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[oracrest]

For me personally, it's not about whether or not something CAN be art, but whether it has crossed a particular threshold. Even that threshold isn't something I can define for myself, let alone some grander, universally accepted definition.

I consider 'Another World' to be art. And put me in the 'Shadow of the Colossus' as art camp as well. I really have no interest if others agree, because I think art is personal, subjective, and abstract. For me personally, there is something about those titles that crosses the artistic threshold. It's not any one thing, but how all aspects come together in an overall sense of presentation.

People (like Ebert) compare games to much older and classical disciplines such as painting, sculpture, poetry, music, film. I think the only disadvantage games has is how young it is. It's still a baby of a medium compared to all those other fields. Even film at it's inception was just a novelty of seeing a photograph that could move. It was a cheap novelty gimmick that evolved over time as more areas and narratives and technologies were explored over the years. Now some of the most powerfully moving things our culture produces are in the arena of film. The same will happen with games, or interactive media, or whatever you want to call it.

At a certain point, technology will reach a point where it is not as much of a limitation as it is today. All forms of media go through tremendous technological advancement as time goes on. Compared to film, which began around the 1880's, video games today are somewhere between 'Voyage to the Moon' and 'Metropolis,' at least in terms of time put in.

Now, not too many people pop in Metropolis and watch it over and over, but there is a scholarly respect for it that exists. I think the same will happen in games. Looking back, the real pioneer titles will stand out as great accomplishments of their time. Even Citizen Kane was highly a technological advancement of film technique, and not necessarily the greatest narrative ever made.

 

[Kilrogg]

I wish I could say that I enjoy this debate, but me not being a native speaker, coupled with the absurd length of the discussion pretty much kill my attention span :lol, even though I fancy myself a fairly capable learner of English.

I'll just reply to Vinci: I'm as confused as you are, if not more, so at least you're not alone. The only thing I'm somewhat convinced of is that if we see art as something grand, then there isn't much art without a) consensus (call it success, popularity, influence, whatever), and b) staying power (people will remember it and draw inspiration from it 10, 50, 200 years from now). Maybe I'm just too ignorant and narrow-minded on the subject (being a lazy person, it is a possibility), but it seems to me that time is the best testimony of quality. And here I am, conflating art with quality. I'm sure someone will jump on this, argue with it, and I'll be unable to answer anything but "Maybe, don't know".

What was my point again? :lol

 

[Vinci]

I wish I could say that I enjoy this debate, but me not being a native speaker, coupled with the absurd length of the discussion pretty much kill my attention span :lol, even though I fancy myself a fairly capable learner of English.

Dude, I've had extensive discussions with you. Your English is better than you think.

What was my point again? :lol

I don't know. As you said, we're in a similar boat. Except I'm foolish enough to jump into the deep water and get myself nipped at by sharks. [Not 'sharks' - these folks have been good to me, all things considered. I'm just exaggerating for fun.]

 

[Drahcir]

Late in responding to replies of my apparent ignorance:

Wait. So you're openly admitting to an appeal to authority?

Yes. But it's only because I am of that opinion.

One of the most ignorant things I've read on these boards in awhile.

Ouch. I only said that in regards to my opinion in defining art, which is something not defined by you or me. That wasn't something I just made up as an argument. Figures in any creative medium have more authorial voice to make substantial arguments to what is art in their field versus someone who's not. Whoever determines those AFI lists we see every so often are authorities. If there were ever a list as controversial as the "AFI's 100 Best Art Films" (not that it would ever happen but this is just an example), who are the AFI going to ask? Martin Scorsese or Uwe Boll? I was only thinking in those terms as to how art is determined and by who in a postmodern age when everyone has an opinion about what it is. I only cited Miyamoto because we all know he's one of few authorities in the video game field that can make a claim with or against the art debate.

