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[Deku]

Ebert's evolving stance on the issue:

Games cannot be art.

Games can be art, but not high art.

Games can be high art, but won't be high art until all of you are dead and never able to see it.

his stance hasn't evolved. he was bashed for making the claim so he's refined and articulated why.

And he's absolutely right.

 

[jdogmoney]

his stance hasn't evolved. he was bashed for making the claim so he's refined and articulated why.

And he's absolutely right.

This is the sort of thing that requires explanation.

 

[Snowman Prophet of Doom]

I would agree that games are not art (or at least that no game except for maybe Shadow of the Colossus has reached the level of art), but they certainly contain art (graphics, level design, story) and are culturally valuable and relevant for that reason.

However, I totally agree that there are no video games to rival the great films/poems/books/songs/TV shows.

 

[BobsRevenge]

He's absolutely right about Flower. The game's a glorified screen saver.

Flower is art, by my definition. It was such a gorgeous game, and the end was unexpectedly emotional. I loved it.

edit: Also, Braid is art as well, I just don't like it.

 

[Deku]

This is the sort of thing that requires explanation.

read the first 10 pages? this isn't my first post.

 

[Brobzoid]

[...] I have the feeling that people tend to use 'art' to refer to good art only and 'entertainment' as a codeword for bad art, at least if we use the expression/product of human creativity (or somesuch) as a starting definition for art.

the truf. People don't understand (or let on if they do) that there is no one definition of art, which makes the effort of classifying something as 'art' or 'not-art' inane.

When people say art they usually mean high art, whether they know it or not - and there is a very good argument to be made that there aren't high art video games because there isn't a high art culture in the video game space.

 

[Safe Bet]

his stance hasn't evolved. he was bashed for making the claim so he's refined and articulated why.

And he's absolutely right.

Games have always been High Art.

If you doubt this you need to discover why playing cards have pictures on them, not just numbers.

...there isn't a high art culture in the video game space.

A Life Well Wasted says hello.

 

[bafflewaffle]

99% of the stuff gaf likes is not art.

 

[FunkyPajamas]

Three words: Gears of Wart.

 

[Safe Bet]

Three words: Gears of Wart.

 

[The Shadow]

You have got to be kidding me. People think video games are an art form? What's next, stripping at a club? Performance art!

It's an entertainment medium. Nothing more. Get off your smug high horses.

 

[bafflewaffle]

some games do have some artistic qualities

but when games are considered great by similarity to movies - "gta is oscar worthy" "uncharted is like playing indy jones" then there is a problem that most do not want to address.

 

[FunkyPajamas]

:lol Flawless victoly.

 

[Tellaerin]

A work qualifies as art if its creator deliberately shaped it with the intent to convey a message, evoke a mood or inspire particular emotions in the person experiencing it. It's really that simple. How successful a given work is in accomplishing this is another question entirely.

People on the other side of the debate like to quote Miyamoto, who insists that games are not art, but he contradicts himself. When he talks about recapturing the experience of exploration and the sense of wonder we experience as children in his games, he's describing an act of artistic expression. He's creating art even as he denies it.

The real question now isn't, 'Can games be art?'. It's 'Where do we go from here?' Videogames are a relatively new artform. There's a tremendous amount of unexplored potential here, and we're still feeling our way. What other kinds of feelings and ideas can the medium be used to convey, and how? Those are the questions we should be trying to find answers to.

 

[BobTheFork]

The idea or story you want to convey isn't art, the way in which you convey it is art.

Then what is the idea? I don't agree that a video game is an invalid way to convey that idea, so I think it's incorrect to say games can't be art. It's as valid as any other visual or auditory medium. Art aside, I stand by my point (I know you weren't disagreeing but clarifying), that there is no invalid medium of expression.

 

[Tain]

i can't help it

To clarify: Very few movies are art.

 

[charlequin]

This is the sort of thing that requires explanation.

If you buy into the gamer-asceticism mindset of "gaming is a medium defined purely by tactile interaction; audiovisual, narrative, and meta elements indeed should be ignored whenever possible" a little too strongly, it's easy to draw the (rather trivially erroneous) conclusion that all of videogaming is properly analogous to basketball or Texas Hold 'Em but not to, say, Dungeons and Dragons or interactive performance art.

Of course, much like Ebert's specific initial argument, any position of this type is always going to require treating video games as a monolithic field filled with products of ultimately similar qualities, rather than a field filled with products so disparate that the fact that they're electronic programs that one interacts with via a video/tactile UI is the only thing at all similar about them.

