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Hideo Kojima Says Games Aren't Art
Next Generation reports that, in a February OPM article, the maker of the Metal Gear series of games says games aren't art. From the article: "'I don't think they're art either, videogames,' he said, referring to Roger Ebert's recent commentary on the same subject. 'The thing is, art is something that radiates the artist, the person who creates that piece of art. If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art.'"
All I have to say is then it's obvious Hideo Kojima doesn't know what art is.
Although video games as a whole may not be art by some opinions, the scenery and graphics often are. I'm sure most of us have seen scenery in a game before and thought it was beautiful. And the graphics start somewhere. With design sketches, so just because you bring them into a 3D world, they are not art anymore?
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art.'
So how is this different from a movie? Last time I checked that is what a movie does as well.
I just bought Resident Evil 4 over the weekend. I'm having trouble buying this guy's argument.
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A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame.
Sounds like he is saying that video games try to cater to the lowest common denominator.
1) Such video games, will almost certainly suck.
2) If catering to the lowest common denominator is sufficient to disqualify a creation as art, then most of hollywood's productions are not art either.
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"For better or worse, what I do, Hideo Kojima, myself, is run the museum and also create the art that's displayed in the museum."
So he creates the art and the museum... But the whole isn't enough to count as art? I disagree somewhat on the point that art is not meant to connect with a wide variety of people. There are certainly some artists that don't care, but for the most part I believe artists like to have their works appreciated by the widest base possible. Whether that outlet be movies, music, paintings, or (depending on personal beliefs) video games.
"It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education." -Albert Einstein
'The thing is, art is something that radiates the artist, the person who creates that piece of art. If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame."
Seems to me that he just said that video games should live up to a much higher standard than art. So damn near anything can be art, but a video game, well, it should actually be good.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
I'm sure most of us have seen scenery in a game before and thought it was beautiful.
Since when is art about beauty?
Is a pretty girl "art?" Is a scenic view "art?" Are some mandlebrot's "art?" If so, who are the artists?
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It's something of a service. It's not art.
You mean that god-awful, dragged-out ending to Metal Gear Solid 2 was meant to be a service? To whom? I'd put this one down to a translation error, he probably meant to say "sermon".
Art is anything which invokes a sense of beauty in the observer. Beauty comes in many forms, but at their core they all appeal to our sense of pattern matching. True art appeals to that sense in a way that appeals to an individuals particular set of patterns somewhere between where the patterns get complex, and where they become chaotic and incomprehensible. It's the examination of those patterns that we find so fascinating.
Many video games aren't art any more than your typical coffee cup is art. They're utilitarian devices designed to serve a purpose and little else. Others reflect or even extend a genre in a way that sets our imagination going, trying to spot the pattern in the plotline, attempting to identify where it's leading. Still more are fascinating for the bizarre and interesting creatures that they present, which are most definitely a form of virtual sculpture and, thus, undeniably a form of art.
While games aren't necessarily art, they are definitely a medium in which art can be performed.
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If games are not to be considered art, then movies shouldnt be considered art either. Especially coming from a man that tends to make movies with a little gameplay thrown in - ie metal gear solid 2. When will we get really really boring game about growing old or being homosexual cowboys that every critic will call art?
So, games aren't art, but the service of providing them, is an art form? Thanks, Kojima-san. Get your meaning exactly. I'll file that next to the S3 project and "I need scissors, 61!".
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
This is yet another attempt for artists to justify themselves to themselves. It's very much like the old "what makes us better than animals," foolishness. What makes us better than animals is that we're not eaten by them on too regular a basis. What makes art art is the appreciation of an audience (sometimes that audience is only the artist). These are simple facts that will not change, regardless of how hard we try to classify those things that we like as art and those things that we do not like as whatever else we want to call them.
Now, that said, I'm not sure I see modern videogames being any better art than the fairgrounds of the early-to-mid 20th century. They are entertainment for the masses, and while both a fairground and a videogame are canvases on which art may be painted, we WILL look back at both as the pop-art of a generation in their own right.