Isn't this really just a case of the requirement of a more collective and balanced agreement that needs to be met by organizations within the video game industry for video games to be considered art? Authorial voices within the industry need to talk more about it. Instead of more video game review formats, what about more video game critiques and theories? Who out there is going to answer the question of why video games aren't art because they're more akin to toys?

I do, I'm afraid, automatically distrust (and in general dislike) folks who take 'getting philosophical' to mean changing terminological gears and naming names.

Not changing. Applying. Terminology is relevant. It's just a viewpoint of how one determines art given a set of parameters. I don't know what prompted you to allege that I was naming names for the sake of naming names, aside from you thinking I was trying to sound smart and pompous. Not the case, I assure you. Joyce's aesthetic theory is a representation, and one I wholly believe in, of a set of rules someone can use to see the art in things. But, you know what, that's fine if you dislike what I did. I'm not going to take issue with your opinion of my apparently tactless attitude.

 

[Zachack]

Let me ask you a question: Do you honestly believe that a game is the exact same as a painting? That they have the same exact purpose? I'm really curious. Because you keep mentioning the 'last century of art progress,' but what I'm telling you is that video games are not the same as the methods used in the past because they weren't explicitly built to convey messages outside of their core functionality.

They were built to convey messages whether the creator consciously knew it or not, and one message is, at the very least, "interacting with this is not a complete waste of your time".

Did the 'last century of art progress' state that basketball and baseball are art? The sports themselves? Are they art? If you tell me, "Yes, Vinci, it does. It states in no uncertain terms that sports are an example of art," I will leave this the hell alone.

Yes, that is one of the outcomes of the last century of art progress. "Art" is not some difficult thing to achieve.

What message does it convey though? The only inherent goal is to create something that enables 'play' to take place. That's purely functional, not emotional or aesthetic or intellectual at all.

"Play is good". "Tennis is fun". "I enjoy watching a dot on an oscilloscope". On top of that, any rules are inherently communication because you are transmitting value judgements.

I knew what they were. Both come from a medium that was built inherently as a tool for communicating ideas. Games were not; they were built with one purpose in mind - 'play.' That's it.

Compare the history of early film to the history of early video games and see how well what you're saying holds up.

And you're ignoring the function of why things are created. Function isn't inherently based around the conveyance of ideas.

Why does function matter when determining if something is art?

 

[Zachack]

The only thing I'm somewhat convinced of is that if we see art as something grand,

It isn't. Also, it is.

 

[Kilrogg]

Dude, I've had extensive discussions with you. Your English is better than you think.

I meant my reading comprehension. I tend to skim through discussions when they're about something I'm not comfortable with, even more so in English. Thanks anyway ... Speaking of which, are you aware that you never actually replied to my last PM ? Don't bother though, it's been so long that it would only feel awkward. Feel free to PM me whenever you feel like it though, I could use some updates on your projects... I somehow feel that recent releases like Demon's Souls haven't gone unnoticed by you, am I right?

I don't know. As you said, we're in a similar boat. Except I'm foolish enough to jump into the deep water and get myself nipped at by sharks. [Not 'sharks' - these folks have been good to me, all things considered. I'm just exaggerating for fun.]

Don't mind charlequin. He's a bit abrupt at times, but he's a good fella . You're not being foolish, as long as you don't come out of it mad and stupid, haha.

It isn't. Also, it is.

Thanks for the clarification :lol.

 

[jdogmoney]

Well, no one's going to name almost anything that counts as a "Nintendo game" because...

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask is one of the best examples of art in the medium.

 

[mugwhump]

What message does it convey though? The only inherent goal is to create something that enables 'play' to take place. That's purely functional, not emotional or aesthetic or intellectual at all.

That's really the opinion that this entire debate hinges on. Ueda's and Rohrer's games lead me to believe otherwise, but I'll agree that gameplay as an expressive language has been poorly explored.
Note that video games are separate from games like football in that video games give creators control over how the rules and mechanics are represented, which is a huge part of their creative arsenal. So I don't think it's fair for people to say video games aren't art because they think football and chess aren't art, because they really are different mediums.