People on the other side of the debate like to quote Miyamoto, who insists that games are not art

And this is really the source of that problem. Miyamoto is one brilliant game designer whose own work touches on maybe 15% of the possibile space of video games. He doesn't work on games where an element of artistic expression is particularly relevant (or he tries to get people to peel that element away when he does), so to him it doesn't exist, even though throughout the industry there are people taking lessons learned from games he designed and using them in games that are built around gaming as an expressive medium.

 

[Safe Bet]

A work qualifies as high art if its creator deliberately shaped it with the intent to convey a message, evoke a mood or inspire particular emotions in to the person experiencing it. It's really that simple.

corrections in bold

 

[Tellaerin]

You have got to be kidding me. People think video games are an art form? What's next, stripping at a club? Performance art!

It's an entertainment medium. Nothing more. Get off your smug high horses.

There's no reason why stripping can't be performance art, as long as the stripper performs with the intention to convey something to her audience, and that intent shapes her actions.

The problem here is that you (and a lot of other people posting here) seem to think that 'art' is some high-flown thing, sole property of the cultural elite. It's not. Get that idea out of your head. Art is all around us.

i can't help it

He's wrong about that, too.

To qualify as art, a thing needs to have been created and shaped with the intent to convey a message or emotion. That message or emotion doesn't need to be particularly deep or profound. Michael Bay's movies, for example, are intended to excite the audience and get their adrenalin flowing. And that's art, just like a treacly pop song is art, or a crude painting on the wall of a cave. All were created with the intent of evoking something in the people experiencing them. As I said earlier, how well they succeed at that (and how deep, nuanced or profound those feelings are intended to be) are other questions, separate from the question of, 'Is it art?'

 

[BravoSuperStar]

You have got to be kidding me. People think video games are an art form? What's next, stripping at a club? Performance art!

It's an entertainment medium. Nothing more. Get off your smug high horses.

So many people in here just don't "get it". SMH.....

 

[Tellaerin]

corrections in bold

Perhaps, but I'm not debating whether or not games are high art. Some of them are, and some of them aren't. Certainly they can be - there's nothing inherently preventing it. But what I was trying to get at is that people have very narrow definitions of what does and doesn't constitute 'art'. Artistic expression isn't some ultra-rare thing, and 'art' in the broad sense isn't required to be deep, refined, or nuanced. The question of low vs. high art is another debate entirely.

 

[Safe Bet]

The question of low vs. high art is another debate entirely.

Agreed

 

[civilstrife]

Ebert's definition of art seems to exclude theater. How unfortunate.

Is a play no longer art if it strays from the playwright's authorial intent? An extra pause or an unexpected smirk of an actor is all it would take to send the audience's imaginations reeling in any given direction.

What happens on stage on any given night is the amalgamation of a playwright's script, the director's artistic vision, the actor's interpretation (in that moment!) and the imagination and participation of the audience. In short, it is almost entirely unpredictable. Theater is the art of setting the proper circumstances and boundaries in which the action (and art) comes organically and in the moment. Such is also the case with video games. Perhaps tellingly, such is not the case with film.

 

[Flachmatuch]

As long as it's a form of creative self-expression, anything can be art, but video games, as they're made now, are overwhelmingly not self-expression in any way (although some of their parts are), so they're not actually art. Not even close.

It's not a really good debate though. Once there's a game that's on par with what's generally considered art, people will recognise it, but right now, trying so hard to prove that our favourite pastime is somehow more than pure (and awesome) entertainment just makes people look completely stupid. When you're saying Flower or Braid is "art", you're implicitly comparing them to stuff with achievements like Faust or the Iliad or Citizen Kaine, and in this case the comparison does indeed become pathetic.

As for the argument that video games have had no time to develop, I don't think it's a really good one. The development of any human creation doesn't mainly depend on the physical passing of time, but on human-time, the amount of time individual people have put into it. Games don't develop just because time passes, they develop because people put work-time into them, so that's what counts most imo, and in that respect, games have been doing pretty well. They're just way too difficult to make, even Flash games require some technical knowledge, and I think that's probably a huge barrier.

Also, it's not really easy to say what opportunities the video game form gives to artists. There are of course a few concepts that work better in this form, but overall, it's not an easy question, and I don't know if there really are topics and themes that can be obviously best approached with video games. Most of these topics would fit movies equally well or even better. The choices you can make in video games and the complexity of possible outcomes actually limits artistic freedom, unless you focus on the rules governing the world and the behaviour that emerges from these rules, which is imo not something a lot of people are interested in.

