Slashdot Mirror
Are Videogames Art?
Angry Black Man asks: "The San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art is currently debating whether or not videogames can be considered a type of art. They are currently holding a symposium entitled "ArtCade: Exploring the Relationship Between Video Games and Art." What do you guys think about this? Also, if videogames are considered art than what stops other computer programs from also being considered art? Censoring videogames because of violence or even programs because of DMCA-type laws may be considered censoring art - something that many Americans have traditionally been very opposed to?" When Slashdot covered computer graphics as fine art, many of you agreed that it was. When asked about beautiful code, many thought so and gave their reasons as to why. Now comes a question about the combination of the two. Are computer games not considered art simply because of its nature as an entertainment medium, or can video games be considered art precisely because they can be thought of as combinations of graphics and code?
Yes! There is creative genius behind todays great videogames!
-------------------- "Only two things are certain, the universe and human stupidity, and im not sure about the latter"
... if their creators believe that it is. Whether or not someone thinks my drawings are art, I think they are -- and that makes them art. They take skill to create, and I take joy in making them. That, I think, is art.
i am a soviet space shuttle
-Foxxz
Video games are as much art as movies are. In fact, one of my hopes for the gaming industry is to see it mature - at least in some ways - into something similar to the movie industry, where there is room not only for the heavily-produced blockbusters, but also for more artisticly-inclined "indy" titles.
I see art as a basic expression of the artist views of life and the world around them. It doesn't matter if it is a video game, graphic, code or a molded pile sh*t. One who has created something that had not previously existed, or one that has taken something and modified it into how they see it; so that the worl can see it as they do... this person has created art. It's that simple!
There is an artist out there that can sign his name to Mr Hankey... and if someone can sign their name to a tird.. then video games are first rate Mona Lisa's!
Never try to beat a professional at his own game!
No more so than Monopoly, Trivial Pursuit, or Scrabble.
Art forms like video games tend to get mired in these sort of debates because they lack snob appeal. People figure that if it doesn't need an endowment, it's not art. People don't sit in high-rent apartments in an artsy-fartsy section of town in fancy clothes sipping spritzers and discussing the finer points of Q3, so it must not be art.
Science fiction has gotten mired down in this debate, as has commerical art of all forms, as did theater at one time. Good grief.
The fact that games main purpose is entertainment adds to the argument for them being art, it doesn't take it away. Film, plays, concerts etc. are all considered art ('fine art'), and their primary focus is entertainment. Video games are just another form.
As anyone who's played First Samarai on the A500 knows - yes.
To me, it seems that computer graphics can definitely be art. But programming is more of a craft. It's about making something well. And just like a well-executed piece of furniture, a program's internal beauty is irrelevant to the users-- it's how it looks and how it works that matters to the people who use it.
Sure, computer games contain art. Their music and images often have artistic worth. But we want computer games that are well designed and skillfully executed, not artistic statements.
I'm a programmer, and I've got a lot of respect for the creativity and hard work that goes into computer games. But I see them as a craft, not an art.
Anyone know why this is a story instead of a poll?
no, video games are definitely not art...
The same is true with video games. System Shock 2 *IS* scary and only a skilled team of artists could craft such a thing. Does anyone remember playing DOOM at night and being in an area with strobe lights, those invisible demons growling and the like? Did that stir any emotions in you? Probably yes. Such a feat is a work of art.
Creating such things is an artform that is developed and perfected by people who like to do it.
I have to counter the question of computergames being art with this question: Are boardgames also art"? The main point of computergames is that they are interactive but this also counts for boardgames.
Is a game of chess a piece of art? I would say Yes. But if so, does this also count for other games( tic-tac-toe, snakes&ladders etc..) as well?
It's art. And like all art, it's crap.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
The question "can video games be art or are they simply an entertainment medium?" (more or less) was posed above. I'd like to remind /.ers that many people get a great deal of entertainment from going to art museums. As to code being skilled labor, in many cases (i.e. Michelangelo) art was the profession of the artist, who would be hired and paid for by one or another rich noble. A medium does not have to be A) boring or B) originally done as a hobby to be art. Think about it.
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Remove the Greed which plagues mankind.
What is art, really?
They may not be considered art by the moajority of people right now, but given a few years I expect that they will be. With the amount of work by ARTISTS that goes into the design of these games and the skill of some of the best coders around, its hard to believe that they arent considered art already. Even now there are thousands of people who obsess over classic video games, emulating old systems and collecting thousands of game roms. Its only a matter of time before people begin to view these games as probably the most innovative and original art form of this century. In the age of multimedia and computer graphics, video games are the epitome of these arts.
Oh Well, Whatever, Nevermind...
I mean seriously, did you SEE the Pauly Shore movies?
IMHO, there's art and there's entertainment...and both movies and videogames can fall into either category...
My $5.95.
Being somewhat outside of the whirlwind of emotions that is Slashdot, I look at this thinking this art-computer games connection may be stretching things a bit. I can agree with digital graphics being art, maybe the same with code, but placing computer games in that same category doesn't seem appropriate. Is the 'geek' (for lack of a better term) community just trying it's damndest to cram itself into a brighter spotlight or what?
Gaming is fun, it's an entertainment medium and I don't think there is usually an artistic intent when it comes to making the game. Granted, there may be a few games out there that are MEANT to be eye-popping and meaningful, but that doesn't apply to the majority, does it now?
*shrug*
All programming is an art.
It has to be functional the same way as any other consumer good. It has to be constructed out of mathematics and logic like anything that's been engineered.
With games you also often have traditional artwork, sometimes 3D, and a powerful but simple interface (Black and White anyone?)
What I'm wondering is why demos (the ones created to show off coding/art skills - not a product taster) aren't being considered. They're the computer equivalent of a music video.
[)amien
And yes, I am an artist (mostly music, but I dabble in just about everything).
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
The functionnality of video certainly takes away from their artful claims. I remember this entry in a art exposition, some guy had blodied himself scripting a poem right off his skin. Didn't made the it throught, deemed too self-serving.
There is a well know word for what coding is about. It's a craft, not an art : purpose full beauty and skill.
In the end, art is about wider forms of human-to human-communication; anything beside the mere straitly purposeful prose we use everyday. Under that angle, I don't see many video games thus far behind used as a medium for political statements, comments on the fatefulness of the human condition.
This post was compiled with `% gec -O`. email me if you need the sources
I dunno, consider when Unreal came out.
Absolutely stunning even in low res.
Remember the userfriendly cartoon:
"That is the prettiest slide show I've ever seen.
What is it called?"
Answer: "It's 'Unreal'".
Now, the code being beautiful, by extension.
Humm...code is the tool of the trade, the brush, if you will, the screen the canvas and the results can be artistic.
But then again, coding has been called "an art form".
Form is the active word. Not art, per se, but a way to create art, or express yourself via code.
Any other thoughts out there?
If it is not on fire, it is a software problem.
If I throw a urinal into a museum, or yell "DADA!" out in the streets, everyone agrees that it's art (because it's been established as so).
But if I band together some talented artists, animators, and ingenious programmers, and create something truly remarkable like Deus Ex or Halo, people question it.
Such things (vidgames) would not exist without human creativity. They're physical manifestation of human creativity. If that's not art, what is?
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
I don't know about most video games, but I do think that rpg's should be considered a form of art, just like works of literature are. As for code being art... well... I think that the development of a new algorithim can be considered an art, but not a piece of art. I mean, it doesn't have any intrinsic aethetic value, does it? As for whether or not sprites can be considered art, or not... well... yeah - I believe they are art, but that's not really the question I believe we should be asking - are they worthy of being put into a mueseum? First off, I don't see how one can say they aren't art... Anyways, as for whether or not they should be put into a museum, I believe they probably will never achieve that level of success - i believe sprites are a less respectable media than even comics, mtgcards, or even pokemon are, and they are actually hand drawn, in the conventional sense.
Of course they are.. Most of them have somesort of story behind them, and all of them - even pong, use some sort of representation to portray a situation. Some of them even have mini-films in them or plot based gameplay.
:) but it probably won't work
If your trying to make this into a legal issue so no-one can censor games because they are art then good
but why is censoring art any different from censoring anything else? Just because ideas are not portrayed with creativity does that mean you should be able to censor them? Or vice a versa.
If parents don't want their kids playing violent games or watching films etc, then thats their business, not the governments.
IMHO the worlds view on censorship (and IP) is totally backwards.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Personally, I've always thought of computer games as art, no matter what the "officials" may say. The defining factor, I think, is the fact that it has a story. A computer game tells a story with a protagonist, an antagonist, a setting, theme, plot, climax...everything you need for a decent novel. Sure, many computer games are very shallow, which would make them bad art...but still art.
As for programming in general...it depends. It can be art, or not. Generic programming is much like technical writing. It is utilitarian, not artistic. It is a task assigned to someone, that any old monkey could do - not an artistic expression of one person's vision. However, this is not always true. Just as there are generic chairs that sell for $10.99 at K-Mart and then bizzarre sculptures of chair-like things on display at galleries, there can also be artistic programs. Someone can write artistic code...but code doesn't have to be artistic.
I think it's just a little early yet for most of the world to accept code as art. I'm sure it took a while for people to recognize the artistry that can go into photography as well.
yrs,
Ephemeriis
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Video Games are undoubtedly art. Take just one screen shot of Chrono Trigger, and look at the detail put into it. Worthly of framing and putting up on your wall. In short, video games are just interactive art, made more indepth and attention-grabbing with a plot and length.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits."- -- Albert Einstein
Why do people agonize about whether particular things can be "considered" art?
... again, a matter of intention. If I make an object with a long metal prong flattened into a small, blunted, flat-edge blade that happens to fit into the slot at the end of a woodscrew, and declare that the primary purpose and my artistic intent is for it to be manipulated by human hands to express the beauty of simple machines by inserting or removing screws from objects, Fine -- it's art that happens to serve as a screwdriver. That doesn't make every screwdriver art.
If you consider something to be art, who the heck is going to stop you? Other people might disagree (hey, my thoughts on art may vary from yours -- so what?) but that's about the extent of it.
Now given that, I don't particularly agree that video games are art, *unless that's what the creator intended*, in which case I have no objection -- then it's art. IMO (which one one else has to buy), Art is *intentional* - accidental doodles, sunsets, plants, shadows, streams or functional objects might be artful, or beautiful, or even artistic, but things get too floppy for me if anything that happens to look nice, or that makes you think, is automatically "art." Not everything sculptural (Zhang Ziyi, for instance, or a Nagra tape recorder) is actually sculpture.
Having groused that practical objects which happen to be pretty aren't, I would say that the other direction is not quite the same, though. An artwork could have a hands-on function which rendered it a useful object
Maybe this helps to explain why I think the money given to the NEA would be much better given to model rocket clubs around the country, or never taken from taxpayers in the first place.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I'm an avid video game player, and have been for several years. At first, I read this story and said to myself "HELL NO", as I really don't buy into much of the modern art out there today. A lot of it does not seem to be the result of talent, thought, meaning, or artform. The same thing can be said about MANY video games. This is why I originally said "HELL NO". However, there are exceptions. Final Fantasy is perhaps one of the most moving video game series every produced on this planet. It has story, it has beauty, depth, and meaning. It is art. Just as there exists art with little or no apparant worth to me, there exist video games with little or no apparant worth. Yet, there are the few that truly qualify as art. So, in conclusion: some video games should be considered art, just as some "art" should really not be considered art.
Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
and for reasons even "Average Joe/Jane" can easily appreciate.
To begin with, (as a programmer) I consider most code art in and of itself. When you consider that video games are composed of creative code, graphics, and sound, you have to classify it as an art form.
The very fact that the people who create the visual environment for video games are most commonly described as "graphic artists" is compelling evidence that our society considers their work a form of art in a very tangible sense.
I for one would love to see an exhibit that's based on various interpretations/muses on video games, both in part and as "complete packages".
Art has always been such a subjective topic that it is hard to say what is just a game and what can be considered art. It almost seems as if a game is only 'art' if it somehow sheds a kinder light upon games and shows that it is more than just a medium to button-mash and scream with joy.
I will bust out some of the dictionary terms of art to try to objectify this:
1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
No doubt many FPS and RTS games do exactly this by creating a sense of real-life shooters and war. 3D engines themselves seem to try to imitate nature as best they can. In a way it is similar to any CG art you see on the internet. Just because it doesn't look real does not mean it isn't art!
2. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
A great example of this would be Alice. Not only was this game awesome to play, but it had an aesthetic value that simply wowed us. We had never seen some of the environments displayed in that game, and it required a lot of artistic interpretation to create levels like that.
I could include more definitions but that would just muddle my point. While I would love to say that only some games are art, any game out there can qualify as some kind of art, whether it is the art of creating perfect ambience, the art of texture and environments, or even the art of character design and skins/sprites. I am sure the artists of games put a lot of time into their work, but you can't credit just them for the piece of art that results.
Just like art, everything comes together at the end and can blow us away, like Alice, or make us cower in shame, like Daikatana.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
As many of my compatriots have already stated, there is no doubt that Games are art, or have the potential to be. The question for me is: What can Games do as an art, which is different from Movies and Books? The answer is simple, if not a little obvious: The if statement. Although it has been tried with interactive movies and Choose-your-own-adventure books, only in games have truly interactive stories come to some sort of life. The basic difference is the role of the viewer/reader/player in the story world. For both Movies and Books, the user is just a passive observer, seeing exactly what the artist wanted them to see. With games however, leeway is given; they become an active character in the story, which opens up whole new avenues of experience. Very few if any games have taken real advantage of these differences as of now. But I think (or hope perhaps) that as games become a little easier to develop (via more generalized code components) it will become a much more rich medium. For a first glimpse at this sort of thing, check out the 2001 Interactive Fiction Competition
So there I was, juggling apples and small animals, when I accidentally bit into the wrong one...
Ok, movies are considered art. Music is considered art. These are both entertainment mediums so I would highly doubt that if it is infact because it is an "entertainment medium" that video games would not be considered art. I think the biggest deal lies in the interactive nature of it. A sculpture, painting, etc are not interactive besides looking and maybe touching. Video games take in all your senses except smelling and I'm sure the ps7 will even do that. But think about it, how many of you have put a game on and just been blown away by it to the point where you sit there like an idiot just watching? I can humbly say that there have been a few ocasions I have done that... the biggest being the Lunar series for Sega CD which blew away anything else at the time. Lets see what else... maybe Myst the first time I saw it (even if it is a stupid game), Ecco the Dolphin on Sega CD, etc. I guess it all comes down to the definition of the word art, which dictonary.com says is:
art1 (ärt)
n.
1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
2.
1. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
2. The study of these activities.
3. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.
3. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
4. A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature.
5. A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
6.
1. A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building.
2. A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer.
7.
1. Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art.
2. Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties: ?Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice? (Joyce Carol Oates).
8.
1. arts Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks.
2. Artful contrivance; cunning.
9. Printing. Illustrative material.
I would say that just based on the first two definitions that video games are not only art but infact are more art than anything else. Just read them again and think about them in regards to video games.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
I've always thought of question of "what is Art?" as the answer to one of two other questions: "Can you do it?" And "Would you do it?"
For example, some art museums have examples of art that are these huge canvases covered with splatters of paint. Your first thought is normally, "Hell, I could do that..." But the in reality, WOULD you have done it? Would you have thought, out of the blue, to create a work of art of enormous size and the scatter random paint on it? Probably not - that's why it's art - because of it's innovation.
The other examples of traditional art are those fantastic, almost-real, oil paintings in fine-art buildings. Yes, I could paint a picture of a bowl of fruit. People do it every day - but I can't do it with such grace, skill and ability. Thus, it's art by sake of the skill it took to create the work. (Maybe with some innovation thrown in.)
