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"Are Games Art?" and the Intellectual Value of Design (timconkling.com)
itwbennett writes: Tim Conkling is an independent game developer whose current project, Antihero, is a strategy game about running a thieves' guild in a Dickens-inspired Victorian city. Recently he had the opportunity to talk to (i.e., was held captive by) an elderly and 'accomplished playwright, set designer, and painter' who quickly dismissed game design as 'not art.' The question of games being art or not isn't a new one. Roger Ebert was on the 'games are not art' bandwagon in 2010. More important to Conkling, who wrote about this interaction in a recent blog post, is the notion that any 'intentionally designed' piece is worthy of intellectual respect. "Nobody would ever seriously write off, for example, an Eames chair or a Gehry building; whether these objects fit some random definition of 'art' is inconsequential to their perceived cultural value." writes Conkling.
you can get away with.
We had this debate back in 2010 when Roger Ebert attacked video games. http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/video-games-can-never-be-art
"art" could mean just about anything in English, so yes video games can be art.
Other languages are different. For example in Korean, art means painting/drawing/sculpture. Music is not art, it's music. So for Koreans, video games are not art.
Or in the pixels my eye perceives. Art is about experiencing the artist's perspective or portrayal of a subject. If artist and the viewer are requirements for art to exist, so if someone creates a thing and both parties agree its art who can argue otherwise?
It's not a matter of opinion. The quality of any work of art is subjective, but its status as art is an objective, self-evident, irrefutable fact.
And it's not just the "best" games, or the ones that meet some arbitrary threshold of "artiness". Yes, Braid and Bioshock are art, but so are Duke Nukem Forever and Custer's Revenge.
Nor is it just video games. It's all games. Everything from tag to checkers to D&D to Monopoly is art, too.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Usually not.
Can they be? Unquestionably, yes.
"There is such a thing as bad art, you just never see it."
That said, there ARE games that are art...
Well, we see what side you come down on. Otherwise, you'd have been calling them ART-LOVING COWS!!
If a urinal on a pedestal is art, a game can certainly be art.
How conveniently self-validating and self-inflating for the playwright and Mr. Ebert to conclude that their sphere of media is art while not-their-sphere of media is not art.
Okay, if you can take the "Bloody Penguin from Yeti Sports" and simply give it a fresh look and walk away with millions, then "the intellectual value of design" is clearly there. Since it's samzenpus's pick I always automatically assume it's a monetary issue. The word "art" is much like the word "natural", everything and nothing is depending on the context.
An example of the value of art: http://news.nationalgeographic...
Personally, I learned how to code, and how to speak English all because of a game called Meridian 59 http://www.meridian59.com/, and am proud to admit, I still dream of the landscape from time to time. So John can suck it! (Don't tell him I said that.)
Are games art? Well they definitely contain art and require some creative input and material. So maybe Zork or other text-based games might technically not count as art; call it adventuring or role playing or something? It's like asking if an art gallery itself, is technically "art" (Not really? Sort of? Maybe? but it contains artworks).
The most important question is, who cares whether video games technically count as art or not? I could take a dump in a styrofoam container, cover it in rainbow sprinkles, put some edgy label on there like "GMO free" or "Monsanto", and sneak it into an art gallery - and people would be convinced it's technically "art". The existing definition is so vague, that's it's practically meaningless.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
No more than a painting of a computer is technology.
To me, video games are indeed art.
When I got GTAV I was smitten by how beautifully was captured in both look and feel. Sure theyre both stylized interepretations of Southern California, but that's part of art in my definition. I found/find myself often just racing through through beautiful place that is my hometown in various vehicles.
Since Im middle aged, I thought back to the first time I played Pong across the street at my buddy's house. The game captivated us then technological hayseeds. First off, I was pretty amazed at the ability to control a rectangle on TV. Neat stuff. Then the subtleties of the physics delighted us for hours before we jumped back on our bicycles or made off with our wrist rockets.
Art is kind of subjective. Just recently the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, CA got a new directed. He recently changed the old policy forbidding inclusion of Chicano art in the musuem. I don't know if you understand how absurd banning Mexican American's art from a Latin American art museum in So Cal is. I'm so white, I'm I'm actually skim milk blue but one of the best things in my life has been the diversity. I've had friends, girlfriends, tons of family from various backgrounds. How anyone can be a fan of art, who directs a Latin American art museum, in fricken Southern California can not by their own honest, internal observations accept Chicano art strikes me as beyond odd and beyond mere racist. I mean the dude must have been racist against art!