So, overall, right now, we don't know what topics fit the video game form the best, tools are often not artist-centered but focus more on technology, making games requires specialist knowledge and/or loads of resources and there aren't too many games that are "obviously" art.

 

[Flachmatuch]

thing needs to have been created and shaped with the intent to convey a message or emotion. That message or emotion doesn't need to be particularly deep or profound. Michael Bay's movies, for example, are intended to excite the audience and get their adrenalin flowing. And that's art, just like a treacly pop song is art, or a crude painting on the wall of a cave. All were created with the intent of evoking something in the people experiencing them. As I said earlier, how well they succeed at that (and how deep, nuanced or profound those feelings are intended to be) are other questions, separate from the question of, 'Is it art?'

I think there's some difference between simplistic manipulation of emotions and art, because in this case, every piece of advertisement, efficiently engineered for emotional effect (ugh sorry), would be art. I think there's a difference between, say, a very well done, psychologist/focus group based life insurance ad and "real" art, otherwise every piece of propaganda, manipulation, lie would be "art". Seeing how well they do this stuff, they could be considered pretty good art too. They also often try to exploit the most profound, deepest emotions...so basically, I think you're totally wrong. Manipulation is manipulation, not art, and Michael Bay is not an artist but more of an engineer.

 

[civilstrife]

When you're saying Flower or Braid is "art", you're implicitly comparing them to stuff with achievements like Faust or the Iliad or Citizen Kaine, and in this case the comparison does indeed become pathetic.

Bullshit. Any developing artist would find this statement incredibly offensive. Art, being a combination of medium and message, can take many forms. Whether or not a particular piece of art is any good is another story entirely. My solo performance piece may not compare to Shakespeare, but it is certainly art.

 

[John Dunbar]

When you're saying Flower or Braid is "art", you're implicitly comparing them to stuff with achievements like Faust or the Iliad or Citizen Kaine, and in this case the comparison does indeed become pathetic.

No, you aren't. Whether something is art or not is judged by its own merits, not whether it compares to the "great" works or not. Also, calling a single game art does not mean you're comparing it to an entire medium (as you imply by saying "stuff with achievements like Citizen Kaine[sic]".

 

[Flachmatuch]

Bullshit. Any developing artist would find this statement incredibly offensive. Art, being a combination of medium and message, can take many forms. Whether or not a particular piece of art is any good is another story entirely. My solo performance piece may not compare to Shakespeare, but it is certainly art.

If you're making music, or writing books, or painting or whatever, you know what you can achieve with what you're doing, you know what you can aspire to. My point was that the game genre has nothing to show for itself, nothing to aspire to yet. If someone actually does bring up Flower etc (which actually happened with Ebert), it becomes pathetic. Sorry.

As for the "combination of medium and message = art" thing, think about it a bit. Every piece of communication is art if you accept this definition, which makes the word completely meaningless. I don't really understand why people want that.

 

[GhaleonQ]

Hey, guys. Want to guess (judging by his Twitter feed) whether Ebert's addressed the best arguments or whether he's made more snide comments?

 

[lyre]

I think he's someone who has never actually played a game, and thus has no basis to speak about them.

The same can be said with most of gaf, but that doesn't stop them from yapping.

PS: The thread is over 700 posts. Ebert wins.

 

[Flachmatuch]

No, you aren't. Whether something is art or not is judged by its own merits, not whether it compares to the "great" works or not. Also, calling a single game art does not mean you're comparing it to an entire medium (as you imply by saying "stuff with achievement like Citizen Kaine[sic]".

We're talking about whether video games can become art. Of course I'm looking at them collectively. My point was this: movies have Citizen Kain (sorry), and if all video games have is Flower and Braid, that comparison (which is practically what was offered to Ebert afaics) is indeed pathetic. There are no comparable achievements with games as with literature or movies. I have worded what I wrote badly, but I don't see how this is such a contentious issue. If you claim that X is art, people will ask for the outstanding achievements, if you have none, the claim will lose strength, at least until we have more than a first approach definition for art.

 

[deepbrown]

We're talking about whether video games can become art. Of course I'm looking at them collectively. My point was this: movies have Citizen Kain (sorry), and if all video games have is Flower and Braid, that comparison is indeed pathetic. There are no comparable achievements with games as with literature or movies. I have worded what I wrote badly, but I don't see how this is such a contentious issue.