Okay - so in my definition above, Video games are a combination of both. Almost every successful new video game that comes out is by definition innovative. It does things that no other game before it has. It can be interesting, beautiful, horrific or just surprising, but it's something that no one else has thought of. The second is the technical ability to create these games is insane. The cutting edge of computer development is the most difficult of any programming tasks (IMHO). Not only are the games usually innovative, but they take amazing skill to implement.
So video games in my opinion are obviously Art - at least the interesting, new and creative ones and not the 4th generation knock-off first person shooters.
-Russ
Me
Music is an entertainment medium and it is art.
Paintings (use to be/still are) a form of 'entertainment' and they are art.
TV shows are an entertainment medium, and do people consider them art?
If something is an entertainment medium where people create original works for the purpose of entertainment, that's all the more reason for the work to be considered art.
Have you played Civilization 3? If you don't consider that one of the great masterpieces of all time, then I don't know what is.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
But if so, does this also count for other games(tic-tac-toe, snakes&ladders etc..) as well?
:)
Don't know about tic-tac-toe, but I'm sure Solitaire is a form of art, albeit dark art: how else can one explain Windows' world domination?
Anyone that's experienced any of Square's masterpieces - especially Final Fantasy IV, Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears - will be able to agree with me that videogames can be some of the most expressive, passionate, and masterful pieces of immersive storytelling of our time. That's not to say they're all wonders of human creativity - but, as with television and movies, there are brilliant works that can be considered nothing other than art.
I can't say the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art will be able to pick up on this - games are, unforunately, in the public's mind, nothing more than "games" - but I certainly suggest the above titles as justification for my belief.
...start a silly flamewar.
No two people agree on what "art" means. I would suggest these are the most popular definitions:
1) image created by human skill and effort using general marking tools (not photography), or field of creating such images, or collective product of this field
2) any field of human endeavor, or products of same (formal, somewhat archaic)
3) any admirable human effort or product of human effort
4) anything with no practical value other than aesthetic appeal
5) anything displayed behind a velvet rope in an art gallery
The word is so muddled that there's no point in using it without further clarification, except perhaps with the first or second definition, when the context makes it clear. It just provokes pointless arguments where nothing gets resolved.
should "Is X art"? always be a yes/no question? To me, obviously not. Debating wether something is "art" by definition is pretty pointless.
Like classical "art", is there enough in video games that arouses your interest, makes you think, is aesthetically pleasing, original, or creative? most definitively.
i have always considered coding an art, mainly because of the demo scene. But it's the result that counts not the tools used ..
and what about the scenario?
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
What I'm wondering is why demos (the ones created to show off coding/art skills - not a product taster) aren't being considered. They're the computer equivalent of a music video.
Does anyone know any good sites to go to view this kind of demo? It just occured to me that the last time I saw one was back on the good ol' Atari ST, and I'd forgotten all about them.
Art is a form of human expression. Videogames are not art; conversely, they are an interactive, electronic medium designed with the sole intent of earning corporations money.
Perhaps the stories and graphics contained within the games are of artistic merit, but the games themselves speak neither for the human condition nor illuminate the labyrinthine passages of the human mind.
Forgive me if this doesn't seem to have much direction, but this is something I've thought a bit about. I'm a student at a private fine arts college, and I'm one of the few there with interests in video games, programming, etc.
Scott McCloud of "Understanding Comics" fame once wrote that art is anything not springing directly from man's need to survive or procreate. In that sense, well, playing video games could be considered an art, but making them stems from a creator's need to earn money, so he can eat, so he can survive-- not art. But there are other, easier ways to make money; the video game creator chooses to make games because he or she is good at it and (hopefully) has an interest in the field. He or she puts personal touches into their work and it's different from what anybody else could do-- art.
It's a tough call, this. Because since Marcel Duchamp put a bicycle wheel upside down on a pedestal almost a hundred years ago and declared that it was art because he said it was, a sort of Pandora's Box has been open: we've got the most liberated sense of art there ever has been (an artist can do anything he wants and try to sell it, really) but we've also got cretins that feel art is simplistic and easy, because they don't understand the thought behind found objects or abstract expressionism or anything else to come along in the twentieth century.
I tried telling a friend while we were in a Renaissance history class about how it seemed to me that the development of 3D engines like Carmack's Quake and Sweeney's Unreal had some interesting parallels to the development of rendering techniques in Italian painting of the 15th century onward. The Italian painters started off with flat images, little depth, and distance was conveyed by placing objects higher on a picture plane-- it was the Wolfenstein era, you could say. But then artists like Giotto (if memory serves) came along, and started figuring out better ways to shade, to manipulate color, and to make objects seem rounded-- to actually occupy a space. The Renaissance of painting started, and it was like the first Quake. And so on and so forth.
Where are we now? Well, the technical craft has all but been mastered in video games; it's not photoreal, so games are somewhere around the middle-18th century, I'd wager. I can't wait until the technical aspect becomes so perfected that it becomes boring to the artists making video games; then the modernist era of videogames begins, and we can see just what kind of creativity these guys really have.
(A note on the above: I'm no expert in the history of painting or the history of games, so the paragraphs above are mostly meant to illustrate the similarities in the goals of the painters and the programmers. Anybody's free to correct me if I'm wrong.)
But then there's the commercial aspects of the video game industry. A lot of games are made for money. It's much like the film industry, I think, where you've got some works that are obviously done to make a buck (the latest Schwarzenegger flick) and then some that are done for the passion of the craft (Wes Anderson, Darren Aronofsky, to name a few of the better of the younger generation, and so on). But it'd be impossible to say that there is no art in the film industry, just because it's driven by money. It applies the same way to video games: Miyamoto's "Pikmin" is art, the new "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" probably is not.
So where am I ending up with all of this? I don't know, I suppose it's all just food for thought. My personal feeling is that video games certainly are art, and it's nothing but snobbery from the elitist old guard that says they're not. You've gotta get with the times.
Code is the paint. Video games are the art.
trollin' trollin' trollin'...
If there's one thing I've learned from emphasizing my studies in the philosophy of aesethetics...
Yawn. All that makes you is a critic.
However, code is just a skilled labor position, much like assembly work or something along those lines. You people really need to think before you post.
Code is to a computer game as scaffolding is to a sculpture. You've missed the point, Mr. Aestheticist. If it gives the audience an experience, that makes it comparable to any narrative work, which makes a computer game just as much a work of art as literature or film. How it goes from inspiration to final product is irrelevent.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
I think we have yet to reach the art stage because these damn computers are so hard to program.
You ain't seen nothin yet
A few points that may be salient:
Craft and art are inextricably intertwined, a fact that is perhaps most clearly demonstrated by a persian rug. The weaving is the craft, the resultant pattern is the art. The pattern may be described in full beforehand, or emerge from the aesthetic consideration of what has come before in the craft process. The craft thus becomes the tool that allows the aesthetic to become real.
Whether the resultant pattern is 'interesting' (read: pleasing, challenging, 'artistic') depends on the the desgner and the viewer in equal parts. In the case of the rug, this is generally a visual response, but their is no reason why sound, spatial sense, touch etc can't be part of it.
Computer games are generally created around functional rather than aesthetic considerations. This is their craft - code effiency, gameplay, level design etc. Each of these has it purpose - responsiveness, longevity, addictiveness (possibly respectively).
The response to the whole games, however, also depends in equal parts on those who create and those who 'play'. The experience is multi-media, incorporating more than one sense, and interactive, which makes it harder to quantify, as it's by its very nature different for each person. But saying this prevents it from being art, is like saying that sculpture that moves in the wind is prevented from being art. The mere fact that they use light, sound, writing, and coding in conglomeration makes it harder to ascertain their aesthetic value, but no less worthwhile.
That said, not every game aspires to be as 'interesting' as it can be. Some only want to be as much like something else that was interesting as possible - mostly for financial reasons. Just as the art world has its stylistic periods, so do video games. Just as the art world has originators and imitators, so do video games. Just as art critics are informed by the history of their chosen media/um, so is the video game connisseur.
--
Of course it's going off the rails. How else is it ever going to fly?
...there's no reason video games shouldn't fall undre this category. Every few months at the News of the Weird, there's a new story about someone who's bottling their urine, or putting a homeless guy in a glass box, or something even more stupid. And all of this is considered art.
I think that just about anything that people put their "heart and soul" into - anything that has different appeal to different people - can be considered an art, from creating a masterpiece painting to choosing the fastest line at a shopping mall during the Christmas rush. The question is whether people will care about this art, and what the best forum for the artists are. I think that mailing lists and web pages are probably the best places to showcase your coding art, as those are the places that your audience will most frequent. A painter wants his work displayed in a gallery because that's where the painting afficionados hang out.
That being said, I have little appreciation for paint as a medium of artistic expression, and that's why I don't visit galleries. Perhaps branching into atypical mediums will give galleries and museums a more universal appeal?
Last post!
Video games are the greatest form of art to come along in human history. Both visual and aural stimulation combine to envelop the player in an experience forged by the game's creator. Expression is taken to levels never seen before in video games. As video games progress, we will see video games that become more and more expressive of a single person's concepts and ideas, because the tools to make the games will eventually become simple and fast enough for a single person to use to create a game. Neverwinter Nights, an upcoming role-playing game with the capability for users to design their own games with it, is a great example of just how this will all work out.
I just tried Black and White and put it on the shelf after 4 hours of mind numbing stupidity.
I went back to playing "Sokoban" on linux...
I like the way it teases my brain, the graphics are crappy, the action is nil, it is all in the brain.
That being said I am 32, soon to be 33, and I guess that is old so I don't relate to the new games out there.
marcf
The real mnf999 always posts as anonymous coward
"Also, if videogames are considered art than what stops other computer programs from also being considered art?"
If sculpture is considered art then what stops your dinner table from being considered art?
When i got my first Atari ST i played loads of computer games, when i look back at some i dare too say that they are art, look at stuff from the Bitmap Brothers like Gods or Speed Ball, it had great game play looked awesome and had good sounds also.
It where creative games with a original game play i guess, but best of all the grafics where real pieces of art for the time it was created in.
Today you only get a 3d engine with some objects in it, yes ofcourse some are nicer to look at then others, but still i think the oldschool 2d grafics look better, way better!
Playing Pirates or Dungeon Master night and day was a great way to spend my teenage years, but nowadays i only get a 3d shooter with some puzzles and a crappy storyline, they are just here too sell off, what happend with people being very creative ?
Sure i missed some good games from these days, which are art, and maybe when i was young there was a load of crap around too, but still i think some games should be in a museum and some should be not. They arent all Art...but some are yes they are.!
Quazion.
Or I guess you could say that 8 bit NES games are equivalent to caveman drawings.
I think those primitive games (and the even more primitive 2600 and ancient DOS stuff) are an art to an extent as some of them are so bizarre they could be considered more of a form of self expression than a commercial persuit. Of course, they ARE strictly intended as a commercial product, and that doesn't help the case for them being True Art. Most of the artifice attatched to videogames, especially as the effects become more complex and flashy, is included merely to boost their appeal. Explosions and sweeping camera movements, morphing and the like- it is art to the same extent that twinkies are gourmet desserts.
if you said "are oil paintings art?" you'd sound insane. but asking "are videogames art?" sounds reasonable.
therefore, videogames are not art, QED.
You know that Beethoven was the first musician be considered an artist. Before that, they were considered skilled laborers. Mozart was very skilled at cranking out beautiful music in short order. Now, we consider music to be art. Photography and motion pictures went through the same transition. What happened? Debates like this. So, thank you for calling programming a "skilled labor position." It gives this debate a certain legitimacy.
You should note that "assembly work" (by which I assume you mean "assembly line work") is not considered to be skilled labor. Also, I was not aware that "code" is a position. Maybe you, too, should think before you post.
Are you kidding me? The good ones (No One Lives Forever, Grim Fandango, etc) all do horribly in terms of sales, while the total crap (deer hunter, who wants to be a millonare) continually top the bestseller list.
Of course they're art.
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Get back to me when my brain starts working.
Most major video game developers have people on their staff called art directors. You need artists to create the graphical content for your games. For your concepts, sprites, backgrounds, and textures you need illustrators. For your models, you need modelers.
The same would be true for things like websites though or any graphical interaction with a user. Go to www.microsoft.com. I guarantee you an artist designed the layout. But I wouldn't consider that art. There is a big difference between making something pleasing to the eye and creating art.
Probably the best example of something similar to video games is cinema. At what point do you consider movies art? What's the difference between Pearl Harbor and Pi?
Then add the interactivity. How does the interactivity of a game contribute to the artistic vision of the piece?
When programming is considered an art rather than a "skilled labor position", will we talk about "starving programmers" and "suffering for your code"? Maybe, in our current economy.
At least Zero Wing has become a form or art
Mind you, idiotic posts like yours are kinda what I expected from this thread. I mean, ask a bunch of twatty nerds what art is and receive a bunch of retarded answers, why don't you?
of course programming is a craft -- what makes craft INTO art is the new or different inventiveness and/or novel levels that someone has taken that craft into
but the opinion of the "artist" is irrelevant as to whether something is "art" or not -- one reason being many artists can be more accurately described as craftsmen/women, and sometimes unable to recognize their own capacities as so-called artists, or more often don't care to
in fact I never trust someone who refers to themselves as an "artist" as someone that actually IS one!! -- kinda like that "those that say don't know, those that know don't say" thing!
For example, I would consider a game like Black & White to be Art, but not a game like Daikatana. Naturally, to make this distinction requires some personal judgement. I'm sure John Romero thinks that Daikatana is a piece of art.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
then Windoze will be considered art. That is not cool!! :)~
There are still millions of people born pre 1973 that don't consider games art.
When they die, and us youngens take control it will become mainstream. I predict in another 15 years this will happen. Until then those that consider games art will have to hide in our little "command centers" appriciating our artform with others over the net.
A Mind Forever Voyaging
However, art is an entirely personal thing. If you think they're art, I'm not going to say you're wrong! Especially if its not something I worked on :o)
Game dev and music blog
Any time a new art form comes along it takes awhile for the public to accept it as legitimate. Take film for example. In the first 30 years of the century, film was a medium for popular entertainment mostly but had yet been embraced by the intelligentsia. The medium was mostly used for entertainment, but here and there were glimpses of art or social messages or what have you.
When Citizen Kane came along, here was a movie that used all of the unique elements that make up film for artistic purposes. It was groundbreaking in that the lighting, photography, music, camera angles, editing and so on all came together to form this wonderful work of art.
I don't think videogames have come this far yet. Now, there are many games that give us glimpses of art and beauty (Zelda games, SNES Final Fantasy games, a glimmer in Black and White, etc.) but no one has yet made the Citizen Kane.
And why not? Well, in the film industry, it took the genius of one man (Orson Welles) and the amazing backing of a studio system (which later destroyed Welles). But the videogame industry is so much harder to work with when art is concerned. Not only are videogames really expensive, but they are looked down upon by those people who could afford to fund game art. The problem here is that a game has to be aesthetically pleasing and interactive, which, if you think about it, is really hard to do. Most people just want to run around and shoot people in realistic environments.
So I put out a challenge to all of you videogame makers out there: try to make the Citizen Kane of video games - it doesn't have to be popular among teens or particularly well-liked by the public, it just has to be good. I've tried thinking of ideas myself, but I've failed so I leave it to the geniuses that I know are out there but who probably don't have financial backing. If you are someone like this, I wish you the best of luck!
The only true currency in this bankrupt world is what we share with someone else when we're uncool. -Crowe
Something like Loom might be considered art. And an original concept and delivery like The Fool's Errand might be considered art too. Something like Legend of Zelda was novel when it came out, but the two I mentioned are still unique and special, even today. I don't think that the majority of games are. Most games, from old to new, are designed to be cool fun, and maybe memorable, but don't really try to achieve anything new. Maybe games worthy of the title "Art" also aren't necessarily as fun (like of like movies). Well, that's how I see it at least.
