The Problem With Games

[briankoontz]

You mention a crisis of identity, but I think you're missing the point. The crisis of identity regarding games as art is not "will games ever achieve art?". That's a binary choice. Either all games are art, or none are. Once that much is established we can go on to question whether a certain work is good, bad or great art. The crisis games are suffering from is that as a form of art we have so far been largely incapable of separating what makes good art in more traditional mediums from what makes good art in a video game. If you judge a movie by the standards of a painting, it may be nice to look at and well put together, but narratively it sucks and the characters are so two-dimensional.

The issue is deeper than that. Games are not either art, or not. Some games are toys, same games are drugs, some games train hand-eye coordination, some games are art, and many games are more than one of these. What's wrong with games serving a multitude of functions?

Games don't *have to* be art. Tetris, one of the greatest video games of all time, is not art. It's a digital toy.

Doom is a work of art. Dark Souls a work of art. Deus Ex a work of art. But it's monstrous and utterly pathetic to say that games are valueless unless they are art.

Space Invaders is a work of art, the first I'm aware of in the games industry. Far from games not being art, games have been artistic *from the very beginning*. But the fact that games often aren't art in no way invalidates their value.

We need to stop trying to pidgeonhole games, and allow game developers of all types to make the games they want to make. We need to celebrate great works of art like Journey and Dark Souls while simultaneously celebrating great toys like Tetris and Bejeweled, great hand-eye coordinators like Super Street Fighter IV and Starcraft 2, and great drugs like World of Warcraft.

Rogue Legacy is not particularly artistic. But because it works so well in each of the other game functions (drug, toy, martial art) it's a great game. It would be even better if it functioned as art.

Artistic games are not the "highest form" of game. Tetris is as good as any artistic game ever made. The highest form of game is a GREAT game, regardless of it's function.

 

[Auron]

"art
/ärt/
Noun
The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...: "the art of the Renaissance"
Works produced by such skill and imagination."


If you truly believe games have no place to be qualified as such and you have played games then I don't know what to say. Furthermore, games involve painting, music, storytelling, film-making and so on, a great deal of it all is composed by art. Movies were not considered art by the snobby artists of it's time as well, it took 30 years for Canudo to publish his essay about the sixth(later seventh) art and I'm not that sure it was widely received by the writers of the time. In fact his argument was that movies involved more than one other artform and thus were artistical in themselves, games are pretty much the same.

 

[Maximum Bert]

Calling games art doesn't change what they are.

Sure dosent things are what they are its just people see what things are differently.

Romeo was her love regardless of his family name, a rose still smells sweet if you call it something else, and calling games art doesn't make the mass media respect them any more than they did. At least in the U.S there should be no debate of whether or not games are art, they are classified and protected by the government as art regardless of your personal opinion on it.

I am not sure you should be equating art with respect as they are two different things but then maybe thats what art means to you for myself however art and respect dont always align. Also not sure where you are going with that Shakespeare line I only brought it up because I believe you got the quotation wrong in the original post and I was wondering if it was intentional or not.

Also I dont see why there should be no debate just because the U.S Government has debated and classified games as art, they are just a group of people after all. Its great that they do recognise games as art and as I mentioned before I would agree in some capacity but I think saying games are art is painting with too wide a brush some games,pictures,films,music etc are trash at least in my eyes but then who makes that decision? its just the individual and as such its devisive and you cant have laws that rely purely on individual judgement with no way of proving one way or the other hence either in the eyes of the law games are art or they arent art (and apparently for the U.S they are). Art will always be debated it is to reliant on personal opinion and experience to be properly classified.

The day we stop questioning things is the day we stop thinking for ourselves and thats not a good thing.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

The AAA-industry has the same issue Hollywood does; budgets are huge, so they are afraid to take risks, so everything is the same and there isn't much artistic value.

Art is something to communicate a thought or feeling. Games in my opinion can not be art because the whole reason they exist is to make money. Not for its own purpose. Same way a car or a TV cant be labelled art. They can be a great looking object but not art.

There are a lot of indie games that people distribute for free.
Similarly there are movies and paintings just made for money, so does that mean they invalidate the whole form of art?

Depends. For me most modern art is crap and alot of art house movies are just pretensions rubbish. Just because an art critics labels something as art, doesn't make it so. An also, just because something isn't labelled art doesn't mean you still cant take enjoyment from it. I know people see beauty in different things, some people have their emotions triggered in different ways. An this is why this topic is a mute subject because people think differently about art. To me, games are just games, some can look beautiful, but for me that doesnt make them art. Others would disagree.

