Poll: Games are art?

[Clashero]

With that said, I think most games (99,9%) are not art. Some may be artistic or artsy (Okami, Prince of Persia) but aren't really art because the focus is on the gameplay, which is essentially computer code, and programming isn't an art. What you create with programming, however, can be.

Who's to say gameplay isn't art, what sets games apart from other mediums is the fact that you can interact with it, games as a whole are art even the bad ones, a bad painting is still art.

Again, this was only my opinion.
Art is, as Ayn Rand puts it, "a selective recreation of reality based on the artist?s metaphysical value judgments.". This means, in short, that art is a reflection of reality as viewed through the creator's eyes, and so it conveys, in a way, his sense of life. A good example is Michalangelo's David. If you think the male form is beautiful, then you will love David. If you think the male figure is disgusting, or regard humans in general as unpleasant, you won't. But you can't argue that David is great art. It conveyed Michalengelo's view of reality: The human form is beautiful.

With that in mind, the gameplay of a game is not art, unless it is meant to be art. For example, in Today I Die, you drag words into a poem to alter reality (if you change the word "painful" for "dark", the world turns dark. But if you change the word "die" for "shine", the character comes alive and literally shines in the darkness.) So, the gameplay of TID is the art, since the game is about poetry in motion, and the way in which you can put the "motion" part in it is by playing.

In most games, the gameplay is a way to gain access to the actual "art" parts of the game: a new architectural design, a different background song, more plot exposition, etc.

 

[E.X.D.]

With that said, I think most games (99,9%) are not art. Some may be artistic or artsy (Okami, Prince of Persia) but aren't really art because the focus is on the gameplay, which is essentially computer code, and programming isn't an art. What you create with programming, however, can be.

Who's to say gameplay isn't art, what sets games apart from other mediums is the fact that you can interact with it, games as a whole are art even the bad ones, a bad painting is still art.

Again, this was only my opinion.
Art is, as Ayn Rand puts it, "a selective recreation of reality based on the artist?s metaphysical value judgments.". This means, in short, that art is a reflection of reality as viewed through the creator's eyes, and so it conveys, in a way, his sense of life. A good example is Michalangelo's David. If you think the male form is beautiful, then you will love David. If you think the male figure is disgusting, or regard humans in general as unpleasant, you won't. But you can't argue that David is great art. It conveyed Michalengelo's view of reality: The human form is beautiful.

With that in mind, the gameplay of a game is not art, unless it is meant to be art. For example, in Today I Die, you drag words into a poem to alter reality (if you change the word "painful" for "dark", the world turns dark. But if you change the word "die" for "shine", the character comes alive and literally shines in the darkness.) So, the gameplay of TID is the art, since the game is about poetry in motion, and the way in which you can put the "motion" part in it is by playing.

In most games, the gameplay is a way to gain access to the actual "art" parts of the game: a new architectural design, a different background song, more plot exposition, etc.

All gameplay is art. When you walk in a game and interact with objects you are experiencing a world the artist imagined, much as you would by looking at a painting or reading a book except, the world responds to you and you are a part of it.

 

[ThisNewGuy]

To me, art is just paintings or sculptures or anything with no other use except for just being there to look at. Everything else is just what it is.

That's a pretty good definition. Art is that that doesn't have any function outside of itself. So like art, to me, is something that doesn't do anything in real life. So to me, games are all art because it has no function outside of the game itself.

 

[Uncompetative]

Look at this http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/474519 it is art and so games are art.

Why do you think it is art. I certainly don't.

It's an attempt to tell a deep emotional story there's another game I think is art but instead of posting it I'll just say what happens. Your a black figure there's a riot going on full of white figures you play a mini game to convince rioters to join your side and stop rioting. After the entire crowd is white they just riot the other way, so you change sides and convince them to join your side. This happens back and forth until you turn gray but then no one will listen to you, they just continue to riot. The game ends.

I played the game in your link before I posted to one of its five alternative endings and the only thing that "deep" about it was the water.