Are images art? Are films art? Why wouldn't an interactive film be just as much 'art' as a non-interactive film? Thats essentially what a video game is ..
especially with today's technologies.
s/symposium/a little thought/g
How can you be so dumb? It is the act of criticism that creates art; without the critic all one has is objects devoid of social context.
Entirely incorrect. Two different critics could have two completely opposing opinions on whether or not something is a work of art. Does it automatically qualify if one says it is even if the other says it is not? The only constant is the artwork itself and its inherent quality. No offence, but the posturings of a deluded philosophy student mean nothing.
I'm not negating the importance of the audience, but art is an ongoing evolution of communication between all sorts of audiences. Try playing both sides of the ball, and then come back here with an opinion.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
Linus Quote:
Also note how I said that it is the BSD people I despise. Not the HP-UX implementation. The HP-UX one is not pretty, but it works. But I hold open source people to higher standards. They are supposed to be the people who do programming because it's an art-form, not because it's their job.
Ok granted thats about programming and I believe we already decided that programming is an art-form. But if thats the case, how can we ignore video games? I mean technically somebody could code the mona lisa (I know I know, actually not that impressive of a painting but deal with the example) by using a text editor and manually putting bits into a file until it ends up being mona_lisa.jpg. Impossible? No... it can be done. Basically has anyone noticed that all these arguments about art, copyright, disk security, etc all go back to an arguement on what constitutes software. Is it the code, or the compiled code? I believe that if movies, music, paintings, sculptures (3d-objects) are all art, and on top of that... if code is art... then how could something up of all those pieces not be art?
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Having recently finished ICO on the PS2, I'd have to insist that anyone considering this question play this game to completion. As pure visual and emotional art, it is more complete than more works I've ever experienced.
On the literary side, I'd also have to insist anyone considering this subject thoroughly explore the game Planescape: Torment. The way this game reacts to actions, expectations, and self-reflection is quite amazing. If you read any review of this game, you can appreciate how difficult it is to put in a few words how
Both of these games tell a story that would be _Impossible_ to tell without the freedom to explore the story, and the strength of the choices given to one exploring it. These games fundamentally connect to many core aspects of the human state in both the same ways 'traditional' art does, and in many ways impossible to do so before - they are fundamentally art in my eyes.
Ryan Fenton
Can they be any less of an art than cinematography?
This is just like The Statue of Liberty. Its a beautiful Statue, but it would not stand without the steel frame within. Anyone who has taken the tour will tell you the Statue of Liberty is just as beautiful inside as out. The graphics, sounds, and story of a video game are nothing without the code underneath. The code doesn't support the art. The code is part of the art of video games.
Slashdot is an anagram for Has Dolts, and I am Dolt number 468543
The effort to combine storytelling, visuals, music and game mechanics requires an enourmous amount of talent on the part of a director / producer for his vision to shine through. The same is true for movies.
This is why it is much easier to look at a painting or a poem and see that it is a reflection of the artistic and creative vision of the creator, as he or she had full control over the creative process.
As far as coding itself is concerned, IMO the idea of it being a craft seems for the most part a little more fitting. Squeezing performance out of a limitted hardware platform is more a result of skill and intelligence, much like an innovative design for a bridge.
___
Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
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Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
From http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=art :
1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
2.
a. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
b. The study of these activities.
c. The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.
3. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
4. A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature.
5. A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
6.
a. A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building.
b. A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer.
7.
a. Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art.
b. Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties: ÒSelf-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practiceÓ (Joyce Carol Oates).
8.
a. arts Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks.
b. Artful contrivance; cunning.
Dictionary.com thinks video games are art.
nuff said.
Anyway, my point is, if they come out and say that video games are not art, they're massive hypocrites, because damnit, if a canvas painted completely in blue is art, then just about any video game is going above and beyond art.
If you want to know whether video games are art or not, just take a look at the credits... artists/audio engineers typically outnumber programmers 1.5:1 - 2:1
Ryan T. Sammartino
"Ancora imparo"
Just look at classic games like tetris, pong, and snake.
Code may be seen as a craft, just like legal documentation may be seen as a craft. However, code may be used for infinite other purposes than merely getting something to work with something else. Code may be used to create a altered version of physics in a game - and depending on how well the dynamics of the game work out - I'd consider those altered physics to possibly be a work of art. A fluid interaction of AI, which beyond funcionality, has a really dynamic flair of interactons with the user - things which could not be organizedly designed beforehand, but emerge from creative programming. There are many things I would consider art in the programming of a game itself.
Ryan Fenton
Wonderful that this is being considered by SFMOMA, I will certainly go down there and lobby for it all I can. Asserting games as art has been a vocation of mine for some time. Here's a rather extensive article I wrote about why games are art and why they are inexorably set on the path to being recognized as so.
http://www.isonews.com/article.php?articleid=7
If putting a Cricifix in P!$$ can be called art, and not to mention some of the sculptures at the Carnegie Museum, then sure as heck computer programs and games can be art.
Videogames are art. I define "art" as anything that requires creativity. However, most videogames aren't fine art. This is because the medium of video game is inherently a form of entertainment, and was created as a way to make money. Yes, video games have come a long way since SpaceWar!, but most still aren't fine art.
For a videogame to be considered fine art, in my opinion, it must have an emotional impact upon the player. Therefore, most engaging RPGs could be considered fine art, in the same way that an engaging story would be. What about those "survival horror" games? Fine art, they (most of them *cough cough Clock Tower*) cause fear, even though most of them don't tell stories.
Or, fine art videogames must be original. You can't just put an artsy spin on a cliched genre and succeed. When I think of videogames as art, several titles come to mind: Diablo I, Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Super Mario 64, Zelda: OOT, Ultima IX, Baldur's Gate. All of these introduced new things to their genres, all of these were original. Sequels are rarely fine art because they're not original. Example: Resident Evil = Fine art. Its sequels, however, were mainly rehashings of the original with new puzzles and enemies.
Or, a fine art videogame can be innovative. Game developers, add something new to games! All platformers were mostly the same, then Abe's Odyssee came along. All 3rd person shooters were mostly the same, then MGS came along. All PC RPGs were mostly the same, then Baldur's Gate came along. Did anyone realize that these games actually added something new to the genre? That they weren't clones of old games? Cold that be why they were so fun? Innovate! Arguably one of the most underrated titles in the PSX's history was Ape Escape. Why? It actually used the 2nd analog stick as control for weapons! It was a work of art - it forced us to think about controlling differently.
My two cents.
-ChardishPlay Ico on PS2. Play Shenmue II on Dreamcast/XBox. Play Luigi's Mansion on Gamecube.
If you can then say with a straight face that videogames aren't as much art as, say, the winners of the Turner prize, then there's no hope for you.
++ Say to Elrond "Hello.".
Elrond says "No.". Elrond gives you some lunch.
Are the graphics used in video games art? Sure, they're graphics.. it's easy to say graphics are are. Is the music and sound in video games art? Yeah, might as well call that art too.. it's generally accepted that music is an artform.
;)
However, that's not the question. The question is are _video games_ art. Games are more than the sum of their parts and even with the most beautiful graphics and awe inspiring music, a game can still fall flat... just look at Daikatana or one of a million other (insert popular game here)-clones. On the other hand, games like The Sims or Railroad Tycoon have been on the top sellers list for... a long time.. and EverQuest, although it's losing steam with all the new MMORPGs being released, had an extremely strong userbase for years and years even with their subpar graphics and sound
It's the gameplay, stupid.
A game isn't just pretty pictures with nice sound tracks and some 'code poetry' to tie everything together and make it run... it requires a certain amount of artistry to take what you can get and make it into something that people actually want to play
So yes... some video games are art.. others are just the Rambo/Rocky/Die Hard/American Ninja MCXVIII's of the industry
-nohbdy
But, some people still prefer "mind" games. And in that case, the games do tend to be more "artistic", i.e. getting emotions to the player through the game.
I'm sure I've seen several GameBoy games that feel like "old school" games. You should look.
- Benad
All those board games were about entertainment and/or fantasy. Did they serve a purpose like a tool? No, they were there for the purpose of entertainment to the beholder. Video games I would say are even more so art than boardgames. They let you live out fantasies or just enjoy the beautiful surroundings (i.e. riven). Some would even bring into question alot about ethics and political espoinage, etc. (i.e. dues ex). So it really is a matter of perspective, which is what art is anyway.
;)
p.s. Of course only free and open source games are truly art. The other stuff is commercially produced so it doesn't really count.
"It has always been this way and it won't change, god bless the fucked up USA" The Briefs
Video games aren't art in the traditional sense that the patron/consumer can alter it. Most art - paintings, sculpture, music, drama - is alterable by its creator, but not by the patron. However, we could consider video games to be a play where the players are the actors and the developers are the playwrights. And the value of the video game could be the degree to which the developers can excite the players to perform. An unplayed game would be an incomplete composition; a complete composition of a video game would have to include players.
Thus, in the classical definition of art, the value and quality of video games would be defined by their popularity. They would be most valuable while popular, and worthless once pasee. They would not accumulate value over time.
It will be a cold day in hell when I start considering Deer Hunter as a piece of art.
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
Asking whether something is art or not is a waste of time. If it was created by a human, then just assume it's art. Now, are most games for PCs good art? The answer is a resounding no.
The difference between art and craft, as defined by my college English department, is as follows:
-Art forges new ground and manifests new ideas
Pros: Can be the most interesting creations
Cons: Often misunderstood, too strange, or
just meaningless
-Craft repeats what has been done before in new combinations and perhaps with a new twist
Pros: Gauranteed to be decent; based on a
previous success
Cons: Gauranteed not to raise eyebrows; based
on a previous success
Obviously this is not a clear-cut distinction - one could easily find border cases in any medium which is somehow considered art. However, it seems obvious that craft cannot exist without art of some degree; in order to copy an idea, the idea must have been created new by someone once.
We can easily find computer and video games that seem to fall well into either catagory. Art would be a game that broke new ground and was unlike anything that came before it, like Wolfenstein 3D, or Lemmings. Craft would be a game that did what has been done before, with little creativity (Spear of Destiny, or an add-on of new Lemmings levels) or a lot (Half-Life). Once again, it's easy to find border cases, like each new iteration of the ID 3D engine, which were full of new ideas but based on the same old one.
We can see, though, that even if most or almost all computer games fall into the Craft category, and even if some are border cases (they eventually fall into one of the two categories), that the medium as a whole is an artistic one. Craft is simply a word that means uncreative art. Just because it lacks snob appeal doesn't mean it isn't aesthetically pleasing.
Since all computer and video games have no purpose other than to entertain, the medium must be considered an artistic one. Craft does not exist in a medium without the potential for art. The quality of the art, and whether or not it is ideal enough to escape the title "craft," does not, even in the cruelest cynic's video-game-hating eyes allow its dismissal as anything less than poor art. We may notice that the assertion that the art is poor is a qualitative statement, which is in the eye of the beholder, but that the asswertion that it is art at all is a quantitative one and bears no argument. Cogito ergo sum - if someone thinks it's art, the harshest blow one can deal it is say it isn't very good.
PUBLIC SPLIT ON WHETHER BUSH IS A DIVIDER -CNN scrolling banner, 10/15/2004
If flashing lights can be art, then video games can.
Simply designing an experience for an audience does not necessarily create art. A balance betwixt sound, color, and pace is not necessarily art. (The following example is not designed to draw flak. I am not anti-porn or pro-censorship or whatever by any means..) Most porn, for example, is an experince designed for an audience in which sound, color, and pace is more or less balanced. For the most part, however, porn is an object for consumption and not for contemplation. It's just a quick way to get from point A to point B. Porn, again for the most part (not exclusively), is not an end unto itself but a tool designed for a very specific purpose or set of purposes. Many modern conventional movies are the same way. Though they may be artistic -- that is, the camera work may be spot-on, the scoring unusually good, or the costumes particularly well-done -- as a whole many movies cannot be admitted as art in large part, I think, because of a lack of an intention to be treated as such. Intention _must_ be taken into consideration. There *is* a difference between a movie and a film, between "movies" and "cinema" (beyond, of course, the fact that 'film' and 'cinema' are, I think, derived directly from French). The difference lies not only in how members of each are treated but in why they are made. So too are most (not all by any means, but most) video games designed for consumption and not contemplation. I imagine that a 'movie/film'-type paradigm will emerge among video games once they begin to be looked at and criticized more seriously. I seriously hope that game reviewers will learn to stop throwing around the term "beautiful" so much. It and other similar terms imply a degree of depth that for the most part I just haven't yet seen in most console and computer releases. I think it's *entirely* appropriate that we ask ourselves the last time -- or indeed, if ever -- we were truly moved by a piece of electronic entertainment. Could we perhaps throw these out into the before we christen the entire genre as art? Please? Ones that occur to me include: Homeworld (the destruction of Kharak was particuarly unbelievable...poignant music, great voice acting, the slow movement of the fireball across the surface of the planet, the piteousness of the task of retrieving the 600,000 colonists, the last of their race...play it, it's amazing) Photopia, retrievable at the author's home page -- http://adamcadre.ac -- dubiously interactive, but a very moving story that I don't think could have been as effectively told through another medium) Check out http://www.ifcompetition.org/ -- a lot of interactive ficiton is really straining the borders between computer games and art..indeed, there is an interactive fiction art gallery... http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm But I ramble. aanyway.
If hanging penises are art, then video games definetly are as well. I forgot where I read that an exhibit was up in some Colorado museum that consisted of many penises hanging up to dry on a clothes line.
eh....nerve gas gives its audience an experience too...i suppose that means nerve gas is art as well?
/. is gonna clear the issue up.
philosophers have been trying for centuries to pin down a precise definition of what constitutes art...i seriously doubt that one article on
stick to vigorously tearing down other people's comments, it seems as though that's the only part of your post that had any thought given to it
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
No, videogames as they are, an interactive experience are not art. However, many game incorporate elements of film, books and fine art. These individual elements may be art, but the game itself is not. It's like saying football is art.
Given a reasonably level playing field, who would win a fight between a bear and a shark?
It really has to depend on the game. Some games were just garbage, and then there was games that made a person wonder just how on earth the machine could do all that. Some of the early games like Super Mario Bros 2 and 3, Blaster Master, Sonic the hedgehog, etc. are sure worthy of being called art. They knew the machine so well in and out that using various tricks they made it appear to do more then it was capable of. I consider these type of games more then just programming of another cartridge to sell to make a quick buck.
Why do you doubt? Maybe those philosophers should have just asked us.
creative genius behind todays great games? haha.
being a game coder (small time), i woudl honestly love to believe that. but the truth is, there isnt much genius. yes, there are streaks of it. the quake engine is brilliant, as is the new quake3 engine. other engines for everything. but most games do nothign amazing. DirectX makes the game coder lazy (hey, why should the coder know how to draw graphics? sound? network support?) Same with OpenGL, but every game is made for windows these days (which is unfortunate).
also, many new games are clones of old games. real time stratagy (age of empires, starcraft, warcraft, etc)) is popular, as is 1st person shooter (you know the drill).
there are breaks from this though. they probably require more, as libraries aren't built around them as much (looks at the sims cd on his desk).
yes, some innovation actualyl happens, but its far simpler to drag and drop in libraries and have someone make bitmaps and mp3's to go with it.
this has little to do with it being art though.
lots of art is also based on a genre, and the tools for it are more developed for common art mediums. it parallels nicly.
Simply designing an experience for an audience does not necessarily create art. A balance betwixt sound, color, and pace is not necessarily art. (The following example is not designed to draw flak. I am not anti-porn or pro-censorship or whatever by any means..) Most porn, for example, is an experince designed for an audience in which sound, color, and pace is more or less balanced. For the most part, however, porn is an object for consumption and not for contemplation. It's just a quick way to get from point A to point B. Porn, again for the most part (not exclusively), is not an end unto itself but a tool designed for a very specific purpose or set of purposes.
