Are games art?

[mchammer75040]

An example. One of the hottest philosophical topics on the internet is Ayn Rand. Her ?objectivist? philosophy, positivistic and materialistic and focused on the need to get society out of the way of the genius so that he can get on with his geniusness, is popular with a broad spectrum of alienated semi-young men tapping away at computer screens and dreaming of world domination. Complicating the picture is the fact that she was also the main intellectual influence on her close friend and prot?g? Alan Greenspan, author of the recent monetary boom we were all enjoying so much until it destroyed the world economy. The only thing which isn?t ridiculous about Rand and her ?objectivism? is the number of people who take her seriously. It would be a good time for someone to publish a work of fiction or make a movie going into Rand?s ideas and duffing them up a bit ? for instance, imagining what it would look like if a society with no laws were turned over to the free will of self-denominated geniuses.

Well, someone has done that, except it isn?t a book or movie, it?s a video game. BioShock, which came out in 2007, was conceived by Ken Levine and developed by 2K Boston/2K Australia, and is set in an alternative-reality version of 1960.

Interesting read:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/lanc01_.html

Thoughts, anyone?

 

[Barnz]

Bad example.

 

[mchammer75040]

And..? Why is that?

 

[Kadayi]

Good games are about good Design and good Design > good Art any day of the week. As someone whose been through the whole Art College scene I can honestly say Art is one of the most overrated realms going and much like Cinema, with its Oscars, Golden Globes and Cannes, games and game designers need to find their own internal validation and worry less about externalised judgement calls such as these. Seek the approval of others and you’ll forever be their slave.

 

[Jintor]

Bad example.

It's an OK example. The challenge to the medium revealed about midway through it was interesting, to say the least.

 

[Mellish]

I asked my dad this question and he said no, but then again he says the olympics is bollocks and also doesn't beileve in charitys. If a game is done right I think it could be considered art.

 

[KagePrototype]

who cares?

 

[Dog--]

I asked my dad this question and he said no, but then again he says the olympics is bollocks and also doesn't beileve in charitys. If a game is done right I think it could be considered art.

The olympics is stupid, you, for some stupid reason, care about swimming and horse riding for a few days out of every 4 years? It's dumb, no one gives a shit about swimming, except when they're on the olympics.. damn.

BTW Games can be art or they can be bullshit, just like movies, just like books, just like paitings..

 

[Remus]

BTW Games can be art or they can be bullshit, just like movies, just like books, just like paitings..

This

Last time I checked, what constitutes art is a matter of opinion.
It's entirely subjective.

 

[PvtRyan]

Why argue over something of which the definition is anything but clear?

Are games xobranals?

 

[Laivasse]

This debate's been had before here and it stretched on for pages...

I think the prevailing attitude was that of course games can be art if, say, a urinal can be art. The bigger question is whether games could ever be what some people consider to be 'great art' or 'high art'.

But then you need to settle on some criteria for what 'great art' is... My tentative definition of 'great/high' art would be that it's art which expresses some profound timeless truth about the human condition, which has the potential to enrich us as a species in some way - creatively, spiritually, philosophically, something like that. The problem is that 'great' art tends to depend upon popular consensus to be deemed 'great' and is also rarely recognised as great within its time. Well popular consensus is a fickle bitch, and therefore IMO a poor means of evaluating work whose value should be subjective and personal. Games are also a medium still in their relative infancy, being merely a handful decades old. As such, aside from the technology they incorporate, many are still very primitive in the way they do what they do (storytelling, etc.). Nor are there enough gamers of advanced years around to be able to establish a serious popular consensus about any particular game being a 'work of art', that has value for the entire human race.

Personally speaking, games are just as much art to me as, say, film. What films can be considered high art anyway, if that's the level we're going to judge things at?? Everyone always pulls Citizen Kane out of their arse, but what else? Most arthouse cinema is total balls, precisely because it usually sets out to aspire to some preconceived notion of 'artsiness' and is therefore pretentious by definition, usually intolerably so.

My favourite film is La Haine, and I'd say it's surely art, perhaps worthy of being called high art, but then I can't think of much else in the world of cinema that touches that level of quality or profundity. What I do know is that I've been as much moved by stuff like Ico and Planescape as I have by almost any film or indeed many books, and more than any classical music. Maybe in 100 years time people will look back on games like those and the consensus will say 'wow, those were works of art, they really said something, they paved the way for something...' I would consider that justified, but then again, maybe no one will say that. Predicting future cultural values is pretty tricky. Either way I don't give a shit at all. I'm confident enough in my opinions of what's important to me that everything else can **** off, and I'd imagine most people are the same way, whether those people consider themselves 'cultured' or not.


(As for Bioshock, I think it should be admired in that it was more of an auteur's game than many other FPSes try to be, in terms of the gameworld's vision at least, even if some elements of the game were uninspiring)

 

[Laivasse]

High fi' mang

BTW I wrote that before I read the article. I'm reading it now (halfway through) and it's very good... verging on excellent - ESPECIALLY the bit about gaming design conventions making games impenetrable to non-gamers. I think that's a key part of why gamers are still, culturally speaking, a minority, and of why acceptance of games as an artistic, or even as a plain old entertainment medium, is not what it could be. However, as the guy says, every medium has its conventions and many of them as as arbitrary as those you'd find in gaming.

I thought the writer was losing his way a bit when he started dabbling with talking about the Wii, but he's recovered by delineating the clear difference in types of games you get on the Wii as opposed to on the PS3/360... Very insightful stuff overall.


EDIT: ...aaaand he finally did lose the way a bit: by making the unsupported assertion that games might never attain very good characterisation - also with the implication that the best gaming can hope for is to occupy an artistic ground somewhere between Hollywood blockbusters and 'high' cinema.

As I've said, I think that's complete hokum, since IMO the 'best' games already more or less rival the best films in terms of artistic quality. The divider between perception of games and perception of film is not related to any innate aspect of the superiority of cinema, but rather just a matter of acceptance and mainstream penetration.

 

[Jintor]

more than any classical music.

Beethoven's Ninth or Fifth Symphonies are pretty damn awesome.

Or Mahler's second Symphony.

 

[Laivasse]

Ico's better

Seriously though, classical's not my thing. I have major problems with adorning something as subjective as music with terms like 'high art' or 'high culture'.

 

[knut]

Sure, why not.

 

[Krynn72]

It can be art if it wants to be. I dont mind.

 

[JFry]

mario paint is about as artsy as it gets.

 

[PoeticRocker]

Something that can be made up of storytelling, feelings, sounds, emotions, and colors is art to me. So yes gaming to me is a form of art.

 

[Tagaziel]

Two words.

Planescape: Torment

/thread

 

[Pesmerga]

Art isn't art unless someone has payed way too much for it.