Aardvaarkman said:
GodzillaGuy92 said:
Because video games are their own art form.
Toymaking is also its own art form.
I already said as much in a different post. That's also why I said video games are "their own art form" rather than saying something like "video games are art, unlike toys."
Aardvaarkman said:
And many video games don't contain any real artistic content
[...]
I certainly wouldn't refer to a film like "Shallow Hal" as art. It's nothing more than a cheap diversion. And a pulpy romance novel or Star Wars fan fiction is barely art.
Art is something created for the primary purpose of inducing an emotional reaction. In other words, art
is diversion, even though it is fully capable of being something more substantial than that.
Shallow Hal, cheap romance novels, or
Star Wars fanfiction may not succeed in having an emotional effect on you, but they're still art because there will always be someone out there who is legitimately affected by those works. They aren't somehow "less" artistic because of their nature; their nature merely makes them bad. That's why Roger Ebert was wrong to claim that video games are not art. He made the mistake of thinking that, because he personally had no appreciation for games (regardless of what they have to offer to people of different inclinations), it invalidates their artistic status. I may not like rap music, but plenty of others do, so I'm not about to claim that it doesn't have artistic merit or doesn't qualify as music.
Aardvaarkman said:
How is playing with a toy not an experience? And how is a video game not something you play with?
Again, reading my other posts would come in useful. Playing with a toy is an experience, but you typically don't experience the toy itself, whereas you do experience a video game in the same way that you experience a film or novel. You usually don't play
with a game (video- or otherwise), you simply play it, because what a game offers is a directed experience dictated by its rules or mechanics. With a toy, it's up to you to create your own experience with it. That doesn't make them erroneous, it just makes them different.
I'm not trying to say that the comparison between toys and video games is simply invalid; the two are quite similar in what they have to offer the person engaging with them. But to claim that toys are a giant blanket which video games fall under, as opposed to the two being kindred but separate entities, is simply incorrect.