Hope this illustrates my point - pun not intended but appreciated! The definition of art varies. But I think those who fail to appreciate digital art are just as odd as the former director of Long Beach's MoLA. And I don't sweat it - dinosauers do eventually die.
I think games utilize art. Textures are art, the music is art, the plot line may be art. But a game itself is a computer program that brings all these different types of art together into a form of entertainment.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
I find it hard to understand why "are games art?" strikes anyone as enough of a question to even be asked. Unless you hew to a far narrower definition of 'art' than even most critics and artists do; it seems pretty obvious that they have the potential to qualify.
This doesn't mean that most of them are anything but sophomoric schlock produced entirely for mercenary purposes; but the same is true of music, film, photography, etc. and nobody seriously advances the "Music can't be art; because boy bands and pop tarts!" position or argues that Uwe Boll refutes the artistic status of film.
We don't need the likes of Roger Ebert to recognize us. Attempts to "make" video games art not only completely ignore games like Bioshock, but invariably come as nothing more than basic indoctrination for ideological agendas.
Yes, games are art. All games are art. Just like the existence of stick figures does not destroy the Mona Lisa, so does Angry Birds not destroy Bioshock. The only ones asking the question are those who do not understand it. Gamers, on the other hand, just want to be left to enjoy their medium.
So what? Games don't *have* to be art, they have to be games. If we get into the debate as it is presented (ie "are videogames art?"), we concede on a very important point that we shouldn't: art is not better than games. Games don't have to "rise up" to the level of art, they're already on the same level. They're important for human development in their own way, just like art is. How come nobody goes up to an artists and asks "this is nice, but is this a videogame?".
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Games and Art are Misogyny.
It's time we did more to get more Women into Art and Games including offering programs and mentoring that exclude men (aka Misogynists).
I remember playing the controversial game Manhunt back in the day.
I popped a plastic bag over a bad guy's head then as he was gasping for air, I kept punching him in the face until he was dead. Then I used a shard of glass to stab out another person's eyes. Disemboweling scumbags with a sickle was always fun. Then, of course, the chainsaw on PigMan was the crowning glory.
So, yeah, video games are art.
Trolling is a art,
When I was young many programmers claimed programming was art. In our days we see discussions on /. whether if there is any engineering involved in "crafting software". Some people even claim there is no "computer science" as software has nothing to do with science (in relation to medicine or astrophysics).
My opinion is pretty simple: everything starts with the trade, or the craft, while you improve your craftsmanship you might look at the same problems more from an engineering and later a scientific point of view. You an even do that without a lot of craftsmanship ... plenty of software engineers who design/develop software but are mediocre or "non elegant" programmers proof that. Similar for scientists. However both scientists and engineers benefit greatly from actually being good in "the craft". The more elegant, expressive and probably simple and emotional a piece of craft is: the more it is art.
Science can be Art (E.g. the Theory about Relativity), Engineering can be Art (e.g. the Eiffel Tower), Craftsmanship can be Art (e.g. Jewelry or Furniture), music, movies, theatre is Art, so obviously computer games can be Art, too.
Many things are art ... just google "the art of" a nice hit: http://www.ovationtv.com/serie...
The Art of War, Martial Arts, the Art of Cooking, the Art of forging a superb sword ... the Art of Dancing, the Art of Making Love ... the Art of Healing ...
Neglecting a certain craft or human activity the potential to be an Art or can be developed into an art is just plain stupid.
Zen, Tea Ceremony, playing Go, Archery, Mastering a Horse, Sailing around the world, crafting a cloth, there are cloth patterns in the world where a single person needs decades to make enough of the cloth for a single dress. Of course that is not Art ... just a Sisyphus Arbeit .... pfffft
How poor a mind you must be if you don't see and appreciate the Art in the simplest things.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
If you thing that games are art, then you are using a different definition of art than the art community. Unless you have taken art and design classes, then you probably do not understand what they mean when they say art. You can trivialize it all you want, and use the lame "any word means what I think it means." But in reality, words mean things. Very specific things. Sometimes they are hard to understand unless you have the correct background. And in that context, no, games are not art.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Looks like video games match every single English definition of the word "art" out there:
art - noun \'art\
* something that is created with imagination and skill and that is beautiful or that expresses important ideas or feelings
* works created by artists : paintings, sculptures, etc., that are created to be beautiful or to express important ideas or feelings
* the methods and skills used for painting, sculpting, drawing, etc.
