Games will never be accepted as an art form

[EternalFacepalm]

Now think clearly for two seconds, and you'll know you're wrong.

 

[ChupathingyX]

Why can't we have a game that is fun to play and that many people can just sit down and play through, while at the same time include many hidden messages and characters with interesting stories and backgrounds that other gamers can analyse and pick apart themselves?

But games are art anyway, without any of that hidden messages, deep meaningful bullshit. Those things are not what makes something art. The dictionary says it's "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium" but really art is whatever you want it to be.

I wasn't saying that games have to have those things to be art, I was just responding to a particular comment.

Also, "bullshit"? What's so bad about having meanings in games, yeah sure it's nice to have games that are mindless fun, but it's also nice to have a game with an insightful story with interesting characters, and it's even better when a game includes both.

 

[Marik Bentusi]

Even if we leave out sandboxes like Minecraft, it's a completely different experience whether you watch someone play a game or do it yourself (with most good games anyway, I do agree there's quite a number of games where the player doesn't have any real input).

You cannot play a game without a player.

Even games that are full of cutscenes and linear corridors need some sort of button pressing to load the next scene. Thus there's always a quantum of interactivity and the "game" part of the game is still valid.
And if you're still worried about actual people not accepting it as an art form, look at a certain US court and remember that the kids of today are the adults of tomorrow. It's a scary thought sometimes, but people that grew up with the medium can have a radically different view on things. Seeing how big and influential the industry already is, I have no doubt at all it will be just as natural a form of art and entertainment as television and movies.

 

[KAPTAINmORGANnWo4life]

Expressing something is art. Making a speech is art, telling a dirty joke is art, giving an honest opinion is art. Games are art, that fact can't change, we don't need to talk about it anymore.

 

[Verlander]

I say it everytime, there is a difference between an art movement and an art medium. Ergo they CAN be art, but don't have to be art. Some games and their respective iconography are already considered art.... so yeah.

 

[oktalist]

Why can't we have a game that is fun to play and that many people can just sit down and play through, while at the same time include many hidden messages and characters with interesting stories and backgrounds that other gamers can analyse and pick apart themselves?

But games are art anyway, without any of that hidden messages, deep meaningful bullshit. Those things are not what makes something art. The dictionary says it's "the conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colours, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium" but really art is whatever you want it to be.

I wasn't saying that games have to have those things to be art, I was just responding to a particular comment.

Also, "bullshit"? What's so bad about having meanings in games, yeah sure it's nice to have games that are mindless fun, but it's also nice to have a game with an insightful story with interesting characters, and it's even better when a game includes both.

OK, we were both responding to particular comments that caused us to exclude some things in order to get through to people with a different worldview. Of course meaning is great. Deus Ex and The Longest Journey are in my top 3 games of all time. But it is not strictly necessary. And by bullshit meanings I meant specifically that faux-intellectual symbolism which is so killing the art world and putting people off art because they think it's all boring writing and analysis.

 

[guntotingtomcat]

Even if your story is the best in the world, even if your dialogue would put Shakespeare to shame, even if your game world is beautiful and mystical, your game isn't going to be called art outside of the gaming community. You want to know why? It's the "GAME" part of a GAME. You know, the part where you spend hours fighting off hordes of zombie and play phiysics puzzles and take part in random violence. Why is this a dooming quality? Because it could effectively be replaced by cutscenes, and it has no point. "But, you filthy, dirt encrusted dog whose name I don't dare speak lest it soil my soul," I hear you spit from the corner of your mouth as you try to comprehend ralking to someone so utterly disgusting and morally bankrupt, "A lot of art is pointless! Some great works of art don't send us a window into the artists soul. Think of the Dada movement. They just took fucking toilets and turned them into art!" And so you sit back on your throne of moral superioty, having won the day.
Or so you think. But first off, the dada movement was a load of shit between to shits on a shit sandwich, (so I basically included them just to get a dig in,) and all those other pointless bits of art are pointless because that's what they are supposed to be. Their meaning is to be meaningless, so to speak. Whereas all of gaming in games could be replaced by cutscenes. oh, sure, some games will be art, but they won't be games. They'll be linear corridors where your character is savaged by monsters that represent the artists inner demons a few times and then falls down a pit, and your only purpose for playing is to "make you feel his pain." But they won't be called games, oh no. They'll be called "immersive representations" or some such crap. So don't delude yourself. No meta-game is going to come along and redefine art and gaming as we know it. Games will never be accepted.

