When did we go from "games can be art" to "all games must be art?"

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SageRuffin

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Dec 19, 2009
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Taunta said:
SageRuffin said:
Do you mind elaborating on "thematic merit"? I'm pretty sure we're not on the same wavelength when it comes to that particular definition. If it pertains to graphics and the sort, then wouldn't it be kind of silly to say a game is "artistic" because it uses a certain art-style (because if so, I'm sure games like the Fable and Team Fortress series would get a lot more recognition), or because it "looks pretty"?

If you do indeed mean something else, then feel free to disregard the previous paragraph.
I actually wasn't referring to graphics at all, but if the art direction is unusual or well-thought-out, it can of course help to portray the themes in the work.

Thematic merit being the ability to explore certain ideas or messages and communicate them to the audience. For example, one of the themes of God of War being like a greek tragedy, and Kratos' hubris being his main downfall and arguably the biggest obstacle between him and his salvation. It also explores a theme of revenge, and how he is so devoted to his goal of revenge that he loses sight of everything else, in addition to what little part of him that made him human.
Ah, I think I get it. Just like the old Greek proverb: "whom the gods would destroy they first anger".

So you're talking about some of the finer points of storytelling, am I right? In which case, sure, I can roll with that.
 

gardyna

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http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-35-A-Response-to-Roger-Ebert (this is a great vieo on gaming as an artform)

now the problem is that a lot of (not all) "gamers" are getting higher an higher stanars to which they compare their games.

my gripe with gaming as an artform is that a LOT of developers don't realy know what it is in vieogames that makes them unique artisticaly. it's artistic gameplay in that way i think games like Super Mario 3 or Doom and Painkiller are far more artistic than games most of modern shooters. storytelling through gameplay (there's an extra credits episoe on that) is far more fun and artisticthan games that use cutscenes (I'm looking at you Metal Gear). that's why games like Half Life (a REALY fun game) and Prince of Persia (great use of time manipulation)

games CAN be "art" but most games are not "good art" just like movies have bad and good movies. and summer blockbuster and romantic comedies. there are games that sculpt itself and it's gameplay by player interaction (Fallour series, Deus Ex, Super Mario and Mass Effect)

but in conclusion i want to say that Movies managed to become "art" but are still fun and most of them focus on fun (but there are people within the movie comunity who focus more on artistic merit than fun) so i hope vieogames can become recocnised "high art" but stil have the same variety as movies who have everything from dumb garbarge(Ninja bread man) to exiting action flicks (Uncharted) and deep thought provocking epics(Mass effect(just barely) (there are some dificult choices you HAVE to make in those games))
 

Taunta

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SageRuffin said:
Taunta said:
SageRuffin said:
Do you mind elaborating on "thematic merit"? I'm pretty sure we're not on the same wavelength when it comes to that particular definition. If it pertains to graphics and the sort, then wouldn't it be kind of silly to say a game is "artistic" because it uses a certain art-style (because if so, I'm sure games like the Fable and Team Fortress series would get a lot more recognition), or because it "looks pretty"?

If you do indeed mean something else, then feel free to disregard the previous paragraph.
I actually wasn't referring to graphics at all, but if the art direction is unusual or well-thought-out, it can of course help to portray the themes in the work.

Thematic merit being the ability to explore certain ideas or messages and communicate them to the audience. For example, one of the themes of God of War being like a greek tragedy, and Kratos' hubris being his main downfall and arguably the biggest obstacle between him and his salvation. It also explores a theme of revenge, and how he is so devoted to his goal of revenge that he loses sight of everything else, in addition to what little part of him that made him human.
Ah, I think I get it. Just like the old Greek proverb: "whom the gods would destroy they first anger".

So you're talking about some of the finer points of storytelling, am I right? In which case, sure, I can roll with that.
Sure! These are themes that can be explored in literature, so it's amazing to see an interactive medium convey the same ideas.