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art
* The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power
* Works produced by human creative skill and imagination
* Creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/art
Unless we are going by the definition of "anything I don't like is not art", then only the artist gets to decide.
Now, art can be shit, but it is still art. Just like most video games, in fact.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Art can be many things. The term itself is subjective which is why we're actually having a debate as to whether or not a game is art. There are definitely art components to a game, but the end result typically is not. Can a game be art, absolutely. Art is a form of communication with an express purpose to cause a some specific reaction in the viewer to to help us realize something about ourselves or whatever else the artist is trying to convey.
A game can defintely be beautiful, with many "art" components, but I would call it art with a "little a" because the game is commercial and meant to be a product rather than a message. Games come very close to being art at times, but until such time as they are intended from the start to be "Art" where the success of a piece can be determined in accomplishing something beyond what it is as a physical product.
In counterpoint I look at something like a Michelangelo sculpture, what differentiates that from some mass produced statue in a store? To that I would say that the artist was trying to capture his vision and create it in a physical form.. in which case a game could definitely be considered "Art"...
So is a game art.. i guess the only answer can be.. "If it was intended to be" .. at which point one can weight whether or not it was successful art.
Almost all games are art. Not all games are great art. Or even worthy of consideration.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It really just goes to Art quality. Why do people playing games demand to be taken so seriously?
Much like the urinal, you have to interact with video games to appreciate them as art.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
I give you: Big Rigs over the Road Racing.
Or just possibly, it's a very elaborate piece of performance art.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
My personal view draws some relatively bold lines between something being art and being artistic.
The fine arts (music, dance, painting, sculpting, etc.) are obviously art. The value of the their existence is based squarely on their appraisal as art.
An automobile, a house (even a Frank Lloyd Wright home), and a video game can be artistic when judged for their artistic elements, but since they have primary functions beyond art, they cannot be wholly works of art. A video game, first and foremost, must be intentionally interactive with some sort of agenda for the player to fulfill. If an automobile does not have an engine, then it's not an automobile. And Frank Lloyd Wright himself continually professed that the form (artistic elements included) of an object should follow its function. He wasn't creating raw art, but integrating artistic sensibilities to functional pieces of everyday life.
Lastly, and I always piss some people off with this one, I don't think something can be art in the traditional sense if it is digital. Art must have the potential to be a failure. Painting, sculpting, even oration can all fail. Photography with traditional film can be an absolute waste if the appropriate lighting, focus, framing, etc. is not achieved. But in digital photography, you get the seemingly limitless opportunity to edit. Digital photography captures images and editing alters those images whereas film captures single, uneditable moments.
Video games can be written, re-written, launched, patched, upgraded, and have relative artistic value based on hardware. When all is said and done, it's more machine than man.
I also distinguish between sports, races, competitions, games and endeavors.
I do not expect many positive points for this post.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Sure. Just as there cannot be a door knob that is not art. Or a zipper pull tab that is not art. Or ballpoint pen that is not art. Or a chair. or a pizza box. or a monthly credit card statement, or screwdriver, or a coupon for cat food. All of these things required some creative choices ... colors, textures, fine details, and their placement, etc. It's all art.
So yes, if that's the threshold, then "all games are art". That's not a very interesting thing to say though.
So when people ask whether games are art, they ARE invariably referring to a more nebulous definition of an artistic pursuit wherein an artist is attempting to evoke a response from his audience. Are games THAT kind of art is what they are asking?
And yes, absolutely, some games, most definitely do rise to that level of art. You named a few yourself.
But a simplistic knockoff freemium game on the app store that is little more than a skinner box attached to a nag screen for your credit card number... it's art on the same level as the coupon book from mcdonalds I got mailed yesterday is art.
It has nothing to say. It's not trying to get you to think (and really it would just prefer it if you didn't think and just entered your credit card number for some more coins/gems/whatevers). And anything thinking you do end up doing is entirely incidental to it's raison d'etre; and probably a detriment to it fulfilling its purpose of distracting you into extracting a few more dollars from your wallet without your noticing.
And seriously, even Duke Nukem had things to say and even caused controversy and was an intentional parody of it's genre.