Ebert can stuff his "movies are art but video games aren't," foolishness.
"Art" is any creative work that causes an emotional reaction, in my opinion. In other words, a beatiful sunset is not art, but a photograph or a painting of that sunset may be.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
I think you know..
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
I doubt even Halo appeals to 1 in 100 people.
The argument is flawed, because people who don't pay attention to art are still likely to see it. People who don't pay attention to video games are unlikely to see them.
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In other words, a beatiful sunset is not art
Tell that to the Magratheans.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Beauty is just one example. Many consider photography an art, which could encompass many things. And as a reply said, art is about many things that can convey an emotional reaction.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
art is in the eye of the beholder... you stop understanding art the minute you try telling others what it should be to them.
"Although video games as a whole may not be art by some opinions, the scenery and graphics often are."
:)
You got it.
The difference between art and design is that design uses art (and other tools) to achieve a goal, typically a functional end product.
The relationship of art and design reminds me of the relation between math and physics. One has beauty in itself, the other strives for a tangible purpose, mostly. It's a crude analogy, but there's something to it
J
I don't buy his position. You could say precisely the same thing about a film.
Of course, there are examples of both entertainment and art in films and videogames. Jurassic Park is not trying to be art - its a popcorn flick, loud noises and thrills. A film like 2001 could certainly be called art. (Kubrick is a great example actually; pretty much all of his films left lots of room for interpretation, as was the intention).
I've seen Ebert put forth this opinion as well, that video games are not really 'art' because with art you are expressing a certain point of view; the argument says, if someone gleans a different experience than what was perhaps intended by the game's creators, then it cannot be art, as art is always about communicating a certain point of view (and emotional manipulation). I would conter this by citing the example of sculpture. A person can walk around a sculpture in three dimensions and potentially glean a multiplicity of meanings from it. By this token, I would argue that there is nothing inherently limiting in the structure of video games in achieving 'art'. What if the creator intends for an experience to be perceived from multiple viewpoints?
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or even photographic, or music. When you start saying "if you want to sell to the "folk" then do not make art" is the de facto most elitiste crap I heard. HECK, some of the most "artful" old painter or classic musician did not paint for the fun of painting, but because they needed the money. What make something art is not the way you do it. What make it art is the "recognition" the final product gets.
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So apparently an artist should endeavor to have his work appeal to as few people as possible?
I read that quote to mean that art is an expression by the artist of something personal, without respect to whether that expression resonates with the audience. It seems to me that videogames transcend that "one way" definition of art. Really new and innovative games come from creators who express personal concepts and images in ways that are inherently interactive. Unlike passive forms of quasi-art, like commercials or billboards, videogames, to be successful as both art and game, demand that the audience be pulled into the vision. Anticipating the reactions of the audience while maintaining a consistent expression of an idea and working to deliberately create that "resonance" is a highly complex form of art. Rather than leaving the audience blindly interpreting in order to see an idea as the artist did, the videogame artist has created a world in which the audience can participate in expressing the idea. The player is part of the art.
Obviously the quality of videogames-as-art differs a lot. Many games are just a rehash of previous games, with unimaginitive elements. IMHO that should be the larger part of the "art/not-art" discrimination. We've all had games that inspired our sense of "beauty" enough to be as memorable as any painting on a wall. It would be hard to play Katamari Damacy, or Ico, or Lunatic Fringe, or even some primitive prehistoric games like Centipede and not feel that the creators had expressed something beautiful.
~
"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." -Emerson
LOL
Graphic Design is engineering.
There are some games that contain art, but a video game in and of itself like _most_ movies is an experience. Would you call the pirate ship ride art? Would you call the superman ride art? it's an experience that contains art sure...
Here's another example, would you consider a snuff flick art?
why consider the game manhunt art? it's trash.