Not all films are art - in fact MOST of them are not. Same with games.

If you're making music, or writing books, or painting or whatever, you know what you can achieve with what you're doing, you know what you can aspire to. My point was that the game genre has nothing to show for itself, nothing to aspire to yet. If someone actually does bring up Flower etc (which actually happened with Ebert), it becomes pathetic. Sorry.

As for the "combination of medium and message = art" thing, think about it a bit. Every piece of communication is art if you accept this definition, which makes the word completely meaningless. I don't really understand why people want that.

In the end something being art has nothing to do with whether you or anybody has the opinion that it is good. IMHO. It being art is something other than it being good or bad according to an individuals opinion.

The reason why Flower should be considered art is simple. It uses what is unique to the medium of gaming (interaction) to create an emotive effect and deliver a message that is not explicit. It is not an experience that could be created by any other art form - since the interaction is intrinsic to the delivery of its message/emotion.

That is essentially what art is - the delivery of a non-explicit message/emotion through qualities unique to the medium. This is why films could be considered art (they haven't always been, they have been just as dogmatically denied the title as much as games are now). Games cannot be considered their own art if they mimic films and don't use features unique to the medium. This is why Flower should be considered art and Call of Duty shouldn't.

 

[Safe Bet]

PS: The thread is over 700 posts. Ebert wins.

No..

GAF Wins

A year or so ago this thread would have being filled by gamers agreeing with Ebert.

Now?

Not so much.

 

[civilstrife]

If you're making music, or writing books, or painting or whatever, you know what you can achieve with what you're doing, you know what you can aspire to.

Wrong again. Under your model, there would be no such thing as artistic innovation. Not to mention that many forms and individual pieces of art exist solely a response or backlash against "established" art.

As for the "combination of medium and message = art" thing, think about it a bit. Every piece of communication is art if you accept this definition, which makes the word completely meaningless. I don't really understand why people want that.

The art community deals with these questions constantly. It was a major theme of the 20th century. From Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal, to canvases painted white to John Cage's silent conerto 4'33. Art is inherently fluid and organic and any attempt to tie it down or restrict it's definition is usually tied to some fascist regime.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Not all films are art - in fact MOST of them are not. Same with games.

The difference is just that it's pretty difficult to find a video game that has any serious claim to being "art", and even its highest aren't really that awesome. Of course the possibility is there, it's there even if all you do is draw pictures in the snow with your piss. That doesn't mean much though.

In the end something being art has nothing to do with whether you or anybody has the opinion that it is good. IMHO. It being art is something other than it being good or bad according to an individuals opinion.

The reason why Flower should be considered art is simple. It uses what is unique to the medium of gaming (interaction) to create an emotive effect and deliver a message that is not explicit. It is not an experience that could be created by any other art form - since the interaction is intrinsic to the delivery of its message/emotion.

That is essential what art is - the delivery of a non-explicit message/emotion through qualities unique to the medium. This is why films could be considered art (they haven't always been, there have been just as dogmatically denied the title as much as games are now). Games cannot be considered their own art if they mimic films and don't use features unique to the medium. This is why Flower should be considered art and Call of Duty shouldn't.

Emotional manipulation can be (and usually is) easily found in things that are not art - in propaganda, PR, advertisement. There must be something else to art than just the ability to manipulate emotion. I think it has something to do with integrity and honesty, but I may be wrong.

 

[farnham]

who cares if videogames are art or not ? the formal classification of art does not make a piece of work worthwhile. it is the effect the piece has on the life of the creator and the user that determines if the piece of work was worthwhile or not. there can be paintings, novels or pieces of music. that are without a question being classified as art by formal criteria but yet bring nothing to the table that could affect anyone. the same is with true with games. there are games that are pretty much standardware that will be forgotten in a few month. then there are games that affect millions of people in some way or form and will be remembered for a long time. now is it really that important to determine if those pieces of work are art ? i believe that the fact that those exceptional games already have affected people in their lives fortifies that work as something valuable enough to be held equally to art even if some formal criteria and tradition forbids some people to call it art.

 

[Kodiak]

*throws hands up*

fuck it, I'm done with this conversation. Makes me too full of RAGE.


Games are a medium which art can and has been created, and will continue to evolve just like any other medium be it painting or film.

I love Ebert, but in this regard he's being obstinate and willfully ignorant.

 

[charlequin]

video games, as they're made now, are overwhelmingly not self-expression in any way

Ludicrous.

