But Is It Art?

[Vetta E-dom]

Your missing a word "high".

There a big difference between art and high art, every video game large or small, good or bad, simple or complex falls under a definition of art. Yet the lines between pop art, commercial art, high art and so forth are not so easily defined. It makes for a much better debate than "Are games Art?"

O please.. Do not listen to this

No one I know in either industry, games or gallery painting use the term "High art" its a stupid bullshit word that makes arrogant assholes look like they can critique art.
THE only people who use this word are not the type of people who you want to be listening to about their opinions on art..

No offense Baldr

 

[Skratt]

It's a creative medium so yes, although some games are more creative then others just like indie and manufactured pop music.

This quote pretty much sums it up for me. The only thing that makes games different from other forms of art is the sheer number of people working it. All of the same components are there - music, drawing, sculpting, engineering, etc. Games don't have to be noir or artsy fartsy just to be art. The movie Crank starring Jason Statham was arguably not something you'd find in the Louvre, but that movie too was still considered art.

 

[DeadlyYellow]

I find Chipman's views rather agreeable on the matter.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Art discussions are almost always moot because there's no clear defined line for what is and isn't art, and it's entirely subjective what you consider "art" or "not art" and even what you consider "good art" and "bad art".

I agree with some people in here in that I think all videogames are art. It's inherent in that medium. Now what you consider "good art" in a videogame is subjective, but you can't argue that one video game is art and another isn't because there's no tangible cut off line for when a game stops being art and starts becoming something else (?).

 

[Two-A]

I think of something as "not art" if it's remembered purely by its entertainment value, if it doesn't make you think, it has no meaning. If the only thing I get out of the expierience is "it was fun" or "it was boring", then I don't consider it art.

Long history short, it's the difference between Transformers 3 and Shcindler's List.

But as you said, the definition of art is subjective. You can't decide what other people consider art, it's a definition you build yourself.

 

[wookiee777]

The way I see it everything from the cheap-ass Wal-Mart chair I'm sitting in to the mass of pornography that circles the internet is art. I don't understand why people think art should be exclusionary, when everything can be appreciated as a something of expression. Everything on earth has its own unique style and tone/mood to convey.

I hate this debate because everything should be art no matter how shallow it is perceived by majority perceptions. Just because you hate it, doesn't make it "not art". What is wrong with making art an all encompassing term?

 

[Unsilenced]

Every video game is art without question. Like every movie or song out there. When you play a bad game, it's just bad art.

Direct comparison to make it simple.

GTA-The Godfather-Jay Z's The Blueprint

Call of Duty-Blade 2- Party Music

Too Human- Dardevil Movie- Rebecca Black's Friday song

But what is a game? What is a movie? What is a game?

Is "Man Sneezing" a movie? Is it art?

Is the 30 second video of a dude smacking his nuts on a railing while skateboarding art? News reel footage? Accidentally leaving a camera rolling?

It's an absurd argument. You cannot address the definition of art without addressing the intent. Art is, at it's core, attempting to convey something beyond the literal. A lump of clay that has been shaped to function as a brick is not art, but one that has been shaped to symbolize a man is. A picture taken to function as a mugshot is not art, but one taken to convey emotion and/or have aesthetic appeal is.

Now, art can be good or bad, effective or ineffective, but if it was intended to be art it should generally be considered art in some way.

The way I see it everything from the cheap-ass Wal-Mart chair I'm sitting in to the mass of pornography that circles the internet is art. I don't understand why people think art should be exclusionary, when everything can be appreciated as a something of expression. Everything on earth has its own unique style and tone/mood to convey.

I hate this debate because everything should be art no matter how shallow it is perceived by majority perceptions. Just because you hate it, doesn't make it "not art". What is wrong with making art an all encompassing term?

Because that would be stupid. If everything is art, nothing is.

If everything is art, then what is an art museum? It's not. It's a thing museum, because "thing" now means the same thing as "art." We would have absolutely no use for the word art. I could say I went to the bathroom, took an art in the art, then got up, washed my arts with art in the art, then dried them with an art.

It's insane. Words need to have goddamn definitions. It's one thing to say anything *can* be art, it's another to say that everything *is* art.

