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Smithsonian Unveils 'Art of Games' Voting Results
AndrewGOO9 writes "The Smithsonian American Art Museum, in recognizing that electronic games are a part of our artistic history has now unveiled the 80 games out of a proposed pool of 240 that will be included in The Art of Video Games exhibit running from March 16, 2012 to September 30, 2012. While the winning games (PDF), as voted by gamers and art enthusiasts alike, are all stand-out titles, it goes without saying that this a huge step in the recognition of video games as artisitic masterpieces."
Without this game among the nominees, this list is worthless.
Art != "Visually Appealing" (though I happen to think that Minecraft is very beautiful in its own way).
Minecraft offers an experience that's pretty different from almost every other game, including the ones that has influenced it. It's not even complete, yet it's consumed the time of so many people and has sold over TWO MILLION copies despite a complete lack of promotion and advertising (other than word of mouth, obviously). It's a game with an extremely simple interface and complete freedom. Regardless of whether or not you think it's "boring" or that the graphics are "bad," it does deserve recognition as a unique experience. You can farm, explore caves, and even create basic computers WITHIN Minecraft! Minecraft really is what you make it... something that not many games, even the sandbox ones, can claim.
Of course, I'm not really sure if this is even worth responding to, as your argument is "Minecraft? Really?" Which really isn't an argument at all.
Everyone's saying "where's this, where's that" and I've agreed with every one of them. My personal bone to pick is the total absence of Uru, one of the sequels to Myst. Go look it up. You'll understand.
The problem with this list is multi-faceted. Remember, first, that the list was selected by the public. This is not something that art institutes generally do (have you ever heard of popular vote picking any other art display? What about one meant to introduce a new topic?) and while we could suggest that it's because they felt they were unequipped to do so, it's not like experts in the field don't exist. They could have asked game reviewers, for example. Or even game designers—artists tend to make good art critics, after all.
But instead they jumped on the populist bandwagon, and did an online poll, because that's what's hip and trendy and gets the kids involved. That's all gaming is to them: something for kids; a passing fad. Actually, it's not even really for current kids, it was for people who were kids during the eighties, and had either an Atari VCS, a Colecovision, an Intellivision, a C64, a NES, or a Master System. The sixteen-bit era is squashed up against the late nineties as if there were no difference, and many important platforms like the Amiga, BBC Micro, and MSX were just left out. Not even the Macintosh gets a mention. And furthermore, the games have to fit into one of a few genres—doesn't that go against the fundamental point of modern art?
The organizers of this presentation aren't looking at games based on the intention, expression and skill of the artists, which is what art critique is supposed to be about. When Ebert said games couldn't be art, it was because he was ignoring the design of game mechanics as an artistic focus, and accused their storytelling and composition of being immature. This presentation gives the impression that he's right due to its lack of care.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
And i will expand on what you said to point out that there are some really beautiful things in Minecraft. Also some incredibly bizarre things and some horrifying things as well of course.
Some of the generated landscapes can be impressive, and of course what people then do with it is often even more impressive. Yes everything is blocky, but a lot of stuff is built to such a large scale that it ends up looking like pixel-art.
So it's a game that allows its users to create incredibly impressive stuff. Stuff that a lot of people like looking at and find beautiful/awe-inspiring/disgusting or in some other way emotionally moving. How is that not as close to what "real" art is supposed to do as we can reasonably define?
And before anyone decides to argue that most of that is user created content and not part of the game itself as originally shipped, how can you contemplate whether video games are art without considering the interactive part of "interactive entertainment"?
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