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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.'"
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.
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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
That's unfair. From TFA:
"Art is the stuff you find in the museum, whether it be a painting or a statue. What I'm doing, what videogame creators are doing, is running the museum--how do we light up things, where do we place things, how do we sell tickets?"
So he's trying to make a distinction between something that contains art and something that is itself art.
That seems like a fair distinction to me. Whenever I challenge someone to name a game that is a work of art they always cite things like Ico. A classic example: it's full off pretty graphics, but it's not clear that the rather pedestrian gameplay is part of anything I want to call art.
Even if you don't agree with Kojima yourself, I don't think the point he makes is one that can be dismissed so casually.
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".
Saying it isn't art is not the same as showing animosity.
If there is one question I have been struggling with for the past year, it has been about the nature of videogames and art, and I am inclined now towards Kojima's position. The main problem is attention: there is a kind of aesthetic mode of attention, a way of looking at things that is open to certain types of signs, feelings and thoughts. The videogame mode of attention is not an aesthetic mode. When you look at a videogame "as art," you have to actually suspend looking at it "as a game." There is nothing wrong with it being a game, but one needs to recognize "gameness" as essentially and perhaps incompatibly different from "artness." "Gameness" is still culturally interesting, important, can be well- or poorly-done, etc.
This is part of my PhD research, so I'm not going to eat up this thread with this issue yet. But it is a more important issue than I originally thought, and my views have changed dramatically.
That definition is, in my opinion, a weak one. Everything someone puts some thought into then becomes art. If that's what you call art, fine - but instead, I think of art as a special kind of production motivated by certain kinds of experience (aesthetic or discursive). What makes something art, in my view now, isn't the way it was created, but the way it is meant to be experienced/consumed. Videogames are very specifically meant to be experienced/consumed as games. There can be aesthetic experiences within those games - as someone else noted, they can "contain" art - but when you are really appreciating that experience, you really have to suspend thinking "as a gamer" to do it.
In an MMO, think of the gap that occurs when someone stops thinking about optimal battle tactics, buffs, timing, etc. to comment "wow, this area is really beautiful - the mood here is so melancholic, etc." Many of us have that experience, but it is so out of sync with the "gameness" that is going on that it is striking.
There is an artfulness is creating good "gameness," too - it can take intuition, intelligence, experience, even talent. But that doesn't make the product art, even if the skills required to make it good are themselves also skills that could be used to create good artistic experiences.
art is in the eye of the beholder... you stop understanding art the minute you try telling others what it should be to them.
It's almost certainly "bijutsu," which maps pretty closely to what we call "fine art."