Video Games As Art - The New Faraci Heresy - Page 2

No, it'll be a Final Fantasy title.

Why do games need increasingly complicated stories to be considered art? There are plenty of art forms that don't involve narrative storytelling in any way and I think if there's anything that's keeping video games from reaching the level of true artistic experience (and I'm not saying that they can or can't reach that level), it's the insistence on telling stories.

I can't really argue with any of Devin's points. They're well-reasoned and make perfect sense.

However, I think the whole "Are video games art?" argument is an impenetrable labyrinth because it boils down to the aforementioned semantics of what you consider art.

There is no question that elements of art are involved in the making of a game. Just like Devin says... Visual art, Music, writing... all of it is involved. It boils down to intent, doesn't it? Film is an art form because filmmakers primary intention (arguably, of course) is to tell a story and communicate an idea.

So, a game can not be art because a game maker's primary motivation is to create an interactive recreational activity, rather than tell a story.

For me, the line is blurred because I see any form of storytelling as an art form. So I have to concede that modern video games have started to cross the line into "art" by virtue of the fact that so many of them are focused on telling a story. So, Devin's comparison with films is apt.

But it also begs the question, is Friday the 13th Part 2 art? Is Silent Night, Deadly Night art? Most would say no. But, is There Will Be Blood art? Most would say yes.

Why is it that some movies are art and others are not? Couldn't we apply the same rationale to video games? Perhaps Double Dragon, Legend of Zelda and any of the pre-32 bit generation games are not art. Perhaps they are. Out of this World was a fairly revolutionary experience. Can you call it art?

Maybe The Suffering is not art. For the same reasons that Renny Harlin's Prison is not art.

Meanwhile, you could say that Ico is art for the same reason that Ridley Scott's Legend is art.

Or maybe not.

I don't know. I don't think there is any way to settle this.

And what if Friday the 13th Part 2 is art? It's primarily filmmakers going through the mechanical motions of making a film solely to exploit its titillating elements and give a cheap thrill to audiences. How is that different from a video game?

Or a still life painting of a bowl of fruit hanging behind your bed at a Motel 6 is not art. While The Scream is. But both are painters putting an image on canvas.

Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is art, while Dean Koontz's Frankenstein is not. Bram Stoker's Dracula is art and so is Stephen King's Salem's Lot? Where do we make the distinction? It's infuriating.

It just goes on and on for me. So I choose to look at video games as an evolving art form. Much like cinema was in its infancy and, some would argue, continues to be. Videogames are an evolving storytelling medium at this point. And, yes, there is a difference between Minesweeper or Solitaire and Grand Theft Auto IV. Just like there is a difference between an Abtronic infomercial and an episode of 24.

Not everything produced in that medium is art. But a work of art is possible in that medium. I would argue some video games have achieved that distinction already. Many of you would argue they haven't. But you can't discount the possibility that such a thing may be possible, can you?

Brilliant article, Devin. This issue reminds me of some missing the point of Marcel Duchamp's urinal - which was art that challenged what art was percieved to supposed to be. It was the presentation of the urinal that made it art - one can't point to a urinal in any washroom say it's art, though what you write down about it could be considered art. Video games don't challenge the definition of art, they...well, I'm just going to end here before reiterating your points about presentation.

Because when it boils down to it, games are still a form of entertainment first and foremost. That's the whole reasoning behind the medium's existence. And now that programmers have the ability to tell stories through the medium, they can enhance said entertainment however they wish.

And let me be clear: I'm so down with that. I've LOVED story elements from a bunch of games, and the interactivity does help*. But while I get off on the interactive storytelling aspect of gaming, what drives the medium, and keeps it financially viable is the fun factor. And while the medium has been slouching towards Shakespeare for the last 20 years or so, it has to do so in the face of artistic endeavors in the medium usually not being financially viable, unless you're catering towards the emotionally stunted. Look at the success of the Wii for an easy example of what catering to the most basic fun centers of the brain will get you. If games want to break on through to the other side in that respect, getting some God's honest adult storytelling into the medium is the easiest place to start, at least in theory.



*By the way, for all the talk about Bioshock SOTC,etc, not nearly enough attention has been thrown towards what I think is the most effective and affecting moment from a game this decade: the mission in Call of Duty 4 after a nuclear bomb goes off and you're forced to crawl out of a helicopter, and live out some poor bastard's raspy, dying breaths. And the main reason for that, I believe, is because there are more people who played that game solely for the social FPS experience than the actually really solid storytelling.

They might or might not be considered art now, but it's entirely possible that in the future those categorisations may reverse. Shakespeare was not considered "high art" for centuries (Voltaire thought his works were puerile nonsense and Tolstoy had similar feelings). Ditto da Vinci's "The Last Supper" (so much so monks carved a doorway through part of it!). Just as time marches onward so does cultural perspective.

Also, it's worth remembering that "art" is a relatively new invention. Journey back in time 500 years to discuss it within our cultural context and people wouldn't know what the hell you are talking about.

I fully agree with Devin on the "Narrative Game X is a movie with chores" argument. I think a lot of the "games are art" crowd pointing out Bioshock, Half Life, Shadow of the Colossus, and even (seriously) Prince of Persia are misguided.

I also fully agree that the art discussion has no bearing on quality, and the hissy fits put up by a lot of the I-need-validation people are silly at best.

Where I kinda disagree is on the remaining point. Can game rules be art. My answer would be "I don't know, but there's a few people trying and thinking about this problem". I further think that THESE are the people worthy of engaging in this debate, not the nerds in random message boards.

Devin, you mentioned it was ridiculous to bring up Braid because of art design and music, and I agree. However, I think that there's a case to be made for the way in which Jon Blow tried (and, in my opinion, failed) to introduce meaning into the actual mechanics themselves, and the way they related to the story. The last level in particular, with its reveal brought by using the time mechanic is an attempt to do this. But again, I think he ultimately failed. Braid is too much of a straight-up platformer with a gimmick.

The problem is that the games that are being made in an attempt to explore this very concept of gamerules as art are one man experimental affairs, put up for free to generate debate. The people doing it are testing the theory, not yet simply creating art. They're unsure it's possible. You can debate them on that, but since this attempt is only now being made, I'm not sure it's fair to close the book on them as failures just yet.

The best example that I know of is called "marriage", and it's freely downloadable at http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html , where the author also has a bit of text talking about the game and his goals. here's a sample:

So, yeah. I agree with almost everything you say, but I'd like you to acknowledge that beyond all the fanboys, fakespergers, flamewars, defensiveness, and major major nerdiness, there are also some serious, creative people who are puzzled by the same questions you are but are attempting to push the boundaries to see how much they can stretch them.

Thanks

[edit] another game that attempts the same thing is http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007.../time-goes-by/

I basically agree with what Devin wrote, the games currently being released can hardly be called art, but heres a good counterpoint Dan wrote a couple years a go. The fundamental difference between this arguement and Devins I suppose is the definition of videogames. It feels a little unfair to classify games such as Bioshock interactive movies. But if one does this then Devins thesis holds. But where would a game like Fallout 3 fall in the spectrum of videogames and interactive movies? Where no two experiences are a like.

If your definition of "art" is "something purposefully created or presented with the intention of communicating an idea or feeling," someone blowing up of a bus in Haifa today during Passover would be them purposefully creating a presentation in which their anti-Israeli (not necessarily anti-Semitic or anti-Zionist) views on display, so you proved your own point - defining what art is doesn't fly.

To that, I'll just get this out of the way - I don't play video games, really (I've worked in video games, though, and continue to do so - just, I type so much that the controllers hurt my hands after ten minutes), but I feel that I know enough about art to simply say that of course video games are art and anyone who says otherwise can't help but sound like those curators at the Academie des Beaux-Arts who, say, went to great academic lengths to explain what the Impressionist painters did was not art.

A case could be made for this still, of course, but I think it goes right to the point that history defines art because it's in the hands of the viewer, the public, the gamer. While yes, there can be academic attempts - as, I definitely feel, this essay is - to convince people why a video game is not art, a great number of people have already decided that it is, whether it be the game playing experience (which, on some level, equates art to action - the way one describes the movement of a boxer as art, something Mike Tyson espouses on in the new Toback doc - though said action is aided) or the design of the game playing experience, which yes, is a sum of artistic parts, but I feel it creates something new.

Finally, I really do believe that interactivity is an art. It's the difference between a stage play and a movie - there's an art to creating something for a live audience, which heads right into game theory. For me, building a game that becomes an addictive interactive experience is an art and what results, can be something that people move out into their lives, approaching things differently.

While yes, it can result in the same kinds of effects, say, a good industrial video on being "manipulative in the workplace" can be, your definition of art didn't say it had to be a "good" idea that's presented.

But as for "feeling" - that's where video games, for me, fit right into your definition with ease. I am blown away by the raw power of the opening few moments of the filmed staging of the Kenneth Branagh versus Emma Thompson "Look Back in Anger" directed by Judi Dench. Holy shit. I feel that same rush of holy shit during "Call of Duty 4." Just as Branagh rains down his vitriol and you are put in poor Alison Porter's shoes, "Call of Duty 4" puts you in an imagined combat scenario and you are left with the feeling of what it's like to be there.

Is it JUST the cinematic story? Hell, no. But is it just the narrative that allows you to take a step into the movie for a change? Yes, you get to live vicariously - but you could still do that with a simulator of sorts where you had no control over the action. When the game becomes REACTIVE to you, when you change what is happening, that's where games have something over a lot of other artistic media - it evolves with you, like a comedian hitting a punchline differently as he/she gauges a laugh. YOUR baggage, all of your knowledge and reflexes and memory affects your game-play experience just as it affects what you laugh at and what painting might speak to you.

To me, that's how video games fit into your definition of art.

It is a very well written article, but my problem with it is when the games cease to be 'art'. From reading the article it appears to suggest that the component parts may be 'art', but it stops being 'art' when the individual assumes the intereactive role. I don't really get that delineation.

If all cinema is art, then something I have never seen, like say 'White Chicks' exists as art without me having appreciated it. In that same vein I have never played Halo, so I have never experienced the narrative, self controlled story-arc it contains. Yet in my mind it exists as a piece of art, made up of music, video, design, acting, writing, choreography and many other widgets, all created so there are a finite number of programmed individual in-game variations that can take place.

At that stage, in my opinion, the game, still in the plastic wrapping on the shelf, has exactly the same artistic value as any 3D animated feature. I would assert that the artistic value then carries through as the player partakes in the predetermined actions necessary to proceed through the game.

You then have to consider the 'sandbox' games, particularly in GTAIV's case, where the player can attack in a manner that doesn't reflect the narrative arc of the set story, as well as the fact that the narrative ends but the game does not. That is more troubling, but I personally still believe it to be art.

Whether it is bad art is a different question, but, having been brought up around computer games, I can safely say there are many videogames I have far preferred to a lot of TV, film, music and literature.

There I think you are wrong. All consumer entertainment is ultimately set out to entertain, in that respect movies are no different to videogames. You have the 'indie' games, but the big releases are by enlarge 'blockbusters' as game development is generally so expensive. You still find people doing very interesting and different things with the medium, in the same way the majority of Oscar movies are big-budget films, just in different genres and differently targeted.

As a final point, I would like to say that World of Goo is a wonderful work of art.

There's the problem, though. No video game HAS been that reactive to the player's actions. There's games that skirt along that precipice (Mass Effect, GTA IV to name two), but we're still dealing with very binary definitions of morality and freedom within these worlds.

That said, this is probably the most clearly defined version of where video games would need to go to breach the "art" barrier.

These are all excellent arguments and I wanted to say I agree wholeheartedly...

And...

That basically hits the nail on the head for me. Videogames are definitely an art form, whether or not "art" has been achieved here is arguable. I would say it has. Many would disagree. But I think we can all agree that the potential exists.

I agree with Grimoald. I consider Grand Theft Auto IV to be a work of art as well. It takes great skill and artistry to create a fully realized world like that. To not say the people involved (writers, designers, programmers, voice actors, musicians...) are artists working at the peaks of their talents is kind of insulting, in my opinion.

No one is insulting the game designers. Somebody could repair your vehicle and do a wonderful job at a low cost, and I don't think I'm demeaning them by not calling them an Artist; that mechanic utilized technical ability and general niceness. Not all art is even very good or likable! Tideland is definitely art, but there are many reasons people have had to loathe it. Your ideas of Art are rooted in having 'class' at what one does, and to say people aren't artists at what they do is to rule them as slobs. This is a very bourgeois concept; you've expanded that wonderful, precious view of the Artiste to everybody. I suggest reading some Celine to know an absolutely brilliant, yet despicable artist.

Right, but your previous example was "Does the button pressing have to be involving for the entirety of a game to be considered artistic? This seems like saying books can't be art because there's no involvement in physically turning the pages." By your example, it sounded like you were saying, "push button to advance scene" like you would turn a page to advance a book.

I understand what some people are saying about how this may be short-sighted and that art hasn't happened yet, but that's a value call. If it hasn't happened yet, it can't happen unless there's a technological innovation that fundamentally changes the medium.

As for SJR's example of interactivity, I don't think that's the right word (and yes, I feel incredibly pompous for telling HIM that since he's such a great writer). I believe you're talking about immersion which is totally different. I can't interact with a stage play and fundamentally change its direction. I'm not the director of the stage play. I can't ruin the stage play (or if I do, I'll get kicked out and the play will resume as if I'd never been there in the first place).

Let's look at this way. Assume Raging Bull was a videogame. Same story, same beats, same everything. Assume that the level of interactivity you have is in the boxing scenes and that everything else is cut scenes (of course, I could expand it with choosing dialogue and so forth, but let's keep the example simple). So I'm boxing, but it's all up to the individual player to throw the punches. Even if they copy the black-and-white and slow-motion, they can't capture the fight choreography. That's all on me now. Am I now the artist? Am I collaborating with the other elements? No, because I have either one of two options: either I can A) do my own fighting, mash buttons, and come out with a result that doesn't thematically or artistically mesh with the rest of the film or B) I land every punch and do exactly what's in the real film in which case, I'm just a middle-man in progressing a pre-determined story.

Now let's assume I can actually win fights that LaMotta lost or lose fights LaMotta won. What happens then? I've now fundamentally changed the story. What happens to themes and ideas and Scorsese's artistic intent now that I've changed what he did? I fucked it. We have removed the artist from the art because the art is based on what I do or you do or what anyone does.

I would assume that a counter-argument to this would be "Well what about something like the AIDS Quilt?" Alright, let's look at that: it does seem to also fit my videogames-aren't-art criteria. It has no singular visions, anyone can participate, there are set rules as far as size and materials (but all artforms have those, whether it be celluloid, the parameters of the frame, etc.), and the original author has no control over how it evolves. But I would still qualify it as art. It's simply collaborative art. Cinema is ultimately a collaborative art. But a videogame is collaboration dependent on the end user but it's a user who can never contribute. Now maybe that's the technological innovation I mentioned earlier. Maybe if some designer somewhere comes up with a massive world that every player can affect and change, you may have something. Furthermore, that world would have to be completely open and subject to no rules except how does that work? What if I want my avatar to jump? What if I want my avatar to fly? What if I want to destroy every building in the world? What are the limitations and who sets them? What are the appropriate limits of my contributions and the contributions of others?

Great advocate.


As with any medium, there's the potential for a video game to be art. An artist could set out to use a video game as his medium to get his idea across. As far as I know, it hasn't been done yet (at least not in a significant way. I don't doubt some college art major hasn't made some crude "video game" at some point as an art piece. Shit, I seem to remember someone doing something like that in one of mine).

But then that's also not what Devin's arguing against.

Ah, I see. I was just saying that books and films have rather mundane aspects that are necessary to experiencing them but that don't detract from considering them art, so the idea that pushing buttons in a video game keeps it from being considered didn't make sense to me.

Again this boils down to semantics, doesn't it? Auto mechanics is not an art form. Graphic design is. Again, I'm talking personal opinion... So the auto mechanic is a craftsman. While the graphic designer is an artist. There are craftsmen in the video game field too. I shouldn't have included the programmers in my parenthesis. Like, when discussing the artists in the making of a film, you bring up the writer, director, actors, production designer, cinematographer and classify them as artists. But you don't do the same when talking about the carpenters and technicians who actually built the sets.

Anyone read my post on the last page? There's an awful lot of theory out there that says all art is inherently a collaboration between creator and end user. The distinction between levels of collaboration in the act of assigning meaning to a text is very, very unstable ground to draw lines in this argument.

There's that moment in Psychonauts in which you realize all the references to Raz (the protagonist) being cursed to die on water and how if you actually fell into water you were carried away by a mysterious hand were actually planting for the last level, a standard time-constrained "avoid letting the water touch you" platformer level that not only was justified, in game, and not just a game gimmick, but actually had a lot to do with plot and with character development, as it made sense that Raz's mind-version of his father would actually trigger that level. That whole thing wouldn't work exactly the way it does if it was strictly a story, because its dependent on platformer conventions that go back to Mario Bros and such, but its not just a videogame effect, as it actually felt that the developers were embracing the possibilities of the genre, in its own terms, much in the way, say, Tarantino does in his own medium.

I think a problem videogames have is that their development as a medium has been even more commercially-oriented than film and, even with the speed of their development, they are still a pretty young form. They have had no Eisenstein and I somehow doubt they will, even as I doubt they need one to be validated.

A lot of the arguments raised here, such as the lack of artist intention, have been so thoroughly attacked in the actual art world, that I don't see how they can be used, definitely, in a different case and they seem to be more born out of semantics than anything else. Not that the arguments don't merit at least some amount of discussion, but that if they are to be accepted, what they mean for videogames is not that terribly important as what they would mean to a lot of other things. And even then, if we agree that, say, a big part of abstract expressionism comes from "experiencing the artwork" (and we might not, and it would ignore a lot of other aesthetic considerations and blah blah blah), then I don't see how the experience of playing a game isn't a worthy intention. Of course, that raises other problems, but that's exactly the point, those problems aren't endemic to this discussion.

I think, however, interactivity is as big a development as editing and most arguments dismissing it come off like complaining that a movie doesn't have some of the constraints of theatre or that recorded music robs you off the performance.

Still though, there usually is at least one generation or two before people, born and raised in a world with a medium, growning knowledgeable on it, get to the point of redefining it and I'm not sure we are there yet.

This is mostly off the top of my head tho, so I might be quite wrong, but I still think that a lot of these arguments come mostly from a place of denying the possibility of games as art and then justifying why, and those same arguments would actually negatively impact on what's considered art in other mediums.

Matt Goldberg's argument on Raging Bully is somewhat myopic, because if there was such a game in which you might win or lose at that point, then whichever outcome is part of the intention. Sounds strawmany to me.

Right. I was just repeating Devin's argument that if all it is just pushing buttons to progress a pre-determined story, then it's not a game. It's a movie. I think I take it even further (and that's why I keep expecting Devin or someone to show up and hand me my ass) by saying that all interactivity removes the possibility of art since the final product always depends on my use.

I think of Super Mario Bros. Its basic gameplay tenets are continued to this day. If I keep running into a pit and killing myself, is it now different? If I just let the timer run out and kill me, is it now different? If there's no "wrong" way to play it, there's also no right way to play it which removes all artistic intent.

matt, read the marriage link I posted up there. I really do think most people discussing thing should read it, as it clearly defines from a game dev's point of view the same idea that Devin started with, and gives an attempt to solve the question. How successful it is is doubtful, but that the attempt is there is undeniable.

http://www.rodvik.com/rodgames/marriage.html

Sorry. I missed it. Allow me to go through it:

So it's art by democracy? By history? Art is only contingent on how its perceived? Then aren't we back to the value judgment?

Yes, but participation and interactivity aren't the same thing. Art should communicate and it should draw a response. But if that art is constantly shifting based on the end-user, then we can never have that communication because one side keeps changing his part of the conversation.

And I think that ties into my argument because you have limited tools in which to respond. Let's look at "Bioshock" (which I think is a fantastic game that will make for a great movie): There is a story and I have a certain set of evolving tools in which to progress. But let's say I don't want to. Let's say I choose to cower in a corner and shoot at shadows. You could say that's the same as me pausing a movie but that's the interactivity! The difference with videogame is that the creator not only gave me tools to choose, the entire game revolves around my choices! I can change the game and if the game is constantly shifting then there's no longer a basis for that conversation you mentioned. We can point out the level design, character design, and all the artistic pieces that make up the game, but as Devin pointed out, that's just the finely crafted Monopoly set. It's all built mutability.

Well, like Devin said in his article, the music in a game is artistic, but the presentation in which it's contained, is not art. I should mention I'm speaking of the game as whole. We're not discussing whether music is artistic or not.

EDIT: And, of course, it becomes more confusing with the point that games try to emulate movies, which are art..or...argh, my head is spinning.