I think a lot of "Games can be art" people would like to see more of this great storytelling and these thought-provoking concepts, and to see it recognized as something with real merit. It's frustrating for someone like me to see people look at games like God of War at the surface level, and just see it as another action game. Some people just don't see the great subtext in it, because they refuse to believe that a video game can communicate the same messages and ideas that a classic novel can. That's really all I want, and that's really all the people at Extra Credits want, is to prevent the medium being shoved under the rug by people who refuse to broaden their horizons.

Just to be sure, this is of course, not meaning that all games should be art. Are all novels great literature? No! But now I'm repeating myself.
 

Taunta

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TheGuiggleMonster said:
Can someone please tell me what art Really is?
It's whatever you define it as. It's a hypothetical construct [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Construct_(philosophy_of_science)] just like love, intelligence, and insanity.

You can also use this definition [http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/art], but it does mention "according to your own aesthetics."
 

sigma2

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I never really thought this kinda argument existed. I've been recently arguing with a bunch of idiots who are like, "Who gives a **** about art?".

On-Topic: Games CAN be art, but they don't all have to be. If all games have to be art, then they kinda lose their sense of being games.
 

DevilWolf47

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I think the primary problem is a total misinterpretation of what art is. Probably the best example of "Game as Art" is Shadow of the Colossus which actually DID have a plot that could be summed up in a blurb. Someone takes a dead woman to a forbidden land along with a horse, a bow, and a magic sword and asks a demon to resurrect her. The demon will, provided the protagonist kills 16 monsters.

As opposed to the recent Final Fantasy series which were kneecapped as art due to Square Enix's terrible TERRIBLE writing. Art doesn't have to be heavily story based, it just needs to be well constructed and have strong emotional impact. What made Shadow of the Colossus art was the beautiful visuals, great score, and the fact that a lot of the minimalist plot was up for interpretation. Same with Silent Hill 2, there was no deep story, some dude is in a horrible nightmare symbolic of his own crimes. Same with Killer7, the central plot was actually nothing more than "U.S democracy was under control of a foreign power," but you wouldn't know that because of how much focus is on the animation, monsters, puzzles, sound, and individual bits of character development.

Same can't be said about Castlevania: Lords of Shadow which had no message of it's own, same can't be said about the latter God of War games which forgot the Greek tragedy subplot and turned into nothing more but "Angry guy commits mass murder," same can't be said about the Silent Hill games not made by Team Silent which fucked up the symbolism. The problem isn't that artists are trying when they shouldn't, a good game is a work of art regardless of genre, the problem is that they're trying too hard in the wrong areas and cocking up the areas where it matters. I could blame the Unreal Engine, but really i blame the current gen hardware. We actually did a better job making games when we were held back by hardware limitations. I noticed a lot of handheld games which are held back are better than current console titles, not to mention XBLA games and smaller profile indie games from the Steam engine are all better. And it doesn't have to be that way, Valve still releases good games when they take the time to make them. The technology is just ahead of it's time.
 

ItsAChiaotzu

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Ace of Spades said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
[strong]It's like complaining that your game of Monopoly or Risk doesn't tell a good story.[/strong]
This is always the argument that really grinds my gears. I understand where you're coming from, but this is not a good example. Risk and monopoly are games designed to be played with friends, and as such, they don't need a story; they're just a framework for friendly get-together. Single-player games on the other hand are just that, games for a single player, and a great deal of games would be relatively boring without a narrative to string together the gunfights and vehicle sections, or whatever other gameplay elements are on offer. Playing poker with friends is fun; playing it alone against AI opponents is not.
Yeah because I'm sure that because you don't, no one could possibly ever enjoy playing poker against AI, as we all know, if you don't enjoy something, then no one can.

Seriously, arguments about "A game needs x to be fun or valid" are completely bullshit because what makes a game fun is subjective.
 

