Games will never be accepted as an art form

[DanteVX]

I think this is an argument that is being won in different areas. I know that at DiGRA conferences and the like, we already accept video games are a form of art work. So the academic world at least, is accepting them as an artistic medium. It is true people may be more accepting of games if they change the name slightly, as is the case with 'comic books' and 'graphic novels'.

It is difficult to believe, for me at least, that they wont be accepted. With video games getting funding from arts councils, something which will probably be happening more and more. I know local councils in England, near me have been looking at it. University English departments are accepting students who want to research video games the same way they accept those coming to study the 'classics'. I know when I was looking for funding, I got offers from English literature funding boards, though they expect you to use a Naratology approach rather than Ludology. However, art and humanities are starting to accept them.

If your interested/want to have your faith restored in the rest of the world accepting games have a read of some of Henry Jenkins stuff, either his blog or published works. There is also a book released at the end of the month called 'Aesthetic Theory and the Video Games' By Dr Graeme Kirkpatrick, that shows how the old rules of art, like those of Adorno etc. still apply to video games.

Just wait and the info and research will filter down over time and it will do it in an annoying way. No one will say we were right, or apologise for all the crap they have called us out for. Just in generation or two's time, it will be accepted and people will look at you weird for asking if it as an art form.

 

[Drall]

Games are a budding new art form, and I honestly don't see why so many people are upset about this. No one's suggesting all games just become colourful, abstract things where you're not having any fun. A game can make you think AND be fun at the same time, and I find it odd that a lot of people can't grasp that.

Every medium needs to be judged differently. While neither movies nor books need to be fun to be considered works of art, video games do. Therefore, when making a video game, the developers must think of that foremost. But I see no reason why they can't add a message, or create parallels to real-world problems, or something like that. So long as it doesn't detract from the gameplay or fun, then they have succeeded. Because a game shouldn't just be art, or it will never hope to succeed. It has to think about being fun too.

Off the top of my head, I can name two examples: Bioshock and Shadow of the Colossus. Both insanely fun games, both explore different topics. Both huge successes. So those people saying "I don't want it to be art, I just want to have fun", well there's proof that you can have both.

 

[FalloutJack]

-Unusual Rant-

Likely scenario? Dude, I don't need to. I live in the country that legally classified games as art. Even if the rest of the world disagrees, precident makes proof. Frankly, alot of the gaming community wanted it too, so even if lawful acceptance isn't enough, people still do.

 

[Brandon237]

Oh my snip!

That is actually a very nice idea, as a two short game that serves the same purpose as an interactive, uplifting movie, that would be a damn good game, I say that time-frame because it would probably be a little boring after four hours, but if you kept the mechanics clever and interesting, you could tell a really good story and I agree that that would definitely be art. I would make an effort to play that if the mechanics were decent, we need a dev! Well done on that idea.

The emotional side of that actually reminded me of viricide, a very good little free flash game that I'm sure has shed many tears... Corny at times, yes, but it has its artistic merit.

 

[Crash 9000]

Many people on these forums try very hard to act like Yahtzee, which doesn't make you look witty/funny/intelligent, because many people who come here, come here mainly for Yahtzee, and OP is no exception. It just makes you look desperate to appear awesome, so you try to steal someone else's content.

OT: Anything can be art I suppose, why does a consensus be required for something to be art? I've found many games to be what I would consider "art". And I've found that 90% of what the consensus defines as "art" is boring and doesn't appeal to me at all. I suppose "art" is just a fancy way of saying, "something I like, that affects my emotions".

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

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.

The "game" part, at it's core, simply refers to the fact that there is a mechanical system of some sort that mediates success and failure.

You know, the part where you spend hours fighting off hordes of zombie and play phiysics puzzles and take part in random violence.

Not all games are as you have described.

Why is this a dooming quality? Because it could effectively be replaced by cutscenes, and it has no point.

Story can obviously be presented in a very passive way. The potential games offer is that it allows the player to interact with the story. Being given an entirely new way to convey a story is a relatively important thing. Books offer a different set of tools than oral traditions, plays have new ones still, and movies give yet more tools. Yet, when you get right down to it, any story can be told orally. Does that mean that all those other media are "pointless"?

"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.

I think the interesting thing is that you are seemingly going to declare why various things are not art without even pausing for a moment to define what you believe would count as art.

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.

While I'll grant you points for excellent use of repetition to demonstrate a point, I'd really like some more information.