My point was this: movies have Citizen Kain (sorry)

Kane.

Also, from the invention of motion pictures until the time a singular auteur could create Citizen Kane, it took over sixty years. Even the most generous measurement of video gaming's history (starting in 1948) would still put our medium at best on par with that, and a more reasonable one (starting from SpaceWar!, say) would probably put us almost ten years behind.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Wrong again. Under your model, there would be no such thing as artistic innovation. Not to mention that many forms and individual pieces of art exist solely a response or backlash against "established" art.

It's true, I don't think there's too much worthwhile "artistic innovation". It mostly comes in when the basic form loses its strength, its power to reach people and its role in society. After a while, it has to sink into itself, it becomes detached from the world and you get "art for art's sake". It happens when artists have no conviction, no belief, nothing to say, just technical knowledge and a wish for uniqueness and individuality, which is mostly pointless because it becomes so superficial (not saying that some innovations aren't actually positive and invigorating).

The art community deals with these questions constantly. It was a major theme of the 20th century. From Marcel Duchamp's famous urinal, to canvases painted white to John Cage's silent conerto 4'33. Art is inherently fluid and organic and any attempt to tie it down or restrict it's definition is usually tied to some fascist regime.

Yeah, I know this, and I still think that it's a symptom of "art" losing its social role and becoming a technical, inward-facing, masturbatory pastime...and I don't think video games should "aspire" to that. I definitely prefer the no-nonsense propaganda stuff like MW, which does at least fulfill a social role, it can easily be compared to the huge Catholic churches designed to impress and strike fear into the hearts of European peasants in the middle ages.

 

[deepbrown]

The difference is just that it's pretty difficult to find a video game that has any serious claim to being "art", and even its highest aren't really that awesome. Of course the possibility is there, it's there even if all you do is draw pictures in the snow with your piss. That doesn't mean much though.



Emotional manipulation can be (and usually is) easily found in things that are not art - in propaganda, PR, advertisement. There must be something else to art than just the ability to manipulate emotion. I think it has something to do with integrity and honesty, but I may be wrong.

I don't think there was mention of "emotional manipulation" in my statement. I said the delivery of emotion or a message/idea through features intrinsic and unique to the medium, without being explicit.

Just like a piece of modern art - the message in Flower is not explicit. It is explored by the player and delivered through the gameplay interaction. It is exactly like a video installation in an art gallery - but it can be interacted with. It has a core message and it is delivered through the medium for the viewer/player to explore/deliberate. There really is no question that it is art, because it would very happily sit in a gallery. Is it GOOD art? That's a matter of opinion.

The reason why Ebert says it isn't is because he hasn't played it - and he made his ignorance on what the game actually did in his paragraph on the game itself.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Ludicrous.

Show me the self-expression behind focus groups then :-/ Most games are made to make money, and that seriously limits any such possibility.

Kane.

Whatever, I can't do anything that'll make me look less stupid anyway

Also, from the invention of motion pictures until the time a singular auteur could create Citizen Kane, it took over sixty years. Even the most generous measurement of video gaming's history (starting in 1948) would still put our medium at best on par with that, and a more reasonable one (starting from SpaceWar!, say) would probably put us almost ten years behind.

I'm not sure that the actual human effort invested in games so far is really smaller. Lots of people make games, and there's a pretty large industry behind it, not sure it's smaller than Hollywood was at the same relative time. Things don't develop because time passes. Things develop because humans invest effort in them.

 

[Stinkles]

He's absolutely right about Flower. The game's a glorified screen saver.

So you're saying Flower is just art, not a game. Which again makes Ebert wrong. Wronger, in fact.


Everyone sees what's wrong with this discussion, right?

 

[lyre]

A year or so ago this thread would have being filled by gamers agreeing with Ebert.

Now?

Not so much.

No. Games as art pushers just gotten louder and more obnoxious.

 

[ronito]

Keep your OT question in OT thanks

 

[I AM JOHN!]

No. Games as art pushers just gotten louder and more obnoxious.

Tagquote goes here.

 

[Flachmatuch]

I don't think there was mention of "emotional manipulation" in my statement. I said the delivery of emotion or a message/idea through features intrinsic and unique to the medium, without being explicit.

I thought "delivery of emotion" meant that you wanted the receiver to experience a particular emotion, which is afaics equivalent to "emotional manipulation", but I might have misunderstood that.

As for Flower, I don't know. I don't want to say it's not art...but imo it is indeed a bit pathetic if it's one of the games closest to art.