Many modern conventional movies are the same way. Though they may be artistic -- that is, the camera work may be spot-on, the scoring unusually good, or the costumes particularly well-done -- as a whole many movies cannot be admitted as art in large part, I think, because of a lack of an intention to be treated as such. Intention _must_ be taken into consideration. There *is* a difference between a movie and a film, between "movies" and "cinema" (beyond, of course, the fact that 'film' and 'cinema' are, I think, derived directly from French). The difference lies not only in how members of each are treated but in why they are made. So too are most (not all by any means, but most) video games designed for consumption and not contemplation.
I imagine that a 'movie/film'-type paradigm will emerge among video games once they begin to be looked at and criticized more seriously. I seriously hope that game reviewers will learn to stop throwing around the term "beautiful" so much. It and other similar terms imply a degree of depth that for the most part I just haven't yet seen in most console and computer releases. I think it's *entirely* appropriate that we ask ourselves the last time -- or indeed, if ever -- we were truly moved by a piece of electronic entertainment. Could we perhaps throw these out into the before we christen the entire genre as art? Please? Ones that occur to me include:
Homeworld (the destruction of Kharak was particuarly unbelievable...poignant music, great voice acting, the slow movement of the fireball across the surface of the planet, the piteousness of the task of retrieving the 600,000 colonists, the last of their race...play it, it's amazing)
Photopia, retrievable at the author's home page -- http://adamcadre.ac -- dubiously interactive, but a very moving story that I don't think could have been as effectively told through another medium)
Check out http://www.ifcompetition.org/ -- a lot of interactive ficiton is really straining the borders between computer games and art..indeed, there is an interactive fiction art gallery... http://members.aol.com/iffyart/gallery.htm But I ramble. aanyway.
The creators of video games are artists, their brush is a keyboard and a mouse, their paint is electrons. Their canvas is a hard drive. What they develop out of these tools can take the breath away from anyone. Video game worlds are expansive, alluring, and wonderful worlds that can rival our own. Video game creators are developing a new kind of interactive art that astounds everyone.
Just because something is different from the norm doesn't make it not art. It makes it different. If people didn't agree with this then people like Van Gogh, Picasso, etc. would never have been considered artists.
__________________________________________
Take comfort in your ignorance.
Grandmaster Plague
Most of us Slashdot "youngsters" consider video games to be art because...
...they are art.
...we grew up with them, and thus like them and will defend them.
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But once we are old, will we consider that days art forms to be new? Once all of us are 60 there will be many new art forms, like genetically engineered pets (buy Pokemon-like creatures at a pet store), genetically engineered national forests, sky movies (raster scanning lasers aimed at clouds at night), moon carvings (ads visible to the earth could be cut into the moon), talking roads (asphault could be cut like an analog record to make your car buzz spoken words when driven over) and many other things. All of these things I mentioned will surely be art, but, 15 to 45 years from now, when we are 60 and crotchety, will our minds still be open enough to accept these new art forms as art?
That's the question to help you understand why art establishments, run by 60 year olds themselves, would consider rejecting video games as art. Their opinion would be wrong, but it would be popular.
Are books art?
The only difference between literature and videogames is interactivity and paper.
Both are highly narrative, both tell stories, both are creative escapes.
Some video games might not qualify, because of their limited focus or nonexistant plot. Tetris and space invaders and Civilization, for example, have more in common with a board game then a novel. These might be cultural achievements perhaps, but are no more art then Chess or Checkers.
However, how do some video games _not_ qualify? How can stories like those told in Half-Live or Unreal or Arcanum or Diablo or even Doom be considered anything but storylines?
Demoscene - Music, Gfx, DEMOS!
The largest computer artforms is the demo. These demos are music and gfx wrapped into a small package.
There are contests around the world called "Demo Partys" which give awards on best gfx, best music, best demos in sizes (64K,etc), 1 hour to compose tunes with a set of samples, best mp3, best Gfx, most genuine.
Many of these artists and musicians are working in the game industry or entertainment industry. Many of the older 64/apple/amiga game musicians are working for the largest game companies, creating tunes for your games you play today.
Assembly - The largest Demo party in the world
OrangeJuice - Demoscene information center
Google demo directory.
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Crystal Melon - Famous cracktros (minidemos) many converted to Shockwave so people can view them. (They were on a c64 and Amiga!)
If you interested in video game, demo music, mods (4 channel) music, is like a midi with the wave files included.
Check out
Nectarine - 100% scene music radio!
Mod Archive
Google Mod directory
Aminet AmiNet mod archive.
C64: Back in Time CD Rob Hubbard, Martin Galway, Ben Daglish, Chris Hülsbeck, Peter Clarke - Music Game Gods.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2000-03 -01&res=l
Please tell me I'm not the only one who instantly thought of the reference.
Seriously, I think this hits the oft asked question right on. (Why) Should I care how my art is interpreted by others?
Music is a bunch of predefined units (notes), defined as pitch and duration, which are arranged in such a way as to produce a certain output. Programming is a bunch of predefined units (instructions) defined as action and argument, which are arranged in such a way as to produce a certain output. Interestingly, the two have merged. There was a certain monastic order which was taught to sing based on what the people beside and behind you were singing. In other words, if you're in the middle, and the guy behind you is singing a C, maybe you're supposed to sing a D. Then, notes would be given to one row, the 'song' would run through the ranks, and you'd get output in the last row.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"Also, if videogames are considered art than what stops other computer programs from also being considered art? Censoring videogames because of violence or even programs because of DMCA-type laws may be considered censoring art - something that many Americans have traditionally been very opposed to?"
This is like saying that because paintings are art, then what's to stop us from saying that normal old house-painting is art, and thus city ordinances on the appearence of buildings are violating first ammendment rights by censoring art.
I'm not saying all code is or isn't art, i'm just saying that code isn't automatically art. Furthermore, i think the submitter obviously has no real care for whether or not it's actually art, but only would the official "art" status would mean for code in general, which is a fairly bad way to approach proving that code is art.
Code is a tool, like paint. Paint, in certain configurations is considered to be art, but paint does not make something art, and in fact, it's fairly difficult to make paint into good art. Throwing the blanket statement of "code is art" around just seems silly and shows that the speaker doesn't really understand what most people talk about when they talk about what is "art".
ben.c
It's really a rather pointless question, unless you can decide what art IS. If you ask three people, you'll get three different definitions of the word.
It's all so confusing now that I just avoid speaking about it much... Better to talk about how something fulfills its function than what it IS.
And of course, a "function" could be just about anything.
Why is art, art in the first place? Someone has the skills to do something that others can view. After viewing it, they like it and are intregiued by it. Wasn't this the same way people look at the Mona Lisa now as when they looked at Myst when it first came out? The lighting in the Mona Lisa is the same as the lighting in Myst. Revolutionary in its time. So, wouldn't computer games just be an interactive portrait?
Tim ODonnell (trying to be the most
Just think of this: videogames are composed of visual, sound, gameplay. :)
Visual and sound are widely accepted to be form of arts.
Gameplay is composed in part by code and in part by the experience (story, involvment,...) the game is able to provide.
Compare it to a movie: you just have added the interaction. If a movie is art, why shouldn't a videogame also be?
Playing or looking at Metal Gear Solid has surely an higher artistic value than watching Impossible Mission 2
Some web sites and most video games are art.
Few people deny that web sites can be art, not because they are art, but because there's a web site for everybody, and thus everybody likes the web, so they'll defend it just because they like it.
Many people deny that video games are art, not because video games aren't artistic, but because they mainly appeal only to 15 to 30 year old males who are in the mood for violence (and more recently, sex). Thus, video games exclude, confuse, intimidate, bore and offend most of the population.
I have never doubted that video games are art, but I have always doubted that anybody else believed they were art. And it's a shame that the web got there first because video games had a 25 year head start. Just like any other art form, technology and sport, video games have potential to appeal to every demographic.
They just have chosen not to.
Video games are also art in other, more subtle ways. Just as artists celebrated "pop art" by enshrining elements from everyday life in their works--such as the famous painting of Campbell's Soup cans, or the countless works which used the pixellated dots of the print medium--so are videogames a celebration of their times and the aesthetics of the time.
Take the vector graphics of many early arcade games--they reflect their times, and have their counterparts in films of the day such as *WarGames* where the computer Joshua plays through scenarios on giant vector screens at Norad; they are an enashrinement of the technology of the period, and embody it. Take the vector game Star Wars, and show it beside clips of the same actions that occur in the Star Wars movie, and you have a pop art statement as interesting as any made by the great pop artists.
How about Dragon's Lair as an attempt to express something in a medium that wasn't entirely adequate, resulting in a quirky experience that transcends the limits of the medium even for its shortcomings?
The very design of arcade game machines and game consoles is art, much as authentic furniture from the fifties and sixties is prized today for its aesthetic qualities. Such furniture was designed to be entirely functional, not as art--yet it embodies a style and spirit which is today viewed as a certain artistic style, just as the art nouveau reflected in turn-of-the-century Continental signs and gates and baubles, or the art deco reflected in common household decorations of the twenties and early thirties.
The same sort of art can be seen in these functional bits. Look at the extreme angles in a Defender cab, the sweeping design of a Star Wars cockpit--as worthy of being called art as any art deco figurine. Or, how about setting up an exhibit to contrast the design of home consoles, from the 70s inlaid fake woodgrain and brushed metal of an Atari 2600 to the functional boxiness of a NES to the sleek black of a Genesis to the colorful GameCube.
The games themselves can be displayed in a similar manner, with demos running to show the simplicity of Pong's attempt to represent tennis in a 2d world on through Star Wars' attempt to represent the cutting-edge 3d technology of the film through simple vector displays on to the ever more complex and imaginative titles which left simply trying to recreate reality in the 80s and went on to create whole new worlds and fantasies--the Mario of Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers as a simplified representation of the hero saving the princess; Pac Man best expressed by the hunger which his Japanese creator in interviews says is the driving (pizza-inspired) idea behind him; Doom's attempt to put the player in a post-apocalyptic world as the protagonist, whereas films have always kept the viewer as a third party to the action; Quake 3 or UT's realism, while portraying the same post-apocalyptic sort of dystopia; the dizzying multi-axis world of the Descent games; Tomb Raider's attempt to make everyone an Indiana Jones; House of the Dead, in the words of the judge who recently struck down a local ban on violent arcade games, who noted it has creativity and even instills a positive message of protecting the innocent by attacking the evil; Duke Nukem and his countless fan levels as the epitome of masculine stereotypes; Discworld the videogames as concrete visual implementations of the world created by the Discworld novels; etc. etc.
To distill my longwinded claptrap: yes, videogames are obviously art.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
I'm aware of Duchamp's ideas, another piece of _art_ being a bottle rack, but how the fsck do you put a wheel upside down?
--
The Cap is nigh. Time to get a fresh new account.
Fair enough. Let me begin by nominating Marble Madness, one of the most interesting, creative, and visually pretty games I've ever seen.
It was, admittedly, somewhat lacking in the strategy department... it was one of those games where you just keep playing to learn the secrets until you can complete the course... but it had so many different interesting quirks and situations that I for one was fascinated with the game. It wasn't the same basic situation repeated ad infinitum (e.g.somebody shoots at you, you shoot back) the situation actually changed from as the game progressed.
It was visually beautiful to look at and had a wonderful score for each level.
Cave Drawings - Pong
Simplistic linear representation of real objects.
Medieval - Frogger, 80's games
flat drawings, non-proportional
Rennaisance - Street Fighter and the like
proportional (for god-like proportions), realistic drawings, 3-dimensional, but not baroque
Baroque - Doom & other fps
all the qualities of Rennaisance but also immersive. as baroque sought to surround the viewer in the work, so does the fps.
What would an impressionist game look like? how about a cubist? dada computer game? abstract?
-f
www.blackant.net
Alright, fine. Whether or not something is a work of art needs to be judged based on the experience it provides to the audience. How's that?
>stick to vigorously tearing down other people's comments, it seems as though that's the only part of your post that had any thought given to it
Ah yes. Quite.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
hmmm...
Well, is a tiger shark in formaldehyde art (Damien Hirst)? Is a cutting depicting a perfect nuclear family on a lesbian's back art? Is a urinal signed R. Mutt art (Marcel Duchamp)? Is getting shot by a 22-calibre rifle art (Chris Burden)? Are photographs and videos of spiting art (Brice Nauman - Human Fountain)? Is a canvas painted black art (many...)? Is a striptease art (Chamaine Weatley)? Is stalking random people art (Sophie Calle)?
One aspect that these excellent and accepted artworks possess is a level of intellectual questioning, observation and social relevance that provokes intense debate. The vast majority of video games are so commercial, regurgitated, thoughtless and over marketed that they simply don't function as very good art at all.
It seems to me that the issue of programming and game-theory as art was answered about fifty years ago. I think that the social position and function of art itself is a far more interesting problem. Let's face it, it takes some substantial effort to go to galleries and read fairly difficult texts that may challenge your own beliefs and sense of history.
And yes, I really do believe that that cheap reproduced picture of ducks in your folks condo bathroom is crap...
Good art does not merely tickle.
If there are any games in existence that I consider to be art, Homeworld and The Longest Journey are the first two that come to mind.
Homeworld's quest to discover your origins, and to find your true home is just as artistic as any film I've seen.
The Longest Journey is even better, questioning what is real, and what is imagination, and how you can tell the difference when they both exist in their own spheres of reality.
Adventure games have the highest capability of being art, in that the creator of the game has more control over how the experience is presented to the player, which is an important factor in interactive art; keeping the artist's vision in focus by keeping the viewer on track with it. To say that Quake is art is somewhat true, in that it represents a critical step in the evolution of technique; a new way to manipulate the medium. Actually playing the game does little to inspire human emotion or question universal truths, which makes high art tick in my opinion.
Leveling up builds character.
A number of "fine artists" don't consider design as high an art as, say, painting, drawing or sculpture. Most of what we see in videogames is design, not "art" in those terms.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Most art - paintings, sculpture, music, drama - is alterable by its creator, but not by the patron.
Most professional artists I think would agree that, regardless of how static their art form is, the reader/viewer/listener always is a part of the equation. The patron's point of view, prejudices, even mood are all important. There have also been many attempts in the past to make overtly interactive art. Now, you could easily say that video games are more interactive than most other art forms.
Wouldn't you have to drive a specific speed to hear the words at the proper pitch?
creation science book
+1 or more for "insightful."
Thanks, you said what I was thinking before and better than I.
My holiday snaps are not art in the way that Ansel Adams' photos are art. Mine can become "art" by giving them direction and meaning to become something larger.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
-jfedor
Its extremely difficult to discuss the relative merits of games because we have yet to develop a universe of discourse for discussing them. That's why when you read video game critics they often go on and on about the latest Final Fantasy and its compelling storyline. We already have a way to discuss story (through literature) and in the past century we've developed a way to talk about film. We simply need to find a way to talk about the unique aspects of games. Currently, this is limited to vague ramblings about "gameplay." Why is chess so fun for its players? What is it people like about watching soccer? Why don't people play poker with all the cards wild? These are questions about games that need to be answered before we can discuss games as art. Until then, all we can say is whether we like X game better than Y game or not.
The thing that computers bring into the equation is the ability to use much more complicated rule system, and have those rule systems be transparent to the player. This is already creating much more sophisticated games by increasing dramatically the amount of tweaking and sculpting a game designer can do.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Videogames are more often than not bland products created by teams of unimaginative drones of big corporations, following simple formulaes. However, some are art.
Its a lot like movies, some of the are real pieces of art, and some are simple cash-cows.
