But Is It Art?

Once again the ever popular topic of 'Games as Art' rears its head in a Gamespot editorial. Matthew Rorie talks the artistic and social value of games, and touches on comics and film to boot. From the article: "As of now, innovation in games is driven more by commerce than by any kind of noble artistic ideal. For that to change, and for games to be taken more seriously by people who don't play them, games need to become cheaper to make, they need to be made by more- diverse groups of people, and they need to be more accessible to nongamers. You could argue about the accessibility point, but the other two factors aren't improving, and they probably won't improve anytime soon. Most game companies seem to be preaching to the choir by developing games that will mostly appeal to people who are already interested in them."

Comments

Is It Art

[MrCopilot]

No

Games can be artistic in style.

Art is art for the sake of art. Games are games for the sake of entertainment.

Next rehashed question please.

Re:Is It Art

[snuf23]

Then how come some films are considered "works of art" when they are also created to entertain?
And a lot of conventional art is created to feed the artist.

Re:Is It Art

[_xeno_]

Try playing Shadow of the Collossus. That game is art of art's sake, at the expense of gameplay in some ways. (Freaking camera.)

In the exact same way that TV shows are art and movies are art and plays are art, games are art. I think most people would agree that board games are a form of art, so it would follow that video games are art as well.

Besides, I'd have to question your statement that "art is for the sake of art." I'd say all art is for the sake of entertainment, at the core. The entire point of art is some form of entertainment, even if it is a more intellectual form of entertainment.

Re:Is It Art

[TheDisgrace]

Literature is also for entertainment. Is literature not art?

Theater, film, music, and dance are also primarily for entertainment. And yet we consider all of them artforms.

There was a time when paintings actually were considered a form of entertainment(going back to the rennaissance and its prior days), believe it or not, basically before movies came along. Paintings and sculpture came to be considered dull by comparison, but that doesn't mean that art has to be unentertaining. And of course, then games came along, adding another level of interactivity to entertainment media.

Essentially, art has become more and more interactive, but art has always been 'entertaining' in one form or another. Games are no different. There's no reason that art can't be interactive or entertaining. Now, not all games are art, just the same as not all literature, theater, film, music, or dance is purely art.

Sometimes these things are purely marketing. Which games are just full of presently, but there have been plenty of games that I would consider works of art. Deus Ex. The Longest Journey. Thief. The majority of the Final Fantasy games. Grim Fandango. Farenheit. The Master of Orion series. Civilization. Dozens of others I can't remember off the top of my head.

Every 'genre' of art is defined a little differently. But ultimately, what makes for truly great art among all genres is one element... creativity. Some games, music, films, books, paintings, are truly inspired works of creativity, while others are highly derivitive or unimaginative.

So yes, games can be art. Some people have difficulty seperating classical artforms from modern ones. Film wasn't considered art for a long time, if I remember correctly, and yet now they are. Games are a modern storytelling artform, with elements of literature, painting, and music.

Yes.

[generic-man]

Yes, good games are art.

Likewise, a nice-looking car is a work of art. An iPod is a work of art. A thoughtfully-designed building is a work of art. The math test in which I expertly demonstrated that 0 = 1 is a work of art. The arrangement of boxes in my basement is a work of art. My mash-ups of Google Maps with Britney Spears songs are all works of art.

Lastly, this entire post is a work of art. Treasure it as if it were your own, but it's not; comments are owned by the poster, and you may not reproduce mine unless it is within the rights accorded you under the Creative Commons CC-NA-lk-OI-MM-5L-Z| license.

What's wrong with games just they way they are...

[GrpA]

I'm getting tired of hearing how games need to change to meet some social ideal of the people pushing them.

I pretty much like games just the way they are, and seriously, if I didn't like them, and I really felt that something was missing from games, I'd just get off my backside and write a game I liked...

Why is it that when a niche happens to like something, someone always feels it's time to change the status quo to increase the appeal to people outside of that niche, at the expense of the people within it.

Sure, I don't like all games. But there are plenty to go around, and I find there are still lots of games that I do like... Even the commercial ones.

I'm in the choir and I like the sermon... Please leave it that way.

GrpA

Who Cares?

[yotto]

Seriously, who cares? Is a car art? Is the ocean art? Is this post art? Just make me a fun game and I'll play it.