The other thing you, thankfully, describe is software. It is futile. That is the point. This makes it a good candidate for being art.

Unfortunately, its futility discourages replayability. It doesn't have to be 'fun to play' to be a game, but I think its vital that you should want to play it more than once. As this is very likely not the case I would say that this means that it is not a game.

You don't have to be able to win for it to be a game, just so long as 'the journey is the reward' and that journey differs each time you play it.

 

[E.X.D.]

Name a valid reason games are not art that can't be applied to any other medium.

Games are associated in some way with Gears of War. Singlehandedly that thing pretty much drags gaming as a recognized art back about 5 years.

Britney Spears and Epic Movie.

 

[Xanadu84]

Games are art. End of discussion. By any sane definition that doesn't specifically try to exclude games, games are art. If it's not survival or sex, its art. If you want a real discussion, ask if games are meaningful. Ask if they cause the same kind of personal introspection of jazz, or a Picasso. That you can argue. But even if you do argue that there not meaningful, I say that they CAN be. If you say that MOST games arn't art, I will point to Rap, Brittany Spears, most action flicks, etc, and say that film and music, therefore, cannot be art.

Name one 'art-game' that hasn't been recontextualized as art by being made part of some stupid electronic art installation in some gallery.

Mario Paint doesn't count.

The Path
Beyond Good and Evil
Crayon Physics Deluxe
The Path
Zeno Clash
Aquaria
The Graveyard
Braid
The Path
And Yet It Moves
World of Goo
The Path

And that's just games I presently have installed via Steam.

Is there any particular reason why you have cited The Path four times, or is your argument so weak on quality that you need an excess of quantity. None of these count.

Wow your pretentious. I think were done here.

 

[Clashero]

With that said, I think most games (99,9%) are not art. Some may be artistic or artsy (Okami, Prince of Persia) but aren't really art because the focus is on the gameplay, which is essentially computer code, and programming isn't an art. What you create with programming, however, can be.

Who's to say gameplay isn't art, what sets games apart from other mediums is the fact that you can interact with it, games as a whole are art even the bad ones, a bad painting is still art.

Again, this was only my opinion.
Art is, as Ayn Rand puts it, "a selective recreation of reality based on the artist?s metaphysical value judgments.". This means, in short, that art is a reflection of reality as viewed through the creator's eyes, and so it conveys, in a way, his sense of life. A good example is Michalangelo's David. If you think the male form is beautiful, then you will love David. If you think the male figure is disgusting, or regard humans in general as unpleasant, you won't. But you can't argue that David is great art. It conveyed Michalengelo's view of reality: The human form is beautiful.

With that in mind, the gameplay of a game is not art, unless it is meant to be art. For example, in Today I Die, you drag words into a poem to alter reality (if you change the word "painful" for "dark", the world turns dark. But if you change the word "die" for "shine", the character comes alive and literally shines in the darkness.) So, the gameplay of TID is the art, since the game is about poetry in motion, and the way in which you can put the "motion" part in it is by playing.

In most games, the gameplay is a way to gain access to the actual "art" parts of the game: a new architectural design, a different background song, more plot exposition, etc.

All gameplay is art. When you walk in a game and interact with objects you are experiencing a world the artist imagined, much as you would by looking at a painting or reading a book except, the world responds to you and you are a part of it.

The gameplay itself doesn't provoke any feelings in me in many many games. Art needs to make me feel something, some sort of bond with the author, a new level of suspension of disbelief in which I enter the creator's mind and see through his eyes, per se. Gameplay doesn't do that.
As I said before: you can't make art "accidentally". You need to create something with the purpose of it being art. If an artist flicks his brush at his canvas because he wants to portray chaos (or whatever), that's art. If a child accidentally knocks over an ink pot and thinks it looks pretty and hangs it on the fridge, that's not art.
Games are more like a gallery of art, in which the gameplay is the bridge between different aspects of art. It's the framing of a painting, or the texture of its canvas, to make an analogy.
Now, if I try to make a contrast by painting something geometrical and using a frame that has whimsical organic lines, that's part of the art.