Why do people want validation for loving and getting enjoyment for something? Art is a personal thing, we find meaning and feeling in it where others don't.

 

[Olas]

Sorry OP, but you lost me at

It seems increasingly clear that the late Roger Ebert, when he made his infamous claims that videogames could never be art, was right...at the time at least. Before his first foray into the white noise of videogame fandom, what games could we point to? Super Mario Bros? Too hallucinogenicaly weird. Half-Life 2? too derivative of modern science fiction to stand on its own legs. What about Shadow Of The Colossus? Metal Gear Solid? Ocarina Of Time? Respectively, maybe, Ha! And the graphics remind me of balloon animals.

If you really think that the problem is that there hadn't been any 'artistic' games yet, well... you're wrong of course, but you're also missing the point entirely.

I think last Tuesday's [a href="http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/comics/critical-miss/10484-ARTARTARTARTFART"]Critical Miss[/a] addresses the subject of videogames being art pretty well.

If videogames aren't art, it's because they go above and beyond that classification into a whole nother realm that hasn't even been properly examined or defined yet. The term art is usually reserved for passive experiences, not interactive ones. Saying that videogames haven't reached the level where they can be called art is like saying that cars haven't reached the level where they can be called trains.

 

[fromthepoisonwell]

I doubt the world is ever really going to agree on what the definition of art actually is, but if we're going by R.E.'s words:

I thought about those works of Art that had moved me most deeply. I found most of them had one thing in common: Through them I was able to learn more about the experiences, thoughts and feelings of other people. My empathy was engaged. I could use such lessons to apply to myself and my relationships with others. They could instruct me about life, love, disease and death, principles and morality, humor and tragedy. They might make my life more deep, full and rewarding.

Then I can think of quite a few games that I'd consider art.

 

[Lieju]

Why do people want validation for loving and getting enjoyment for something? Art is a personal thing, we find meaning and feeling in it where others don't.

For me, it's not really about labeling things 'art' and 'not art', but rather that games should try to be about more than just an enjoyable shooting execrcise. I'd like to see them grow as a medium, and for that we need to critique them the same way we do things like movies.

One can find enjoyement in Twilight-movies, for example, and no-one can tell them they aren't enjoying it, but we can discuss the artistic merits of the movies, what value they have, how good the characterization and cinematography are, whether there are other, better movies that do the same things better etc.

And I like discussion like that.

 

[TehCookie]

Calling games art doesn't change what they are.

Sure dosent things are what they are its just people see what things are differently.

Romeo was her love regardless of his family name, a rose still smells sweet if you call it something else, and calling games art doesn't make the mass media respect them any more than they did. At least in the U.S there should be no debate of whether or not games are art, they are classified and protected by the government as art regardless of your personal opinion on it.

I am not sure you should be equating art with respect as they are two different things but then maybe thats what art means to you for myself however art and respect dont always align. Also not sure where you are going with that Shakespeare line I only brought it up because I believe you got the quotation wrong in the original post and I was wondering if it was intentional or not.

Also I dont see why there should be no debate just because the U.S Government has debated and classified games as art, they are just a group of people after all. Its great that they do recognise games as art and as I mentioned before I would agree in some capacity but I think saying games are art is painting with too wide a brush some games,pictures,films,music etc are trash at least in my eyes but then who makes that decision? its just the individual and as such its devisive and you cant have laws that rely purely on individual judgement with no way of proving one way or the other hence either in the eyes of the law games are art or they arent art (and apparently for the U.S they are). Art will always be debated it is to reliant on personal opinion and experience to be properly classified.

The day we stop questioning things is the day we stop thinking for ourselves and thats not a good thing.

You nailed the point when you said art doesn't equal respect, since a lot of people want games to be art to gain respect rather than make better games. You can still debateif games are good art, since art doesn't make things magically good either.

Also if you want art games because they're emotionally compelling, why do you need the acceptance of other people calling it art. If it's art to you and art is subjective that should be good enough. Unless you're trying to share it like a fanboy, then I'd understand why you'd want others to see it how you do.

 

[Something Amyss]

Can a very good, very beautiful vacuum cleaner be high art? No it can't, it's too complex a mechanism to be a unified object.

Rules like this remind me of George Carlin's statement that gymnastics is not a sport because it's "something Romanians are good at."

Of course, his rules were INTENTIONALLY silly and arbitrary; that was a large point of the routine.

 

[Something Amyss]

Books are written by one (sometimes two) author(s). They are then replicated for the mass market.

