Are Videogames Art?

Game Politics, as always, has some meaty thoughts on offer. Today they're revisiting the perpetual question, 'Can videogames be considered art?'. They touch on the words of Roger Ebert, and discuss a recent piece on the subject in the Sydney Herald. From the article: "Brendan McNamara, game director for Team Bondi, makers of the upcoming film noir PS3 game L.A. Noire, has no doubt his team is creating art. With a project plan that includes 170 pages describing cinematic moments, and 1,200 pages detailing interactive events, the game has a Hollywood-like budget of more than $30 million. 'We control the delivery of the information ... We give players a setting and a framework, we control what they see and do. So how are we not authors?' McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture. At the same time, he believes that being driven by sales is a good thing." What is the Slashdot opinion? Are games too different from other form of expression to be considered art? Is Shadow of the Colossus comparable to Leaves of Grass or Citizen Kane?

Comments

Little boys

[Cybert4]

Sorry, but the number one reason that games are not considered art is that they are thought to be for young people only--in particularly, only boys. It has nothing to do with "commercialism". I'm not saying it is good or bad. Go to your local game store--see how many little boys you see. Chances are, it's a lot more than 50%. Yes, you have some (still male) people in their 20's and 30's who grew up with them.

I remember, just on the radio, how a professional personal ad writer said that an example of an unworthy person is "living in his mom's basement, playing Nintendo". Sorry, but that's the public's view.

Re:Little boys

[TomHandy]

So does that mean that the work of Dr. Seuss isn't art?

Re:Little boys

[Anonymous Coward]

Kids don't know what's best of them because they are stupid. That's why we don't let the little fuckers vote. Kids must be disciplined hard and often and punished even more often. Fuck it, were we to let them decide what to eat for dinner it would be candy, candy, candy and ice cream.

Ever seen MySpace? That's what kids end up doing if they're calling the shots. Fuckin' little losers.

Mark my words: you see a kid, you beat the crap out of the fucker until his nose bleeds for a week. Serves him right. And it doesn't matter if you don't know why you had to beat him, he sure as hell knows.

Stigmatized, yes

[the_humeister]

McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture.

The stigma doesn't come from being mostly a commercial venture. Look at movies. They're mostly commercial ventures too. However some are considered more artistic than others. I think one aspect is that games are interactive. Most art is, for the most part, passive in that the viewer sits there and looks. That's not to say that games aren't art. I would argue that they are. We just need to better encompass our definition of art to include such things. 100 years ago, would a crowd of nude people be considered art?

Art vs commerce

[payndz]

McNamara wonders if video games are stigmatized because they are a mostly commercial venture.

Because movies, of course, are made for no more reason than pure artistic expression...

There's no such thing as art

[FhnuZoag]

Let's be controversial here.

I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic. Art, I propose, is just a label applied by self-appointed judges regarding their own arbitary tastes. The proper response is not to endlessly try to justify electronic entertainment as 'art' in the eyes of pretentious old men, but to note that their opinion does not actually matter. The next generation, no doubt, will have their own idea of art, and their own view of what will be culturally significant, and the scorn of today's judges have no meaning in this respect.

Re:There's no such thing as art

[oggiejnr]

Given the current crop of so-called "modern art", I think is safe to say that the only definition of art that can be uniformly applied is that it is art if someone is willing to pay money for it on the basis of it being art.

Re:There's no such thing as art

[Al Dimond]

Y'ever study John Cage? You've hit the nail precisely on the head! John Cage wrote a piece of music called 4'33", consisting of four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence divided into 3 movements. Because it was performed as a work of music and accepted by its audience as a work of music, it was music. It has also been discussed ever since by musicians and by people that study music, adding weight to its status as a musical composition (it becomes music itself when it is performed and listened to). Meanwhile, consider the music that's pumped through speakers into stores. There is no performance, there is no attentive and active audience, and nobody cares about it. It's being played to present an atmosphere that will subtly convince consumers to buy more things. Even if what's being played is one of Beethoven's great symphonies, something with sound, with notes, with all kinds of recognizable musical elements, it's not being used as music (there is a composition, but only questionably a performance or audience); therefore its status as "music" is in question.

So your definition, as cynically as you offered it, is pretty much right on. Art requires artist and audience (these roles may overlap, or, as in much music, be separated further by tradition). That is all.

Re:There's no such thing as art

[Twinbee]

A great piece of music is still a great piece of music, even if it's only a dog that ever listens to it. The situation and atmosphere (e.g. supermarket enviroment) are external variables which affect the enjoyment of said music.

Oh and John Cage's music 4'33" in my opinion is completely neutral, offering nothing or bad. If you could put every theoretical piece of music on a multi-dimensional tree, then the 4'33 would certainly occupy an important place in that tree. However, it lacks any of the enjoyment that can be gained from good music. I think it's a gimmick in that sense, and the any enjoyment people derive from it comes from another source (the silence may inspire them to a pleasant memory etc.).