 

[Xanadu84]

All video games are art, because all games are a creative endeavor trying to engage an audience. Yes, that definition is INCREADIBLY broad. We also literally can't have a conversation about art without a definition that broad, without the conversation descending into a stupid, pointless clusterfuck. So if you think it's art, almost certainly, it's art. Art is not a very exclusive club.

After that, we have a spectrum between art and, "High Art", art that is truly moving and transformative. Some games have these high art characteristics in spades, and are generally accepted as being, "Artistic". Other games largely lack these traits. This gives a general idea of the sort of characteristics that gives something artistic value. But this is only because these traits TREND towards being moving and transformative for a percentage of players. On the level of the individual player, anything MIGHT be transformative and moving, and any interpretation of the SUBJECTIVE opinion on artistic merit cannot be wrong for that individual. So what art is can vary wildly. This does not negate the larger communities ability to discuss objective strengths of a games artistic merit. Instead, it is a reminded to the entire community that beauty percolates up from the collective, subjective experiences of individuals, and that pattern that forms out of the noise of collective opinions is a thing of beauty.

 

[Stilkon]

I like to think that all games have the potential to be art, just like any movie, book, song, album, or painting. I would argue that while A Clockwork Orange (both the movie and the book) is a piece of art, a Spongebob coloring book or The Expendables is not. Same thing with games; while some can be considered artistic, others are generic cash-ins, just like any other medium.

 

[madmatt]

Games can be art. Not nearly all games are art, but they can be. However even when a game is art, they're only art third. First they're a product to be sold to make money. Second they're a medium through which to entertain yourself. Only third can it be art. The first and second are more important than the third. And people tend to forget that...a lot. As a product to make money off of, customers have -every- right to complain when they're not satisfied. As a medium for entertainment, customers have -every- right to complain when the game isn't entertaining in the way it promised to be. Heck, even as art people have -every- right to critique it and call for change.

On that last part, would it be paintings, instead of people telling the painter to change he would just not be able to sell his work and go bankrupt. In games, the company at least gets a 'second chance' to give the people what they want and keep them paying them.

Well put, it said what I was thinking far better than I could! Perhaps then, the distinction is that games are rarely "pure" art (i.e. purely for the sake of expressing itself even if not entertaining etc), as they need to fulfill those other two functions, but can still be artistic and art as a derivative of, or, as well as those other two. It depends on the content, as fulfilling those 3 criteria, not the medium any more than everything on paper is art.

 

[TrevHead]

It's a creative medium so yes, although some games are more creative then others just like indie and manufactured pop music.

I'll also point out that art and money have always gone hand in hand. Most if not all celebrated artist's were professionals not hobbyist, which means they needed to eat.
Even much of the stuff those fine art snobs worship are paintings made for wealthy merchants and land owners to show off to his peers as their bling.

When Damian Hurst became famous he was sawing animals in half and knocking them out like a production line.

So called high art follows trends just like anything else.

EDIT Who knows maybe in 200 years in the future, art lovers will be queuing up to play MW3 and art critics fall over themselves in praise of such a "masterpiece"*

* Although I would rather an atom bomb destroy civilisation and humans become the slaves and pets to apeman, no language or bollocks than see that happen

 

[WanderingFool]

I agree with games being art, but at the same time I refuse to agree that because they can be art, they are above reproach[footnote][sub]Theres your fancy word for the day...[/sub][/footnote]. Like with ME3, just because you can say its art, doesnt mean we cant demand change. While games are art, they are also products. And as products, we can complain when we dont like what we got.

Ill also say that "what is art?" is also subjective.

*Edit*

Games can be art. Not nearly all games are art, but they can be. However even when a game is art, they're only art third. First they're a product to be sold to make money. Second they're a medium through which to entertain yourself. Only third can it be art. The first and second are more important than the third. And people tend to forget that...a lot. As a product to make money off of, customers have -every- right to complain when they're not satisfied. As a medium for entertainment, customers have -every- right to complain when the game isn't entertaining in the way it promised to be. Heck, even as art people have -every- right to critique it and call for change.

On that last part, would it be paintings, instead of people telling the painter to change he would just not be able to sell his work and go bankrupt. In games, the company at least gets a 'second chance' to give the people what they want and keep them paying them.