That makes no sense to me. Are you saying that you'd have an emotional reaction to a photograph of a sunset, but not to an actual sunset?
o_O
So when 100 people walk by a brilliant Van Gogh or Michelangelo piece, and all of them are captured by it, it is no longer art? I feel that the greatest works of art appeal to parts of our brain that are universally human. We all have different experiences and lives, but certain emotions and reactions are conserved within all humans. If a piece of art is able to exploit this, it certainly doesn't disqualify it as art, and it perhaps makes it even more valuable than something more personal and specific.
No can do... last I heard they all went back into suspended animation after Earth Mark II was cancelled. Stupid bureaucratic mice...
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
That we're even having this discussion is a pretty damn good indicator that video games are art.
[o]_O
That's JUST what came to my mind when I was playing Castlevania: Lament of Innocence, and stopped to admire the surroundings of the "Garden Forgotten by Time". It was beautiful. The floor that resembled an old mansion's garden, the textures, the vines on the walls, and the plants, along with the classical music, it had just a "wow" effect on me.
I wanted to stop playing and just walk around that garden. That game is DEFINITELY a masterpiece of art.
Surely anything can be categorized by human beings? And if so, it's up to the human beings to categorize it. And for something as subjective, ephemeral and man-made as art, it's up to each of us to come up with their own opinion of what's art, just like it's up to all of us to come up with an opinion of what's good?
Although I disagree with his opinion that Art is meant for one person I do agree with his concept that most games can contain art and that the game itself is really a "museum" where the "Art" can be appreciated. But here's a question: Can a musuem be considered a work of Art? Is the Hirschorn or the MET any less a work of art in themselves? They are functional, yet artistic but is that enough to classify them as works of art?
In a related note, I play WoW and I found a snapshot of a sun setting in Azeroth that was so beautifully rendered I made it into my wallpaper. So is a "virtual" picture of a "virtual" sunset in a "virtual" world displayed on a very REAL screen considered Art? If not then what is it? What is its function except to be displayed?
Not saying I have the answers...just posing the thoughts...
but zelda windwaker looks like art to me..
maybe he is not the programmer or artist who actually created the game content.. but I think the game should be art for them.
If the Serial Experiments Lain PSX game isn't an example of art, I don't know what is. And then there are the better examples of interactive visual novels. The question which then arises being are these actually games? Maybe what he's groping towards is the notion that one can sensibly define "game" and "art" to be mutually exclusive at a local level. Of course, in this situation it will always be possible to produce things which are part-game and part-art.
From http://www.copyright.gov/fls/fl108.html: "Copyright protects only the particular manner of an author's expression in literary, artistic, or musical form." It isn't music, it isn't literature. If they say it's not art, I guess it does not fall under copyright law?
Like many others here I disagree that increased utility, functionality, and accessibility disqualify any creative expression from being art. Perhaps your art may "feel" differently (more museum-like for Mr. Kojima) but it isn't disqualified.
What distinguishes something from craft (even excellent craft) and turns it into Art is the ability of that work to change the audience either through conveying an experience of the artist's or (in the case of games) allowing the audience to have an experience. Great art will change your outlook on life, including: opening up a new way for you to appreciate something (basically creating a new love) or creating some form of new awareness (about issues or other people's viewpoints). These sorts of changes are fully possible in functional and accessible work, regardless of medium.
To claim that *any* medium cannot convey artistic expression is dubious, but claiming that games, which are better than most mediums for conveying expression, cannot achieve "Artfulness" is downright silly.
Complexity Happens
but I disagree with that logic anyway. Most people that I know do not like games like I do. In the big picture, the population base of gamers, and of gamers that are only really captivated by one type of game or another, compared to total population of the world puts games in the proper ratio to be considered art. But maybe I should RTFA, I don't know.
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if 8 bit nintendo isn't art I don't know what is
To think that Kojima himself would have so little respect for his own creations. Yes, video games contain art, but presenting that art is an art in itself. If he is so blind as to not see this, then I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to respect him the way I once did.
