Slashdot Mirror
Videogames as Art
Philip Kollar writes "AllRPG has just posted Games As Art, Part 2.
In this article, I attempt to create a viable list of things that come together to make a videogame art, rather than just entertainment. I also explore how these three concepts (writing, design, and interactivity) have been used in other forms of media and how they're being further explored in the world of gaming."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
if movies are considered an artform then indeed, why not games?..well, some games at least- but some movies, spy kids, not really artsy.
.
there are many parallels
How about the ZORK series? Those games were ALL plot.
Zork was great, but the two best infocom games bar none were Trinity and Planetfall.
It legitimizes it. Until video gaming is accepted as art, it will always be considered (at best) a pastime for children or (at worst) a leading cause of violence in children.
Rob
The two are not mutually exclusive. Just as not all that is done with paint is considered art, not all video games are. But, like some work that is done with paint is considered art, it is equally logical that some video games can be seen as art. There are those who consider movies art. Lets take, for instance, Toy Story. That is definitely art, in my opinion. Now, lets take a video game like Diablo II. Have you watched the movies that play when you beat a level? Are those any less deserving of being called Art? If so, why do you draw a distinction between one animation that is played on a big screen vs one that is on your computer? Are the 3D models of the monsters any more or less art than the models used in Toy Story?
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
:wq!
That's the real question.
I like to think that art is the expression of ideas and concepts in a manner that evokes something above and beyond the sheerly practical.
In other words, if you make a sandwich because you're hungry, it's not art. If you make a sandwich in a way that seems aethetically pleasing, or incorporating particular ingredients that remind you of something, or you refrain from making a sandwich to make a point about world hunger, it's art.
I'm not a huge modern art buff. I much prefer Constable, Turner and Monet to Pollock, at least as far as painting is concerned. I like things that look like things. But I don't dispute that things which may not be appealing to me aren't art.
Personally, when I really think about what I do for a living, I'm something of an artist. When I write programs, I try to make the code beautiful, clean, functional, and even visually organized, because that is artistic to me.
If you go with my definition, videogames certainly qualify.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
What does calling it art do for the form?
One important difference it will make is whether it is considered protected speech. "Art" is protected, whilst "video games" are not.
I'd like to comment that if we're gong to consider throwaway sitcoms with no redeeming value "art," surely games can be considered art as well.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
I'm sorry, but this is contemporary art. As much as I agree with the author's premise that video games is art, his writing style bears no reality on the current status of art as a discipline and offers about as much insight as my grandma would on the state of open source in the computing disciple. Comparing it to hollywood, which has it's own artistic foundation totally removed from the authors writing, is grotesque.
Holy frickin art snobbery batman!
Really, there is a shitload of good art in videogames. In fact ANYTHING CAN BE ART.
What really makes something "art" is the effort and thought put into it. That's why some buildings are "art" while others are not.
A cheap, pre-fabbed home is not art (typically) but something designed by a guy like IM Pei is.
The medium does not decide if something is or is not art.
The Holocaust Museum in Berlin is an amazing work of art*, but a trailer park is not. The medium is the same, the difference is all in the effort and mastery that was put into their aesthetics.
*So much so that the museum was actually shown before there was even any art in it.
Life is too short to proofread.
This guy clearly doesn't know his Art from his Elbow. He claims that videogames combine design with interactivity and that that has never been done before. Of course it's been done before, in absolutely every user interface ever created. Plus the quality of the article is dreadful, the writing is haphazard and, while the guy has a point, he has executed it extremely badly. Video games are a collage of art; art is in every texture, every mesh, in the plot and writing, in the music and sound, in the concept art, even in the code, but it's how all the parts come together that define the piece.
:) all we own as consumers is a copy.
I believe that some games are more art than entertainment; games like Myst and Syberia were both extremely artistic graphically and musically. Some games are too artistic; the original Unreal FPS didn't satisfy a lot of people because it was simply too art-driven, it was beautiful but slow with long periods of not enough stuff to shoot. Does that mean it's art in the videogame genre, or does entertainment factor into whether the game is art or not?
The point of the above is that there is a difference between interactive art and video games. It is intensely difficult to class video games artistically, most people see only as deep as the graphics. I don't think art necessarilly has anything to do with entertainment, which is what the interactivity provides. Art is possibly the antithesis of entertainment.
Basically my definition of art is anything that inspires one or ignites emotions. I've actually shed tears after finishing some video games (not because it was "so beautiful" but because it's often such a relief). So I guess that if a video game can be appreciated and provokes emotion in the observer (good or bad) then it can be classed as artistic.
However, I'm opposed to classifying video games as works of art, because if they do get to that distinction then they'll cost $3,000 a piece. Come to think of it, the source code probably costs more than that to license
Go to eBay and check the price of Radiant Silvergun, THEN tell me video game prices only depreciate. A big reason most games don't appreciate in value is the number of copies that are produced. Rarer games, especially good ones like Silvergun, are priced accordingly.
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
To which you reply: "The medium does not decide if something is or is not art." Huh?
The parent agrees, games can be art -- she just doesn't think this article measures up to anything like "the status of art as a discipline."
I used to work in a modern art museum. If we'd hosted a show about video gaming as art, nobody'd have blinked. If we'd put on a shoddy show about games as art, it'd have been a different thing. The parent's saying this ain't much of a show, not that its premise is wrong. That's not being a snob, it's being competent and having some background in the subject.
No offense intended to the article poster, but I'm with the "snob" on this one. Pachinko machines are art, but if you tell me it's because they make pretty noises and you can put money in I'm not that impressed...
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
is that art is relative to both the artist and the viewer.
