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Can Art be Games?

sophiehoulden.com

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Re: Can Art be Games?

#31

Post by saraid216 »

matthewowen wrote: post #12

I will never for the life of me understand why so many video game players are so insistent that video games must be art. Why does it matter? For what it's worth, I don't think that video games can be art for reasons that are far too lengthy for the scope of a comment on here. But that doesn't mean video games can't be good things. I also like sport, newspaper articles, and good beer. Cultural artefacts don't have to…

If you're not a game designer, it doesn't really matter that much. But the approach you take to something changes when you decide your creation is a piece of art; there's an aspiration that comes with such a decision. The idea isn't so much that video games must be art, but that they can be art.

Re: Can Art be Games?

#32

Post by saraid216 »

toksaitov wrote: post #2

There is also an interesting argument between Roger Ebert and Kellee Santiago (the co-founder and former president of Thatgamecompany) on this topic http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2010/04/video_games_can_neve...

As I recall, Ebert actually conceded that his respondents might have a point and that he wasn't really qualified to make the call after all.

Re: Can Art be Games?

#33

Post by saraid216 »

arocks wrote: post #29

The article might be a brilliant bit of satire but many young parents can actually relate to it. Children are exposed to interactive toys like tablets at such a young age that traditional toys like a Kaleidoscope barely holds their interest. It is sad to see one of your favourite childhood pastimes get a minute or two of their attention before it is thrown to the attic. To be fair, even I do not find a Kaleidoscope f…

A friend of mine has a lovely 5 year old daughter who's equally fascinated by crappy Zynga games as she is by a hand-cranked music box. ...and toy swords that say, "Thundercats!"

I've mostly put it down to a complete lack of taste, but it's a fairly large gamut of childhood toys there.

Re: Can Art be Games?

#34

Post by saraid216 »

wfn wrote: post #22
brunoc wrote: post #19

MoMA posted this a few days ago - they've acquired 14 games: http://www.moma.org/explore/inside_out/2012/11/29/video-game... tldr: • Pac-Man (1980) • Tetris (1984) • Another World (1991) • Myst (1993) • SimCity 2000 (1994) • vib-ribbon (1999) • The Sims (2000) • Katamari Damacy (2004) • EVE Online (2003) • Dwarf Fortress (2006) • Portal (2007) • flOw (2006) • Passage (2008) • Canabalt (2009)

I am disappointed by a severe lack of Braid in that list. After all, Jonathan Blow is most definitely one of those stirring the (most peculiar) discussion of games & art; see an article+interview about him, http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most... - quite a decent (even if somewhat pretentious on several levels) read while on the topic, by the way!

It could be as simple as Blow declining to donate his game to MoMA, too.

Re: Can Art be Games?

#35

Post by andolanra »

10098 wrote: post #30

I don't understand how games can't be art. Creating images is art. 3D modeling is art (like sculpting). Writing stories is art, as well as creating interesting characters. Animation is art. I'm intentionally not mentioning things like programming or gameplay design, but some people might call these art too (not me, though). So many artists are involved in these projects. And yet, when all of their art is fused togeth…

Because the fact that a game contains art doesn't necessarily imply that it is art. I can also take a gymnasium, commission art for the walls and music to be played as people exercise and so forth. I doubt that people would consequently consider the gymnasium to be itself art, despite the fact that art no doubt went into its creation.

A film could also feature excellent writing and beautiful visual art, but the art of film comes not from those individual elements being present, but the artistry present in their use together. The thing that makes film an art is the combined whole of those individual elements, which is why you can have a film that is not good as a film despite having, say, spectacular acting or sharp cinematography or a beautiful score.

So the question is, can the artistic elements of games be combined in such a way that the whole result, not just the individual elements, is artistic?

Re: Can Art be Games?

#36

Post by saraid216 »

10098 wrote: post #30

I don't understand how games can't be art. Creating images is art. 3D modeling is art (like sculpting). Writing stories is art, as well as creating interesting characters. Animation is art. I'm intentionally not mentioning things like programming or gameplay design, but some people might call these art too (not me, though). So many artists are involved in these projects. And yet, when all of their art is fused togeth…

Most people don't consider soap operas or game shows to be art, but they undergo all the same stuff movies do. (And some people regard them as different kinds of art and other people as simply "bad art".)

Differently, it bothers me that people hear "game" and think "on a computer". Is football art? Or is Remember the Titans art? Or is National Football League 2012 art?

Re: Can Art be Games?

#37

Post by billysilly »

DanBC wrote: post #9

> After Emily left I checked on the internet and it turns out she was right, you really do just look at it, that’s all! Well, that's one way of doing it, and it's what most people do, but you're not going to get the most out of it. Rothko's Four Seasons murals are a good example - big slabs of colour, nothing too complicated. But then when you find out that he said ... > "I accepted this assignment with strictly mali…

Likewise, when I post a sloppy, obscene comment, silly people without culture might get confused.

What they don't know is that I want the readers to feel like they're in a novel of Liselotte Hupenblum, where angry, half-finished gargoyles bark humiliating gibberish at them.

... which changes everything!

Re: Can Art be Games?

#38

Post by xyzzy123 »

Personally? Yeah I think games can be art.

However, while I've had some great experiences playing games, I don't think I have yet played a game which deeply changed my worldview in the same way as, say, some novels have.

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