Quake isn't art, and Most Valuable Primate isn't art, but then you can see O Brother Where Art Thou or play Myst, wich are in my opinion works of art.
You can't take the sky from me...
Perhaps you could explain why.
True, he didn't qualify his statement by pointing out that everyone's a critic in some sense, perhaps he assumed it was obvious he was making a distinction between someone attempting to be a "professional" critic as opposed to the normal every day kind, but that was his point.
Art after all is in the eye of the beholder. You can wait, if you like, until the "art of gaming" is institutionalized to appreciate it as such. Just don't expect everyone else to wait with you.
I can tell you code is art because I've seen code that fits this description (there's this C decss tool smaller than any perl implementation, for example.)... But I don't have the time or patience to convince you of this fact. So if you don't wish to take my word for it, go ahead and wait for the institution.
If you want to launch into a discussion on digital mediums for art, we can do that as well, but it will merely get me pointing out that lack of precision doesn't seem like a good criterion for fine art...
The 5k web page contest seems like a great example for making this case. We have thousands of entries and only 5k of data, yet how many entries were duplicates? How many were even remarkably similar? The annual C obfuscation contest seems like another likely candidate. This is an annual contest with thousands of entries every year. Complete data set size: 2048 bytes not including whitespace.
To help put it into perspective, current crypto stumps a computer by making it count all possibilities for just 32 bytes of data.
It's the same argument for the theatre. Live stage, televised or movie, same argument. it depends on the Game in question. Like say, Spawn. Spawn was very low brow, low intelligence action flick(not to say it wasn't a decent film, it just wasn't somethign I could consider "art"). Now let's say Citzen Kane. That was art. Deep, moving intelligent film. You could tkae that to the video game style and use two similar contrasts. Say, DoomII and Metal Gear Solid. DoomII was rather simplistic with no real story or characters(other than you, a horde of monsters and John Romero's head on a stick, again, it was fun, but something I couldn't consider art. Quake's a different story. I consider Quake a medium. Much like unshaped clay. Quake was designed for modifications and map creation and such. Alot of really great stuff has been made out of it), but Metal Gear Solid, that's a different tale. Metal Gear Solid had a deep plot line, three dimensional characters and a very VERY serious point(Which reenforces my feelings on nuclear weaponry, yeah, sure the AI sucked, but the PSX had it's limitations...)
I'm not saying that MGS was as good as Citzen Kane as far as being artistic, but it does something that all of what I consider art does. It expresses an idea or an emotion rather deeply and heartfelt.
Games can be art. Metal Gear Solid was art. There are plenty of games, even on something as simple as the NES could be considered art. Although not all art has to be namby pamby wussy pussy feeling. I consider Terminator 2 art for the simple fact that it conveyed a powerful message about our fate and such.
And if you'll excuse me, i'll be framing my MGS CDS and calling it a Kojima classic.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
Computer games have only really been around for 25 years, not counting the half dozen before then. Can anyone think of any motion pictures from 25 years after their invention that could count as a work of art?
There aren't many for sure. The fact that they have now had going on for a century to develop means that this medium is properly mature and can produce proper works of art.
The early examples may have hinted at their potential, and in a few cases may have even delivered what they promised. But those were few and far between, as they will remain in video gaming for some time to come.
Demos such as GLExcess (non-interactive program with graphics and sound) are no less art than movies - they are movies, except they're made by realtime rendering instead of being a sequence of stored images. I don't associate them with the kind of art you find in galleries, but they probably are art.
They that quote Benjamin Franklin on liberty and safety deserve neither.
What about computers as artist? There's an interesting article here about a computer that seems to be able to make creative paintings.
Well, first of all, 'Art' is completely subjective. One person's junk is another person's art, whether the medium be video games, movies, paintings, sculpture, performance art, whatever.
However, in my specific _opinion_, videogames are much like modern movies -- very many of them are created solely for economic reasons and driven by "suits" that just want more of the same. However, once in a while, a game comes along that is clearly art: the product of one person's (or a very small number of like-minded individuals) vision that both looks fantastic (and by fantastic I don't mean it uses the latest and greatest technology, just that the artwork is clearly inspired and consistent) and plays like a dream. Usually such games are the product of small-time garage developers before hitting it big and getting sucked up into the 'studio' system. Once in a while, someone within the system can sneak something really good by the suits, but as with Hollywood, its pretty rare these days.
And to clarify above, don't get me wrong, I know that modern games are often worked on by many people putting in tons of effort, but even in such situations to reach the level of art you generally need one person with a strong vision making the ultimate decisions.
There is an very well written article at Planetquake, which influenced my opinion towards this topic that much that I better just link it instead of quoting it thru my post.
The new mod_xray Episdode II Teaser - Download It now!
Boycot? Blackout? Subscriptions?
I don't care!
"Are computer games not considered art simply because of its nature as an entertainment medium, or can video games be considered art precisely because they can be thought of as combinations of graphics and code?"
You can look at the source of this game, as well as the graphics. But under no circumstances can you play the game.
-DrkShadow
WHY CAN'T SLASHDOT POST MORE RELEVANT AND MEANINGFUL NEWS POSTS? THIS, IS VIDEO GAMES ART? IS ANOTHER BULLSHIT POSTING FROM THE NEWS FOR NERDS, STUFF THAT DOESNT MATTER AND WASTES YOUR TIME WEBSITE. why was my posting in caps? because i intended it that way. slashdot has seriously gone downhill from what it used to be a year ago.
This discussion isn't really about whether computer games are art, it's about whether the concept of computer games as art could be the basis for legal tactics against other people's equally bogus legal tactics. The concept of art has been applied to so many things that it really doesn't mean anything any more. Art is like religion in that it can be attached to almost anything and nobody is supposed to question the sincerity. Garbage, shit and rotting meat have all been exhibited as art in actual art galleries.
So sure, computer games are art. Campaign spin doctoring is art. Closing a real estate deal is art. Drunk driving is performance art. Suing Napster is art, censorship is art, and this post is art. Why not.
Much like movies, videogames have an initial purpose to entertain. Also like movies, some of them can be considered as art, others not. But to censor a game or movie doesn't give the author of the work the ability to release to the public, which determines what is and is not art.
Also, on a side note, responding to the fact that in most art, the patron does not have a chance to edit: Music is one art form in which the patron is able to adjust and perform the art. Just thought that it would be useful in the argument.
This tastes like granma! By george, you're right! it DOES taste like granma! We'll take a box of it!
First of all, we have to distingush the concept of art from entertainment. I see art as an expressive medium that allows the artist to convey feelings, emotions and ideas. The better the artist, the more interesting these things are and the better they are conveyed. Entertainment, on the other hand, is a medium who's purpose is to make people happy, and let them have fun. The better the entertainment, the more fun people have.
It is notable that these categories are overlapping but distinct. What is classically thought of as art (paintings, sculptures, etc.) are mostly art and have only a little entertainment value. Good literature almost always has elements of both art and entertainment. Movies are a mixed bag: some art movies, some entertainment movies, some both. Music is the same way.
Video games are historically thought of as entertainment. Pac-man has virtually no artistic elements. Quake doesn't really either. However, there are many games that do have artistic value. Many good RPG's, such as the Ultima series or Fallout, tell artistic stories and convey emotions and ideas. Deus Ex recently revolutionized the FPS genre and gaming as a whole by providing great entertainment and strong artistic qualities seamlessly intertwined, like a good movie or book. I'm sure there are good examples from console gaming as well.
It's important to realize that even though video games are historically an entertainment medium, they completely superset of all other art forms. A game could have an entire novel in it, or a movie playing that you can watch in entirety. The quality of reproduction of these other art forms is only limited to the gaming technology of the time. This fact alone establishes gaming as an art form.
Gaming also provides an entirely new dimension that artistic designers can exploit: interactivity. In no other art form that I can think of can the audience be an integral part of the presentation. Game developers can finally convey emotions from a first-person perspective, making the player feel sorry or triumphant or whatever for his/her own actions. Games are only just starting to scratch the surface of the artistic potential here.
We are starting to see game designers get more and more recognition for their games, especially the artistic ones. Peter Molyneux was personally lauded for the very artisic Black and White. Everyone loves Warren Spector for bringing us Deus Ex, and retroactively for System Shock and Ultima Underworld. I'm sure Richard Garriot's next project will probably bring him the attention he deserves. Game designers are the artists of gaming, and gaming as an art form is about to come into it's own.
-3Suns
The revolution will be slasdotted.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
1) i thought art described anything artificial (man-made)
2) according to dictionary.com: art: human efforts to immitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature. seems to me that video games that do any of these things are art (or posess components of art). physics is immitated in many video games (or altered, or supplemented or counteracted). light. gravity. nature itself (sounds, wind, water, life, death).
3) who actually would debate this? probably the regular group of anti-capitalist, socialist, elitists who accept without challenge the idea that paint spattered on a canvas in random patterns is art but feel the need to debate whether or not something (at least partly) motivated by profits, something requiring intellect, skill, time and effort, and investment and something that somebody actually gives enough of a crap about that they will shell over their money for -- they cannot accept that it is art. typical elitist spewage.
Code is not art. It's pretty but its not art.
Art is USUALLY created as a single unique entity. If it is mass produced then IMHO, it is not Art but a commercial product, designed for materialistic gain. Is Microsoft Software ART???
I think that video games are an amazing form of art because they combine all sorts of aspects of art
1) A story. Some games (mostly older ones, but still) have stories more in depth then many novels
2) Music. It's not amazing music, and you probly couldnt get a record deal if you tried with it, but, it's still music. 3) Visual arts. While they are produced in real time by the computer, there were many skilled artists who set up every detail of the picture you see. It's just more interactive then a painting 4) Code. While everyone might not agree, Code is an art. It's creative. To those who understand it, good code can be beautiful
the combinations of all these art forms, to me, makes video games an art. An art unlike any seen before it, because it takes so many diffrent aspects and puts them together
The opinions in this post are ficticious. Any similarity to actual opinions, real or imagined, is purely coincidental.
Anybody remember the game "Stroker" on the commodore 64? Anybody remember the work of Jeff Koons? Voila!
Is music art? are movies art? are theatrical plays art? Is there anything in the entertainment industry that is *not* art?
who am i and what am i doing here?
Well I am glad that you mentioned you were "small time". As for your comment... It's so easy to throw around the "lazy" comment. It's so much harder to understand exactly how much work goes into making a good game. You will learn this as you progress in the industry.
Good luck...
Nothing any of us could type would be more eloquently written than the essays of Chris Crawford, designer of some fine games in the past such as Eastern Front. Please check out the link below.
The Art of Computer Game Design WSU Vancouver
Mr. Crawford currently works for his company Erasmatazz, which has much neat stuff, and some good essays on Erasmus.
Scarce, scared, scarred, sacred... -Col. Bruce Hampton
Of course I don't mean there is no such thing as painting or music or poetry. What I mean is that the things that the "Art world" celebrates tend to be just sophisticated, elitist entertainment, and this nonsense about the "undefinability" of "Art" is just a symptom of faith in a nonexistent entity.
I mean, if a photo of Jesus in a jar of urine or a bunch of vaccuum cleaners or a guy sleeping in the gallery can be considered "Art," do we really want to lower something like Doom to that level? Rather than trying to claim they meet someone else's criteria for some arbitrary title, why not just say that they're the best at what they do and leave it at that?
Art is anything someone makes or does to elicit an emotional response. The real question, for video games, for Cadillacs half-buried in the desert sand imitating Stonehenge or for pictures of Jesus Christ immersed in urine, is "Is it good art?"
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
If it is entertaining, it is not art.
So as to avoid making either of the terms all but meaningless, I believe that this is an important distinction to maintain.
If you find one term to be derrogatory, or another snobby, that is a problem of your own perception; fix it.
All there debates about "Is X art?" are missing the point. Art is not in the medium. I do not have a good definition for the word art. But what I can say is that art is about a message, it's about intent, it's about interpretation. Trying to find a good one-size-fits-all definition for art is difficult, because there are so many different kinds of art for so many different audiences.
Video games can be art, computer graphics can be art, even code can be art, although it rarely is.
I've played Marble Madness...a few levels worth and then I got bored. ::shrug::. What'd I miss? I can see the physics potentially resulting in some clever situations, but I didn't get nearly as drawn in as you did. Perhaps I'll check it out again.
While we're in the vein of slightly more abstract games (as opposed to the nigh-cinematic and nigh-literary pieces I mentioned), I'd like to nominate Journey to the Planets (screenshots and a few spoilers can be found at http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lakes/7953/ 8bit/journey.html) a game for the Atari 400/800. T'was a game about an astronaut type stranded in another galaxy by some power or another. Said astronaut had to solve 8 planets' worth of puzzles which, as the above site mentions, required varying degrees of reflex and intellect. I think a great deal of my immersion of the game was due to my age when playing it (I must have been 5 or 6 when I started). Perhaps my railing against the godlike powers that stranded the poor astronaut in that universe was a little on the silly side...but the feeling of accomplishment once I was able to leave the alternate galaxy, land next to five identical spaceships, and see two or three astronaut types greet the formerly stranded guy was, I recall, very intense.
In any event, Journey to the Planets was and continues to be a frustrating but fascinating game. I recommend it to anyone interested in making sense of strange symbolic systems. Good for children with patience, it is. "Anchors Aweigh" does get old after a while but it certainly makes you want to land that ship!
>Are Videogames Art?
>
Well yeah. Final Fantasy X for the PS2 will be as much art as a game juding by the previews I've seen of it. Quite a few other PS2 games like Ico and Kinetica could easily fall into this catagory as well. Though I doubt you could say any games created for either the PC or Xbox could be considered art. Quite a few created games for the Amiga like could considered as art though
If that is not Art, then I don't know what is.
What cannot be art? I mean, if the Cadillac Ranch (near Amarillo, TX) is considered art...
Washington, DC: It's like Hollywood for ugly people.
is a nice looking car, house, or pieces of furniture Art? sure, in a sense as they all have thier catigories to live in, be it architecture, industrial design, or etc... Video Games and programing fall into the same situation: they are made for a specific purpose, and should be considered Art under that purpose. An Artfull program should be thought of on the same lines of designer furniture, no more no less. But, keep in mind you can make a program "Art." It's all about context. If Abiword is just beautiful code to read, it is just perfect example of the designer furniture compairison. Now, if a program opens functions to call arrays in a lyrical manner, just to say "Hello, World!"... well... it's most likely Art.
.cig
old comic books?
old board games?
old movies?
old childrens books?
old TV ads?
all have a degree of creativity...
'sapientia potestas est'
Masterpeices of digital music are art, skillfully rendered digital images can be art, and software, too, can be art. To broadly imply that *all* software is art to somehow screw with the DMCA is taking it too far though. Software can be art, and in the case of games I would consider it "Interactive Art", similar to performance art, except the audience is part of the performance. Certain works of source code are also art without being graphical or interactive, but as all art is subjective, I'm sure only people of certain mindsets and understanding will fully appreciate pure code art.
An old painting is a work of art...
A new painting is a work of art...
If an old video game is considered a work of art...so is a new computer game.
Age has nothing to do with it.
'sapientia potestas est'
Many people seem to confuse the definitin of art with their definition of 'good' art.
Someone might walk around an art museum and scoff at a simplistic painting and say, "That's not art!" When that they really mean is that it's not GOOD art. Whether it's not good art because it could just as easily be painted by a child, or if it seems the artist didn't put enough thought into it, is irrelevant.
So the question is. Are video games GOOD art? Is Quake 3 worthy to sit next to a Picasso, or a Rembrandt? Or are video games just another low-brow commercial art?
Um, Resident Evil is a rip off of Alone in the Dark.
I can't wait to see a PC in an art gallery running Quake Done Quick in a loop.
My major problem with "videogames as art" is the
focus of the audience is so focused away from
anything artistic, that any merits of the medium
are almost lost.