Re:There's no such thing as art

[Triv]

Did YOU ever study cage? Because you entirely missed the point.

Cage believed that there are elements of a musical performance that are entirely out of the composer's control, things that are random and spontaneous that nevertheless inflect what's going on on the stage. Every sneeze by the audience, every cough, every whispered conversation, every squeaking chair as an audience member gets up and leaves in disgust, ALL of it is in some way a part of the music you're listening to.

What Cage did was, to bring this passed-over element of musical performance to light, he wrote a piece of music that entirely accentuated the random sub-elements of performance by eliminating the music entirely, thereby making people more conscious of their immediate surroundings. THAT'S why 4'33" is important; it has nothing to do with this bullshit 'what is art?' argument.

Triv

Re:There's no such thing as art

[monoqlith]

I think it has everything to do with the "what is art?" question - that's exactly the question begged by your interpretation of the piece.

This is called reflexivity - the art work interrogating itself or its medium or its exhibition, precisely to ask the question "why is this art?" You can't answer that question without first answering the question "what is art?"

Are these coughs art? Are the conversations art? If so, why? Where does the art stop and everything else begin?

Personally I don't think that's good art. I find it pretentious. It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't require any technical skill. It asks obvious questions. But anything that is interpreted as a piece of art work can be considered art even if it isn't good art.

As soon as you say something is art it becomes art. The question is then "why do we say that this is art?" since there is no objective definition of "art."

The art crowd has fooled us into thinking that there is something that is objectively art or objectively "good" art. That is absurd. Art is based entirely on how its interpreted and perceived - how can it be anything before it touches your eyes or mouth? There are no concepts communicated by the art piece as an object *in itself*, just like there is nothing communicated by regular objects just in virtue of themselves. Everything we say it communicates is actually an imposition of our minds. Things outside of us have no semantic meaning by themselves, without observers.

When it encounters an audience - be it the artist him/herself or people in a crowd - it becomes art. This is radically subjective definition of art, that some people find offensive. I don't. I think it is everything art is supposed to be - human. It depends on the humans participating in the viewing and the making of it.

Re:There's no such thing as art

[7Prime]

Actually, that's incorrect. The piece is NOT named "4 minutes and 33 seconds" as everyone likes to point out, the name of the piece, as Cage titled it, is "Silence". But the naming of the piece, for the program's sake, is to be the intended duration of the particular performance. I've read his performance notes for the piece, 4'33" is never included anywhere in them. It just so happens that the first performance, which was done in 3 movements by a pianist, btw, happened to be 4 minutes and 33 seconds long, and appeared as 4'33" on the program, and many people missed the point. It has been, since, performed in many different durations (all in 3 movements).

Cage loved to explore bounderies. All his music was extremely structured, even if it's result was indeterminate, one of his prerequisites for this piece, and why he requires that the title reflect the duration, is that the length be decided BEFORE hand. He approached the piece as if it was (and it is) a very serious performance work, and didn't want it to be trashed by amatures going for a cheap laugh. One of his definitions of art, even in his most post-modern efforts, is that any work follows conscious bounderies, even if these boundaries is "has no bounderies at all", but in the case of "Silence", one of those bounderies is "must have pre-defined duration".

I believe it to be one of the most "important" (notice I do not say "best") works of the 20th century, as it has spurned more controversy and more debate on the its relivance as a piece of art, than probably any other musical work. Is it an aesthetic work? Interestingly, it is intended to be. In his notes, Cage describes the audience being made to listen to themselves, their conglomerate breathing, their heart-beat, the sounds of airducts in the wings, the work is meant, partially as an aesthetic look into the "sounds of the full concert hall", and is meant to be interpreted as much. There are many different layers of interpretation of the piece, with "silence" refering to a complete vacuum, or an actual quited space.

That said, the deffinitiong of "audience" is not very set in stone. I will challange that any piece of art needs an audience, but I'm not sure if that audience need be conciously attentive. I just finished writing the music for my the local six-o'clock news, it's intended as a diversion, something to accentuate an intro annimation and punctuate the importance of the newscast. Is it art? I don't know, I think is both art and not art at the same time. It has a purpose besides it's pure musical aesthetics, but MANY forms of art have outside reasoning. MOST music is narrative, and tells a story (even a good 50% of classical music), some of it is political, philosophical, or in otherways, intended to try to sway some kind of position out of the audience. How is that different from trying to sway consumers into buying merchandise (I've done music for advertisements as well, btw)? I usually try to only tackle writing music for merchandising that I actually put some stock in. I like doing music for PSAs, because I usually believe that they're a good cause to support. But other times, I just like doing music to a commercial I think it's aesthetically interesting, and artistic in it's own right. I'm in an interesting position where I can decide what spots to write for and what not to.

My point is, I think art is much more expansive than most people like to make out to believe... usually their just superimposing their own aethetic sense on what they think is good and bad. Good and Bad are not part of the defenition of art, as in, there is such a thing as "good art" and "bad art" (from the audience's perspective), but their both art. Kenny G is bad art, mall crap is bad art, IMO of course.