Quite a shame, too. The man has made some of the best pieces of art which the medium has to offer, and he can't even appreciate what he's done. It's a shame when the fans do the art more justice than the artist himself.
If there was ever a word that resisted discreet categorisation it's "Art".
Art is such a sliding scale it would be immensly foolish to say whether games are art or not. Is a play a piece of art? Is a moving mechanical construct art? Where do you draw the line between art, artistry and simple aesthetics?
The amount of time and effort wasted by people trying to pin down the definition of something that, by it's very nature, is personal and massively subjective is astounding. Really - for every work of art that the majority agrees on (Old masters such as the works of DaVinci or Constable) there are an equal number of disputed pieces. Let me cut a cow in half and stick it in a fish tank as a way of example....
Anything that requires creativity - the use of imagination and innovation over the use of rules and procedures - has the elements of art. Whether it can be truly called "A work of art" is entirely down to the individual experiencing the final piece.
My personal view? As far as games go, no. I don't think most games are works of art. Most games. However there are some games where the aesthetic sense is the key point, where narrative (interactive or otherwise) is so tightly woven that the simple mechanics of the game are forgotten. Two examples that come to mind are ICO (Such a beautiful game!) and it's unofficial sequel, Shadow of the Collossus (as morally ambiguous as many great novels). The emotional impact on me from those games is great - as great as a poem or a stirring song. So I feel they are Art.
Games are a new medium, no doubt. And a lot of them are cookie-cutter copies, bland, formulaic, mechanical. But whether the rare gems that stand out are actually works of art is a personal decision and one that each player should decide for his or herself. Certainly it's not a decision that should be made for you.
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Most films, comics, (pulp) novels, and so on aren't "art" either.
I think he's got a kind of "Art-with-a-capital-A" concept in his head here, and that's all well and good, but you have to apply that kind of thinking evenly.
Also notice that his definition doesn't RULE OUT games as art; he's merely saying that they're not currently being treated as such. I guess games are still waiting for their Orson Wells or Claude Monet to take a "pedestrian" medium and make it transcendent.
I can see a case being made either way....
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Is a sunset a creative work? Don't you people understand the concept of "AND"?
Why not fork?
I think that a lot of the issue here is a personal stake in whether games are art or not. I can understand the desire to have one's passions be regarded as an art, especially as a game developer myself. But to use a mundane example, even my printer has artistic qualities to it. There probably was an artist involved at some stage to make it aesthetically pleasing. And while he and maybe some of his peers may be "moved" by the artistic nuances of my paper tray, I doubt that we'll see it on a museum shelf for at least a few years.
I can totally understand and agree with Kojima's position. It doesn't negate my work to bring engaging art into games, and it doesn't mean that someone can't choose to make a game that is truly a piece of art.
I think to be art, a message is required of the artist, a message that is the true intent. The intent may be to illuminate, to evoke an emotion, to startle, or even to repulse. While counterexamples do exist, the true intent of most games is to entertain for the duration of game play. So unless we're prepared to call my karaoke rendition of "Video Killed the Radio Star" art, we maybe shouldn't be so offended.
is that art is created solely to be art. Kojima does imply that functionality is a detriment to the creation of art, because then the object is made not simply to be an art object, but to then perform some purpose. This has already been challenged in the art world several times over--Claes Oldenburg's paint-splattered bed, for one--and the sister subject, whether there is something artistic lying in that which is created primarily to be functional (namely Warhol's silkscreens of soup cans). Perhaps our secondhand interview doesn't give us the whole story of what he's suggesting. That first line, about art radiating the artist, seems to speak to the large number of people who collaborate to create the experience that is the game. That is, can art really radiate one particular viewpoint when that art is the coalescence of several hundred people's expressions? (Go buy Psychonauts and learn that, yes, it can.) Kojima's comments raise more questions than they answer, if there really are answers in anything like aesthetics, and maybe that's the point. The particular cultural assertions that define what to Kojima is art are necessarily different than Americans', so I'm not entirely sure we're supposed to see eye-to-eye here. I do know, from the art objects I've seen from Japan, that the physical artifacts maintained from antiquity pose a very definite separation between utility and artistic purpose. The screens and fans we see are treated as dual objects--the fan is one thing-in-itself, and the adornment on the fan is another. Honestly anything that kick-starts this discourse, especially on a wider scale, is a good thing.