To be more clear, many games involve doing a set
of very similar tasks over and over with mind
numbing repetition where the experience is
more of a skill-building exercise / sport /
random search / hit the button over and over
RPGfest than any sort of experience that could
be considered an 'artistic one'.
Regardless of the fact that there are many
artistic elements involved in both the design
and the craft of the game, most games feature
a primary audience experience which is
anything but artistic in nature. An example
of this is Wolfenstein 3D, which has you
shooting the same enemies with the same weapons
over an inordinately long list of similar
levels. This experience is not, in fact,
artistic in any way. It bears no relationship
to the interaction of a new idea or image etc.
which is the interaction with art.
It is of cousre possible that you could have
a secondary audience experience, where you
are watching, or are mentally distanced from
your own playing where you can derive an
artistic experience from the same game. But
this is definitely a secondary experience.
There DO exist games which provide a primary
audience experience which might be considered
artistsic. An apple II game which involved
controlling two games with one joystick, each
which would change into another game periodically
might be primarily an artistic experience.
Heaven and Earth, as it has been explained to
me is a set of very different activities,
puzzles, and koans wended together into a whole.
Both of these games primarily are presenting
the user with a novel, challenging, perhaps
thought provoking experience, and one that
at least on the first pass is in no way based
on repetition, skill-building, etc. and thus
does not detract from a possible artistic
experience.
Fundamentally, I feel that whether or not most
videogames are art, they are pretty horrid,
in that they do their best to direct any and
all attention away from any of their artistic
merits. Music and movies do not do this, and
TV does it less. A true success of a
videogame-as-art would be one where the primary
experience itself was artistic, impressing
upon the audience new ideas and thoughts which
are previously foreign to them, not merely
a plotline.
-josh
Books (storys) is art...
Images (pictures) are art....
Music is art....
Interactivity is art....
Video Games is a conbination of several kinds of art forms...
Dosn't that make them the highest form of art?
I don't think the statement that video games are art can be really argued against. There is a hallaeious about of visual art and other non-scientific crafting that goes into making games.
Whether video games are "fine art" is a better question. I personally don't think they qualify for that as such. The medium just hasn't been around long enough. Hasn't been refined and reshaped nearly as often as the fine arts have. Eventually, yes, I believe video games will eventually reach such a lofty status, but they aren't there yet by a long shot.
Especially after playing Seaman.
http://www.gamenationtv.com/reviews/seaman.shtml
Some games are high creative art (like Seaman), and most others are low trashy art (like Quake). But they're all art.
Why do the eggheads bother asking such easy questions as "are video games art"? Mega-duh. How about asking more interesting questions like "how can we apply art to other computer applications like spreadsheets, word processors, web browsers and programming languages?"
What happens when art meets a programming language? Check out the most amazing stuff I've ever seen done with Flash 5 -- and it's all open source:
http://www.levitated.net/daily/index.html
Don't miss these elegant XML browsers for mapping web pages and reading poetry:
http://www.levitated.net/daily/pondcoderotdaily.ht ml
http://www.levitated.net/daily/pcFinite.html
http://www.levitated.net/daily/may2.html
And here's the most elegant approach to a visual programming language I've ever seen. Click the right button and select "Zoom" a few times, then pan around with the left button to manipulate the icons close-up:
http://www.levitated.net/daily/isoconstruct.html
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
From www.m-w.com, with my comments in italics: ( (nearly) All formatting preserved)
: skill acquired by experience, study, or observation <the art of making friends>
: a branch of learning: (1) : one of the humanities (2) plural : LIBERAL ARTS b archaic : LEARNING, SCHOLARSHIP
: an occupation requiring knowledge or skill <the art of organ building>
: the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced b (1) : FINE ARTS (2) : one of the fine arts (3) : a graphic art
: a skillful plan b : the quality or state of being artful
: decorative or illustrative elements in printed matter
Main Entry: art
Pronunciation: 'ärt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French, from Latin art-, ars -- more at ARM
Date: 13th century
1
Programming is such a skill, as is game designing, and definately the combination of skills.
2 a
You have to learn how to build a good game, and it's no exact science.
3
Being good at games is a skill, and I've already pointed out that building them is also a skill.
4 a
This would seem to apply especially to games that involved in interactive worlds. (In this case, a monster noticing you would be considered interactive.)
5 a archaic
Most games follow a story line or sequence of events, which would apply here.
6
This is the only one that doesn't fit.
And now the rest of it, included for interest
synonyms ART, SKILL, CUNNING, ARTIFICE, CRAFT mean the faculty of executing well what one has devised. ART implies a personal, unanalyzable creative power <the art of choosing the right word>. SKILL stresses technical knowledge and proficiency <the skill of a glassblower>. CUNNING suggests ingenuity and subtlety in devising, inventing, or executing <a mystery plotted with great cunning>. ARTIFICE suggests technical skill especially in imitating things in nature <believed realism in film could be achieved only by artifice>. CRAFT may imply expertness in workmanship <the craft of a master goldsmith>.
What's this Submit thingy do?
However, on the more specific question of whether computer games (or code) is art purely for the convenience of interpretation under the law, I would say no. That is not what the art debate is about. Debate the law for on its merits, or lack thereof, rather than grasp for loopholes.
between the game and the code. Whether code (or computer graphics) is art or not is not relevant to whether the game is art, and vice versa. I believe that a videogame can be abstracted as a set of rules, in a form that does not depend on the specific code used to implement the game. For example, LucasArts' The Secret of Monkey Island is really a very elaborate choose your own adventure story, presented in the medium of computer graphics, combined with an interface that gives the illusion that you are controlling what Guybrush does in his fictional world. Solitaire videogames are a convenient way of playing solitaire, and the game of solitaire is changed very little by presenting it in a computer medium.
A videogame should not be considered merely a program combined with graphics (and sound and music), but as a game. Note that it is possible for someone to design a game without being able to program. The game designer's job is to imagine the game, and the programmer's job is to render the game as closely as possible to what the designer imagines. Of course, the designer and the programmer may be the same person.
The code for a videogame may be art in itself, but it is a tool for rendering the game to the player, much like a chisel is a tool for creating a sculpture out of a block of marble. Videogames are really a mixed-medium art form, where the artistic aspect is how the mediums of graphics, sounds, and rules of the game are combined, by way of the code, to create an experience for the player.
Interestingly, one may ask the more general question, "Are games art?"
you completely misunderstood the concept of art! the act of creation is art. what the audience thinks means shit.
keep it simple.
We should resist this whole notion that computer games should 'aspire' to the status of art, and here's why. Art is dead. It is worthless. It is empty. Since the 19th century, we've all been taught that art is the highest form of culture. Then in the 20th century's democratization, we've been taught that everything is art, and that art should be "challenging". The result, an installation in a gallery featuring the artist's unmade bed. Trouble is, this sort of thing has been with us since Marcel Duchamp drew a 'tache on the Mona Lisa and it's all getting a bit tired. Art for art's sake is a stupid concept promoted by artists from pure self-interest. Back in the renaissance, they were hired to do a job of work by a patron. Painting and sculpture were highly prized skills, but it was all very purposeful. As part of the general emancipation of the past 200 years, artists have achieved a remarkable status considering the usefulness of what they do. Just look at rock stars and actors, what are they for? Now with computer games, we have a new form of play. Humans have always played games as a form of physical or mental exercise. This sort of thing may actually pre-date "art" in prehistory. Even animals play, and for the same reasons. To try to turn games into art is putting a square peg in a round hole. Art for its own sake has led to a rather unnatural elevation of the artist's status. We don't need any more primadonnas. Games are not art. They are culture, and as such are much more valid and meaningful than anything you could learn in art school. Don't lets fall in this trap, people.
Are computer games not considered art simply because of its nature as an entertainment medium...
Hmmm...you mean like Music, Theatre, Movies, and Comics? No, that isn't why at all. In art, there is always a name behind something. When you listen to U2, you listen to 'Achtung Baby' by U2(eg Bono, the Edge), not 'Achtung Baby' by Island Records. The movies you like are often identifiable by the director, and more often the actors within. Jackson Pollack (whether one considers his paintings artistic or not) is most definitely Jackson Pollack, and not Sears. But how much name recognition is there in game programming, aside from a few standouts like Sid Meier and Yu Suzuki? And they're just directors. I think that your average game programmer is just as much of an artist as anyone in the Louvre, but most will never get any quantifiable credit for it in our society. Same goes for many other areas such as advertising (quite a number of graphic artists and conceptual geniuses around there).
da Vinci, Botticelli, Giotto. All these guys were closer to the graphics artists and designers of today. Most of their great works were commissioned by kings and millionaires. None of them were starving artists living for their artistic principles alone.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
A videogame can certainly be art; it is one of the myriad forms of storytelling. Just because it is interactive and entertaining doesn't invalidate that.
As for coding itself, I believe that Schopenhauer once described art as (WARNING: Bad paraphrase approaching!) the direct expression of the human will. If programming doesn't fall under that definition, or couldn't, I don't know what could.
ask the Slashdot crowd: it's art!
;-P
ask a crowd on the street: are you kidding? it's computer thingamajig whatchamacallit neato trick, not art.
i mean, play Planescape: Torment- if that is not art i don't know what is. visually, musically, and literature-wise. but it doesn't fit any preconceived category.
i mean, when did photography become art? why is what Ansel Adams did art? i think the quick answer is when the technology ceases to be the interesting part of the equation.
what i mean is, when Matthew Brady made his famous Gettysburg photographs in the Civil War, they were surely artisitic, but most people's reactions, like the New York Times editorials of the day, were like: "behold, this amazing new thing called the photograph, gee whiz! look what you can do with it! i feel like i'm there on the battlefield!" everyone was reacting mentally to what Brady was doing with the camera, not what he was doing irregardless. but by the time Ansel Adams was walking around Yosemite, who cared about what the camera was doing, it was like, "look at that awesome rock! this photo is art!" the technology ceased to be interesting, what you were doing with the technology was able to stand on its own two feet in the human mind.
it was no doubt what Brady did at Gettysburg was art, but at the time, most people were not thinking about anything but the marvel of the new tech called the photograph. same with Planescape: Torment, or Doom, or Myst. Of course it's art, but the average person is like: "well spank my bottom! you can do that with a piece of silicon and a cathode ray tube? dang!"
but in some decades, when computers are ubiquitous and unremarkable (yes, they still are new and weird and remarkable nowadays. we are still stretching the boundaries of what we can do with them and where to put them and what they look like), then an Ansel Adams of computer games will come along, when we're all grandpas and grandmas, and our greatgrandkids will be like, "that game Qwerty, where you have to use a keyboard to shoot things called Imps on a 2D screen? it's so retro! that's art!"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Before we ask whether something is art, perhaps we have to specify what we mean by art and, presumably, what we mean by entertainment.
If that question remains unanswered, there could be no meaningful discussion of whether something is art or not.
A simple (and simplistic) definition is that art aims at making one a better person while entertainment is just a pastime. By that definition computer games (most of them anyway)
do not qualify as art.
I wouldn't call Minesweeper great art. But I can and do call Final Fantasy 4 (2 in the U.S.) a work of art. What is the difference?
Some types of video games have as much plot, story, and character development as a novel. Some have as much original and beautiful music as a symphony. Though these traits are shown at their highest watermark in (IMHO) games like FF4, there are many, many other games which include what I'd call impressive art. Acid Tetris and Dune 2 contain great music, if you ask me. Adn I'm sure there are others who, like me, replay Unreal primarily for the sheer beauty of its fantastical world and compelling soundtrack. Other games might not be as "beautiful" per se, but are rendered with amazing craftsmanship and attention to detail, like Half-Life, and this craftsmanship makes them art in my eyes.
Quite frankly, when people are busy arguing whether something is "art" or not, I have one criteria: is it a work of skill, created by a heartfelt dedication or effort on the part of a talented craftsman(woman)? To me, if this case is met, it is a small step to saying something is art. I see video game design, plot/script writing, image editing, graphic design, painting, and music composition all as art forms. Why should something that is a grand amalgamation of these, be considered less than art?
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
"Art" derives from a word which means "made". Art is the use of technology for communication, be it the use of paint in Lascaux or moveable type for printing books or chemistry for making movies.
In fact, videogames are perhaps the leading edge of communications technology, as it actually provides a direct visual (and with force-feedback) tactile experience.
Admittedly, the stories being told through videogames are not as inspiring or sweeping as "Lord of the Rings" but give us time... we're still learning this new toolset.
There is no spoon.
The other criteria I have as to whether something is art:
Does it try to make you *feel* something?
This should be considered part of the above post.
-Kasreyn
Kasreyn: Cheerfully playing the part of Devil's Advocate to hairtrigger
art1 (ärt)
n.
Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.
The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.
The study of these activities.
The product of these activities; human works of beauty considered as a group.
High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.
A field or category of art, such as music, ballet, or literature.
A nonscientific branch of learning; one of the liberal arts.
A system of principles and methods employed in the performance of a set of activities: the art of building.
A trade or craft that applies such a system of principles and methods: the art of the lexicographer.
Skill that is attained by study, practice, or observation: the art of the baker; the blacksmith's art.
Skill arising from the exercise of intuitive faculties: "Self-criticism is an art not many are qualified to practice" (Joyce Carol Oates).
arts Artful devices, stratagems, and tricks.
Artful contrivance; cunning.
Printing. Illustrative material.
I agree. Kinda. My favorite games are NES games just because I can get them so cheap. And there are a lot of Super Nintendo games I really like, but everything got kinda dull after that.
If you like sokoban, the most challenging iteration is "Boxxle 2" for Game Boy. It has lots of levels and they are all extremely difficult.
I forgot to mention, "Adventure of Lolo 3" is the most difficult puzzle game I've found for the NES or any system (Lolo 1 and 2 are easy). Maybe you'd like to give it a try.
My take is that a lot of artistic talent goes into the design and creation of video games, bus as a medium I don't know if the games themselves can be considered art. Is the game Monopoly a work of art? Is Scrabble? What makes video games fundamentally different from these games that would qualify them as art?
There are still people who swear that photography is not an art form because it merely captures what is already in the world as opposed to creating an image from the imaganiation.
My gut reaction is that video games per se are not art, but some of the games definitely are. Myst! Definitely! Quake? I'll say no, good game though it is.
As a graphic designer, I wouldn't even consider most of the design work I see to be art and most design is based upon basic artistic principles and techniques. Heck, most of my own design work is merely corporate branding meant to hawk wares.
So, no, video games aren't art by default, but some games definitely qualify.
Pooty tweet
Try to tell me these games are not art:
Grim Fandango
Alone in the dark (earlier ones...)
Unreal
no engine flames please, yeah yeah the unreal engine is crap blah blah whatever; I'm looking at design here, Unreal was undoubtably a very artistic game (10 bucks says this appears in a quoted response...). In fact, any game can be deemed "atmospheric" is a artistic imo. Any game that, when you finish it, you think "whoa." and not "hmm." is artistic.
It would be ludicrous to say computer games are not a form of art. They are a creation from the mind (usually), and the creation of levels and textures cannot really be classed as "design" in many cases.
However, i can see that many people would class computer games as several bits of artwork put together, the level design, the texture art, the code, the sound, the music. But i guess combining these artistic elements in a pleasing way is also art, in fact, its probably the definition of art.
ghaa.
Remove the evil a** meme from your life and you will be free. Just be what you are...a graphic designer, painter, dancer, programmer, pumber, musician, composer, policeman, athlete. Your need to be an a**ist or to "know" what a** is is just evidence that you are firmly in the grip of this powerful meme.
When people dared to consider that anything other than traditional a** as defined by the exclusive "in the know group" was a**, they invented a new meme called "fine a**" to maintain their exclusive hold on all things a**istic.
