art world. Video games like The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls may look work of art, but sadly they're not considered fine art. Both games are more interactive movies than works of art.

This is half-baked.

For one thing, Duchamp's "Fountain", and the Dadaist movement that followed, was an assault on art that people mistook for great art. It was meant to tear down human achievement, not build it, born of depressed and angry cynicism after the first World War.

Also, avant-garde art isn't a great example of "fine art". Heck, there's debate whether or not it's good art. Red Square, I would argue, is a terrible piece of art, because it took little effort on the artist's part and it didn't impart anything of emotional value (it was more of a declaration of independence from traditionalism than anything particularly artistic). This is because I define art as "a method of conveying emotion".

It's as good of a definition as any.

And under that definition, then yes, we have "Fine Art" video games. "Fine Art" merely refers to a piece of art that places immense value on the aesthetic over practicality.

http://www.indiegames.com/2009/03/21/path3.png

There you go: A video game that sacrifices function (fun) in exchange for aesthetics and conveying the fears of maturing. A video game meant to be seen, pondered, discussed and experienced rather than played. Fine art.

 

[RiseUp]

Nothing will make video games into fine art as of this typing. In order for something to be a work of art, the artist must plant the idea that their work is art. In my opinion, video game developers and game journalists don't know anything about art. They're trying to plant the idea that video games are a work of art, but can't fully articulate a reason why video games are art. The best reason these people want video games to become art so badly is for the medium to be taken seriously, which is kind of a bad reason. Art is supposed to take people out of their comfort zone and expose them to new ideas. Art is also supposed to provoke a reaction out of the the viewer. Just to be clear, when I'm talking about art, I'm not referring to Jackson Pollock, Vincent Van Gogh, or Andy Warhol;

I'm talking about Judy Chicago and the Dinner Table:
http://cdn.brooklynmuseum.org/exhibitions/dinner_party/images/Dinner-Party_428-wide.jpg
Or Marcel Duchamp and the Fountain:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573
Or the Red Square:
http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Drama/visualarts/avant-garde/red_square18.html

That's what's considered art in the art world. Video games like The Last of Us and Beyond: Two Souls may look work of art, but sadly they're not considered fine art. Both games are more interactive movies than works of art.

This is half-baked.

For one thing, Duchamp's "Fountain", and the Dadaist movement that followed, was an assault on art that people mistook for great art. It was meant to tear down human achievement, not build it, born of depressed and angry cynicism after the first World War.

Also, avant-garde art isn't a great example of "fine art". Heck, there's debate whether or not it's good art. Red Square, I would argue, is a terrible piece of art, because it took little effort on the artist's part and it didn't impart anything of emotional value (it was more of a declaration of independence from traditionalism than anything particularly artistic). This is because I define art as "a method of conveying emotion".

It's as good of a definition as any.

And under that definition, then yes, we have "Fine Art" video games. "Fine Art" merely refers to a piece of art that places immense value on the aesthetic over practicality.

http://www.indiegames.com/2009/03/21/path3.png

There you go: A video game that sacrifices function (fun) in exchange for aesthetics and conveying the fears of maturing. A video game meant to be seen, pondered, discussed and experienced rather than played. Fine art.

I don't hold to the belief that you have to sacrifice any sort of gameplay to have an interactive exploration of theme though the game's aesthetics. It's possible to be evocative AND offer a traditionally functional game, provided the two work similarly to support each other. As a simple example, I'm working on a game about the impermanence of human institutions clashing with a human belief in being part of something larger than oneself, in the guise of a side scrolling beat-em-up. It would take too much effort for me to explain everything, and the final product might be something of an incoherent mess since this is my first time attempting such a thing, but gameplay can work to support tone and theme just as well as, if not better than, a game's aesthetics.

 

[lacktheknack]

I don't hold to the belief that you have to sacrifice any sort of gameplay to have an interactive exploration of theme though the game's aesthetics. It's possible to be evocative AND offer a traditionally functional game, provided the two work similarly to support each other. As a simple example, I'm working on a game about the impermanence of human institutions clashing with a human belief in being part of something larger than oneself, in the guise of a side scrolling beat-em-up. It would take too much effort for me to explain everything, and the final product might be something of an incoherent mess since this is my first time attempting such a thing, but gameplay can work to support tone and theme just as well as, if not better than, a game's aesthetics.

Then it's not fine art.

Oh, it's art, all right. It can even be great art. But fine art, by its very definition, drops all non-aesthetic focus.

 

[Mikejames]

I usually refer to how Yahtzee put it, when saying that there will never be a full consensus on the issue.

My personal definition of art is something that provokes emotional attachment. And there are games that have given me far stronger emotional feelings than any other story told in any medium. Fear, despair, joy, sympathy, the whole gamut. But these were all extremely personal experiences. I'd no doubt have felt differently if I'd had a different personality. I can't really share the emotions of a film critic blubbing at the end of It's A Wonderful Life, and I don't expect them to share those of my eight-year-old self blubbing equally hard at a funeral scene in Wing Commander.

There are games out there that have moved me more than any film or painting have, but obviously, not everyone will share those sentiments.

 

[NiPah]

Fine art, defined as:
creative art, esp. visual art, whose products are to be appreciated primarily or solely for their imaginative, aesthetic, or intellectual content.

So it's pretty much a subjective definition, which would explain why so many people argue over what's fine art.
As to what I see as fine art, well there's countless games that meet that definition for me, the most recent would be Dead Space 1-3 due to my appreciation of the setting (which entails all the above).

I know, I know, I'm saying Dead Space is fine art which may be weird, but that's what you get when you define something with such a bullshit subjective definition.

 

[veloper]

A MILLION dollar pricetag for a single copy and someone crazy enough to buy it, will make it fine art.

Just be content that some videogames are actually quite good and even mediocre games will offer better entertainment than most of the crap coming out of Hollywood and most of the book publishers too, nowadays.

 

[ZZoMBiE13]

As someone who studied art in college, I have a pretty well defined set of standards for what is or is not art. What makes art be art, and how it gains that status.

At least for me, art isn't some check box that needs to be ticked. This is art, this isn't art, none of that matters. Art, simply, is a created work that elicits an emotional response. It does not matter if it's created for entertainment purposes, it does not matter if it's created by one man or a team of a hundred. That's all fluff.

I honestly feel that art is only art once it's viewed and considered. Once it's appreciated for more than a surface value. A painting is just a smear of oil based chromatic streaks until someone gazes upon it. Regards it. Interprets it. Feels something about it; be it rage, indifference, joy, or whatever. Art isn't about the process that created it, but about the response it garners from an audience.

In many ways I think video games can be the ultimate expression of art. Because it requires the interaction in a way no other art form every could or ever has. What does piloting a character around in this or that created world make you feel? Make you think? Do you like him(or her, or it), do you hate him, do you want to see his story play out and take part? That interaction and consideration is paramount because it's the same kind of things we do with other art forms. These things are fundamental in viewing a painting or a film and they're at the very core of how we pick up and experience video games as well.

Gazing upon a Salvador Dali painting makes me feel something. And piloting The Lone Wanderer around the Capital Wasteland does as well. So does watching Luke get his hand cut off or reading about Zaphod Beeblebrox's latest adventures. And those feelings are what make a created work into a work of art.