MGS 2 was one of the closest things to an art form I've even seen on a game console. The writer of the screenplays for the MGS games definately met this guy's definition of art.
This is just an idiotic statement :-)
To the extent that movies are art, how are games not also art? Paintings? Stained glass windows? Music?
All arts are services by that definition. Go design games and stop giving interviews.
Thus the prophet Bill seized the holy Xbox and did turn once for a full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Neither three-hundred-and-fifty-nine nor three-hundred-and-sixty-one did he turn, for he turned the full three-hundred-and-sixty degrees. Thus did he hold aloft to his loyal followers the new Xbox 360. It's once dark exterior shone radiant white in the sun.
The followers who had camped out for days scrabbled to be the first to recieve The Good Box. Unfortunately not all were able to recieve the gift for the prophet had not antcipated the demand.
As the last Xbox was handed down, the prophet delivered one final message before his followers departed. "Abuse not thy box, for the wicked shall suffer of overheating."(Consoles 360: 1-11)
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it isn't literature
Yes it is, at least for the purposes of the Copyright Act of 1976 as amended. Literature, or "literary works" as defined in 17 USC 101, consists of "works, other than audiovisual works, expressed in words, numbers, or other verbal or numerical symbols or indicia, regardless of the nature of the material objects, such as books, periodicals, manuscripts, phonorecords, film, tapes, disks, or cards, in which they are embodied." Such as a computer program.
Nothing will kill a creative endeavor faster than wondering "Is it art?"
In fact, it's a very self-indulgent thing to ask. Most artists of note didn't set out to create "art", they were(are) inspired by the passion and drive to create, or because they just had something to say. They'd do it whether culture called it art or not (and in fact, many great artists who were lesser names did.)
So, who cares if games are "art" or not? That's not for the game creators to decide, that's for culture to sort out later. There certainly have been great games that create immersive and plausible worlds (or at least worlds that work on their own terms) and offer insights on human nature-- Fallout comes to mind, maybe Deus Ex, perhaps even Starcraft. I don't know if they're "art" (or perhaps "literature") or something else, but I do know these works attained a level of greatness and will be remembered for it.
Hideo Kajima = complete idiot. And always has.
Although I do understand the notion of trying to please everyone with a well-rounded video game that no-one is unhappy with, I think they captivate people in a different way. When I was playing Shadow of The Colossus, I was absolutely enthralled by the whole design of the game - not just the etheral visuals, but the enivironmental sounds, the subtle changes in the world as you moved between areas, and the awesome feeling when clinging on to a stone giant's fur in order to have a fighting chance... It was a very different overall feeling than I remember having from most video games. It's an amalgamation of many things from different senses, rather than just the visuals of a painting or the witnessing of a movie, so it's not really like it.
But if movies really can be classified as art, then I don't understand why games can't be. A lot of people work on both, (as is also the case with music, and no-one has a problem with calling music art), most movies have to have some commercial success; unless the only movies viewed as art are independent movies with no hope to gain any profit.
But that said, I don't remember a lot of games that were more art than great entertainment. But this genre of entertainment is still growing up.
