Poll: Are Computer Games Art Or Entertainment?

OtherSideofSky

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They're both art and entertainment, just like movies, literature, music, theater, and a great deal of traditional artwork. Nothing which requires that quantity of creative input and expression can fail to be art and most art forms have their origins in entertainment to begin with. It's worth remembering that Shakespeare wrote to entertain his audience and make a living as well. As far as changes to old titles, they can be annoying, but unless someone goes out of their way to destroy the original version it's not that terrible unless it's done purely as a form of censorship. Movies get re-cut all the time and even books sometimes receive revisions.

Sober Thal said:
I don't think rape is a 'slippery slope' when deciding to ban a form of media that puts you in a rapists' shoes and tells you go at it, rewarding you all the way. I think that's what that rape lay game was.
As far as Rapelay went, I don't like it myself but it was produced solely for sale within the nation of Japan, which has completely different laws and cultural standards and was never officially distributed within the United States. In the time it took for the mainstream media to discover its existence the developers in Japan had already responded to criticisms by taking the word "rape" off the boxes and out of the titles of their games and proceeding as usual, except for mocking the controversy in one of their later releases. There's an entire sub-genre of games like that in Japan and any attempt to regulate them in the West is utterly useless because they will never be released here. As such, its safer to just avoid the censorship issue entirely.

Quite frankly, all of those games are so utterly absurd and completely divorced from reality that I can't see them ever leading to any real life crimes, which is the only concern I could ever see being reason enough to ban them. If your concern is about gender equality, I think they also made a game about women raping a man at one point.
 

Denamic

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Sober Thal said:
Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you can say what you want without consequences.
Not in the U.S.A. at least. Slander is a punishable offense ya know.
That's a completely different issue.
Works of fiction is a completely different thing than slander.
I guess I can agree they have a right to make them... for private use. But I think it should be illegal to sell it.

I don't think rape is a 'slippery slope' when deciding to ban a form of media that puts you in a rapists' shoes and tells you go at it, rewarding you all the way. I think that's what that rape lay game was.
So you're saying that you have to draw a line of how far you can go.
And that that line is crossed with rape?
Don't you see anything odd with this?

Rape is despicable, yeah.
It harms the victim mentally and sometimes physically.
But you know what's much worse?
Murder.
Killing someone ends their life.
If we can't put you in the shoes of a rapist, shouldn't we also ban games that put you in the shoes of a killer?
 

Cowabungaa

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Why can't they be both? Books and movies manage just fine being both.
Denamic said:
Works of fiction is a completely different thing than slander.
One can incorporate slander in a work of fiction, obviously.
 

DanielDeFig

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Oct 22, 2009
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Like all video games: computer games are an entertaining art.

The creative process through which video games are created automatically makes them art in my opinion (though not all video game developers approach the task of creating a game, with that in mind). The purpose of games will always be to ultimatley be entertaining.

Should older games be updated to meet the entertainment requirements that may change with time, and /or updated to fix issues that hamper the goal of entertaining?
YES!
 

veloper

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Art can and is applied to everything made by man.

I could've ticked both, but there's no point in using meaningless words and "art" used in a highbrow context is even worse.

So entertainment it is.
 

Denamic

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Sober Thal said:
Draw a line. It is not odd. It happens all the time, everywhere.

Being a rapist in a game that rewards such behavior is what I'm against. It's more than just 'in the shoes'. It's sick.

That's the line I draw.

And no, we don't have to ban all the games where you are a killer. But we should (and do) have penalties for stores that sell them to minors.
Wow, aren't you getting any cognitive dissonance?
Or are you just blissfully unaware of the incredibly contradictory values you have?
Either way, I've lost interest in this, so like you said, let's just agree to disagree.
 

CatmanStu

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Jul 22, 2008
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Art is entertainment, and...
zehydra said:
entertainment is art.
If you find something artistic then you are, on some level, finding it entertaining.
If you find something entertaining then you are, on some level, finding it artistic.

I personally feel that society should stop using 'art' as some sort of cultural badge of honour and instead use it as an alternative to entertaining.
Use entertaining for anything that elicits a uplifting experience, and artistic for anything that elicits a uncomfortable experience: The Shawshank Redemption was at first disturbingly artistic but ultimately spiritually entertaining.
 

Jabberwock xeno

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Oct 30, 2009
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Some games art, some aren't.

In fact, all games are art if one says they are. The entire concept of what art is is that it's something that's it means something to someone more than the sum of it's parts.

If I throw a stick at a wall, and call it art, who are you to say ohterwise?

What if I told you that the action of me throwing that stick was a symbolic representation of my life and feelings? what if I told you that me doing that caused me to come to terms with my own personal demons?

Is it art then?

It's like in slumdog millionare. To the boy (forgot his name), every question in who wants to be a millionare he knew the answer to because of a infliutinal moment of his life.

To you ane me, it's just a quiz question, but to him, it's his parent's dying or his brother becoming a hitman etc.

To some, the mona lisa is just paint on a sheet of paper. Tha value of art is in the eye of the viewer, reader, or player.
 

phantasmalWordsmith

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Maybe they are art because they bring entertainment. Or do they entertain because they are art? I know that's just circular logic and trying to sound like philosoraptor but it fits the circumsatances
 

FireDr@gon

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Apr 29, 2010
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seydaman said:
Implying art is not entertaining
???
Its a poll I had to have options, options dont imply anything! Some people find some art boring, other people find all art boring, Some people find Some art entertaining other people find all art entertaining. Do I even need to say this?
 

Eumersian

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Sep 3, 2009
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One of the purposes of art is to entertain. So, I think I said all I needed to say.
 

FireDr@gon

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Art is a word, and like all words, they need a clear definition in order to mean anything. You cannot, no matter what you personally percieve as art, "Call anything art"

Art can mean lots of things to different people, but not it's definition.

If I called a mountain a tree, I would be wrong.

For anyone thinking " You can call anything art" Look up the definition of art then feel sheepish.
 

soultrain117

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Dec 4, 2010
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Depends on what game. For example Call of Duty is entertainment. If anyone thinks that it is art please proceed to bash your own head against a wall. It is a good game, but it is diffidently not art. However, a game like Shadow of the Colossus is art.
 

The Big Eye

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Aug 19, 2009
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Art and entertainment are not mutually exclusive, you boob.

FireDr@gon said:
Art is a word, and like all words, they need a clear definition in order to mean anything. You cannot, no matter what you personally percieve as art, "Call anything art"

Art can mean lots of things to different people, but not it's definition.

If I called a mountain a tree, I would be wrong.

For anyone thinking " You can call anything art" Look up the definition of art then feel sheepish.
Not true. "Art" has a definition, obviously, but this definition is composed of other words, words like "aesthetic," "self-expression," and "significance," the meanings of which are themselves hard to pin down.

Defining art exactly is like the old problem in philosophy of finding out how many grains of sand you need to make a heap. There is no meaningful or satisfying answer to that question. Asking which heap of sand is "better", on the other hand, can yield insightful results.

Call of Duty, for example (the single-player campaign, at least), is art. It is. It's just really, really bad - from an artistic perspective, that is, not an entertainment one.