Accessible?

[Sierpinski]

and they need to be more accessible to nongamers

Shouldn't that mean that paintings, sculptures, and other forms of traditional "art" need to become more accessible to non-museum-going people? This is becoming less of a problem with the internet (and specifically sites like Google Image) but the full effect of traditional art doesn't get expressed to those who are not active in the artistic community (ie those who don't go to art museums and such.)

I'd say that games contain art. Some people would argue that code writing (at least the good kind) is an art. Surely some of the music scores and sound effects are art. The levels, characters, weapons, backgrounds, textures, etc. are art.

Games contain art. Games are entertainment.
Art museums contain art. Art museums are entertainment.

Very good summary

[Proc6]

For that to change, and for games to be taken more seriously by people who don't play them, games need to become cheaper to make, they need to be made by more- diverse groups of people, and they need to be more accessible to nongamers.

So true. Games have fallen victim to the "too many Crayons" problem that is now plaguing movies. Constraint forces creativity. An artist with a single sheet of paper and some charcoal can soar to new heights of creativity because the limitations of medium force the message to be spoken through the art not the tools. Movies can now just use 3D Animation and green-screening and post to create nearly any effect imaginable. Sadly, it cannibalizes the director's ability to convey artistic message. (see Star Wars: A New Hope vs Phantom Menace).

For whatever reason this seems to happen every time constraints are lifted on art. Back when it was damn difficult and the tools we're very primitave we were given radically different and ground-breaking games like Pac-Man, Dig-Dug, Toobin, Galaga, Joust. Short of the fact they all use a joystick and buttons, they're about as completely different as you can get. Now we have Quake 4, Doom 12, Unreal Tournament 60. There's about 3 types of games, and 500 knockoffs of those. The drive to create totally new paradigms in gaming is almost gone. DDR is probably the most recent thing I would classify as truly new.

Of course the second big problem is that game authors (rightly or wrongly) simply want bigger final dollars for their creations as opposed to higher profits. This is capitalism, and that's okay, is just means that a highly succesful niche game is less desired than a watered down whack-a-mole that sells to the unwashed masses. The concepts, themes and functions of a video game or movie will continue to be steered by whether or not it can make it onto Burger King cups and Dell Holiday catalogs.

So as much as the summary is very correct, we need specific, niche games. And while I do think there's some real "new money" to be generated in a lot of untapped small fields, I don't see how it can happen in the current environment. Braindead WoW makes money, and money is what everyone wants above all else.

Under these requirements, what is art?

[nine-times]

As of now, innovation in games is driven more by commerce than by any kind of noble artistic ideal...

Yes, because movie studios and art galleries don't want to make money. Painters and directors have absolutely no commercial hopes for their creations. I know all the professional painters I know aren't trying to sell their paintings.

...games need to become cheaper to make...

Like movies are cheap to make? Yeah, I mean, I can scrounge up a couple hundred million in a weekend. Paint, canvas, they cost money too. More than you'd think.

...and they need to be more accessible to nongamers.

...and paintings need to be made to be more accessible to people who don't look at paintings, movies to people who don't watch movies....

Look, I'm not saying that it isn't possible to improve the game creating/playing community or something, but are they art? Yes. That it can be expensive, commercial, and that it has a limited audience has nothing to do with the question whatsoever. Art can be all of those things. Good art can be all of those things.

Games are a form of art.

[Xerxus]

Novels are art, right?
Some RPGs have novel-sized plots.

This is what Dictionary.com has to say about art:
"High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value."
Games seem to fit this description as well. Half Life and Doom are wonderful aesthetically.

Other games even have literary merits.
Case in point: Earthbound/Mother2 (warning, tsunami of text)

Different view on the article's main 'points'

[MegaBurn]

Why is it that articles like this always seem to come out of gaming industry media outlets? This one in particular annoys me for a whole host of reasons, beyond just spending way too much time discussing the lack of cultural acceptance for comic books (or graphic novels).

First off (not counting the comic books), video games or rather interactive multimedia computer simulations are just a content medium, a channel for presenting information to a viewer. This channel includes anything that passes through it just like any other medium. How people categorize this content varies but I think its safe to say anything intended specifically to entertain the viewer can safely be called art. Again, the same goes for entertainment on any other content medium, like movies, music, and yes, even comic books.