So books cease to be art if they are created by multiple collaborators? Are games then art if they are done by only one or two people? I mean, something can be designed by a single person AND mass produced, but you seem to be making exceptions.

Again, I'm forced to go back to Carlin:

Rules like this remind me of George Carlin's statement that gymnastics is not a sport because it's "something Romanians are good at."

Of course, his rules were INTENTIONALLY silly and arbitrary; that was a large point of the routine.

 

[fromthepoisonwell]

So books cease to be art if they are created by multiple collaborators? Are games then art if they are done by only one or two people? I mean, something can be designed by a single person AND mass produced, but you seem to be making exceptions.

Sorry, I'm not explaining very well.

In my opinion, having too many people involved in the creative process does indeed preclude the creation of art. It's hard for me to explain why I feel this way though.

Maybe a part of a whole could be considered "art", such as pixel art within a game. So say a hundred people create a game, there could be many individual instances of art within the game, but the game as a whole is not. It's like the game itself is too watered down and diluted from any one, guided vision to really be artistic. Again, just in my opinion.

Art is a creative process used to express oneself. And too many people just muck that up.

It's like the difference between sitting down and creating a beautiful website as you envision it should be, as compared to designing a website by committee. Which I've done. And there was nothing artistic about it.

I think that's an interesting way to think of it. Focusing more on the creation process and artist than the product and viewer.

Reminds me of an art teacher I had (way back in Elementary, most of the things he said went way over our 3rd grade heads) that seemed to have a similar view. He said art isn't the painting, but the artist creating the painting. I don't necessarily agree with the definition, but I can respect it.

 

[Veylon]

I would say that games are not art. They contain art, in the form of songs, images, voicework, poetry, etc. But the core component of games, what makes them games and not something else, is gameplay. That's what has to validate or invalidate a game as a game, not whether it measures up to some literary or painterly standard. Validation is what this whole argument seems to be about, whether or not games are "good enough" to be art. And that's terrible.

On a side note, 'art' is a word with many conflicting definitions and roots other words that seemingly have nothing to do with art as we know it. Artifice, artificial, artifact, and artisan. In the broadest original sense, art is anything at all made or done by humans. The Art of War, for instance. A caution to those who might argue ancient tradition or the "real" meanings of words.

 

[Racecarlock]

I frankly don't care whether or not they're art.

What matters is what games mean to you. What experiences you got, what lessons you learned, hell, even if you just had a rockin' good time. That's what matters.

I don't care whether or not roger ebert or the fuckin' smithsonian considers my entertainment worthy of them or not. What matters is I have fun playing them. They had a good impact on me, and that's all there is to it. But onto another matter.

When did fun become so low brow? Why is it so below artistic consideration? I don't know about you, but many people in this world have a lot of bullshit to deal with in their lives. Divorces, break ups, bills, food, heating, taxes, transportation, politics, and many many other things so complex that I can't even think of what they're called.

It takes, in my opinion, a lot of skill to make someone forget about lost loves, bills, bad jobs, family member deaths, and possibly a whole lot more bullshit and just have them sit back and laugh as they plow down pedestrians in GTA IV or shoot aliens in metroid.

It's very hard to make a game so fun and engaging that someone can momentarily forget about the bullshit of reality and just sit back and escape. I think really fun games ARE high art, and I don't give a shit what the actual definition of that phrase is. It doesn't matter, because I forgot about that law that allows guns on playgrounds in North Carolina for a good few hours while I had the time of my life.

 

[ImperialSunlight]

Can a very good, very beautiful vacuum cleaner be high art? No it can't, it's too complex a mechanism to be a unified object. Its shape may be art and it can be put in a museum, but then it's not treated as a vacuum cleaner but as a sculpture.

I feel the same is the case for games. Games are composite things made out of thousands of little elements. They can have subelements that are art, but a game will rarely be able to be a coherent whole. As a matter of fact I think the games that are closest to being a unified piece of art, are the Pongs, Rogues and Space Invaders of the past. Because of their simplicity they get closer to our perception of traditional art.

I still believe Delta was one of those early games that got closest to coherent art, other people will surely have other candidates. It integrates simple graphics, music and gameplay into one. It's really more of a rhytm game than a sidescrolling shooter.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02YBWKxDXPI

So are paintings art? They serve many purposes whether it be decoration, appreciation, symbolic meaning, covering cracks in walls, etc. and so do not have a unified purpose, and they include many elements in their design: line art, colour, paint types, mixing, motion, flow, symbolism, feeling, etc. and that is only in the design of the painting itself, ignoring what the painting is painted on, framing, setting, history, etc. so how can they be considered art if they have so many elements to them, yet a video game cannot? Who defined art as a unified concept and if things with only few elements are art, how many is too much?

