Howdy, Stranger!
It looks like you're new here. If you want to get involved, click one of these buttons!
Quick Links
Are games art?
Xasapis
Member RarePosts: 6,337
I just noticed a tweeter discussion regarding the matter. Of course, being tweeter and all, the discussion was hard to follow and one of the members eventually chose to block the rest, because ...
Anyway.
What do you people think?
- Are games art?
- Are they merely products?
- Or they start as products and have the potential to become art, given the test of time?
Also:
- Are people working on these projects artists?
- Or they are they just making a very good product?
Comments
Isn't all art (and games) "merely products", to be bought and sold? Some folks use art to make money, especially artists
Some games have wonderful artists working on them. It shows in the moods and settings that some games have.
I can't recall who said it, but someone said that art is how an artist sees any specific thing, and they recreate what they see. It evokes feelings in its observers. In this way, I guess games could be considered art, as I have had many feelings while playing games from tears of joy, heart tugging, all the way through rage.
All in all, though, I find it hard to call games "art." I also don't think pissing on a flag is art, though many feel it is. Again, art is in the eye of the beholder
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
I like a variation of one of your original definitions -- a game is a product, built using artistic elements combined to produce interesting interaction with the express goal of entertaining the customer. The whole can be viewed as an art form or not. I don't know that it is an acquired taste over time, or requires time to mature or polish the game into an art form.
If it's an art form or not, I doubt in a hundred years time we'll see universities offering Computer Game Appreciation 101, even as an elective.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
It would also mean that failure to create pieces of art can be determined by coincidences. Say an artist's work would not be art because 5 years after its creation the museum where its displayed burns down, thus preventing it from passing the test of time.
They also provide you with a similar experience as other art does, such as cinema.
...is my interpretation. I believe that a lot of the "art" we are exposed to is not art at all. Most of it being a cheap knock off of art as a concept, generated and mass produced by businesses for profit. Really though, the whole thing is a grey area defined by intangibles that are often unique to an individual, like feelings and perception. This topic is destined for ad nauseam.
Magic the Gathering, the card game: there can be no question that this is "art"; many works of art in fact and people may not realise just how many serious artists are commissioned to produce the works. So it follows that video game equivalents which use the art on the cards is also art.
Noughts and Crosses: not art. Ditto word games and so forth. And whilst a video game adaptaion may have artistic trappings the game part won't be.
In between the two extremes there will be games that are and others that are not.
You can do the same with the "story content" in games. Adaptaions that are based on literary works being at one extreme and games that have no story and simply banal comments (or less!) being at the other extreme.
Now "game mechanics" - which form the other key component of most games - they tend to be judged on whether they are "functional" or not. In the same way that a fridge say is functional or not.
And that is since some game mechanics are superb whilst others are "blah".
Maybe one day - art has, after all, crept into many everyday objects. Manufacturers have realised that kettles, TVs, buildings are so forth can be artistic as well as functional. And we are better for it.
Then, you have games like The Last of Us, which has a narrative so well-written it would stand on its own as a work of literature. It's definitely an artistic piece of gaming entertainment.
I think we could all agree that the original pong wouldn't be well-acknowledged as art.
“Microtransactions? In a single player role-playing game? Are you nuts?”
― CD PROJEKT RED
I think the challenge would be define something as not art.
However, since the question also has a certain implication, is it art or more of something else? For me the idea of a game is so ingrained as art, I cant say art or a game as what the implication could be. They are synonymous.
Since a game is art but with function. While other art is may be even a lazier form.
So games are a higher form of art.
Write bad things that are done to you in sand, but write the good things that happen to you on a piece of marble
I don't play games because I want my movies to have slightly interactive parts between the movie. I don't play games to have something arty to look at. I play games because I enjoy the game part of games. I want the game part to be good, not art.
There is a get-together of independent photographers in London every two months. I've just been for the first time. A handful of people bring their projects, pin them up on the walls and look for feedback from others. Some of these photos will never be seen by anyone else ever - the photographer might decide to pursue something else. In other words, the project might not stand the test of time, heck, it won't even survive one evening. Yet, I'd call it more of an art than some of the antique pieces that reach a museum.
Game development is incredibly varied. People do it for different reasons. Companies have different workflows and even within one studio, the priorities may change with a change of key people. Some people will say AAA games are less of an art than indie titles - I used to think that way, but don't anymore.
My friend used to work for Rockstar Games and other high profile AAA studios. The way he spoke about games was pure passion, definitely close to speaking to a painter about their work. At the same time, I know people from both AAA and tiny studios, seeing games as a financial transaction.
There are studios I would not see as art. I know of a mobile game studio, where the goal is to push out as many microtransation games as possible. They get a design idea, assign it to two people over a weekend. The whole art then gets outsourced and the game is pushed onto Android as early access. If people bite, more of it gets outsourced and the final game with full monetisation is pushed out. The whole process takes about 1-2 months.
I get the feeling, and could be wrong, that people wanting to call games "art" are attempting to elevate games to a higher status than they are, just to rationalize their own love for games. Loving games is not a bad thing. Enjoying games does not make one a "child." If one disagrees with another's idea of art, it often leads to nose in the air, "You're boorish!" replies. Or "You just don't get it, do you, you poor imbecile."
So I ask... Why do people even want to call games "art?" Are there special Government grants that would now include games if they were called "art?"
PS: I apologize if I stepped on toes, but my experience with "art" seems to be flooded with status seeking rather than actual "art."
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
Whereas people who accept games as art are ready to do it because they don't have similar requirements that art should be pure and have special value.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey