Tobor said:
It sounds like you are looking at games as being art in the same context as other media, when in my opinion, it makes more sense to view it in context other games. A beautiful chess board for example, is a game and a piece of art. Video games are at the core, nothing more than a chess board, a visual representation used for recreation and education.
The level of interaction that games bring as a new medium means that a genuine work of art could be produced, and could stand on its own two feet as art, regardless of comparison to other media.
Also, beauty or aesthetic virtues are not necessarily the same thing as art.
Guernica for example is aesthetically quite displeasing (deliberately so), but is also one of the most important works of art of the twentieth century.
Something like Rez or Lumines skirt around the potential of Games as Art, with their synaesthesic qualities, but then they are at heart quite conventional gametypes (an on rails shooter and a block puzzler respectively).
Planescape Torment is a well written RPG, but is admired because it brings
competent writing to an otherwise artistically barren medium - the other topic about
just how bad the majority of writing quality is in gaming, means even a
competent piece of writing garners praise. It does not stand by itself outside of the medium, which imo any genuine piece of art would.
Film can be considered art work as a purely visual medium, despite other visual art such as sculpture and painting also existing.
Likewise film can be considered as art from a purely narrative perspective, despite there also being literature and drama to 'compete with'.
Film can stand by itself against other mediums, in other words.
For a game to be considered a work of art, it would need visuals that can directly stand comparison to other visual mediums, and would also need narrative that can also stand alone when taken in comparison.
However, a game should
also have some method of interactivity not possible in any other medium that is also in and of itself a work of art; if you just have a top-notch narrative combined with artistic visuals, you've made a movie, not a game.
tl;dr - games aren't art yet. They might be in the future.
EDIT:
Mgoblue201 said:
this entire art thing is bullshit. The problem with art is that it seems to be this holy grail. Would I consider Mario art? Not really, but it doesn't need to be.
Agree completely, but this debate sparked from a poster claiming that he doesn't post in threads about toys, and others pointing out that all games are toys by their nature.