Actually forget what I said, and just read this.

 

[Kpt._Rob]

My Watercolor professor once shared with the class his method for defining art. I think it works really well here, and I think it can also point out some of the inherent problems in trying to decide whether or not a game is art.

A work of art then is a recording of between one and three things. It is a recording of an intellectual activity, for example Cezanne's portraits of Mont St. Victoire, which clearly demonstrate a breaking down of the visual field. It can be a recording of a physical activity, as would be the instance in the case of a Pollock painting, where it is the vast stretches of time put into the physical process that define the piece. The rarest instance is that of a work which records either emotional or spiritual activity, Rothko serves as a good example here. These elements all exist on a spectrum, such that a work can posses more or less of any of the three. Generally, to be considered a really good work of art, it must be strong in at least one category, but even better if it is strong in all three.

Here's where we run into a big problem with deciding whether a game is a work of art though, is in the devision of labor and intellectual activities. A game can record the intellectual activities of the developers, but it's rare that this is a single person, and often times the ideas an individual contributes may simply be permutations of someone else's idea. The people who are doing the physical activity that is getting recorded (in this case coding and graphical art) are also heavily subdivided. Not only that, but it's very rare that the people doing the labor to create the game had a role to play in the creation of the idea they're working to realize.

There are some big questions being raised by these scenarios. Regarding the people with the ideas, the question is "if you don't do the work to make your idea a reality, can you be considered an artist?" History would say yes, but even in the art world this is still up for debate somewhat. Many artists throughout history have used workshops where someone else rendered their ideas for them. In most cases though, they still know how to do the rendering, it's not that they couldn't do it themselves (as is the case with the idea people) it's that they couldn't maintain the same output working by themselves. But the recent case of Thierry Guetta (recorded in the Banksy documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop) has kind of thrown the issue back into the ring for debate again, since Guetta lacked the skills to do any rendering.

The second more damning question, and from my understanding the one the earlier thread was really digging at, is "can you be considered an artist if the work you're doing isn't towards the realization of your own idea?" The earlier question could (and please note that I italicized that could because I find the claim a little sketchy) be answered with a "yes" if one decided to consider the workers themselves as rendering tools. But there doesn't seem to be a satisfactory way to answer this question with a "yes," unless it's the case that the worker is equally inspired by the idea as the person who came up with it was. This seems dubious to me, but there is always the possibility that I could be wrong.

That final question, of whether a work captures either emotional or spiritual activity doesn't strike me as one that needs too much dwelling on. While there are some rare games which manage to capture emotion, it is really doubtful that all of the people working on the game were caught up in that emotion. That is to say the game conveys the idea of emotion, but it doesn't record emotion, if that difference makes any sense to anyone. And while I'm not going to say it couldn't happen, I have yet to play a game which struck me as being spiritual.

Now indie games have a little bit of an easier time addressing these issues. Their smaller staffs and riskier turnarounds mean that it's much more likely all members of the team are invested enough in creation to be considered artists in my mind. But AAA games are a little bit harder for me to look at in such a like. In these instances, it seems like most of the people involved (who aren't insane and named Peter Molyneux) probably wouldn't be there if they weren't getting paid.

 

[V8 Ninja]

Here's my opinion on the whole Video-Games-As-Art debate:

I constantly find myself enjoying TF2 far more whenever I realize I'm not debating semantics on a web forum.

Take that statement as you will. Also, I'm calling it now; DEBATES ABOUT/INVOLVING MASS EFFECT 3 WILL NEVER DIE. EVER. If you pester me for more wisdom, all you're getting is the "Try Again Later" side of the die.

 

[Vetta E-dom]

Games can be art. Not nearly all games are art, but they can be. However even when a game is art, they're only art third. First they're a product to be sold to make money. Second they're a medium through which to entertain yourself. Only third can it be art. ........................................................

......... bankrupt. In games, the company at least gets a 'second chance' to give the people what they want and keep them paying them.

All games are art.. Period .. there is no exception to this.. the meaning, context, and content can change and because of this what type of art it is changes but no matter what all games are art. All movies are art, every genera of music, every song is art, every leaf falling from a tree is art, every bump and flake in dried wall paint is/are/will be art.