I think overall, the problem with art is the inherent elitism and absurdity in the concept. People attempt to define art not because art is a quantifiable thing that they want to understand, but because the concept of art is lofty and fantastic, and adds notoriety to whatever can feasibly claim itself to be "art". However, when it is looked at without such selfish bias, art is a word without much meaning in today's society, and people would probably be better off not bothering with the concept, instead just labeling video games as "video games" and paintings as "paintings", not because they are necessarily art or not art, but because of what they are in themselves. Video games should be protected on the grounds of free speech, not because they are "art".

 

[Fox12]

?High Art??. While the solid definition of Art itself hasn't yet been fully established (If you still find yourself asking ?Is it art?? about a particular piece or performance then the question is proof positive of a lack of a universal definition), there are clearly examples of High Art in almost every medium. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa, Shakespeare's Hamlet, Welles' Citizen Kane and Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, etc, etc, etc.

"We have no standard for what art is, but these things are definitely art"?

You mention a crisis of identity, but I think you're missing the point. The crisis of identity regarding games as art is not "will games ever achieve art?". That's a binary choice. Either all games are art, or none are.

How does that make any kind of sense? Art, in its simplest form, is expression. That's a very basic definition that most people agree on, but there's no concrete definition. Pong wouldn't be art, because it doesn't really attempt to express anything. Other video games, on the other hand, express great ideas or emotion. Some video games are art, and some are not.

However, high art is much easier to define. It typically has great cultural value, and expresses deeper human truths, typically ones that are universal. High art also tends to stand the test of time. Regardless of whether you like Shakespeare, he is high art. I detested The Great Gatsby, but I accept that it is a literary masterpiece despite my dislike of it. I can respect it, despite my dislike. That's what separates it from a simple pop culture story, one that is immensely popular, but quickly dies and fades away. No, not all video games are art, much less high art. I wouldn't consider Halo or Half Life art, even though they may be entertaining. Some people in the video game community don't seem to understand the difference between popular culture and high art. Keep in mind that pop culture pieces tend to exist to entertain, whereas high art pieces exist to reveal truth. Bear in mind that truth may not be pretty, and so high art does not necessarily exist to entertain, comfort, or distract you. High art is not necessarily enjoyable. That's why it is harder for video games to be high art (though I think they can, and will be, if they are not there already). It's in the nature of a video game to entertain you, and if it doesn't do that then most people deride it as not being a good, or a real, video game. I have yet to see a game with the symbolic power of Lord of the Flies, the subtleties of 2001 a Space Odyssey, or the social significance of a Charles Dickens novel.

I love entertaining pop culture things, don't get me wrong. I love Saints Row, and that's as low brow as it gets. I enjoy a fun video game. But until we understand that video games can be more than escapist fun, they won't grow.

 

[Bostur]

So are paintings art? They serve many purposes whether it be decoration, appreciation, symbolic meaning, covering cracks in walls, etc. and so do not have a unified purpose, and they include many elements in their design: line art, colour, paint types, mixing, motion, flow, symbolism, feeling, etc. and that is only in the design of the painting itself, ignoring what the painting is painted on, framing, setting, history, etc. so how can they be considered art if they have so many elements to them, yet a video game cannot? Who defined art as a unified concept and if things with only few elements are art, how many is too much?

If we talk about games as art, I assume we talk about a game as a unified concept. Otherwise we could ask ourselves the question "Is game graphics art?" or "Is game music art?". I suppose the problem is not so much whether games are art, but maybe more if a game is a thing, or if it is really many things at once.

I see paintings as something very unified, sure it consists of many elements but the end result is hopefully something complete. Games on the other hand often consists of things that by themselves can be considered art and which can in practice be isolated from the rest, music, artwork, story. I think thats where a lot of the confusion stems from.

Often when someone observes a game as a piece of art, they are not observing the game as a whole, but perhaps the story or other elements. In that case the game ceases to be a game and becomes something else entirely. Thats why I used the vacuum cleaner analogy. A vacuum cleaner that is put on a pedestal ceases to be a vacuum cleaner and becomes a sculpture.

I was not trying to define art or to exclude anything from the category of art. I was trying to comment on a common fallacy that tends to happen when people view something functional as a piece of art. They often forget about the functionality, and focus entirely on the form. Maybe due to the predominant idea that art can't be functional.