 

[HaircareForMen]

I must say that i do see games as a sort of art, i hold a spot in my heart for games

 

[E.X.D.]

With that said, I think most games (99,9%) are not art. Some may be artistic or artsy (Okami, Prince of Persia) but aren't really art because the focus is on the gameplay, which is essentially computer code, and programming isn't an art. What you create with programming, however, can be.

Who's to say gameplay isn't art, what sets games apart from other mediums is the fact that you can interact with it, games as a whole are art even the bad ones, a bad painting is still art.

Again, this was only my opinion.
Art is, as Ayn Rand puts it, "a selective recreation of reality based on the artist?s metaphysical value judgments.". This means, in short, that art is a reflection of reality as viewed through the creator's eyes, and so it conveys, in a way, his sense of life. A good example is Michalangelo's David. If you think the male form is beautiful, then you will love David. If you think the male figure is disgusting, or regard humans in general as unpleasant, you won't. But you can't argue that David is great art. It conveyed Michalengelo's view of reality: The human form is beautiful.

With that in mind, the gameplay of a game is not art, unless it is meant to be art. For example, in Today I Die, you drag words into a poem to alter reality (if you change the word "painful" for "dark", the world turns dark. But if you change the word "die" for "shine", the character comes alive and literally shines in the darkness.) So, the gameplay of TID is the art, since the game is about poetry in motion, and the way in which you can put the "motion" part in it is by playing.

In most games, the gameplay is a way to gain access to the actual "art" parts of the game: a new architectural design, a different background song, more plot exposition, etc.

All gameplay is art. When you walk in a game and interact with objects you are experiencing a world the artist imagined, much as you would by looking at a painting or reading a book except, the world responds to you and you are a part of it.

The gameplay itself doesn't provoke any feelings in me in many many games. Art needs to make me feel something, some sort of bond with the author, a new level of suspension of disbelief in which I enter the creator's mind and see through his eyes, per se. Gameplay doesn't do that.
As I said before: you can't make art "accidentally". You need to create something with the purpose of it being art. If an artist flicks his brush at his canvas because he wants to portray chaos (or whatever), that's art. If a child accidentally knocks over an ink pot and thinks it looks pretty and hangs it on the fridge, that's not art.
Games are more like a gallery of art, in which the gameplay is the bridge between different aspects of art. It's the framing of a painting, or the texture of its canvas, to make an analogy.
Now, if I try to make a contrast by painting something geometrical and using a frame that has whimsical organic lines, that's part of the art.

Your definition of art is to narrow.

 

[Uncompetative]

Wow your pretentious. I think were done here.

"Wow, you're pretentious. I think we're done here."

I can't help it if I'm overqualified for our discussion...

 

[E.X.D.]

Wow your pretentious. I think were done here.

"Wow, you're pretentious. I think we're done here."

I can't help it if I'm overqualified for our discussion...

He said with conceit.

 

[Tunahead]

It seems to me like people who enjoy videogames just want games to be seen as art because of people who go DURR GAMES ARE STUPID YOU NO-LIFER. Why would you care about profoundly stupid opinions like that in the first place? They're just games. If a game feels like art to you, that's fine, but it's not like the whole "games = art?" discussion makes the games any more or less artistic.

Notice that I mentioned "people who enjoy videogames", not "gamers". That's because "gamer" is a stupid, wretched word coined by people who apparently want to be seen as special because they play videogames.

You don't call a guy who sometimes watches television a "watcher" or an office worker who sometimes visits the gym an athlete. Gamer is just a word that sends the signal that games are your "thing". Your ONLY thing. And you don't care for people or other forms of entertainment or sunlight or excercise or personal hygiene. Stop using that word. It annoys the pants off of me. If you aren't paid to play videogames as your profession, you are not a "gamer".

Also I must point out that in other mediums there do exist people who also debate the artistic merits of those mediums. And everyone hates those people. So don't be those people. Those people think Citizen Kane is the greatest timeless cinematic masterpiece of all time, and that kind of stupidity doesn't need to spread to the world of videogames. Mostly because videogames are already plenty stupid with all the "Savin' The World #12532523634623" storylines.