Since it requires a download and I'm at work so I don't really have the time to give its due at the moment, I will certainly consider it later.

In that case, I'd argue that you're not changing the game, you're just refusing to play it. And on another level, you're not engaging the piece in the way its creator intended. I can play Beethoven's 9th backwards on a turntable if I wanted to, but that's not how Beethoven intended it to be heard. I can stand an inch away from the Mona Lisa and stare at a tree off to the side for an hour, but DaVinci didn't paint that with that idea in mind. And the designers didn't create Bioshock to have you stand still and do nothing.

Of course, it could be argued (and rightly so) that there's still meaning and possibly even art to be found in playing Beethoven backwards or focusing on a background tree in the Mona Lisa, whereas there isn't in standing in a corner and doing nothing in Bioshock. And maybe therein lies another definition of art -- something that can retain meaning even when observed or used not as its creator intended, that allows multiple interpretations without requiring that any one be the "correct" one.

Hmm, I may have just talked myself over to Devin's side of things....

Don't worry... Mine too.

My point is, basically, that some videogames may or may not be "art" (much like some movies) but they have definitely evolved into an art form. Meaning that they are the collaborative effort of several artists in different mediums making one whole piece. This piece can be considered a work of art or not depending on a person's sensibilities.

Movies aren't inherently art is what I was trying to say in my first post all the way up there. And neither are videogames. They are mediums of artistic expression and art can be created in both these mediums.

But, you'll argue, were they mediums of artistic expression back in 1982 when David Crane made Pitfall? No. Of course not. And when they made the silent reels of two little girls having a pillow fight in 1901, or whatever the date was, that was not artistic expression either.

But movies eventually evolved into an art form. And so have videogames.

re: Dickson's last post.
Last time I played Grim Fandango, I would purposefully delay the actual playing of the game. I love the feeling I get from "being" in Rubacava, one of the cities in the game, which is mixed with as much nostalgia as listening to a song I liked 10 years ago, and I would just stay in places where the mix of music and visuals particularly please me. If there's some value to be found staring at a background tree in the Mona Lisa, I don't see how its different to just enjoying an environment in a game.

Of course, a great deal of that enjoyment comes from strictly personal reasons, not at all envisioned by the developers. However, if that's a dealbreaker, then it's a dealbreaker for all popular music once its time has passed and we only listen to it because of what it reminds us of, which helps get into the standard boring highart lowart festival where the heart of this conversation probably unintentionally resides.

Sometimes I think that, if they have evolved into an art form, one imitating movies, they imitate the worst movies one would call un-artistic.

An interesting piece by the philosopher Ben Dupre:

"There are people who get really upset about the idea that video games are not art. Furious, in fact. And I suspect that the reason is because there's a need to validate one's hobbies."

Sigh.

Honestly Devin. You just wrote a 5,000 word fluff piece 6 years too late. This is the sort of piece that will be laughed at by anyone in the know. You may enjoy the "yes men" agreement from people here. As I explained yesterday, you make false statement after false statement.

I feel like the reason you need to dismiss games as art is validate your hobby. See for me, its not a hobby. Playing games is the same as watching movies to me (also a hobby). But its also my job, and my passion. I don't write criticisms. I have worked for years in school and on sets making films. And then I switched to games, and I spend 12-16 hours a day trying to make the best games I possibly can in a corporate structure, while designing my own games.

See, I respect your job and position - less so when you use your writing skills to talk on subjects you dont understand. But I get "upset" (if you can even call it that) when you tell me my ART is not art. But again, this is less of a touchy subject since this has been settled for many years. I think I simpy get more annoyed when you talk about things outside your realm of knowledge.

You argue movies are different because they are more than an aggregation of art forms because of its unique idea of editing. Lets get beyond the fact that editing is found in writing, radio. But yes, as a film student, as someone who was going into editing professionally, I understand your point.

How you can be so... sorry to say, but absolutely stupid, or more likely than not simply dishonest, to say interactive media does nothing to bring these forms of art together. I can't say much else. Rule sets, interaction, the relationship between player, character and avatar (sounds similar to relationship between audience and camera does it not) are all new things brought to the table. Games being so much new to the world of art that it frightens people like you, or simply confuses them.