Jumplion

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
Roger Ebert was right -- basketball players don't care that their game is not an art form, why do gamers? I'm not saying that it's impossible for games to do artistic things, just that it's the wrong medium for it 90% of the time.
[sup]It's back from the dead! AHHH, undead thread![/sup]

Can a basketball express the innate and complex psycological, sociological, emotional, sexual, or any other "-al" aspects of the human condition?

Fuck if I know, I just bounce the damn thing and pray it makes it in the hoop.

Frozen Donkey Wheel2 said:
I mean, he's right almost all the way through, but then he talks about Bioshock, and it all falls apart.

He says that the game is "primarily about killing people in inventive ways", and he's implying that this brings the game down. By doing that, he's also implying that the game would be improved without the mindless fun, despite it's artistic aspects already present. Thus, he's saying that mindless fun and actual depth can NOT coexist, which is odd, because he spends most the rest of the video saying they CAN. But if Bioshock is a better game with the mindless fun removed, isn't he basically saying that the games industry is better off with the mindless fun removed?
I don't think he meant it that way. What he said is that if the primary argument for "games are art" still centers around violent conflict, killing whatever's in your way, and shooting things in the face, something that Ebert and other game critics claim that's what all games are about, then we're not in a good position. Whether or not Bioshock has depth and meaning doesn't really matter when that could all be ignored over electrifying splicers. Still an excellent game by all means, I loved it, but critics won't be able to see past the violence, unlike with violent movies like Pulp Fiction or Scarface which are "deep" as they can see past the violence.

Films started out as nothing but cutesy musicals and whatnot. I'm sure people laughed at the idea that movies could be used to express "artistic" visions. If the best example someone at the time could come up with for "movies are art" was, I dunno, "Singin' in the Rain" with it's deep, complex social commentary (bear with me here, I have no idea if it does this, it's an example) then it still doesn't really help the image of "all movies are just stupid musicals or comedies!" See where I'm going here?

"Art" and "fun" (I prefer to use "entertaining", there's a difference) are not two distinct ideas, they can coexist. The problem I think is that we haven't been able to do that on a consistent basis. Most developers are not skilled enough to balance entertaining qualities and purposefully employ artistic visions with few exceptions. Keep in mind, "art" doesn't have to mean "pretentious" it's just what the developers are trying to convey with their game.

Gaming is evolving every day, every week, every month, and every year. New ideas come up, some fail, and others succeed. We gain nothing if we hold it back, so just let it go and see what happens.

Cause and Effect is fun, no?
 

Ace of Spades

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ItsAChiaotzu said:
Ace of Spades said:
Owyn_Merrilin said:
[strong]It's like complaining that your game of Monopoly or Risk doesn't tell a good story.[/strong]
This is always the argument that really grinds my gears. I understand where you're coming from, but this is not a good example. Risk and monopoly are games designed to be played with friends, and as such, they don't need a story; they're just a framework for friendly get-together. Single-player games on the other hand are just that, games for a single player, and a great deal of games would be relatively boring without a narrative to string together the gunfights and vehicle sections, or whatever other gameplay elements are on offer. Playing poker with friends is fun; playing it alone against AI opponents is not.
Yeah because I'm sure that because you don't, no one could possibly ever enjoy playing poker against AI, as we all know, if you don't enjoy something, then no one can.

Seriously, arguments about "A game needs x to be fun or valid" are completely bullshit because what makes a game fun is subjective.
If you like playing poker against AIs, good for you. Take your pick of the numerous virtual poker derivatives that exist in the world. If you're going to sink millions of dollars into a game that doesn't have a point. If you don't like story in games, that's fine. However, you can stop telling me that story-based games are missing the point of video games. You stick with your 'low-brow' games and let the 'high-brow' part of the industry continue to grow.
 