Anyone who argues otherwise siting specific titles as being "NOT ART" is expressing a personal preference generally based on whether or not they are entertained by a particular title. Those same people then usually try to force this personal preference on everyone else as some form of fact. From there is gets complicated and increasingly more annoying. For example an extreme but sadly common example is pornography, some may say a picture of a simple nude statue is art while at the same time a PlayBoy centerfold poster is not art (personally I would even argue the human body is a work of art and should freely be displayed as such, and indeed I would include everything from flashing breasts to modeling). Same is true of violence, if a character in a movie kills in the heat of passion (and its moves the viewer) its art while some would say a movie that depicts people killing for fun to be "NOT ART".

So yes, it is art.

Second, cost is a minor factor. The movie theater analogy was extremely poor. People seeking to pay per play in a theater type arrangement go to an arcade, they don't run out an dump $500 on a gaming system and a few games. Games are reasonably priced for the volume of content you pay for (that says nothing of quality) and at least for consoles you can get more functionality out of the few $100 you had to drop on equipment to watch movies at home.

Third, play time in context to introducing people to video games is a problem for most titles. This says nothing of game demos, independent games (including "interactive fiction"), and the huge range of non-3D games (most of which are short). Web based games on portal sites are also becoming more popular.

Finally (before I get replies just telling me to shutup), the game industry is broken but I think 'natural' industry changes and market pressure will slowly resolve most of the problems. This will also result in an ever widening range of game content becoming available. The main problem with content today is only small independent developers and hobbyists are willing to risk their time and resources on anything but a sure bet product. A large part of the solution will be advances in development technologies such as new versions of 3D Game Studio for small developers, open sources development resources for hobbyists, and procedurally created content generation for the big developers. It goes well beyond just engines, development tools, and the range of content but thats a subject for another article (by someone who can describe it far better than I can).

I'd also like to note that I'm back, I have posted a comment on here in years but now I'll be contributing my two cents a little more often, at least for a while.

Note: Sorry if this is redundent with any other replies, took me a while to write this.

-MegaBurn

Re:What's wrong with games just they way they are.

[Chosen Reject]

I am in awe at your amazing ability to miss the point.

You say that he cannot know how to make games if all he knows is how to make a random number guessing game. To be pedantic, you admit that it's a game, he wrote it, and therefore you must admit that he knows how to make games. Maybe it's not going to be a great hit with your type of crowd, but he might find hours of fun with it.

Now to pull apart your fantasy of how to make "games."

Polymorphism is method of programming. Not every language uses it. But not every game is even a computer game that needs a computer language. This particular argument I will not repeat, though it is valid everywhere.

Huffman compression is a method of lossless compression. Not every file needs to be compressed. You could use bitmap sprites and other uncompressed files. Or even use an off-the-shelf system that does not require you to know anything about it, neither in the creation of the file, nor the use of it.

How many poly's are acceptable is totally dependent on your graphics engine and machine you are running it on. This might be something you would have to be aware of if you used someone elses software, but if you wrote your own, it would be totally up to you. But this also assumes that you are making a graphical game. Lots of people like the old text based games.

Path finding is only necessary for certain games where there is some AI that needs it. Not all AI needs it and not all path finding even needs to be recursive.

A circle to the screen would be a basic function of a graphics engine, yes. But again, if you're not making a graphical game, it is totally unnecessary. Again, you could also use third-party software. In which case, the method of getting a circle to the screen is very different. How to do that in the engines made by Epic, Valve, id, Blizzard, etc. is very different, though usually it is fairly simple, and could be easily learned, even if you wanted to go make your own engine.

There is a lot of work that goes into making all games, correct. But then he never said he would get up and write it in a few minutes, hours, days, or even weeks. And he didn't say which types of games he liked. Maybe he likes the old text-based MUDs. In which case, it would take a while to write a simple game, but would require none of the elements you have mentioned.

Easy answer

[Guppy06]

"But Is It Art?"

Nine times out of ten, if you find yourself asking that question, the answer is "yes." There is often doubt about what is art, but there is rarely any doubt about what is not art.

It's up there with questions like "Is this a dumb idea?"