Their meaning is to be meaningless, so to speak.

Something designed to be without meaning still says something.

Whereas all of gaming in games could be replaced by cutscenes.

Are you suggesting that I can play chess through the non-interactive medium of cutscene? I suppose there is some truth to that statement since there are only a finite number of possible chess games, but there would still need to be some mechanism where I chose a particular move or not. Otherwise I wouldn't be playing, now would I?

oh, sure, some games will be art, but they won't be games.

If they have mechanical systems mediating progress then they will 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.

Is the player's progress mediate by a mechanical system? If so, you have a game. If not, you do not have a game.

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

By you, perhaps. The interesting thing about art is the definition asserts art is not defined by any particular standard but rather by the audience that views it. If the audience considered something to be art then it becomes art regardless of the creators intent. Likewise, even if a creator intended something to be art does not automatically make it art.

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.

Games simply offer a new set of tools with which to explore the human condition. These same tools can be used for frivolous fun in the same way as film or print. Give artists time to figure out how to leverage the tools better and you'll start to see things that could better resemble something you'd call art.

 

[Aisaku]

Simple demographics: Once enough of the naysayers 'check-out', games will be accepted as an artform. Of course by then we'll be arguing whether or not designer neural stimulation scenarios in direct-to-the-brain-stem VR constitute an artform or not. Just sayin'

 

[Siege_TF]

Art can inspire, and the first level of AvP not only inspired dread in myself, those pseudopenis-headed xenomorphs still giving me the occcasional nightmare, but also dread in my first aid classmates a few months back (My line of work requires a valid first aid certificate). This alone qualifies it as art, what follows is the story of how I related my experiance from the game as the emergency anaphalactic shock treatment needle (AKA EpiPen) was being passed around.

As I held the sealed EpiPen container in my hands I chuckled to myself.
"Something like this is the healing item in the latest Alien vs Predator video game, but it's about twice as big and delivers hemostat medicine to stop you from bleeding out."

I noticed I had my classmate's attention, as well as that of the teacher's. I wasn't expecting that, since at 30 I thought I was probably the youngest person present; there were more than a few grey heads in the room, and I was expecting rolled eyes or polite disinterest, so I went on.
"It was a nasty surprise too since the first level of the game kinda mimics the first Alien movie; there's only one Alien running around, and as you're trying to get to the end of the level it starts out by not letting you get a good look at the thing. Now, you're playing a Marine, like in the second movie, but you got seperated from your squad, and you've only got a pistol and a flashlight. And one of these."

I brandish the EpiPen, their looks have changed from novelty to dread.
"Now, a lot of games you just wait for a bit if you're injured and your health comes back, in some others you have to pick up a first aid kit or something, but it disappears and your health comes back. In this game you get hurt as you eventually fight the thing; it's setting up the atmosphere, but it's also the tutorial, so..."

I mimic the actions of my character, miming holding a pistol in my right, the EpiPen in my left.
"Before you can keep on going you gotta use your hemostat; your character takes the lid off with his teeth, hits the button on the back and jams it into his arm. What really got me though... is while he's getting injected... the right side of the controller vibrates for a few seconds."

At that I shake my right arm as I look around the room, holding the still-sealed injector to it, and am rewarded with the horrified faces of my peers. I imagine most of them were realizing that their kids (or even grandkids) may well have gone through what I just described, and they were doing it for fun.

 

[Pyro Paul]

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.

Of course not all games will be considered art. Just like not how all drawings, illistrations, or paintings are considered art. To say 'Games will never be accepted as an Art Form' is the same thing as saying Paintings will never be accepted as an art form or Photography will never be accepted as an art form.

some pictures are just pictures.
some paintings are just paintings.

but some of all of these things are art...

 

[Kurai Angelo]

I would be curious to know the OP's interpretation of what actually constitutes art, or what you define art to be.

 

[LordXel]

This? AGAIN!?!

Who cares if it isn't art?

Look what you've done Roger Ebert! People are still talking about this!

... Yeah I don't care about the art thing anymore.

 

[ShakyFiend]

Snippity

Right off the bat I dont know where youve been for the last 5 years but everyone from 'The Guardian' to 'Time' magazine accepts games have already produced specimens of high artistic merit. I dont know how you define accepted but I challenge you to come up with a way they havent been accepted as an art form.

Secondly, pretty much the only workable definition of art is that it inspires heavy debate as too whether it's actually art or not. So in a way, this thread just adds to the colossal (and mounting) pile of evidence.