DementedSheep

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I agree.
In general I prefer games to have a good story because I do play some games for the story and I care about that sort of thing. Games that have a good story tend to stick with me longer even if I only played the once because the game play wasn?t brilliant. I do think that there is allot of potential for games as an interactive story telling medium and I would like to see game branch out and...well be more mature and explore new topics.
However that certainly doesn?t mean all games need to be about the story or 'artsy' or emotional. What happened to just good old fashion fun? Playing a game for the game and the challenge? Is that not an art in itself anyway? Sometimes I even want something stupid, with not plot to speak of that I can just boot up, play and fell good without really having to think about anything outside of the game play. You don't need a story driven motivation to play Mario. It depends what mood I?m in really and a good story does not excuse god awful game play. A game should be fun and challenging, I don?t buy a game for an interactive movie I expect it to be fun aswell
Not having a good story dose not automatically make something fail as a game, in some cases it just might have been even more epic if it had a good story as well.
 

TheIr0nMike

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To answer your question, it never did. Everyone's just getting pissy because people think that someone is personally attacking them by making an artistic video game that isn't mindless fun.
 

darkcommanderq

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
The current thread on the upcoming revival of 90's style shooters really drove home something that is fairly prevalent here on the Escapist, something that gets on my nerves; the idea that any game that fails to be art fails as a game. It seems like at some point gamers went from thinking "hey, maybe games have the potential to be art, when the medium is used in the proper manner" to "if a game isn't artistic enough, it fails as a game." Think of how many posts we get where games like Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, and Doom are brought up, and someone inevitably complains about the lack of story. Since when did a good game even need a story? It's like complaining that your game of Monopoly or Risk doesn't tell a good story. We see the same mentality, to an extent, with some of the common complaints against multiplayer focused games, specifically that they don't have a story, and they do nothing to advance gaming as an art form. That mentality strikes me as snobbish, and forgetting that these things are called video games for a reason -- but then there's that great wall banger that occasionally pops up, where someone says "you know what, we need a new term, sort of like comic books became graphic novels."

Now, I'm not saying that games can't be artistic, or that they can't have a story and still be good. Far from it, since I grew up on titles like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. But I also grew up on titles like Doom, Rise of the Triad, Descent, and to break out of the FPS list, Sonic the Hedgehog. Every one of these games is a milestone in gaming, even if RotT is mostly forgotten today. Every one of them is an excellent game, which holds up as a great experience even today. Yet none of them would be considered so much as acceptable if all games had to be art. Why is that? And more to the point, why do we forget how much fun a game with absolutely no story outside of the blurb in the manual can be?
I will counter point by saying that story modes in a lot of FPS games today serve as practice for multiplayer. A good single player story section should teach the player everything they need to know to play the multiplayer aspect. Id like to point to bulletstorm for this example, because I see WAY to many people in that multiplayer system that obviously didnt play single player first and are terrible.
 

RevRaptor

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This apparently is art and is valuable. WTF really? if the artist put any less effort into this the bloody canvas would still be white.


This apparently is not art, it has no vale whatsoever, despite the fact that the artist undoubtedly put a lot of time and effort into making a brilliant image that is enjoyed by hundreds of thousands of people.

Yea I don't get et either.
I don't want games to be art I want games to be fun.

Also as a side note, they say art has to stir feelings. So what stirs your feelings more. A bunch of squiggles on a canvas or the image of a battered lone warrior rising to continue the fight against unspeakable evil?
 

Booze Zombie

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What very few people seem to take into account is that there's different kinds of art.
In movies, you've got The Mask, Casablanca, Scarface, The Godfather trilogy and Clerks.
They're all art, but they also all serve different purposes, fit into different types of being.

It's the same for games, really.
You can have a big epic of a game with a deep story and immersion, a silly game with more focus on self-gratification and humour and many more types beyond or between.

For instance, I'm looking forward to both Skyrim and Saint's Row 3 and I both think they look beautifully made and engrossing games, but they're also amazingly different and some might argue that one was of less artistic merit than the other, but I say not so.

They are both designed by talented processionals who are looking to make a good, cohesive experience but they're not all the same, they're not all the same gelatinous mess trying to appease the masses, they're targeting specific tastes and sticking with what they do well.