But a lot of the stuff i see on the app store. Yeah, some guy drew some cutesy icons and animations, and that's "art" but the game itself is no more interesting artistically than a dollar store toilet brush. That is to say: yes its art, but so what?
Ditto for tag. Tag isn't artistically interesting.
According to EA, all their games are "art". which also means that no one is allowed to complain about poor design in games such as Mass Effect 3 because, well, its "art" and no one is allowed to complain about art.
Seriously though - what the heck does it mean to say that something is "art" - so what? For games, the only issue that matters is "are they entertaining enough to warrant paying money for them?" This all strikes me as people trying to aggrandize their work in order to argue that somehow it is "better".
A painting of a soup can is art. Rap is considered music (by some, not me).
You do not understand what art is.
If films, comics, books are art then so are games. Period. If not then not.
It was sorted long time ago:
- game mechanics are not copyrightable, however,
- the text that explains the rules is copyrightable,
- all the art used on the rule books etc are also copyrightable
Simple.
Almost anything could be considered art.
This post is art.
It's not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of propaganda. The educational part of this slashdot post is that the headline asks the question rather than answers it. Slashdot. If this is a debatable question to the slashdot crowd, then the takeaway lesson is that this is an unwinnable political debate. When one poses a question of "Is X art?" it is the obvious spearhead of a campaign to suppress the freedom of speech to produce X.
Art is work intended to interact with the aesthetic sense of its audience.
(Aesthetic sense is evaluation of a work other than for its utilitarian aspects.)
Tycho over at Penny-arcade made the point:
They hired dozens of artists who worked together for a year to create something that looks nice. Sounds like art to me.
One the other hand, if you're asking for Great Art, something that moves your soul, and changes the way you view the world, most isn't but neither is most of anything.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You are bitter that I understand it better than you do.
any 'intentionally designed' piece is worthy of intellectual respect
Guess what that "respect" actually means? (a) Critics should discuss the work of art and how it criticises society and condemns the status quo, and how the artists uses various means to do that or (b) lining the pockets by inventing some new copyrightable or trademarkable or designmarkable (what the heck do we already have nowadays?!?) thing?
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
There was a music director that just about got fired for an implicit answer to that question: "Musicians to the left side of the room, vocalists to the right." (The department chair was a vocalist.)
The boundaries of all the arts are fuzzy. Anyone who makes a claim that something is, or is not, art is telling you more about their thought processes than about the physical universe. Or they could be being prescriptivist about the social universe. They aren't talking about anything even in principle physically measurable. It's like the definition of pornography. If it doesn't turn you on, it's not pornography, no matter what it does for someone else. (I'm *NOT* asserting that everything that turns you on is pornography. A wide boundary is all I feel comfortable even considering. Erotica is much more varied.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Uh-huh. And your proof that Tim Conkling, the video game designer who wrote the article in question, is part of this shadowy game-censoring cabal is...?
Yeah. That's what I thought.
Science starts with something complicated and tries to make it simple.
Art starts with something simple and tries to make it complicated.
Games are games first, art second.
If a game is designed to be art first, then it comes out being a boring, tedious piece that would've likely been better as a film or book.
If a game is fun, engaging, and enjoyable, but has very little in terms of "art" in it, be it visuals, audio, or story, it is still a fun and engaging game that you will probably play for hours and hours on end. Lets face it, flappy bird is as far as you can get from art, yet people played the shit out of it. Tetris is a ugly display with bleep-bloop music, yet it is one of the most well known video games out there.
Im not saying that artistic games are bad, but artistic games that put art first and leave gameplay and enjoyment as an afterthought are horrible.
Sorry your parents wouldn't buy you that PS4 you kept bugging them for, but this isn't the way to handle that.
... when people don't realise they're that.
It's important to realise that the issue at hand is the definition of 'art', and that's not directly related to video games. If and when a definition that's agreed upon by all sides can be reached, deciding whether games are art would be easy.
Essentially it doesn't matter.
Do you enjoy games? If so, awesome. If not, fine - there are plenty of other pursuits you can enjoy. If you do, then I hope you appreciate the mental, and emotional experience.
If I declare games to be "art" does it in any way enhance that experience? If I declare them "not art" does it in any way diminish it?
It's a pretentious label. Most gamers don't care whether it's art. They don't care whether books or music are art either. They just enjoy them.
