When you stop regurgitating Roger Ebert's argument, I might be willing to debate this, although the collective community seemed to have ammassed all of the flaws in your post.
Zachary Amaranth said:Which is silly, because we have other art with direction.emeraldrafael said:So if a game is not goal oriented then its art?
It does seem to be the gist here, though. The "Games Aren't Art" argument has always struck me as similar to a line from a George Carlin routine, where he discounts gymnastics as a sport because it's "something Romanians are good at."
Except, being George Carlin, it was a joke.
This is like saying "Music isn't art because you can also dance to it."
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What does their artistic merit have to do with their creative freedom being protected? No when in the U.S. constitution does it say things are guaranteed protection if they are art. Games are guaranteed creative freedom based on the fact that it can't be taken away. Their protected for the same reason newspapers and protest are protected. Being art has nothing to do with this.Thaius said:I would like to think this viewpoint ceased to exist when all of the creative freedom of the medium in the entire United States hinged on video games being recognized for their artistic merit. Apparently not.Thamous said:Why does it matter if they're art?
I feel like gamers as a whole are so dead set on getting their favorite passed time classified and accepted as an "art" so they can justify their enjoyment of it.
Why? Stop giving a shit what other people think and just enjoy what you enjoy.
Not quite.Thamous said:What does their artistic merit have to do with their creative freedom being protected? No when in the U.S. constitution does it say things are guaranteed protection if they are art. Games are guaranteed creative freedom based on the fact that it can't be taken away. Their protected for the same reason newspapers and protest are protected. Being art has nothing to do with this.Thaius said:I would like to think this viewpoint ceased to exist when all of the creative freedom of the medium in the entire United States hinged on video games being recognized for their artistic merit. Apparently not.Thamous said:Why does it matter if they're art?
I feel like gamers as a whole are so dead set on getting their favorite passed time classified and accepted as an "art" so they can justify their enjoyment of it.
Why? Stop giving a shit what other people think and just enjoy what you enjoy.
If games we officially and legally considered "art" in the U.S. nothing would change, people like Jack Thompson would still try and get them censured and limited and they would still fail as miserably as they have now at achieving their goal. All the attempts to have legal regulations put in place on video games have failed simply because their unconstitutional. They would fail equally as hard if they were "art".
I explicitly said that seemed to be the argument, not that you agreed with them.emeraldrafael said:I wasnt really saying I agree with that opinion, just according to the OP thats what they define as a game being able to be art.
Hmm. Okay. Well, I consider films art, even though many if not most of them are made for entertainment purposes. I consider games art for the same reason; they're experiences designed to evoke some form of response. If a game is purely about gameplay, with no story elements or message that it's trying to convey (like a multiplayer game, for example) then I feel the game stops being art and becomes craft. However, most games have some form of story or message behind them and storytelling is an art, at least in my opinion it is.Chefodeath said:As much as I respect you respecting my opinion, the entire point of me opening up this thread is for you to try and convince me otherwise. A good definition will include all the commonly viewed paradigm examples of that category; No one would try to create a definition of science that didn't include biology or chemistry. I want you to tell me what makes video games such a paradigm example of art that not including them in my definition would be foolish.drummond13 said:By your definition of art, they aren't.
By my definition of art, they are, though currently a rather avant garde branch of art.
Nobody's going to your mind about this because your definition is set. There's nothing wrong with this: we all have our own personal feelings on what "art" is. But there's absolutely no point in debating the matter because we're each holding games to a totally different interpretation of the word "art". I don't see how the concept of winning and losing suddenly makes games any less an art form than movies but hey, as I said, that's based on my definition not yours.