 

[Same River New Water]

Before you can have this debate, you have to define "art". As soon as you've defined "art", you can immediately tell if games fall into that or not.

For example, noted film critic Roger Ebert defines art partly as something that is "created by an artist", so the interactivity of games rules them out of Ebert's definition of art.

I consider art to be a much broader term, which encompasses all games. The question then is whether they are good art or interesting art, which is just the same as asking whether they are good or interesting games.

Neither of us is objectively right or wrong. There's no universal definition of art that favours one understanding over the other. It just comes down to your interpretation.

That's why a lot of philosophical debates are so tiresome, because they're really just arguments over categorisation.

 

[CAPPINJACK]

I think the bigger question is: "Why do we NEED to call it art?" Is it to satisfy the inner-pretentious asshole within? Is it to try and elevate the industry to something more lofty so that it can escape the scrutiny that it's drawn upon itself over the years (this is partially the case - after all: "It's not pornography, it's art!").

You know what? Let painters, sculptors and Larry Flynt make the art. Just make me a fucking game that I won't throw away in disgust after 10 minutes because of shallow gameplay, bugs and/or a shitty/non-existent story. Or even better! Make me a game that I -DON'T- have to play with other assholes on-line in an effort to ride the coat tails of World of Warcraft (guess what "genre" I don't like).

 

[Uncompetative]

Ok. Very, very, loosely...

Art has a theme.

Games have a space of possibilities constrained by rules.

Theoretically, the creation of a narrative through the generation of dramatic scenarios that support an artistic theme can be part of the rules of a game provided that the player does not feel that their choices are being 'shaped'. Keep their minds busy, give them plenty of apparent freedom and let them opt-in to responsibilities that they do not want to shirk for fear of losing experience points. Make the game more about how well they played their role (which may have been one of narratological failure), than their kill/death ratio.

As far as I am aware no one is attempting to do this.

It is very hard.

Think: "the game of the character of the world of the movie", rather than: "the game of the story of the movie" which merely recreates it.

 

[Mortakk]

I think KneeLord has a point here: elements of every game are artistic, so every game has art in it. The problem with talking about games like you would a painting is that a painting has one (maybe a couple) of artists... games have hundreds. So if you look for it, you'll find art in every game. Whether or not a game as a whole is artisitc though... Some games, yes. This does not mean all (or even most) games are good art, and some are only made to make a buck... I'm not sure I'd call those art at all.

 

[nikosuave]

The idea of games as art is just silly to me.

Without explanation that just sounds stupid

I agree, and I will also provide a counter argument as to why it shouldn't sound stupid even with an argument.
Contention 1: Paintings and other graphics are considered art, all video games are graphics given movement.
Contention 2: Many movies are considered art and are simply graphics given movement, in fact many are nothing more than shoddily put together videotapes made with a camcorder in a forest or city point [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloverfield] and case [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blair_Witch_Project]
Contention 3: Video games are movies which incorporate a new aspect (interactivity), meaning that they are art by virtue of them being movies with additional capabilities.

 

[Aardvark Soup]

Some can certainly be considered this: the very atmospheric Ico, the postmodern Earthbound and the deconstruction of the gaming medium (and the concept of the sequel) known as Metal Gear Solid 2 are some examples. Most artistic games are indie though, and there are some fantastic artistic examples among them.

 

[adman]

Art is something created using any medium possible.

Therefore Games are art, whether they be well made or not.

 

[Izakflashman]

Is a movie art? Is a song art? If that answer is yes, then it must be so for games aswell.

The real question I should have asked is how gamers feel about this as a spectacle. Do you see games as a simple entertainment thing, or as an artistic statement?

The same can be asked of graffiti. When does it stop being about infamy and into the realms of street art? Usually when it gains a purpose, or it has a point to it. Something games are made to just entertain. Others could make you think WHILE entertaining you.

I consider this game to be art. http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/495076