Wait, so video games aren't art?

[Thaius]

She's not insane, just ignorant. Extremely.

I don't know how you could fix that, but read up on stuff and confront her about it. Or perhaps link her to <url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdG2LHair0>this video, done by Daniel Floyd before the days of Extra Credits. One good look at video games reveals their artistic merit; I fail to see how she could still think like that after this video.

 

[Thaius]

Dangit, double post. Stupid college internet. Ignore this.

 

[TiefBlau]

Just today in middle school English, we got a writing prompt about means of communication (art, music, literature) affecting peoples lives. After my teacher started to take questions I asked if video games were a form of art, and what do I get? She almost burst out laughing then said "Of course video games aren't art, thats solely a worthless technology!" I later asked if movies were considered art and she said they were. Now how aren't they art, compared to movies of course. They both have actors, plot twists, romances in some of them. That seems pretty art like to me. Is my English teacher as insane as I think she is?

Eugh.

What am I supposed to say in response to this? No, of course she would say that? No, of course someone who has come from an age where the most popular video games were Mario and Megaman wouldn't consider such a thing an art form?

Yeah, that about sums it up.
[hr]640[/hr]
As a sidenote, why don't we just stop concentrating on the fact that PEOPLE THINK VIDEO GAMES ARENT ART OH THE HUMANITY and actually focus on why we aren't working very hard to prove them wrong?

 

[hem dazon 90]

No they aren't stop trying to make them art

...

Wow. Really? Games aren't art. Despite the moving philosophical and emotional arguments that have been consisting in games for decades, they aren't and are completely incapable of ever being art.

...*Sigh*

Such great epic arguments as da bad guize r evul!11! and Natzees are meen!


I can see what you mean it's so philosophical

...Obvious troll is obvious.

because anyone who disagrees with you is a troll

 

[LogicNProportion]

I'm doing this as my argumentative topic in English this semester. I may be labeled as a geek, but meh, I wear a Boba Fett shirt to school more times than not, anyway.

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

Art in general, not just high art is of course subjective which is partly my point. To be art, something must be viewed by someone, somewhere as art. A child can draw a picture but it won't have any meaning to them beyond colours on a page that looks vaguely like their pet. Within an hour they will have forgotten all about it and moved on to some other entertainment. I don't think that a game designer, who will work on certain aspects of a game, not the whole thing, will view that game as their artistic expression.

Art is forgotten and the child counts as "somebody." They put color and effort to paper and made an image of a creature they find dear to them. The expression and interpretation is there and they count as somebody, thus art.

And why are you trying to speak for game designers, exactly? A game designer is no different than a Pixar artist by your example as in they are all smaller parts of a greater whole. That whole... is still art. To-may-to, To-Mah-to. Same difference. And now I must go work, hopefully we can continue this later.

Ok, have funsies at work, view this post as your finishing work present!
I think that to be art something has to have a meaning and I mean more than just simple description. While meaning is obviously down to a given individual I don't think a child is capable of seeing past "this is my cat" and nobody else is going to see artistic meaning it.
I've never said that no games are art, I said that most aren't. My point is that at some point in the creative process a game designer making an artistic game should be thinking "I am making art right now".
For the massive games pumped out by the big studios they must have hordes of designers working on aspects of the game comparitively small compared to the finished product. While the individual drawings of landscapes etc could be considered art, the finished product was never intended to be.

Here is the thing, it is all art. It is an expression. It could be "My cat" or "Deconstruction of No True Scotsman Fallacies in an entirely subjective term."

Also, it would be a tad pretentious for a designer to have the random thought "I'm making art" when the more honest thought is that "I'm making something special." They don't need to have that thought for it to be art since it is going to be art no matter what they do. An example is my avatar. I drew that. Oddly enough that character is a derivative of the character I created to make my namesake but I liked the picture better, hence it is my avatar instead of the accurate namesake artwork I did.

Was I thinking the direct thought of "I MAKE ART NAO!!!"? No, I was trying to represent a thought in my head in a manner that would display my intent. While I am humble enough to admit that the piece is mediocre at best, it is still art. My thought process is irrelevant to the fact, as is the child's thought or the developer's. Art is art. Good, bad, or mediocre is the question. By your child example, the old statues weren't art until we unearthed them and the crap I drew in college and high school isn't art because I hardly think of them. However, the fact remains that they are all art, with or without memory or profound thought process.

One of the beautiful things about art is that as an expression, it isn't always deliberate, good, or profound. /babble

 

[DeathWyrmNexus]

No they aren't stop trying to make them art

...

Wow. Really? Games aren't art. Despite the moving philosophical and emotional arguments that have been consisting in games for decades, they aren't and are completely incapable of ever being art.

...*Sigh*

Such great epic arguments as da bad guize r evul!11! and Natzees are meen!


I can see what you mean it's so philosophical

...Obvious troll is obvious.

because anyone who disagrees with you is a troll

I dunno, an inflammatory statement that completely precludes any and all objective thinking as well as doesn't consider that film does the exact same thing without its status being questioned...

Yep, that sounds pretty trollish to me.

 

[MaxwellEdison]

Anyone who utters the words "That's solely worthless technology" is an idiot. Pompousness and technophobia in only one statement? Must be a winner!

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Even more importantly, why do you care? As long as you enjoy playing games, what she thinks is irrelevant.

 

[BENZOOKA]

More like interactive art. At least some of them.

There are endless definitions for things like art, or what could be considered as art. One popular one is: "Art has no other purpose than being art". Video games then again include music and images, which could be thought of as art. You can create art-like things within a game. It's also entertainment and in some situations could be compared to watching TV, or throwing a rock into a lake and watch the consequences. It's tricky, but one really shouldn't bother with these things.

Compartmentalization is terrible, if it isn't absolutely needed. Things are what they are and people have different opinions. There is no right answer even to this question. No one holds the absolute truth and rulebook to say what is art and what is not.

 

[hem dazon 90]

No they aren't stop trying to make them art

...

Wow. Really? Games aren't art. Despite the moving philosophical and emotional arguments that have been consisting in games for decades, they aren't and are completely incapable of ever being art.

...*Sigh*

Such great epic arguments as da bad guize r evul!11! and Natzees are meen!


I can see what you mean it's so philosophical

...Obvious troll is obvious.

because anyone who disagrees with you is a troll

I dunno, an inflammatory statement that completely precludes any and all objective thinking as well as doesn't consider that film does the exact same thing without its status being questioned...

Yep, that sounds pretty trollish to me.

I made a sarcastic remark. Sorry if it sounds inflammatory I had a bad day

 

[ezzawesome]

I souly disagree with her, because to create a video game, it takes an extremely open-minded visionary, with epic skillz in the art department. So...maybe you should leave warm feces on her desk or something, yunno, for laughing at you, then ask her if it's art. Then, maybe she won't be so ignorant.

 

[ezzawesome]

No games are not art, now shut up about it and focus all that energy your wasting on something that actually matters. Sure games can contain different forms of art in them but they themselves are no more art then the building that holds the art museum.

...Actually, ^this guy has a point.

 

[boholikeu]

Because video games aren't art?

Games don't serve the same purpose as movies or books. You aren't suppose to look at them and admire them, you are suppose to play them and enjoy yourself.

Some people get a lot of enjoyment out of analyzing a deep book or movie. Who's to say they can't do the same for a deep video game?

It's a bit like trying to argue that music can't be art because it's something you supposed to just listen to and relax with.

 

[Chromanin]

I'm not an advocate of the "games are art" movement. It's not that I don't think they are, I just don't care either way. Your teacher's attitude is apalling, though. No educator should laugh at a serious question, and art or not, the technology is not "worthless."

 

[tthor]

I don't believe videogames have reached a point of being art(yet, tho it will take a long time till we ever reach that point), however that teacher's reaction seemed very ignorant of the medium and all of it's many accomplishments. videogames may not have reached a point of art yet, but they are certainly proving their worth to society through their ability to immerse a person in the story and get a person excited to learn new ideas through the medium

 

[sneakypenguin]

Meh games are a collection of physics engines, graphics engines, polygons, sounds, triggers, rules, numbers, music. I don't find any of it artistic really, rather I find it more of a sport or game. Man vs AI or vs designer. This whole gamez r art thing is kind of a pointless debate, other than for self gratification you get from someone saying it is.

 

[TiefBlau]

Despite all the opinions on here, I have a feeling that no one here actually has a solid definition of art. Sure, you can say it's "profound" or "you admire them", but that means fuck all if you don't have any foundation to these arbitrary words.

Art, to me, can be defined by two rules:
A) It has to be an intelligent creation (that is, it is consciously made by someone)
B) It has to be made with the intention of provoking thought.

By this definition, a whole lot of stuff is art. But not necessarily good art. I think the quality of art is determined by how much it makes you think.
[hr]640[/hr]

Because video games aren't art?

Games don't serve the same purpose as movies or books. You aren't suppose to look at them and admire them, you are suppose to play them and enjoy yourself.

Seriously, this "games are art" bullshit is little more then an attempt by teenagers and couch potatoes to feel more important then they actually are by telling them self's that by spending all of their time playing video games and accomplishing nothing useful, they are "contributing" to an "art form".

Its stupid, so just stop it.

And by the way, I have been playing video games on regular bases since the days of the NES so its not like I don't like video games. Its just that this whole discussion is getting on my nerves.

Do you want to see the first film ever made? It looks kinda like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39zhCvPBprI
Pretty fuckin' profound, eh?

It is with this reason that you're understandably skeptical of the whole "games as art" concept having witnessed the very first ages of video gaming, just as JD Salinger was pretty pissed off when people all went to see films instead of, say, read a good book, and the same reason Ray Bradbury was pissed at television's replacement of books.

But don't attack an entire medium based on your own nebulous preconceptions of art.

Even today, Harry Potter, Twilight, a lot of music, and just about most, if perhaps not all, Hollywood movies attempt to be more entertainment than art. Naturally, video gaming follows suit. That doesn't render the entire medium incapable of producing art.
Games at times have ways of conveying an experience better than any other medium can do. Horror games in particular are an excellent proof of concept. The genre arguably isn't art, but it utilizes techniques that can make a game so.

Like I said, it's understandable that you feel this kind of anterograde skepticism. But it just drives me up the fucking wall that you actually use it to question our integrity. Did you really watch Schindler's List to have your feelings evoked by cinema, or did you just want to see all the naked girl pictures of starving Jews? We're not fooling ourselves when we say that we can be genuinely moved by a video game. I've seen worse poetry. It can be done.
If you still think that video games aren't art, I welcome you to define it, and we can discuss further.

 

[iblis666]

they are as much art as anything is art, after all art is meant to entertain by way of making people feel emotion and based on the amount of tears ive shed playing video games it couldnt be anything but an artistic medium.