 

[Vinci]

Okay, I think I'm done with this particular debate. For one, I'm not even sure the people on the 'games are art' side agree with one another's definition of what 'art' is; second, I don't see how my perspective has any impact on games for others from a practical sense; third, I find it strange that the 'communication of rulesets' should be grounds for a game being communicative and thus acquiring the 'art' label, particularly when those who espouse it would seem to consider Tetris - the clearest definition of communicating rulesets ever in game language, short of Pong and the opening of Super Mario Bros. - not especially high as art within even this industry. [Some would argue that 'it's simple,' whereas I'd consider it 'concise' and 'elegant.' I'm sure I'm not alone in that judgment.]

Ueda's and Rohrer's games lead me to believe otherwise, but I'll agree that gameplay as an expressive language has been poorly explored.

And I've never denied either of those. I've mentioned Sleep is Death on several occasions in this thread. I find it interesting that all of the games suggested as 'art' or 'strong art from the standpoint of gaming' were ones that my distinction backed up. So in practical terms, I seem to be identifying the same standout titles that everyone else is; I'm just less flexible in terms of applying the 'art' moniker to everything else. Which is fine. I'll let everyone who does agree that 'games are art' lead us into the next chapter of this discussion, since accepting that proposition as fact is meant to get the real conversation underway.

I apologize for holding things up for so long, everyone. Please proceed.

 

[Version 3.0]

I'm trying to use people's definitions in here, but they all seem extremely sketchy.

EDIT: Ultimately, it all sounds like "Art is art when I point at it and say it's art."

That's exactly right. There are nearly as many definitions of art in here as people.

Ultimately words only mean what we define them as.

Ultimately "%anything in this world% is %any word in your post% when I point at it and say it's %any word in your post%." What ultimately matters is that other people understand what you mean when you say it.

That's not exactly true. There are clear, unambigious definitions for many things, and though you CAN point to something and claim it is or isn't "X", nobody is going to take you seriously when you do. We do it in jest all the time. "Chihuahuas aren't dogs" or "Smart cars aren't cars", etc. But nobody cares; of course Chihuahuas are dogs. Nobody gets to make up their own definition of dog.

But apparently art is special. Obviously you can point at something, declare your own definition about whether it is art, and be taken seriously indeed--even when, by any researchable source, you are factually wrong.

But I suppose that's what the "art" crowd likes about it: the ambiguity. It makes it easy to find "hidden" meanings and profound insights where, most likely, none was intended.

 

[Tellaerin]

I knew what they were. Both come from a medium that was built inherently as a tool for communicating ideas. Games were not; they were built with one purpose in mind - 'play.' That's it.

So where do simulations fit into this, then? Things like flight sims, which were intended to replicate the experience of flying an aircraft for training purposes? Enthusiasts may 'play' them recreationally, but their roots lie squarely in something that was devised specifically to impart factual information. They're gaming's equivalent of a reference book or an instructional video. And flight sims are one of the oldest genres of PC game.

An automotive reference manual and a novel are both books. A caricature and a roadmap are both pictures. Any medium that enables someone to convey both thoughts and feelings can (and inevitably will) be used to inform, educate, and entertain, sometimes all at the same time. And I'd say that includes pretty much every form of communication mankind has devised. Whether or not a given work is 'art' is a matter of what you use that medium to say.