I am a programmer by profession and a musician/ composer by passion. I have no need to be an a**ist or to have anything I produce labeled a** by anyone else.
JUST LET IT GO. As more of us do, the evil a** meme will die out which will solve a lot more problems than older generations who "don't underastand our a**" dying off ever will.
Everyone's different...I am the same.
QED
#art=(#art#)
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
I wouldn't give a plug nickle for a Picasso if it weren't for the people who would pay vast money for it. Certainly I'd never keep it as "art".
In the same way, "art" is whatever someone says it is, for themselves at least.
"Fine" art is just several people agreeing that, "Yeah, that's art." Fine.
Some of the most beautiful art ever created, in my opinion, is embodied in many Japanese swords. Some music is art, but no one thinks that all "music" is even music, much less art.
Are video games art? Some are, I'm sure, just because several people will agree they are.
If the museum wants to "get real", they aught to use their time to show folks examples of what they believe is "art" *within* video games.
How's that for a shift in paradigm?
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
Has anyone had a chance to play Soul Reaver 2 for the PS2? It is amazing in artwork and story line - if it isn't considered art, then nothing is. However, I am stuck in Dark Forge - the entrance door has become sealed and I cannot get out! Help would be much appreciated - I had to start playing with C++ and write a numerical Integration program because that was easier for me, I'm not joking.
Since I started learning Japanese, I recently heard about a major genre that currently exists only in Japan, the social/dating sim. The "killer app" of this genre was Tokimeki Memorial in 1995 (a success on the scale of Doom), and since then there have been thousands of clones. Unfortunately, these games revolve around conversations with game characters, so they are unplayable for people who don't understand Japanese. And because of the aforementioned risks, no one has ever dared release one in the West. As a result, the genre is completely unheard of here.
As a jaded gamer, I find playing a completely new genre for the first time in 5 years very refreshing. Dating sim gameplay is fundamentally different from anything I've seen before. I'm hopeful that the genre will eventually break into the Western market. If you are looking for a paradigm shift, this is perhaps where it will come from.
I believe video games are artwork. Just as movies are considered to be works of art as well as code and computer graphics as was mentioned in the post. Vieo games are probably the most difficult of all art forms to create. The hours of man power and number of people and the amount of knowledge needed is fairly great. The arguement that video games are forms of art stand strong especially amoung the Japanese. The masocistic attitude of teams like the one at Konami working on Metal Gear Solid 2, as mentioned in Next Genereation magazine by Hidea Kojima himself, shows how much heart and dedication went in trying to realize Kojima's vision of the perfect Metal Gear. That, in my opinion, is what defines a work of art and video games have many of them. Like movies, graphic art or any other form of art there is a lot of crap out there. But amoung the piles of it, there are some shining golden timeless pieces of artwork that deserve that title rightly so.
Animated cartoons didn't used to be "art". Then came "collectable animation cels". Then came serial numbered copies of animation cels. Now, there are serially numbered copies of hand-painted imitations of frames from computer-generated movies offered for sale.
Games are moving in that direction, as the visuals get better. "The Art of Myst" showed at SFMOMA last summer. There's a Myst coffee-table book. We're getting close.
Art is all about the content, not the medium. It doesn't matter how much effort it took to make a work of art or how masterful the code (or paint or paper or image compression algorithm) is, it's really about how that content affects you. Using this theory, one can say that a virus scanning program or Joe Montana Teaches Typing could possibly be art if its content has the power to move you in the way that a work of art would. As for defining what art actually is, it's most likely in the eye of the beholder. For some people modern art looks like a giant scam, but for others it can be breathtaking. I find it amusing how video games are getting the same kind of criticism that films got during their infancy. Games will continue to mature and be more recognized as an artform just as films are today.
The problem is that Black and White just sucked goats. They had all these nifty ideas about gestures and tamagotchi creatures and whatnot but they forgot about making it fun. Purchase something good. I would recommend Independence War II, which I just finished playing. Some other games not quite as recent which are very good: Half-Life, Homeworld, Freespace 2, Tribes 2, Sacrifice.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
To say that all Video Games are art would be tricky, but to say that none of them are would be downright impossible.
I've played some games that have completely sucked me into them. The Zelda series is my all time favorite. It may sound cheesy, but when I play, I become Link (no, not literally), I enjoy the game and I feel for the character. The same can happen in a good book or movie. Chrono Trigger (ask anyone who's played it and most likely it's among their favorites) and Chrono Cross (this game was just beautiful) also fall into this category for me. If these games aren't art, I don't know what is.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
Video games are interactive movies. Does anyone still deny that movies are an artform?
Even better, video games can be ported to movies and movies can be ported to video games. Novels likewise.
however, just because it's a game, tv show, movie, code, or even pigment on canvas, does not automatically make it art. you must EARN the title.
the possiblity exists in all things to be art.
"Fine art" is a specific term with a specific meaning, and most movies don't qualify.
That said... of course video games are art! Art communicates a cultural message of some kind: it makes the person receiving the art feel something. Videogames that don't achieve this suck.
This isn't just the post-Quake games either. Pacman is art. Maybe it's simpler than modern games, but it has a cultural impact.
Art is the part of culture that arises for its own sake. People don't play videogames because games help them perform any tasks (well except for the USMC people reported to use hacked copies of Quake for training, but that's different); they play videogames because games are interesting in themselves. They play games for the experience.
As another rule of thumb: If it's art, some people will think it's more interesting when they're stoned. It may be fun to go to work stoned but it's not better; some people think that (for example) The Wall is better stoned. Some people apparently believe the same think about Counterstrike.
my old sig used to be funny, but then slashcode ate it and now it's not funny anymore
What a silly discussion. Of course video games are art. If there were a story on /. asking if movies or plays were art, the poster would be ridiculed and strung by their toenails on a hanging fiber-optic line. Play a video game like Final Fantasy IX or Zelda: Majora's Mask or Devil May Cry... they all bear striking resemblance to more conventional, recognizable forms of art.
... he didn't know why videogames were art at first, but he settled on the idea that they incorporate pretty pictures and sound - two easily recognizable art forms.
i asked my 13 year old brother this question and he immediately replied, "yes!"
videogames incorporate pictures and sound for the purpose of getting an aesthetic/emotional rise out of the player... a statement which parallels what I feel is the purpose of art - to seek an emotional response with a symbol of some sort.
Some videogames are more artistic than others, but they're as much an art as anything could ever be.
Anything not directly related to survival can be art. The question is IS it art.
Likewise, video games CAN be art, the question is whether or not a particular game IS art. It's one heck of a tough question to answer, and in the end everyone will have their own opinion and there will be no right answer.
Track down an artist and ask their opinion.
-All your base are belong to the man.
I've never been able to program a very good game, but I have a lot of fun designing both graphics and levels for existing engines, and it's definately an artist's job. Levels not designed by artits are generally crap (most of Doom2's levels are crap - I made some of the best Doom/2 levels ever (sadly, they were lost in the great hard drive format of 2000)). Check out my first 3 DaveGnukem levels (beware, I'm a maze person): http://cblumpman.tripod.com/download/ DG something.zip (you'll get a short dir index)
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
I don't think you (Coward) understand the magnitude of the concept people intend to refer to when they say "Art." Talk to some people who go or have gone to art school or have taken 20th century art history classes, and you will get a better understanding of what the original poster is saying. Personally, I agree that art for its own sake is utterly worthless, and computer game people shouldn't worry about whether some stuck-up museum director decides to put them down the hall from the guy who takes pictures of whips up his own ass.
IMO one should add a definition "A work of human creation that attempts to capture, define, display, or induce emotion or complex emotions in the viewer, listener, or user."
As much as I'd like to be able to say that one of my favorite pastimes is an art, I don't think so, because the only 'beauty' most games are created to invoke is a lush green pile of cash, and the only people who get any emotion besides "whee" from the games are their creators, so they wouldn't be successful works of art. Things that entertain may or may not be art, but if they're only meant to entertain they definitely aren't.
Oh boy...
I am persuing a career in cinema and film right now. I consider the medium of film/cinema to be one of of the most vividly conveying mediums out there. It can combine the magic of music with the various aspects of visual elements, and intertwine them with a cohesive plot and characters.
In order to keep this on topic, games are, likewise, art. The combine many different elements - music, story, imagry, and, most importantly, creativity depicted. Never let it be said that the great artist, idSoftware, is of little artistic value!
However, I think we should draw the line quite firmly and insist that most software should not be considered, 'art', and here is why.
I'm not aware of the legal definition, but if we look at the dictionary definition of
art, we see that conventional software could indeed be included under this definition, possibly under, "High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value". However, I would argue that this should not be the case.
If we look at art in a historical fashion, we will notice that art has never held much of a functional purpose, with rare exclusion. This is part of the beauty of art. Surely, the AK-47 is an artfully crafted weapon - inexpensive (in a manufacturing sense), well made, easy to maintain, and accurate. Nobody that is knowledgeable of firearms would deny this fact. The same could be said for the first automobiles made by Henry Ford. However, like most software, both of these items perform or performed very specific tasks. They were undeniably artful in craft, but they are rarely considered 'art', unless we're talking about 'artifacts'.
Software should be considered using the same standards. If it performs a practical function (besides relaxation), it should be considered what it was intended - a tool. Software, such as games, that is intended for leasurely consumption should be deemed 'art'.
From the other side of the fence, I'm sure that everyone that has ever created anything they they were proud of has felt that their work was artful and skillful - only naturally.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
All the Metal Slug games qualify as art. Quake clones are just butt-ugly in comparison.
Hmmm. From the sound of what you wrote (and excepting the bit about the NEA), I don't think we're even coming from very different angles, actually ;) [At least narrowly ...]
;)
... it's definitely artistic, and a good example of how engineering projects can be beautiful -- I wonder (seriously, not something I have any idea about) whether Mr. Eiffel did intend it as art per se, as much as a demonstration of "what a cool thing I can build with steel."
Yes, Duchamp's Fountain is exactly the sort of thing I'm thinking about. Whether or not it's to my taste, and however "legitimate" I or anyone else thinks it is, if Duchamp called it art and meant it as art, his call as the work's creator trumps mine as an ill-bred, thick-headed, literalist critic. Sure, I might be the guy scoffing at it as "just a toilet" but I'd still consider myself to be making fun of an artwork, rather than denying an artist the right to define the intent of his work.
I see no reason that video games can't be art in the same sense, and often with about as much appreciation from me
Aside: The K-cars sucked, which may be the fault of the engineers, but surely they're not the most representive product of pure "engineering"! Unreliable, unergonomic pieces of junk that seemed to come most often in a shade of brown UPS turned down. (Now, a nice Volvo 240 wagon or a Volkswagen Beetle is a different story. Those I think the engineers can be proud of.)
The Eiffel tower I think is part of a thin overlap
And the NEA? Well, I think I have run out of shame on that count. Only in my darker moments would I concede that America "deserves" certain of the projects that money from that organization has supported. A fully voluntary NEA I'd be fine with (and there are plenty of art-supporting foundations) although I might have an aesthetic objection still, but so long as a penny of tax dollars go into it, I'm all for dismemberment -- immediate, complete and unapologetic. I'm unconvinced that the NEA contributes to the general welfare, and certain that collecting taxes for it does not. (As a pursuit of happiness issue, though, people can freely support even art which I wouldn't purchase for the lavish mansion I do not own.)
Cheers,
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Posting late on this one, so chances are it won't get read too much.. but here goes.
The consensus seems to be in the direction of "games are art". I would tend to agree, although in my mind the definition of art is always fuzzy, almost annoyingly so actually. However I think an important question to ask is whether or not calling video games art has any important implications. I.e. what makes it important to make a distinction? Certainly an art exibit portraying video games in the MoMa would be interesting, but does that somehow change the status of video games?
I'm not sure, but does art follow different legal (patent/trademark/intellectual property) rules? This could have dramatic implications for the game business if there is a change, although this seems like the biggest possible effect I can think of.
Does it change people's opinions if we start calling QuakeIV art or not? Do art departments at universities suddenly have to start trying to hire Graphics and Computer Science Ph.Ds because it's now art? Maybe several new "artsy" magazines will spring up for the coffee table focusing on old/new computer games?
But maybe (and most importantly) will my Fiance may now let me play more games because they are no longer just a waste of time, but artistic expression?
Brett
__ No registration required to read this message. They did it in the Matrix.
Yes, mod the parent of this post up. What would be the basis for art as a legal tactic? I want to know.
I consider myself an artist, with programming as my medium. When I consult for a company to integrate foo into their web service, that is commercial programming, like commercial painting. But when I am constructing a massively multiplayer interactive experience, that is artistic programming. I am trying to break through the existing constructs to something new, something that is my own. That is art.
And I have difficulty articulating the rage I feel at those banal greedy fuckwads who want to take away my artistic tools. The only reason we can do anything as programmers is because of the decades of patent-free ideas and expressions contributed to computer science. If software patents had been the name of the game from the get go there would be no Internet, no home computing, and none of the opportunities available to us now.
What if brush-stroke technique was patentable? So only Monet could paint impressionistically, only Seurat could use little dots, only Pollack could throw paint at a canvas. There would be no growth in art, the art world would wither and die.
Don't talk to me about patent expirations. Art grows and develops only when there is an active body of work and active painters, riffing off each other and each others' techniques. Patents put a lock, a brain-death on the exploration that is critical to art.
Touretzky is really on to something with his library of DeCSS scramblers. Not so much for the DeCSS case, but for the larger point that programming and computer science are not like other "patentable" domains. The library of scramblers shows the easy transition from art to code, that art is code, and this for a DeCSS scrambler.
Thank god for people like Lessig, who have the skills and talents to navigate the world of the fuckwads. As a computer artist (in the larger sense), I am busy trying to do art. By the way, there was a hopeful piece in the NYT today: I say "hopeful" only because it is another indicator that the mass-media zeitgeist is slowly waking up to the tragedy of the fuckwads.
Unfortunately, it's hard to avoid despair when the fuckwads control the government. The other day I was walking, thinking of this and other problems, and I thought, there must be some way we could all retaliate against the fuckwads.
Anyway, someone who is a lawyer, please comment on the art as legal defense possibility. I have to get back to making art.
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mod00d0 0ddd up p p lzzzzz
Some games, however, are closer to art - for example, Prince of Persia 1 or Ico. These games don't have much story, but they (especially Ico) are somehow able to convey emotion, similarly to the way art does.
When it comes down to a hard distinction though, I think that games fall into their own category - neither literature nor art, but something in between. The major difference between games and other media is that games actively involve the player, in a way that regular art or literature cannot. It's not a good thing or a bad thing - games are just too different. For example, most people would agree that there is something about Tetris that makes it immortal - but it cannot be classified as art or literature in the conventional sense. Tetris is a quintessential Game.
Now, that being said, most games produced today are pure crap, just like most movies are. That is unfortunate, but does not automatically invalidate all games - or all movies.
>|<*:=
They are:
King's Quest V (look at the amazing graphics for that time) and..
Unreal Tournament! The Best game Made EVER!
For me a piece of art is a subject of meditation, something that will enrich my life and broaden my perceptions, introduce new ideas, and will in some quantifiable way modify me. This can be anything, a painting, a piece of furniture, a haiku, a film, an object as unsignifant as a bottle opener. Expressed in such a manner, art is a deeply individual value: each of us has a different experience and is receptive in different manners.
IMO the difference between art and non-art is detemined by my perception of quality and innovation, taken in the boadest definition of these words. Most of the time one will percieve if an object is groundbreaking, or if it reflects enough human soul to be breathtaking. In the simple ackowledgement of the encounter with ones of those objects, lies art.
Given that personal definition, my obvious answer is that video games and program code do have a potential to be art. I have met occurences of both that have enlightened me, made me discover new concepts, ideas, knowledges, communication forms, etc...
video games have the greatest potential for art than almost any other medium out there, save 'science'.