 

[Tellaerin]

I think there's some difference between simplistic manipulation of emotions and art, because in this case, every piece of advertisement, efficiently engineered for emotional effect (ugh sorry), would be art. I think there's a difference between, say, a very well done, psychologist/focus group based life insurance ad and "real" art, otherwise every piece of propaganda, manipulation, lie would be "art". Seeing how well they do this stuff, they could be considered pretty good art too. They also often try to exploit the most profound, deepest emotions...so basically, I think you're totally wrong. Manipulation is manipulation, not art, and Michael Bay is not an artist but more of an engineer.

Art is something that was crafted to evoke emotion in the person experiencing it. Not all manipulation is art, but art can certainly be created with the intent to manipulate. That doesn't automatically disqualify it from being art. (Old Soviet propaganda posters are the first thing that comes to mind, and I'm certain you can think of other examples.) If there is some fundamental difference, it's mainly one of intent on the part of the creator, which isn't always easy to know.

So I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

As for the "combination of medium and message = art" thing, think about it a bit. Every piece of communication is art if you accept this definition, which makes the word completely meaningless. I don't really understand why people want that.

Art is communication. Specifically, it's the means by which we communicate emotion. It allows us to evoke feelings in someone else so they can experience them firsthand. What I don't understand is why people want to make 'art' into something more exclusive and pseudo-profound than it really is.

 

[Flachmatuch]

Art is something that was crafted to evoke emotion in the person experiencing it. Not all manipulation is art, but art can certainly be created with the intent to manipulate. That doesn't automatically disqualify it from being art. (Old Soviet propaganda posters are the first thing that comes to mind, and I'm certain you can think of other examples.) If there is some fundamental difference, it's mainly one of intent on the part of the creator, which isn't always easy to know.

So I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree on this one.

I'm pretty sure you're right with the creator's intent stuff. Showing integrity when you have none is pretty difficult though, so I think it's not completely unknowable.

Art is communication. Specifically, it's the means by which we communicate emotion.

This is pretty close to what I think too. I think there's more to this though...I mean, sometimes you do "deeply" understand that the person whose stuff you're reading was really alive and similar to you, and that feeling is pretty profound, and I think that might have something to do with art.

It allows us to evoke feelings in someone else so they can experience them firsthand. What I don't understand is why people want to make 'art' into something more exclusive and pseudo-profound than it really is.

No idea...because I don't think simply saying "I'm sad" is art, even if my mom becomes sad when she hears it (to demonstrate that effective communication has taken place hehe).

 

[charlequin]

Most games are made to make money, and that seriously limits any such possibility.

The bugbear of financial motivation erasing the ability for artistic expression is like high-school material. Nobody seriously considers this to be the deciding factor of the artistic validity of a given work.

Yeah, I know this, and I still think that it's a symptom of "art" losing its social role and becoming a technical, inward-facing, masturbatory pastime...and I don't think video games should "aspire" to that.

Do you even live in the 21st Century? Art done got democratized, man.

 

[civilstrife]

It's true, I don't think there's too much worthwhile "artistic innovation".

What can I say? Go to museums, theaters, operas sure. But also go to fringe solo theater performances in some guy's loft. Go take part in interactive art installations. Read the short stories of unknown, developing writers. Art doesn't need to be famous to be good.

It mostly comes in when the basic form loses its strength, its power to reach people and its role in society. After a while, it has to sink into itself, it becomes detached from the world and you get "art for art's sake".

Art for art's sake doesn't really exist. Art is not and can never be detached from the world it inhabits. Sure, it may not reach many people if it becomes incestuous and closed off from the world at large, but it's still art.

Yeah, I know this, and I still think that it's a symptom of "art" losing its social role and becoming a technical, inward-facing, masturbatory pastime...and I don't think video games should "aspire" to that. I definitely prefer the no-nonsense propaganda stuff like MW, which does at least fulfill a social role, it can easily be compared to the huge Catholic churches designed to impress and strike fear into the hearts of European peasants in the middle ages.

Well you've placed yourself (and this is not a bad thing) among a very particular group of thinkers. You're approaching art from a utilitarian, left brained standpoint. Art, however, is the domain of the right brain. It deals in associations, imagery and poetic use of communication to convey meaning. It accesses the ethereal, the unquantifiable and the unspoken. It does not need a purpose. Our need to ascribe a purpose and label to things comes from our analytical, data processing left brains. Very useful in day to day life, but not in art.