And once again, that brings us back to intent. I really don't understand why you're so rabidly opposed to the idea of intent as the key determiner of whether or not a thing is art. To me, the alternative is appalling. It would mean that people could arbitrarily declare anything to be 'art' or 'not art', which totally removes the artist from the equation. I accidentally drop a pocketful of change on the ground and the coins land in a pattern that pleases you? Art! Nevermind the fact that I made absolutely no effort whatsoever to direct the outcome, and never even meant to drop the coins in the first place. My intentions don't factor into it. Or alternately, the works of Jackson Pollock: Not art! They're just random paint splatters on a canvas! The fact that Pollock was deliberately flinging that paint the way he did, and choosing the colors he chose, need not factor into it. His intent was irrelevant, or at least that's the POV you seem to be trying to communicate. In your world, there would be no difference between Pollock splashing a canvas with paint with intent to create art guiding his hand and a chimp randomly doing the same. The two might generate similar-looking results, and that's all that matters. I can't tell you how passionately I disagree with that.

EDIT: Damn, too late. Well, it was good discussing this with you, Vinci, even if we don't see eye-to-eye on the subject.

 

[Sibylus]

Yeah, thanks for sticking around and talking about this with us, Vinci. These kinds of discussions are some of the forum's more enjoyable.

 

[Aaron]

Because something's function is intrinsically and massively important to how it is created. The way I create a building is going to be very different from how I create a bridge, but if my building is very traditional in style (ie. it is built specifically to amplify the structure's function as a 'shelter for people'), then I see that as good design - but I don't see how it qualifies as art. If my bridge, on the other hand, is well designed but has some sort of elaborate design across the top that makes it look like hands are holding up the thing (again, neat), that would be - without question - art.

You would think someone with your username would know the Mona Lisa was painted under contract. Function is not nearly the same thing as intent. For instance, Rez functions as a game where you shoot things, but if you think that's the game's intent, you could have only been playing it blind, deaf, and dumb. It's about the experience. Just as a painting isn't art until it interacts with the viewer, a game isn't art until it reacts with the player. When done well, it can evoke everything that any art can, and that's regardless of a narrative or 'movie like' experience. However, it doesn't work if you treat it like a movie, just watching along. Games that don't engage the player, ones that don't have that interaction, aren't art, in the same way the average hollywood blockbuster isn't art.

 

[To Far Away Times]

The way I see it, games are a medium used for personal expression. How the creator uses that medium to share experiences, and create new ones, is art. Art is not necessarily in the mechanics of a game, (though some are beautifully designed, like Tetris), art is how the message gets across and what it means to the people that experience it.

 

[Salazar]

Not changing. Applying. Terminology is relevant. It's just a viewpoint of how one determines art given a set of parameters. I don't know what prompted you to allege that I was naming names for the sake of naming names, aside from you thinking I was trying to sound smart and pompous. Not the case, I assure you. Joyce's aesthetic theory is a representation, and one I wholly believe in, of a set of rules someone can use to see the art in things. But, you know what, that's fine if you dislike what I did. I'm not going to take issue with your opinion of my apparently tactless attitude.

You didn't apply terminology, you just stated it and mentioned that you subscribed to it. And you did just name names; you had to beat the traffic, which excuses but doesn't alter what you did: name names. The post didn't lack tact, just substance, originality, effort, anything more than surface personality.

Oh, I almost forgot. Hegel, Quine, Ayer, Austin blah blah.

 

[BobsRevenge]

That's not exactly true. There are clear, unambigious definitions for many things, and though you CAN point to something and claim it is or isn't "X", nobody is going to take you seriously when you do. We do it in jest all the time. "Chihuahuas aren't dogs" or "Smart cars aren't cars", etc. But nobody cares; of course Chihuahuas are dogs. Nobody gets to make up their own definition of dog.

But apparently art is special. Obviously you can point at something, declare your own definition about whether it is art, and be taken seriously indeed--even when, by any researchable source, you are factually wrong.

But I suppose that's what the "art" crowd likes about it: the ambiguity. It makes it easy to find "hidden" meanings and profound insights where, most likely, none was intended.

No, it's true. It's just that art is less clearly defined in our language, or at least in our culture using it. I can make anything mean anything I want it to. I just can. You can't stop me. Whether it means anything to anyone else is another matter.

I'm just restating what I said.

