'Games Are Not Art' - The Fault of Game Journalists

Roger Ebert has gone on record stating that he doesn't think games are art, and may never be up to the level of film as a medium. Kyle Orland responds on the Video Game Media Watch site, saying that if anyone is to blame game journalists are at fault for that perception. From the article: "The question of whether or not games are art is a hotly contested one, and one I don't want to get into in depth here. Suffice it to say I think they are, as far as they are capable of providing deep emotional experiences that can change the way we look at the world. If you agree that games are art (or will at least grant me the premise), here's another question more relevant to the focus of this site: Have we, as critics, given people like Ebert enough reason to believe that games are art?"

Comments

This is something...

[th1ckasabr1ck]

This is something that I spend a decent amount of time thinking about/discussing - I'm a game programmer, and once in a while this topic comes up. The real tough part of this problem is defining art.

Can games be beautiful? Absolutely. Look at Doom 3 or Ico, both beautiful in completely different ways. Can games be emotional? Sure. Check out Valkyrie Profile or Final Fantasy or whatever. Can games make you think? Definitely. Do these things combined make them art? I have no clue, mainly because the definition of art is so subjective.

Personally I don't think we should view the games we are making as art. It's really easy to forget with games that we are making a product (software) to sell to a consumer. Any time that we are doing something in the game which does not increase the value of our product to our potential consumer, then we are tilting off course. It seems to me that if the decisions we make are consumer driven, then that tends to lean us away from the 'art' label.

Book just came out on this.

[Bill Walker]

Nic Kelman begs to differ:

Considering its subject, Video Game Art (Assouline, 300 pp., $29.95) is surprisingly thick with text. That's because it's the brainchild of a novelist, 28-year-old Nic Kelman, who strives to make the case for this ever expanding genre as a genuine art form, drawing analogies to film, myth, and literary epics. Even for the gaming averse, though, a flip through these pages is revelatory, suggesting the sheer range of intricate dream-scapes and brain-tickling phantasms buried amid the clichéd ghouls and fembots.

(text from this week's Village Voice)