Number of pages? Budget?

[niceone]

Well, I think they probably are, but bringing up the budget and number of pages they wrote is kind of missing the point.

Penny Arcade

[ResidntGeek]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2000/03/01 Penny Arcade settled this shit back in 2000.

Art is obviously subjective

[digitalderbs]

However, I like many people, have video game music on their iPods alongside "real" artists, and I'll replay FMV sequences or whole games because I enjoyed the story -- just as I would re-read a good book.

Also, there is an aspect of timelessness to art. Quoting Ebert (and his main argument) :

...no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, film-makers, novelists and composers.

The video game age is very young, and this perception will inevitably change as it matures. I'll encourage my kids to play Final Fantasy and listen to Nobuo Uematsu.

Is $THING art?

[MrNougat]

Yes. No. Maybe. Depends.

I've often considered that the thing which is most functional for its purpose is the best art. Think "chair." Four legs, seat, back. A perfect representation of "that upon which people sit," and you can actually sit on it.

So let's think about videogames. Are they art? Is Monopoly (the board game) art? Is chess? Is a paper airplane? Is masturbation? All these things entertain us, in one form or another.

Fact is, whether or not $THING is art is wholly subjective, depending on the person making the determination. Beyond that, there's whether or not $THING (which may or may not be art) is good art or bad art.

That's a whole other discussion.

Define: art

[mr1337]

Let's define art.

Art: The products of human creativity. (Source)
Art: The expression of creativity or imagination, or both. (Source)
Art: The formal expression of a conceived image or imagined conception in terms of a given medium. (Source)

With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.

Re:Define: art

[Cal Paterson]

With these definitions, I consider video games to be art. I always have considered them art. They are simply an expression of human creativity. Being on an interactive medium only adds to the art.

Mankind has been try to define art for thousands of years, and, you know, I'm not sure you quite solved it with three links and a few sentences.

Or rather everything is art...

[Kunta Kinte]

I think the deeper message that we can draw out here is that there is no such thing as art. In other words, there is no unbreachable division between what is art and what is not, and there is no magical quintessence that makes something automatically artistic.

Maybe "everything is art" is closer to what you are getting at?

Wikipedia, as usual, as a good writeup on Defining art ( Why the editors don't routinely include WP links on core concepts, is beyond me ).

My personal definition of art is anything that inspires without obvious utility.

I completely disagree.

[Ayanami Rei]

Pong is most certainly art (moreso than many other games).
It is that achieves a satisfactory experience through the user's experience that is much more than one would expect when looking at all the pieces individually (sound, graphics, interface).

You could have a massively hyped game with great individual assets (think Daikatana), yet the composition and feedback loop with the user is decidedly lacking. Some character models could be very artistic, but the whole combined product is forced; dead.

Pong is the opposite and it succeeds with the sparse resources allocated to it. That is what I believe makes it a work of art. It is the precisely the unity of design, mechanics ... the whole thing coming together and having a significant impression upon the user that makes it artistic.

Re:Pong != Art, therefore Video Game = Art

[SheHeItThey]

Just because Pong does not (necessarily) contain pretty pictures and music doesn't mean it's not art. The gameplay itself can be art.

I consider games to be art because the design goals of them are to entertain, not to be useful. Pong is for having fun, not for demonstrating how balls bounce off surfaces.

Re:Interaction vs Art

[ith(4mor3)]

When I play a game, it's a work of art. Seriously, I'm creating a dynamic, variable expereince for myself from a set of hardware and software tools. Why should the fact that I intereact with a video game disqualify it as art? I interact with all other forms of art: I adjust the angle and distance with which I view a painting, there is a variety of ways I can tweak and play around an mp3 while listening to it with Winamp, my DVD player has more buttons to control movies than my PS2 and GC combined have to control a game, and I attach meaning to a work's sights and/or sounds further manipulating them beyond the original, raw sensory information I had received.

Physical and mental interaction is true of all art forms. I know that when I write a story, I'm not writing with complete control. The reader will give meaning to my words and create a text different than I had intended and possibly a better one. The reader is creating an experience from the tools I've provided. Such reading is an integral part of the art of writing. Otherwise, they're just meaningless symbols. And if I make a game out of the same story, the story evolves into a more interactive form with more room to explore and more potential for meaning attachment. The story doesn't cease to exist and neither does the fact that it's art. Games simply give more ''authorial control'' to their users than other works of art. In doing so, games are more postmodern than the arts of the past and many of those that are emerging.

Also, video games themselves are syntheses of other art forms. One might be able to argue about how well they are assembled, but even if a work art is produced through undeveloped skills, it doesn't cease to be art. And the parts of games some may claim are non-art (AI, game play) are just as much art as others, since they are representations, alterations, and extensions of reality (human intelligence, movement and physical intaction with objects), which is what art does.