Ultimately, the only way to answer the question of if games are art is to DEFINE ART. How else, logically, can you answer it?

If the concept of what a dog was was as loosely defined as art, I'd be making the same call if someone was trying to see if an animal that we bred into what amounts to long-term evolutionary inhumane treatment towards animals, you know, a dachshund, was a dog. You know, are its legs too short, does its fucked up body length exclude it, etc.

However, thanks to having a popularly understood science of classification of animals, we don't have an issue with it. Art just doesn't have that same level of popular clarification, so the clarification has to be created to answer the question. And then the answer is as generalizable as people are agreed upon for the definition. As with anything.

We can answer the question in regards to any number of definitions, so long as they are clearly stated. And again, the question would have been answered for each of these respectively, and would go so far as they are agreed upon.

edit:

Yes. But it's only because I am of that opinion.

Well, I'm sure you already know this. But an appeal to authority means nothing in an argument. It's fallacious.

I mean, personally, I don't actually have much of any appreciation for what Miyamoto says. I generally don't give a shit about his opinions and fundamentally don't like Nintendo's game design ideals.

 

[oracrest]

....There are clear, unambigious definitions for many things, and though you CAN point to something and claim it is or isn't "X", nobody is going to take you seriously when you do. We do it in jest all the time. "Chihuahuas aren't dogs" or "Smart cars aren't cars", etc. But nobody cares; of course Chihuahuas are dogs. Nobody gets to make up their own definition of dog.

But apparently art is special. Obviously you can point at something, declare your own definition about whether it is art, and be taken seriously indeed--even when, by any researchable source, you are factually wrong.

But I suppose that's what the "art" crowd likes about it: the ambiguity. It makes it easy to find "hidden" meanings and profound insights where, most likely, none was intended.

It's not that the word 'art' is special, its that it is a more abstract concept than 'dog.'

I can say that I love my mother, and we can agree that we have an understanding on what the idea of 'love' is, but YOU don't have to love my mother. And the meaning of the word doesn't break down because of this.

'Art' is a similar kind of word. To create a definition for the word that is as concrete as 'dog' is a Sisyphean task.

 

[Vinci]

For what it's worth, I am more than fine with continuing independent lines of discussion on this topic with people through PMs. I've been doing so with charlequin already. The benefit of this is that I'm able to address your individual definition of 'art,' how it directly relates to my distinction between 'design' and 'art,' and cover concerns between our different perspectives without having to address a chorus of voices that are all singing the same song but with pretty diverse interpretations of it.

If you don't want to, that's cool. I'm no authority figure on the matter, obviously; I enjoy the debate to an extent, but keeping track of how each person views art and then trying to discuss that in any way that is respectful to his or her opinion is really hard to do within this thread.

As an aside, to Aaron: I mentioned earlier in this thread that the Mona Lisa was a contract piece, though I feel that is less of an issue - in truth - considering DaVinci created the piece over a period of several years. Odds are, the painting's subject likely wasn't there for the full period in which he labored upon it, and thus I do question how closely it related to the original person. That said, my distinction comes into play upon works that were not originally intended to act as forms of communication.

 

[MrGame&Watch]

Here's an article from the Atlantic defending video games as art. I think he does a good job portraying how I feel about.

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/05/why-video-games-are-works-of-art/56205/

 

[Version 3.0]

Here's an article from the Atlantic defending video games as art. I think he does a good job portraying how I feel about.

http://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/05/why-video-games-are-works-of-art/56205/

That's pretty well written.

I wonder if Ebert has any notion of the history of his chosen profession. Movies were once derided as flimsy, shallow mockeries of "real art", namely live theatre.

But I guess for some people, "art" is just a way of putting themselves above others. That's most definitely the case with Ebert.

It's amazing how cyclical history and society can be. It blows my mind, for example, that somebody who was once persecuted for listening to Heavy Metal can, 20 years later, level the same accusations (sometimes word-for-word) against their own child and his choice of music.