/ramble
 

Jumplion

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RevRaptor said:
Also as a side note, they say art has to stir feelings. So what stirs your feelings more. A bunch of squiggles on a canvas or the image of a battered lone warrior rising to continue the fight against unspeakable evil?
Both, actually. The first I sort of see a weird monster thingamabob, makes me scared oddly enough, and for all I know the artist behind it could have planned out every splotch and splash on the canvas. The second painting makes me think of a badass warrior, going off to a bloody war, who for some reason has a crusader symbol on his shoulder. They're both art to me, nothing prevents both those images from being "art" or "not art". You're just under the pretense that "art" must mean "pretentious" or incomprehensible or something like that, but that's only for those who go out and study the craft or whatever it is the modern art movement drudges out (yes, I don't like the whole modern art stuff, but whatever floats your boat).

"Art" means a couple different things to different people. I personally go by the definition of "Art is the purposeful organization of different elements to illicit an emotion of any kind from the participant," so in that sense plenty of video games, fun ones at that, would fall under "art" to me.

But I'm just rambling and trying to keep a mostly dead thread alive for whatever reason. PM me if you want to continue the discussion so this thread will rest in peace for once.
 

Huttser

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All games have a story. It might be a limited and simplistic story but they do have one, like in Risk the story is that you are in command of the armed forces of a country and you are attempting to take over the world. That being said a good game with a good story is like a great movie, while a good game with a limited story is a great B movie. They are both a lot of fun and well worth getting into, but they serve different purposes. Movie Bob said, "Yes not everything needs to be this high-art, but that doesn't mean all low-art is somehow created equal." They aren't bad because they're brainless shooters, they're bad because they're bad brainless shooters. Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, and Doom are all great brainless shooters. They are alot of fun and shouldn't be judged for having underdeveloped storylines. The story in these games has always been about making up a reason to create some serious carnage. So saying they have limited stories is pointless, they are just about craming as much pure fun into a single action-packed shooter as physically possible, and they do an increadable job of it. The problem is that a lot of this type of game don't do a good job of it so this type of game gets a lot of heat, but Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, Doom, and every other one that does this type of game right should be respected, loved, and enjoyed.
 

IvoryTowerGamer

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Owyn_Merrilin said:
The current thread on the upcoming revival of 90's style shooters really drove home something that is fairly prevalent here on the Escapist, something that gets on my nerves; the idea that any game that fails to be art fails as a game. It seems like at some point gamers went from thinking "hey, maybe games have the potential to be art, when the medium is used in the proper manner" to "if a game isn't artistic enough, it fails as a game." Think of how many posts we get where games like Serious Sam, Duke Nukem, and Doom are brought up, and someone inevitably complains about the lack of story. Since when did a good game even need a story? It's like complaining that your game of Monopoly or Risk doesn't tell a good story. We see the same mentality, to an extent, with some of the common complaints against multiplayer focused games, specifically that they don't have a story, and they do nothing to advance gaming as an art form. That mentality strikes me as snobbish, and forgetting that these things are called video games for a reason -- but then there's that great wall banger that occasionally pops up, where someone says "you know what, we need a new term, sort of like comic books became graphic novels."

Now, I'm not saying that games can't be artistic, or that they can't have a story and still be good. Far from it, since I grew up on titles like Final Fantasy VII and Metal Gear Solid. But I also grew up on titles like Doom, Rise of the Triad, Descent, and to break out of the FPS list, Sonic the Hedgehog. Every one of these games is a milestone in gaming, even if RotT is mostly forgotten today. Every one of them is an excellent game, which holds up as a great experience even today. Yet none of them would be considered so much as acceptable if all games had to be art. Why is that? And more to the point, why do we forget how much fun a game with absolutely no story outside of the blurb in the manual can be?
Very few people in the "games are art" crowd actually think all games should be art. Even the creators of Extra Credits see the value in games like those you listed above.