It is of relevance, just what is meant by the questions that are asked, whenever the word "art" is used, at least that way one would enter a discussion in which "art" doesn't become a qualitative statement as such, or as if something being "art" had some inherent meaning to it just like that.
Also, it is worth knowing that some time ago, "art" as a general notion of something valuable, was undermined when it was pointed out that anything that is randomly placed in an art museum suddenly becomes "art", because it isn't obvious what would be art, and what wouldn't be art just like that.
It is probably a good idea to think of "art" as foremost being an art piece, at best, and not simply infer something qualitative into something you would like to think of as being "art", otherwise everything might perhaps be thought of as being "art" for a variety of reasons, and a discussion about what should be or should not be thought of as art probably quickly descend into pointless relativistic drivel.
If someone wants to create art, but nobody likes it or nobody want to call it "art", is that thing or action then "art"?
Thus, obviously, anything "art" is a cultural thing, like language and meaning.
Oh.. you didn't think you have a soul did you, and that there is or was the supernatural god that exist?
Or, do you believe good and evil are real things?
Or that "problems" are real things that you see around you?
How silly of you.
Is a book art?
Is a "choose your own adventure" book art?
Is a movie art?
Is a choose your own path art?
Okay those questions answer the topic as a whole, but there is another path to this.
If your break a game down to it's pieces:
Are the tokens in a game art, the money, the graphics.
What about a 3d model. (if you don't believe a 3d model is art, then remember you can "print" up a 3d model and chance an actual model, which can be made of any material. Thus a statue, which is definitely art. So is the blueprint, or dye for a model art?)
What about the mechanics? Many pieces of art require that you "follow the rules" or it is no longer art. For example a magic act, if your were to rush the stage, hold the levitating orb etc... you would be violating the rules of the act. Similarly you are expected to sit as an observer in a theater, to follow the rules of a sort. Breaking these rules will have you kicked out of the theater, similarly you can be banned from many games for breaking their rules.
Okay but an observer is very different from an active participant. But if we exclude active participants, then many theme park rides need to be excluded, magicians can't, use audience members as part of their tricks, and kinetic sculptures can't have any motion that comes from the observer.
What this means is that at both the macro and micro levels games exhibit no new features from something that is not already considered art. heck there are people who even go crazy over collecting memorabilia from their favorite games. Just like you have coin, snow globe, mickey mouse, coke, movie, etc... collections. Heck even the graphics engines used in games are used in making digital art for professional movies. Some games have even more advanced rendering systems, with higher polygon models than many movies used or are using to render their scenes, some use the exact same rendering systems. (For example you can make movies with blender, and games as well. Heck I have even seen entire movies made within games level editors.)
If you are going to say games are not art then I challenge you to tell me where you draw the line. Expect to have me point out entire genres of art that will be excluded by your line. I can site sources if need be, but I can almost guarantee you that it will include something that is considered art, and will make you look foolish for excluding it.
In the end it is an opinion, but if you try to make it official i will nail you to the floor with it.
There are games that are art but not all games are art.
It's not a matter of opinion. The quality of any work of art is subjective, but its status as art is an objective, self-evident, irrefutable fact.
And it's not just the "best" games, or the ones that meet some arbitrary threshold of "artiness". Yes, Braid and Bioshock are art, but so are Duke Nukem Forever and Custer's Revenge.
Nor is it just video games. It's all games. Everything from tag to checkers to D&D to Monopoly is art, too.
There is not, never has been, and cannot ever be a game that is not art.
Well, ok, but that's just like saying that if a two year old draws two circles and calls it a cat, or if I whistle the Close Encounters motif out of tune, then they're "art" too, because they are drawing and music.. Having such a wide definition reduces the term to meaninglessness.
Is me laying a rotten plank of wood over a puddle "civil engineering" as much as the Golden Gate Bridge?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yes, those are both art. Anyone who claims they aren't is completely, objectively wrong.
No, it doesn't. It reduces the utility of the word for those who want to conflate "art" with "appealing to me personally", but those people are worthless scumbags whose deliberate misuse of words to cover their own insecurities should always be called out for the filthy lies that they are.
Yes. That it is less sophisticated does not change this fact.
Art is required in games, just as it is required in movies and books. But not all games are art, just as not all movies or books are art. Some far from it. 8-)
For that matter, art is required in Engineering and Crafting. And some of those are art, even though some deny it.