 

[cRIPticon]

He's aware of most of the things that matter: no video game story has yet stood up to a masterpiece of film or literature, interactivity is usually either at odds with or independent of narrative due to the player's actions and objectives (kill the enemies, keep your combo going, collect items, use the right spells, heal your character, upgrade abilities, avoid damage etc.), games have to use other media as crutches to convey ideas, and so on.

You seem to be confusing mechanics for story. Again, it does not matter how long you take in a level, where you explore, etc.; Portal always ends the same way. Games can, at time, wrest control away from the player to advance a narrative and keep the story on track. Ebert falls down as he is not even open to the possibility that he may be wrong and is basing this completely on what he believes constitutes art. If he never experiences the material, he is not qualified to judge/critique.

Oh, and do you know what advantage the masterpieces you refer to have over other forms of media? Time. That's all. Consider the following:

Early reviews of Gatsby were mixed, and relatively few copies actually had sold before Fitzgerald's death in 1940. Many critics, most notably Ernest Hemingway, were put off by the fact that Fitzgerald had been known as a writer of stories for popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post. It was not until a revival of Fitzgerald's works in the 1950s that the novel began to attract serious criticism. For the five ensuing decades, Gatsby has continued to attract critical attention and reappraisal. Critics have praised Fitzgerald's tightly woven narrative, and many have focused on the position of the narrator, Nick Carraway, and the subjective limitations of his observations of Gatsby's saga. Although Gatsby was for many years called “a novel of the Jazz Age” (a term which Fitzgerald coined), critics have agreed that it has a much more universal meaning, not the least of which is a trenchant critique of materialist American society much like T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land.

It took 25 years for The Great Gatsby to be held up as a piece worthy of critique.

What can video games do better than anything else? Live-action films can more effectively unite moving images and music; among many other things, the director has full control of the frame and pacing. Literature is still the best medium for telling sophisticated stories. In fact, games share one of film's big weaknesses in this area: placing the audience inside a character's head. No FPS has conveyed a character's thoughts better than, say, David Copperfield or Huckleberry Finn.

That's because, in an FPS, you assume the same role as the protagonist. In fact, you ARE Master Chief in Halo. Very similar to The Matrix. In the movie, you and Neo were joined along the same path of discovery up till the point of understanding what the Matrix was. Then the control moved away from you as a participant in the discovery to an observer. That mechanic is what made the movie have so much impact.

I would dare say that Indigo Prophecy did a pretty amazing job of conveying the protagonist's thoughts.

What can games do better than anything else? Allow the player to see the environment from a perspective of their choosing, explore lateral threads, inject their own morality when given the opportunity by the author, etc.

Faith isn't just conviction, it's experiential. Playing a game is also an experience. Both involve feelings, which produce memories, which we classify as knowledge. I'm arguing that knowledge derived from direct experience isn't strictly necessary to judge the artistic value of games.

You can argue all you want, you are still wrong. Try judging a work of literature from CliffsNotes. Sure, you may get setting and facts, but you miss the point of the work. The very nature of games demands direct participation.

Bingo, you've hit it! What's the point indeed? Multiple endings comprise a limited array of outcomes. Your choices are restricted from the very beginning. In Silent Hill you can't shout at characters you meet, you can't MacGyver traps for the monsters, you can't sit down and wait until you die of thirst. Decisions in video games often have no more meaning, impact or variety than those in a choose-your-own-adventure novel.

Have you ever actually played a video game?

Of course choices are restricted from the beginning, rule sets, staying the course of a narrative arc, etc. So what? Movies and books only have ONE ending with little opportunity for internalization. Choices allow the player to inform the space in which the narrative exists and add their perspective to the experience while still following the intended arc. No books (except Choose Your Own Adventure) or movies can do the same.

No doubt this is true for the majority of English majors.

Out of runway, eh?