This is an offense to the creators of games like Katamari Damacy and Shadow of the Collossus. For God's sake, the *manuals* for both of those games are art! (I think We 3 Katamari's manual is more artsy than Katamari Damacy's though, but whatever). Katamari Damacy doesn't try to appeal to all 100 of those people that he speaks of, so does that not make it a game? Basically, what he's saying doesn't make sense. Is Katamari a game or an art? Why does he think all games absolutely *have* to try to appeal to all 100? It doesn't make any sense. Of course, I won't defend that games like GTA or Medal of Honor are art, but seriously. Blanket statements are just wrong.
You know, I keep reading quotes from this guy and, while obtuse, they aren't exactly insightful. The guy created 1 great game (Metal Gear: Solid) and the rest have been mediocre. The stories, characters and writing in general in every other Metal Gear game have been awful. The game mechanics have been mediocre and cliched ever since Solid (and don't tell me Metal Gear for NES was any good -- it wasn't).
Ask Miyamoto what's art. Or Will Wright. Not this guy.
If someone calls something art, you have to consider it as such. Placing things in absolute catagories is without any benefit. I personally have played some games that I consider to be art (Killer 7 is the most recent). If Hideo doesn't feel they're art, that doesn't change my viewpoint at all. Plenty of people don't think a Jackson Pollock is art. Plenty don't think a Warhol is art. Those people do not change anything.
There isn't any point in even trying to argue this guy's statements because they're so narrow-minded.
Just because this guy is known for a popular series of games doesn't mean he knows what he's talking about, nor does it make what he says relevant. He clearly has a very limited vision of what art should be and regardless, he probably views games from a business perspective, as a way of simply making money.
What I don't understand is why individuals keep getting all the credit for these games, like this guy was responsible for every last aspect of the game. That guy may have had the initial vision but the people who put all the real work into the game get little to no credit.
Games fall under the same banner as books, music, television, and movies, which are all considered forms of artistic expression. All of these forms can be worked on by one person, or several hundred people. All of them are mass-produced for public consumption. A lot of what's released is crap, though not all of it. Each has critics praising and shaming respective works. Yet, despite the similarities, games aren't art because they follow the rules of every artform? What a load of shit.
If games didn't jump on the art bandwagon, we'd still be in the Pacman/Space Invaders/Galaga/etc era, with nothing to really look forward to. No Halo. No Half-Life. No Final Fantasy. Not even this guy's Metal Gear series would have made it. Why?
Because, in one way or another, all such games strive to make liberal use of artistic elements in order to create a masterwork; therefore, they fall under "art." If he had half a brain, he'd know that.
And example. One man takes a blank white canvas. He takes paint and in a frenzy of anger, fear, disgust, throws paint about, with no real image in mind, just a need to express. And that is called art.
Another man takes the same canvas, and with a pencil he draws a portrait of a woman. This woman means nothing to him, she is just a model. He uses techniques and skills he's been taught to best capture the natural beauty the woman already possesses. And that is called art.
You have two entirely different processes, one wild and emotional, the other structured and with inherent meaning, and both are considered art, even though they are completely and totally unrelated to each other.
Games are structured and rule based. They have environments, sound, characters and story. Each of those things, taken individually, is considered an art (graphic art, musical art, written art), but somehow, putting it all together in a coherent and believable fashion isn't art?
But really, I think the reason Kojima doesn't consider video games art is a a simple one.
The Art of a Video Game is in the gameplay.
Think about it. Art is about expression and empathy. Remember the original Super Mario Bros.? Hundreds of video games predated it, but it somehow captured our imaginations with simple and inventive, creative gameplay.
Tetris is similar. A work of sheer imaginative brilliance to make a puzzle out of falling blocks in random shapes.
That is art, that evokes a response, even a devotion, in those who partake of it. The reason Hideo Kojima does not see games as art is because most games aren't original creations. They're a thin veneer over something that has been done before. In much the way that a copy of the Mona Lisa is not art, but the original is, the thousands of Pac-Man ripoffs are not art, but the original is. I have no doubt that Shigeru Miyamoto, Sid Meier, Peter Molyneoux and the like are artists, but most game developers don't create art, they just rehash and improve on ideas.