This piece will get agreement here. It may make some rounds among game makers if they go to your site. And it will be laughed at. And it may be picked up by a student or so, and maybe even brought up in a class, in which case it will be instantly dismissed.

The topic will turn to Juul's discussion of the topic "Half Real". Something I suggest you read if you wish to be an honest journalist. Or Zimmerman's talk on the subject. Jenkins seminal work. And more. See, people much more qualified than you have endlessly debated, researched and examined this topic. You wasted your time here.

Last time I respond to this topic. Because its a waste of both our times. But it was a fun way to rant for a bit here at my desk before I have to work. I suggest you look at your statements about R.R.'s next film. You are just too old. This is beyond you, and its obvious to me, you will NEVER actually research the topic and try to understand it. You will do what old men do - respond using your knowledge you have acquired before with out attempting to learn the new. As some people in the mainstream argue such a trivial thing as to whether games are art. The ART academia, interactive media scholars, and artists are busy discussing jargon, and how to describe this new art form.

You are 5-15 years late. It was a fun debate back then, and the literature is online for you to find. But you missed it. And even back then, your arguments would have been flimsy and unsupported at best. But it was an entertaining read - your dismissing rhetoric always is.

COROLLARY:
When something is called "art", that does not imply that it is a thing or quality or that it is "good".

My favorite example is from Daniel Clowes' "Art School Confidential" (the comic, not the movie) which was used in "Ghost World". My friends and I often walk through the MOMA in New York or the ICA in Boston and see a lot of things of quality and interest; but we also see a lot of things that are "tampons in teacups".

There are "tampons in teacups": bullshit that you're supposed to respect because it's "art".

And there are "shenanigans": the first guy to paint a 20x20 foot canvas white or blue maybe gets a pass. Maybe. But everyone after that I call shenanigans. Especially that guy who nailed a string to the floor. I hope he got a good paycheck for that one.

I'd like to note that Russian Ark's one take was itself an editing decision, as much as a film containing many edits...and that I think Shadow of Colossus comes up more often in the argument than Grand Theft Auto because it's more 'elegant', the consideration of which, in relation to art, I find sickening.

Was there a point when art wasn't about value judgments?

Again, that's sort of bum criteria - see Smilin' Jack's post for why that's not a particularly great standard for what constitutes art.

I appreciate your distinction in physical terms, but art is constantly shifting based on the end user. What you change in a video game might be considered the "text," which is stable in what most people commonly consider art. But it's arguably not the text that makes something function as "art," but a combination of factors originating from both author and reader.

I like this, actually, although it might make a better case for games as fundamentally inferior art than not art. There's still the potential for interpretation and interaction (I think of these terms as more related than you seem to), but the levels of interpretation are deceivingly limited. It's not the fact that the text is shifting. While the text, itself, doesn't shift in most of what's considered art, the meaning of the text is constantly in flux, so it's practically a moot point on whether the text is stable. But in video games, where the text does shift and physical participation is required, there's typically less of an emphasis on interpretation. The emphasis is shifted from the art and meaning-creation to the text and the shifting of it, and that could be seen as inhibitive.

If you can "sculpt" code (much like clay or language) into a diverse experiences that can be either a puzzle/story/interaction/exploration/education/creation-tool, especially for the purpose of immersion/emotion/aesthetic-appreciation (cause and effect being key, not one or the other solely), that medium would be an art form (AKA tool) and could be used to create art IMO.

Course, you could say I was just looking for validation in my career, which started in commercial art and veered into interactive media.

But, as devil's advocate, could LARPing be considered art by the fervent defenders of "video games are art"?

Many of them do. This is true. But, appreciate this: Shouldn't a work's value be judged within the confines of its medium? If narrative cinema started out as an emulation of theater, then narrative videogames started out as an emulation of cinema. It's a logical progression. And, games, by their very nature, have to involve the resolution of a conflict. Which means that most of them must fall into a "genre" template. In films, traditional genre films, by and large, tend to be schlocky garbage, right? (I'm speaking on artistic merit, not entertainment value) So it makes sense.

It's subjective, isn't it? Of the 100+ movies released in a given year, how many of them can you sincerely refer to as works of art? A handful? More? And what are you basing the criteria on? Are you not, in fact, comparing it to other movies?

The Godfather II is art. Mobsters is not. And so on.