It has barely been tapped. I'm looking forward to the day when a well rounded artist can take his time, ala kubrick, to make something extraordinary. I want to see genius! When the full social potential is tapped, watch out!
More interesting than the article's question:
Why does nearly everyone who's obviously a "non-artist" (commodities traders, sysadmins, housekeepers, George Lucas, Barbra Streisand, etc.), whenever a question like this arises, display a deep psychological need to be labeled a member of the profession/vocation/lifestyle/whatever of "artist", while those who obviously are "artists" (great painters, poets, composers, etc.) mostly don't give a shit whether anyone thinks they're "artists" or not?
Hm.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
Maybe this is obvious and is why not many mentioned it, but I think there is a difference between a game that is art and a game which uses art. Quake III is a good example of the latter. There are some beautiful (some not so interesting) levels and textures used in the game. The weapons are artful. I don't find the gameplay artful. I did in Doom though, but I might be biased due to the novelty of the game at the time. It seemed like the levels were designed to take you through a journey in some certain way. Doom provoked some emotions from me, mostly fear, but some others.
Quake III, while some levels are interesting, rare do I feel any were made to bring out something special. Perhaps a few large rooms were made just right to have large chaotic battles, but I don't think it that was hard to do or particularly well done if that was what they were going for.
I have a hard time drawing the line between a bad game and bad game as art. It's hard to judge this kind of thing because you're not sure if the makers were going for art, and not knowing that makes it difficult to critique a game. I really don't think they were going for art in Quake III. Maybe some of the level makers or artists, but they had a practical job to do in making their art which was more important than the art itself. Aliens vs Starship Troopers I guess... if Starship Troopers (which I enjoyed) is considered art, then I guess Quake III should be too.
Well, I liked it anyway
I tend to be a sucker for a game with a good story. Hopefully, the way that the game plays -- besides being simply fun -- is something that serves and evokes the story told within the game. That is probably why I love adventure games and interactive fiction. A good adventure game combines a fascinating story with pretty pictures, making the storytelling a bit more like a comic book than any other medium.
But what it comes down to is what sort of content is being expressed within the medium. I focus on the story and the pictures. I suspect that I tend to lose track of what makes games *games* tho', and what sort of function that serves.
Cutting notches in roads? Making bumps on purpose? Everybody knows in the future the Earth will be completely paved, and impurities like this will only ruin the ultimate hypercar driving experiance.
I was never really much into programming. Did some BASIC when I was a kid, but then I lost myself in Digital Design and Production. I've always looked at programmers as artists in their own right, and they deserve that recognition.
When you take away the flashy graphics, killer soundtrack and story (depending on the genre of game), left alone at the heart of a game is the code. Programmers spend countless hours tweaking, re-tweaking, debugging, doing end-runs around functionality problems, more tweaking, etc. That in itself is an artform. One that I'll probably never learn, that's for sure.
That's not to take away from the writers, designers and producers of the game. Their job is equally important, taking that code and putting a face to the gameplay. How many games have we fallen in love with (FF, Chrono, Ultima, the list is huge) because of the look and feel of a game? The story you become immersed in? The sheer challange of it all?
Video Games ARE art. From Pong to Final Fantasy 10, it's evolved like any other art form and should be considered as such.
Blog Prophyts - Right On, Man
Whether video games are considered art or not depends on the individual definition of art, IMHO. My understanding of art is that someone creates something that has a superior quality than other objects of that kind. So, for example, if I draw a picture it's not art because of the lacking quality ;-) There are easily a billion people who can do better than me. But if Dali draws a picture it's art because he is very good at drawing pictures, and you easily recognize it. There are only a few people who can do better than Dali, and that makes his pictures art.
Same for video games: some outstanding games can be considered art, some poorly done advertising games not.
For example, I consider the Monkey Island series as art because of their beautiful graphics, their well-done jokes and because it's generally of a very high quality level.
Then there some games around the Neverending Story movie (if someone remembers), and they were about the greatest sh*t I've ever seen ;-)
Beside the overall-quality of a game, normally good artists are behind games to create the backgrounds, the characters, movies and music. And there's a reason we call them artists ;-)
Source code is art (at least considered as such by law here in Finland AFAIK).
(Computer) Images are art.
(Computer) Music is art.
The (game) storyline is art.
Put all this together and you still have art, right?
In a way that makes the player an artist?
(Ever been as a spectator in a good game of Quake or other FPS?)
It is my firm belief that video games are art. I also believe code can be art, like a great piece of writing. I also believe that some hardware should be considered art.
I belong to the ______ generation.
If it entertains you, then its good art. Otherwise its bad art. Any other definition is pointless - you end up going around in subjective little circles, proving nothing.
The decordova museum in lincoln ma had an exhibit which included the latest state of the art video games. Zaxxon was free!! this was in the 80's and had a bunch of games..
since the decordova is art museum arcade games must be art.
If they are good art or bad art might depend on the game in question.
Nice furniture falls in the same category I think.
The problem with most games is that whatever art is within them is often overshadowed by other deficiencies within the game. The graphics within them often are quickly dated, there are very few notable storylines, and the coding elegance is frequently sub-par. And you didn't even address the artistry of gameplay.
If some game WERE to be artistic on ALL levels, then maybe I could consider it art. The only games that even come close to art are in my opinion Tetris, which when first written was an incredible example of code and gamplay elegance, and possibly Myst and it's imitators, which had very strong visuals and intrigueing storylines.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Why do you think a college education has nothing to do with whether or not you're a good programmer? Obviously it's an art that has to be "in" you, or you can't do it quite right, regardless of the level of experience or education.
I would most definintely consider videogames to be an art form. Actually, I believe they represent a particularly exciting confluence of art and science. The success of a videogame is essentially rooted in its storytelling ability and capacity to elicit emotion from the subject gamer. Sometimes this takes the form of something a little more artsy-fartsy (e.g. Final Fantasy, Resident Evil or of course Myst), and sometimes the appeal is fairly lowbrow (e.g. DOA3).
But even in the case of wham-bam fighting games, the appeal of a game its ability to draw a user in to the action of combat and the clash of fighting styles and personalities contained therein. It's not all that different from what makes a dance piece successful (or not).
Bottom line, videogames represent the germination of a legitimately new form of art, one that combines classic elements such as storytelling, visual art, choreographed movement and music with technology like no other. It is a young form, and one that has its roots purely in the value of entertainment. But is also an evolving form, and as someone who alternately wares the hat of artist and techie, I'm excited to see where it will go.
Howard Dean for president
As a game programmer, I think that games could be art, but that's not they way the are produced. Fanboys tend to think we're ivory tower geniuses, but the reality is that were almost completely driven by schedules, marking, and sales predictions. The killer is that the great, great majority of games are sold to "kids"--where "kid" means 8 to 16 or so. So most of the time you have guys in their twenties or thirties or forties trying to dumb down games so they'll appeal to the weird sort of crowd that still believes in Santa Claus (i.e. reads comic books, only likes action movies, still thinks they can make a go of professional skateboarding).
Obviously, Picasso would have dabbled in computer imagery for his displays, because he was an extremely talented man who brought those talents to bear in *every* medium of the day. He wasn't a painter. He was a real artist, like Da Vinci, or Michelangelo, both painter and sculptor and inventor of dazzlingly new things. To imagine that Picasso would *not* have dabbled in computer imagery would be the flawed assumption. Great minds are expansive, and do not deride as your small one does based on the functionality of the medium.
Case in point, Picasso once made a sculpture using little more than some very functionsal and extremely common utilitarian items--an absinthe set. They were everywhere at the time--you could not go to a cafe or restaurant and not see them. And obviously they were "purely functional". Yet Picasso was not above using such commonplace and utilitarian items to create his art.
You show your stripes as an elitist art snob, the ssort who always sneers at the avante-garde, and who is therefore doomed to be mistaken. Impressionism was derided as childish scribbling. Music was considered a trade, not an art. And you sir are the type who made such mistakes. I can tell by the tone of your post, and particularly by this snooty bit: "Give art functionality, and one of the hottest debates on whether it can be any longer accepted as visual art cranks into gear."
Wow, something functional isn't art? So, Greek vases are not art, beause they were used at table? Roman mosaics are not art, because they were carelessly stepped on every day? Italian frescoes are not art, because they were basically Renaissance wallpaper? How about mass-produced woodcuts, the magazines of their day? But what if they were by Durer?
To even suggest that something is not art by virtue of its functionality is to display both an ignorance of the history of art and an arrogance exactly like that shown by the old guar stodgies nobody ever remembers. To Salieri, Mozart was just an ignorant childish bum; yet we only remeber Salieri's name today in the context of his rivalry with Mozart--despite his "superiority" in creating classic pieces as opposed to Mozart's "undisciplined" beer-hall-inspired diddlings, Mozart was the real artist and Salieri more like the tradesman.
Have fun in your snooty arrogance at assuming the argument that functionality precludes art has any merit whatsoever. It is the argument of the has-beens and never-was'. It is the argument of an ignorant elite, and this assertion can be proven by going to any museum of classical ars and looking at their array of perfectly functional ancient tableware. Or by looking at a mass-produced Durer woodcut, or any number of things which the elites would never have considered worthy of the name art.
Chasing Amy
(We all chase Amy...)
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws"-Tacitus
DirectX makes the game coder lazy (hey, why should the coder know how to draw graphics? sound? network support?)
That's just dumb. When you're writing a game you just call a "draw 3D model" function (or "draw sprite" or whatever). Even in the days of people writing assembly language texture mappers on the 486, only 1 guy on a project cared about it. The "draw 3D model" call was the same for everyone else. You don't write games at the micro-optimization level. And games, most certainly, cannot be equated with graphics engines.
just ask Electronic Arts.
Shakespeare's greatest works were written for two reasons: 1) To brown nose to the monarchy of England. 2) To provide cheap entertainment to the masses. It was, on the whole, just cheap entertainment. Video games combine many different forms of art, drawing, storytelling, beautiful coding (oftentimes some of the most boundary pushing work in programming).
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Learn this now, and you might enjoy the industry. PC games suck; PC game coders suck. Get into console games instead.
mostly because i'm a philosopher and i've seen in my studies that for any objective definition of what art is, there are a multitude of examples that deny that definition of art.
-dk
Dream with the feathers of angels stuffed beneath your head.
Assuming art is beauty just watch the sunset from Hyrule Field during Legend of Zelda:Ocarina of Time
This is the worst sig ever.
Of course anything which is created without complete pratical purpose is art -> you have to be creative to make it so it is defined to be art.
:(
But I think that good art isn't designed by committee. If there isn't one person with a perfect vision of what he/she wants to express, the game becomes shitty, shitty art. Game design by committee sucks but is inevetable if there isn't one strong designer leading the way. I think you usually wind up with a gory (but graphically impressive) mess of a game.
What were the best designed games you have seen with a great beginning, action, climax and ending? I've seen a lot of games with great beginnings and action but unfortunatly, the climaxes are usually not very good.
Which games have great climaxes?
Ben Schleimer
Ben Schleimer Life is like a sewer, what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
Anything we make that simulates life or fantasy.
Probably the best argument for video games as art is Next Generations "Top 100 Video Games of All Time" article. (Next Generation Sep 1996 p 37) Seldom are graphics mentioned as even part of a reason to be listed. They mention things like feel and depth and give descriptions of that intagible something that made each game great. How do you program feel without some measure of artistic sense?
I recently did a simple mod for quake3 were I made the rockets corkskrew. Easy to impliment but they did not "feel" right. Only after several hours of tweeking simply for the right balence of feel an functionality was I satisfied.
You can look at this from two perspectives, either it just a matter of me being willing to take the time to get the behavior right which any one can do, or I had a sense of how the rocket flight should feel verses how it did feel and felt around till I found it. I would say it was the second.
So often you have developers that are very willing to put alot of effort into hammering out all the little details like my example above, but lack the artistic sense to make it work just right and get the "feel" right. That intangible thing that make you come back for more after you've beaten the game 8000 times. A good example (and oh man am I going to take heat for this) is Mortal Kombat. Alot of effort went in to each installment of that game. But the developers lacked the sence to realize that the game is incredible stiff and repeditive. When ever you land a jumpkick you apponent responds in the same way. It just doesn't feel right either. If the developer were sensitive to this and corrected it we would have not seen the games popularity plummet the same day every one had seen all the fatalities.
Now we look at Street FIghter 2 an you can see huge variety of things that can happen off a landed jumpkick all dependent on a number of factors like angle and location in the arena. But, more importantly, each result "feels" like that was what should happen.
As an artist(traditional and computer)and a cartoonist who makes game art, 3d models, textures etc... the amount of work involed the time, the love and the artistic skill is exactly the same as that which i would use if i was working on a traditional piece of work that any person would readily call art.
I mean to sit at my PC and sculpt a low(or high) poly model of what i wish to create from the raw materials of vertexs and faces, to then paint it a skin to wrap it in and give it personality and character, and then to animate it into life... yes it is an art. it takes artistic skill to create it. To design and create any graphical content within a game is art, the musical score of teh game is art it is compossed and created to stir emotions just as any of the great symphonies were, The story (not always) told within the game can often reach artistic levels on par with the great novelists and writers.
Code is not so much art, but it is the ground work and the bones of a game, with out it the art work of the artists and musical scores of the musician and the plot of the writer cant be seen heard or interacted with. So Code while not an real art form in its self, it is essential to the Artistic aspects that make up a game... so shouldnt be looked down on.
Video games are art pure and simple...
ps:- What i dont call art is a pile of open lunch boxes stacked up on an art gallerys floor... thats just a mess and a waist of good space >:P.
This is the definition that has held true since the time of the Greeks.
To the Greeks, music, rhetoric and math were what we'd now call art. Painting, sculpting and such activities were not fitting for citizens to pursue.
Although graphic arts and sculpture are now considered art, this isn't as big of a change as it seems at first.
In fact, art is still rhetoric. A painting isn't considered great because of anything necessarily related to the actual manufacture of the paining. Rather, it's the work's role within society. The role a piece of art takes in society is played out in rhetoric. This has not changed in thousands of years.
Because it's the rhetoric surrounding a work and not the object itself that makes a piece of work into art, anything can be considered art if it takes that rhetorical role in society.
So, like all the other posts about "what is art" this simply suggests the editors never took humanities classes. Or perhaps they just didn't stay awake in class. There's no mystery here. Move along.
Saying they're just passing along the misguided efforts of some art museum flunkies doesn't make matters any better.
MGS2
Heh, I don't know why I didn't reply here as soon as it popped up, seeing how I got this article mentioned on GameDev.net and all...
:P
Anyways, on to the post.
Yeah, games are a form of art, perhaps the penultimate form. You have different types of art all rolled together with the added bonus of interactivity. It's like a painting that stares back, or something.
I can tell you, if San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art thinks that they aren't, I know of a few people who will try to incite a riot, but will instead be pointed and laughed at. Heeh, my friends are hilarious.
Oh well, I'm sure that this has been said already.
Chris 'coldacid' Charabaruk Meldstar Entertainment
I told her that anything can be art. Look across the street and observe that Wendy's restaraunt building.. it could be art.. you may not like it, but it is art nonetheless if someone deems it so.
I guess that is why the Critic was invented.. someone has to tell you whether or not you're full of shit, though there still might be someone out there that likes it regardless.
Never hit your grandmother with a shovel, for it leaves a bad impression on her mind...
There are some greek words that seem pertinent to this discussion. The greek word techne is the root of our word technology, and it means skill, art, or craft-- any of them! there is an 'art' to sailing, or any other kind of craft that we, now, would think of more as a skill. In addition, our words for poet and poem derive from a Greek verb which means to do or make. The poet is a maker; a poem is a creation. So the ideas of art and craft are historically a lot more connected than we realize.