Now, I'm not just here to get beaten up and have my lunch money stolen, and you're not just here to beat me up and steal my lunch money! Your job, escapists, is to engineer a likely scenario in which games will be accepted. LIKELY! REALISTIC! KEY WORDS, PEOPLE! Or, failing that, just comment on what I've written. I'm just as depressed as you aren't, and I want you to pull me out of my funk. I apologize for the wall of textiness.

Art is subjective.
You are right, by your definition of the word art perhaps. But not by mine.

 

[Smooth Operator]

Sorry mate they already have, maybe sharpen your pitchfork for the next rally and I'll bring the torches.

 

[oktalist]

If everything can mean anything to anyone, nothing means anything at all.

We are all fighting over territories of meaning. So says the Minister of True Lies [http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Deus_Ex#Chad_Dumier].

 

[mechman123]

Allow me to point you all who have not watched them to the Extra Credits videos. They dont have all the answers, but they make some darn good points in my humble opinion.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3818-Art-Is-Not-the-Opposite-of-Fun
I don't believe that fun and art have to be mutually exclusive, which is what it sounds like many people are implying(as a general impression). Some seem to fear the creation of the stereo typical snooty art critic (as described fairly early in the thread). Its a image many of us know and apparently fear, but why? You ignore them already, but whos to say they dont already exist to some degree. Perhaps the reason you don't see them is because Video games has not evolved through the same process as the other mediums. Those Beret wearing walking jokes were a product of a different time and the different circumstances.
Furthermore I find it strange and slightly sad that the words "taking things seriously" have developed such a negative connotation with people regarding entertainment development.

 

[LiquidGrape]

"Could effectively be replaced by cutscenes"?

So your assertion is that what makes the interactive arts unique in media is actually its most damning quality?

Yeah, sorry, it doesn't work like that.

 

[jhaughton]

put it this way
if the Supreme Court of the United States had not ruled it as an art
it would be controlled and monitored 24\7 by suites that want to eventual be able to control everything.
it does not matter if individual people consider it an art. as long as it is unrestricted i am content.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

Your job, escapists, is to engineer a likely scenario in which games will be accepted. LIKELY! REALISTIC! KEY WORDS, PEOPLE! Or, failing that, just comment on what I've written. I'm just as depressed as you aren't, and I want you to pull me out of my funk. I apologize for the wall of textiness.

I give it a decade or two before there's a new medium that's the devil. When you look at videogames current status of villainy in the eyes of the press, it's reminiscent of other forms of media. Blues, punk and metal I'm sure weren't accepted as art forms in the musical world right away.

It's a matter of time for games, before something comes along to take the fall and then people will see games in a new light. You know, then there's that whole court case that took place that legally declared them as art a while back.

 

[Lilani]

-snip-

It seems the US Supreme Court and the National Endowment of the Arts disagree with you, then. They've already accepted interactive media as legitimate forms of art. Considering video game have only existed as we know them for about 30 years, I think that's pretty good as far as getting official recognition for a new form of art. Some new mediums and movements are hated for several decades on end, if not centuries, before finally being accepted.

I think it's already happening. It's just a matter of convincing the old people video games are not the devil, just as filmmakers had to convince people that film was not of the devil. And in about fifty years that won't even be a problem anymore. Then it will be us standing in the way of the next artistic movement. It's just the way of things.

 

[Rex Fallout]

Art is simply a representation of one's feelings, Ideals and ideas. It is mans attempt to physically reconstruct that which he has in his minds eye so that others may see it. So that they may love it. Hate it. Critic it. Be indifferent to it. That is what art is. And so, the very fact that you are on a gaming lifestyle website, judging whether or not games are an Art proves that they are. You're post contradicts the reason you meant to put it up. If it wasn't an art, no one would debate it.

 

[BodomBeachChild]

They said the same thing about movies. Now go watch Across the Universe.

 

[Dr Jones]

Yourargumentisinvalid.jpg

Everything this guy said here. You couldn't be more wrong (op). If you really are that thickheaded to believe that every game needs to have hours of killing zombies i suggest you go play "The Stanley Parable". A free mod for HL2 (though you dont need it) that in my honest opinon is art.

 

[Alon Shechter]

To quote the three headed Knight,
"He buggered off!"
OP sort of disappeared as soon as the good arguments came along.