 

[Racecarlock]

But until we understand that video games can be more than escapist fun, they won't grow.

But we already do. Look at dear esther and spec ops: the line and the countless "art games" on the internet.

With that in mind, why are we still talking about this? Will this debate just not stop until heavy rain has as many sequels as call of duty?

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

What about book? They're mass produced.

Books are written by one (sometimes two) author(s). They are then replicated for the mass market.

I have a Hans Werner Sahm print on my wall at home. There are tens of thousands of copies of it around the world. Is a copy made from an original work not art? Is only the original painting considered art?

But the first thing you said was that "Art isn't mass produced". My point is that, yes, it very well is. That's the nature of the capitalistic beast. Everything is mass produced. Even people. A mass produced Hans Werner Sahm print is still art, but its also mass produced. Does that take away from or make it not art? Hell no.

 

[AzrealMaximillion]

But the first thing you said was that "Art isn't mass produced". My point is that, yes, it very well is. That's the nature of the capitalistic beast. Everything is mass produced. Even people. A mass produced Hans Werner Sahm print is still art, but its also mass produced. Does that take away from or make it not art? Hell no.

We're each using "mass produced" in different context. Actually, we're probably using "produced" in different ways.

Maybe I should have said, "Art isn't mass created." Or possibly "group created". A person creates art. That art can then be replicated over and over and over. Video games typically are not art because dozens and dozens of people work to create it. Books and paintings are art because only one or two people are involved with the creative process.

Like others have pointed out, I seem to be taking the perspective that the creative process determines what is art rather than the end product. And, in retrospect, I believe they are correct.

Yesterday was month-end for me, so I didn't have a lot of time or brain power to explain myself very concisely. And since today is first-of-the-month, I'm probably not doing much better. So my apologies for any confusion.

Aaaaaaah, now I understand. Thanks for clearing that up.

I will say this. Video games can be art. I think that its very pretentious of us gamers to want the whole world to recognize video games to be labelled as art when we have so many examples of games that are clearly not art. I think we need to understand that as with TV, Movies, paintings, pictures and even books, video games have examples of artistic games and examples of games made to feed the wants of consumers. Video games like everything else should be considered individually rather than painted with a broad stroke. By us as gamers and by those outside of the culture.

I also have to disagree with your point about how video games can't be art due to the amount of people involved in making them. For instance I could use the same argument against TV and Movies, and I think we both know that it would be invalid to do so.

I believe that the game designer and/or game writer are the artist and the ones that make the game (creating code and such) are there to chisel the game's essence out of stone.

Individually speaking, I'd say that Spec Ops: the Line is an example of a game that is art. By the end of the game I was actually questioning my time playing 3rd person shooter that so indiscriminately have me shooting down hundred of virtual people. Spec Ops: The Line gave the people I was killing a face. It gave them purpose and a reason to feel bad about killing them. And it did so not just through cutscenes, but through gameplay as well. It captured the criticisms of inglorious war in a very similar way to Apocalypse Now did before it, and Heart of Darkness before that.

I think what makes a game art is the level of immersion that it creates. A game doesn't need to tell a story to do that either. No one feels immersion while playing Call of Duty. That games is about shooting people to get the most point and getting enough points to gain a reward over time. Its that Skinner Box theory in perfect display. Call Of Duty will always feel like a game no matter how long you play it or how deeply into the game you are.

A game like Skyrim on the other hand could be considered art due to the game actually making you feel like you are the character you made with the abilities you've chosen. It makes you feel like you're exploring the Northern Province of Skyrim. Even if you ignore the main story, the world of Skyrim is built well enough to make you forget that your playing a video game, and that is what I think art is.

Art makes you forget that you're looking at it, reading it, watching it, and playing it. While its unfair to say that video games are art just for the sake of acceptance in the mainstream world, I think its fair to say that video games can be art.

 

[Something Amyss]

Sorry, I'm not explaining very well.

I think you're just hitting the limits of what a poorly-structured argument can facilitate.

It's like the game itself is too watered down and diluted from any one, guided vision to really be artistic. Again, just in my opinion.

So Hideo Kojima's visions are watered down by the numerous staff involved?

I don't buy it.

That's sort of like saying a symphony isn't art because the final outcome may be different from the intention of the composer due to the possibly hundreds or thousands of musicians involved, each putting their own interpretation into the piece. Each individual interpretation by an artist may be art, but the whole can't be because...Too many people are involved, diluting the vision?

I'm sorry, I just don't buy it. It still sounds like an arbitrary definition rather than one that can be justified. The sort of thing I use "because ponies" to describe.