I think we really have to forget purpose in any kind of consideration of what is and isn't art. Artiness is a function of the final result, rather than the process of getting there. (Yes, so-and-so may have poured their heart and soul into this sculpture but it's still crap...) Unless, of course, the process itself is worthy of being considered art, though that's pretty unusual (e.g. some types of performance art).
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Exactly as above, but I'll add one comment: There are millions of copies of famous works of art, on postcards and lithographs and so on. No one is saying these are valuable, but the originals are. Thus, original cartridges for old systems are increasingly expensive as are old arcade cabinets in good condition. I imagine that if you could get ahold of some of the pre-production run copies of a good old game (say the Mario or Zelda series), they'd be worth something.
"But I trust in the people's capacity for reflection, rage and rebellion." -Oscar Olivera
Art is merely communication; a medium plus a message.
Painting is an art, music is an art, public speaking is an art, etc. There is good art and bad art, of course, and the message can be anything from "life is meaningless" or "people are suffering in [insert country]" to "have a nice day" or "enjoy your leisure time".
Are video games art? Yes.
Are video games GOOD art? Well... maybe, haha. Like any other art form, I think it depends on the individual piece.
Anyone who has played Xenogears can appreciate video games as art. (Unless you didn't like it. But then you're crazy, and none of your opinions are valid.) Though the dialogue (it's a translation) isn't so great, the story and music more than make up for it. It's something I wouldn't have an issue with recommending to an English teacher. Planescape: Torment is along the same lines, but with a much more well-written text. Most of the game can (re: SHOULD) be done through conversations, instead of killing everything. The story is much simpler than Xenogears, but with the same amount of depth. I'd say play it, but have fun finding it. Truly art-worthy, though. Sucks that Black Isle was closed down.
This sig is only here so people stop skipping the last lines of my posts.
I have long thought of programming as art. Not just game programming, which I do as a hobby, but also to a certain extent the business/database programming that I do in my day job.
Of course, I have had a hard time rationalizing this out loud or explaining it to anyone. When I sit down and write a object-oriented wrapper to procedural database commands, or write my own login/session-key code, I *feel* the same way I do when I am doin art-- Art is a big part of my life. I write and draw and sculpt all the time. Everything I truly enjoy doing is art... except programming. Why then does it feel like art when I am doing it?
Most people define art in terms of art-appreciation. Nobody ever looks at or admires the scripts I write on the company mail server. So for the longest time I rejected the idea of actually calling programming art.
But lately I have been getting a better appreciation of minimalism. I used to hate abstract art, and minimalist art, until I actually started to do a little bit of it. To the non-artist, art is in the appreciation, but to the artist, art is in the creation. Recently, a teacher of mine, Jay Mccafferty was telling me about his favoured field of art, "Process Art". If you follow the link, you will see a couple of examples of his work-- he freely admits that they don't look like much, and that if you didn't frame them and put them up in a gallery, nobody but him would know they were art, but that isn't the point. The point is the process of creation. He spends a lot of time on his art, and puts a lot of thought and emotion into them. Most of this is invisible to the causal observer. "Artistic Entropy" if you will; lost data. But the end result is still kinda pretty, isn't it? I think so anyway.
So I applied that concept to the idea of programming-as-art, and it really fit well. Nobody at work who uses my inventory control web-app is going to see any of the parts of code that I am really proud of. Things that took me days of hard work are going to flicker into their browser in a few seconds-- But that isn't the important part to me. The part that matters to me, as the programmer/artist was the process of writing it. The experience.
Or something like that ;)
Words can be art too when used in a deliberately stylish/expressive way. Think of poems and songs.
I'm sorry but the nature of art IS the purpose or the intent of the artist (or artists) that realize the work in question.
If it is worth anything artistically is a matter of debate, and of taste. But It is the intent that makes the art.
That is why if you see some rock with an interesting shape, it can be beautiful, but it's not art. Because there was no intent in creating it.
If someone takes that boulder and put's it on display, and calls it "Attack ship on the shoulder of Orion". Then it is art. It might suck, be lame or lazy, derivative or cliché. It might be artistically worthless. But that's not the point.
There was intent in putting it in context, however lame it may be.
There seems to be a misunderstanding that to be art, an object, work or process as to have a standard of quality. Or a certain degree of pompousness. As if "Art", with a capital A is something else in a class on it's own.
The artisitc intent makes the piece. Whether or not it is good is a matter of taste, and analysis.
The problem with the article, is that it does not adress some of the more interesting issues. Like that videogame as an artform has yet to come into is own. Videogames are still an immature medium. It's highly derivative of movies in it's grammar and the way that it conveys information.
It is somewhat natural, being partly a visual medium, like movies. But I think that as it matures, the medium will acquire it's own distinctive grammar, it's own style guidelines.
Videogames are a mix of interactivity, visual stimulation, intellectual stimulation, fine motor skills as well as dramatic tension. But it has yet to fully exploit all of those element with any degree of consistency, partly because of it's cinema heritage, and the strong familiarity that people have of it.
The same way that cinema gradually moved away from the theatre mindset and that photography moved away from a painting mindset, while still retaining caracteristics reminiscing of them, videogames are evolving and will continue to evolve.
I also think it would be interesting to look at the way games are reviewed, and how it evolves with time. Because it seems that the way a particular medium is critiqued formalises the medium, identifies the structure of the idiom and procures guidelines to follow or break. It provides a structure, on which the artform can lean on.
Those are very interesting issues on a theoretical stand point, and I'm still waiting for this. It dosen't at all diminishes the pleasure of playing the present games however
Strioa