Everything is a product made to sell money every form of art fulfills this. As an opening bullet point go back to your art history. Pop-art: Pop art employs aspects of mass culture, such as advertising, comic books and mundane cultural objects. Noted for its mass production. also for its advertising/ influence... Tomato soup any one...?

Art Nuvo: The style was influenced strongly by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, when Mucha produced a lithographed poster, which appeared on 1 January 1895 in the streets of Paris as an advertisement<<< Mucha for Christ sake made lithographs selling drinks and candies, Hes one of the greatest designers EVER go look at deviant art and just about 80% of the work there is a knock off of his posters.

Every popular art movement is tied to making something popular to sell money, movies, paintings, advertisement, music, games so your first point doesn't really have much validity I mean yeah its true but it also describes everything in the world.

Second a medium in which you use to entertain yourself.. Do I honestly have to pick this one apart... Do you not understand A. the historical significance, or B. the practical application of painting, music, and video games. Do I not go to the movies to be entertained, do I listen to a song only out of necessity. Small history lesson during the 16th century Dutch golden age there was a rise in a middle class, finally people were wealthy enough to purchase a lot of things that weren't really needed. This Is where we get genera paintings, and a lot of more allegorical paintings. A genera painting is just a painting of every day life, allegorical paintings are paintings of mythical beasts, greek/ roman gods and monsters, and they are used to create a duality of story in relation to the everyday/ historical surrounding. So basically painters were paid to create stories of gods and beasts reenacting the drama/ history of every day life in fantasy.

Now I realize that in today's age you might not respond/ comprehend paintings and other subsequential "ART" the same way as a citizen in say the 16th century would, but to them this was something they would stare at and interact with in a way that might not even be possible in today's age are you one to really say that No one can be entertained by a painting.
If you are than I really pity you.

Only third can they be art... yeah this list is honestly full of holes and misguided information


O and at least studios get a second chance to make their customers happy.. UGh tell that to the couple 1000 of studios that closed because no one bought the game. Or even tell that to the 1000s of studios that have collapsed or went bankrupt because of piracy, or their game wasn't well received, or any publisher problems, /etc
At least they didn't have to deal with all the bratty spoiled gamers ***** about how bioware/ EA is the worst company in the world because it was sad when Shep died.

 

[sanquin]

-Snip-

You know, a whole essay about why everything is art is meaningless. You're like those people going 'But how do we know anything is real, man!' Definitions have to be made, boundaries have to be put in place. If EVERYTHING was art, then the word itself wouldn't exist. Technically everything is nature. Even chemicals, buildings, plastic, etc. As it all comes from, or is made by nature. But we don't call everything nature now do we? Technically, every sound is music. But we don't call a car driving by music now do we?

Stop with your huge over-generalization and try to actually add to the discussion rather than subtracting from it.

 

[Vetta E-dom]

Talking out your

Interesting cause from where I'm sitting you're the one making claims that are subtracting from the conversation with out really adding any meaning.

Ill also have you know I work professionally as both a concept artist and a gallery artist. And from my experience in both industries I have found what I have said to be true, when I'm designing for games, fashion, or just any other body of work I take visual cues from every possible little thing imaginable. Like Iv said I take the veins off leaves, Ill pull up lava flow charts and use them as brushes, Ill pull up light bulb, light fixtures, etc and so forth to design engine parts, art is found every where, to define it you do your self and everyone else a disservice.

Now I can guess from your post you not might be intelligent enough to see the beauty in this and I am sorry for that, really cause you're the one missing out. And if you haven't yet realized it the easiest way to troll people is to drop a forum where you try to have people define art, its pretty useless.. Like your comments that lack context, and a bit of history as to what is art, again tons of art movement are just born out of what preconceived notion of what art is supposed to be, and because of this we get a crap ton of bad art.

If your to arrogant or unintelligent to understand what I'm saying I can use smaller words next time and try to break it down a bit more but if you don't have a huge understanding of what your talking about please do me a favor and don't post about it.

 

[Ruzinus]

Art is not immutable. The campaign that ME3 needed a changed ending never implicitly claimed that it wasn't art, and the idea that suggesting (or even demanding) that something should be changed is saying that it isn't art is excessively stupid.