So, while a game can be art, just because it's a game doesn't mean it is art. Just as not all movies can be considered art, or all books, or all poems.
just some guy
Before getting excited about what is and isn't art, consider this- why do we need games to be considered art?
The simple answer is this society considers art to be legitimate, and therefore time spent enjoying art also is legitimate, therefore in order for playing games not to be frowned upon then games have to be considered art. (or, electronic games need to be considered professional sports, if you read the other 50% of the games.slashdot stories that all tie in to the desire to legitimize games)
I don't think that a need for legitimacy is a good enough reason. I like playing games- and I like them whether I or anyone else thinks they're art.
I think games can become legitimate and important on their own, without ever being considered either art. Games are a form of expression, but they should express more than what they currently do, and the things they express should be important. The best way is to probably A. have more people making games, making more voices to be heard and B. create a tradition among the most elite game developers for more fully expressing important ideas in their games.
First, let me say I would be interested to read both your papers and what you cite in your research. I think this is a non-trivial problem, yet possibly also a simple one (though I don't know why people disagree with me :).
A couple terms are needed: I'll use "classical art" to represent nongame art (physical, structural, sequential, etc.), and "video games" as the blanket term for console, PC, electronic, arcade, etc., games. I don't use the compound word because I'm ornery and video games are only one small subset of the vast game universe.
"The game part is where you are trying to beat/master a system...it's the cognitive orientation of the player." And earlier "The videogame mode of attention is not an aesthetic mode."
You've called it a mode of attention, however your unspoken words are "And that is the only way you can approach video games." That cognitive mindset is simply one mindset - albeit a highly popular and (currently) completely expected one - people use when approaching something (currently) labelled as a game. And I would argue that that mindset/response is a totally taught response, a response ingrained by positive feedback: problem solving in a very specific context. This leads to gaming editorials about how people have no morals while gaming. However a person's first video game experience leaves them asking "What do I do?" to which a gamer replies, "Here's how you beat this game". The newbie has to keep forcing themselves into the mindset for a while until it becomes second nature. They may even be surprised at the language used as people generally think of games something to be played, not the gamer's re-contexting of having to beat them. Do you beat Trivial Pursuit?
However it is not a *required* mindset to use, view, or consider a video game. The video game does not force you to beat it. You decide if and when you want to beat it. Or instead if you just want to play it. The classical art does not force you to view/think/feel about it, many will simply shut it out of their experience, or you may form an emotional reaction or connection with it while experiencing it.
Your descriptions also leave out the fact that there are at least 2 mindsets for beating a video game: Play the game as the designers/team intended (suspending disbelief), or to beat the game's ruleset (meta-gaming).
Taking the first point, I'm not seeing how that is different from classical art: There is a product, there is an observer/participant, there is a reaction to abide by the required suspension of disbelief, and the observer/participant attempt to live within the non-real world for a short time - sometimes an imperceptible amount of time.
As for the second point, I would argue that as soon as people try beating the game's ruleset, when they start meta-gaming even if it is 'merely' to MinMax their character or to only use one cheat code, it is because the player had no patience for the video game *as*presented*. Simply, their mindset was in dissonance to that the designers/team expected at the time they experienced it. You could also say that the observer/participant decided to try continuing participating - but with some help/different limitations.
Can the designer/team be faulted if the observer/participant takes their expression and picks it apart to MinMax their game to the highest edge of the rules? Can the photographer be blamed that a print of their masterpiece is used to line a bird cage, or to make a collage or retrospective book?
Some classical art, especially things labelled interactive art, provoke the same reactions, especially when people's assumptions are questioned: it becomes something to figure out or otherwise solve. Their reaction to the art is such that they no longer participate in the suspension of disbelief, and may even try analyzing it with their mind instead of feeling it with their emotions.
Some people postulate that video games also have a different vein of mindsets to which people gravitate: ex