Slashdot Mirror
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?
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.
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.