 

[the spud]

If we were to replace all the gameplay with cutscenes, then you would have taken away the artistic advantage of videogames. Videogames, as an interactive art form, focus more on immersion, and therefore require gameplay. I often end up feeling much more attached to the world and characters in a video game than I ever have in film. I guess we are just going to have to get more people playing and try to share our medium.

 

[Lonan]

"art : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art?show=1&t=1292602796
Art is just creativity in the sense you're using it in. It really doesn't matter if a bunch of people don't view it as an "art." What exactly do you mean by that anyway? You mostly just said crude and vulgar things.

 

[BaronUberstein]

Personally, I don't give two shits whether it is / isn't art or not, or if it will even be accepted as art, I play games for fun, I don't want to sit there with a notepad analysing every piece like some pretentious arse head thinking aloud "Hmm, so this is what they developer wants me to feel at this point, interesting, but I only feel this, so I'm clearly playing this wrong, it's time to readjust my entire lifestyle based on the whim of this developer."

I'll play the game for fun, scares, interaction and more fun. Please don't take that away from me by making me analyse and think bullshit about entertainment.

Why can't we have both?

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?

I have to agree with this.

It's like the alternate reality games Valve does. I never paid any attention to the alternate reality stuff, yet I still loved the Portal games and had fun playing them. Doesn't mean someone else can't go the extra mile and do the whole alternate reality thing.

 

[Not G. Ivingname]

"art : the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects; also : works so produced"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/art?show=1&t=1292602796
Art is just creativity in the sense you're using it in. It really doesn't matter if a bunch of people don't view it as an "art." What exactly do you mean by that anyway? You mostly just said crude and vulgar things.

This? AGAIN!?!

Who cares if it isn't art?

Look what you've done Roger Ebert! People are still talking about this!

... Yeah I don't care about the art thing anymore.

I would be curious to know the OP's interpretation of what actually constitutes art, or what you define art to be.

Games are meaningless? Then how come I have seen games really showing the means of slavery, racism, religious fanatics and other important subjects?

I don't think games are art, but they're certainly not meaningless. I've never watched a movie that could make me cry, but I've been close in some games. Taking shooters as an example is the best way to demonstrate how games can never be art. Good thing someone learned something from Fox News.

Seeing a picture by Picasso doesn't give me any feelings. Playing Tales of Symphonia gives me several. Playing Resident Evil 4 gives me only the feeling of fun.
Not all books are art, but some are. Likewise not all games have to be art. Honestly, I don't think games are art, nor do I care. I love them, that's enough for me.

Also games have already been officially declared to be art, so you better be prepared to fight the supreme court on this one.

Don't know about you...but this looks like art...

Games may not be classed as art (because they don't need to be) but they produce some beautiful images, just type in any game, your bound to find a beautiful image which could easily pass off as art.

The OC was being SARCASTIC with his title, read his post.

 

[drummond13]

Why does it need to be accepted as an art form by the public at large? It doesn't make it any less an art form in reality.

 

[Thespian]

I know it's your opinion, and you're entitled to it, but you're wrong.

Yeah.
It already is accepted as an art form. By artists and governments alike.
Also, games fit the technical definition of art.
And just because the gameplay part of games isn't art as we know it, that's because it's new. New =/= Inferior. You might recall several decades ago when film was also never going to be considered an art form. Look how that turned out.

So yeah. Nicely worded and I see where you're coming from, but sorry, your viewpoint is simply erroneous. Now, if you don't think games are art, that's different, but saying they will never be accepted as art is wrong. Incorrect.

 

[Saltyk]

I don't care if Ebert or the politicians or the media consider games art. I consider games art. Not all games, but there are plenty out there that qualify in some way. So, screw the pretentious bastards that scoff at video games as art. They haven't a clue what they are talking about and will surely be seen in the future as the ignorant fools that they are. Don't believe me. Look at Elvis and Rock n' Roll. Once upon a time, "people" thought they were indecent and of "the Devil". Would you listen to anyone who suggested that today?

 

[IceStar100]

I would fully expect gaming to be a legitimate art form capable of producing some stunning works at some point, but I consider it to be in it's infancy at the moment. I've yet to see a game tell a truly moving story but I reckon they'll manage it at some point, up until then I think I'm going to appreciate them more as games than as art.

Have not seen a moving story really I know many cried becuase of ICO or screamed with anger when someone kill hurt the main of a game.