You don't base the validity of Mobsters as a work of art on Mario Puzo's novel of The Godfather, do you? Assuming you bother to make the distinction at all, of course.

Not sure if I'm making sense. But what I'm trying to say is, if we start to categorize the value of a videogame as art, maybe we should do it in comparisons to other works in its medium and how it stacks up against them. But then you have the whole quandary of art = good. Not art = bad. And we're back at square one again.

Like I said, it's a fucking labyrinth.

How does difficulty level factor into all of this? I can't read an Easy mode version of Finnegan's Wake. Well, you could make one, I suppose, but then it wouldn't be Finnegan's Wake, it would be a simplified explanation of Finnegan's Wake. It's a Reader's Digest Condensed Book, giving you the content and maybe some of the meaning, but robbing you of the larger experience. So am I being robbed of the larger experience if I play on Medium instead of on Hardcore? Can a game be considered art when you can drastically alter how its presented before you even start playing it?

Then there's unlockables and bonus content. You don't get a bonus chapter for finishing Les Miserables, or unlock a new readable character at the end of War and Peace.

Godfather II is art, but I don't particularly care for it. I can prefer Half-Life to StarCraft as one prefers baseball to football. You can make metaphors out of sports games, and the written or spoken metaphor would be the expression, not the game itself. Gaming doesn't express much feeling, and when it does, it's in elements that could just be in a movie. Who's going to read Finnegan's Wake and exclaim "Oh yeah! Got another sentence in! It beat the last one!" throughout? Doesn't make any sense. And I don't mean whether the sentence was more well-written than the last, I'm speaking of competition. Video games are bastards of arts, but I do quite enjoy them.

Ah, I wouldn't be surprised if that paragraph was backpedaling to the debate's beginning, but you'll have to tell me, I'm busy at work...

Nothing I hate more than agreeing with Devin.

While it is ignorant to dismiss of an entire genre ("I hate rap", "I hate anime", etc. I like what Scorsese said about the snobbery people have against a certain genre, "I you don't like horror movies then...you may like movies, but you don't like cinema."), video games don't really fall into that category. They are a medium, rather than a genre. And most of those genres (strategy, rpg, fps, etc.) don't really lend themselves to an artistic experience.

I've never experienced a video game as art. Not even Chrono Trigger. The design of most of the video games I played were a sum of artistic pieces (background design, music composition, story development), but those pieces did not make up an artistic whole. I can appreciate the artistry of a finely made guitar or the design of a tennis racket, but that doesn't mean that the music made or the game played with those instruments will be artistic.

As far as plot and story, no matter how sophisticated, video game play will always feel more like "Choose Your Own Adventure" as opposed to "The Brothers Karamazov".

That being said, I had a roommate who in the early 00's described the game "Black & White" as a philosophical revelation. So maybe I'm wrong...

Ultimately, Dupre's right. There's no objective criteria by which we can consider something art or not art. The best we can do is base our evaluations on the family resemblance principle. And we have to accept that it's a method of classification that's going to be prone to more category leak than most others.

My knowledge of contemporary forms of art is pretty insubstantial and so I'm treading on thin ice here (if I'm wrong please set me straight): As far as I am aware, literature (and I group movies under this banner also) is the only art form that can (and does - extensively) criticise itself through itself generating a feedback loop which propels it forward (expanding, redefining genre etc.). An arrangement of wooden blocks is not similarly capable. Only language can explore concepts. Even to formulate concepts requires language.

I did! I agree, for the most part. I think what limits gaming as an art is that it tries to mimic all other forms. There is a narrative and a score and design work -- it is simply aping other forms while not establishing something truly unique.

I work in a literary center where I've encountered some programmers-slash-writers who are doing very introductory gaming work that tries to become something new. At the moment, most of it is text-based and not being made for mass consumption.

Since Devin mentioned Warhol, I couldn't help but think of his "Silver Clouds" piece, which is a dynamic work of art. With the air currents and the visitors passing through it, it is a constantly changing work of art, even though it's a piece that's fairly easy to comprehend, digest and explain.

I'm thinking about that piece because what seems truly limiting about most video games is how narrow they are -- that while you can go about the work of a game in several different ways, you are (for the most part) working to achieve the same things as every other gamer. It seems that if a game were to be truly artistic, it would have to embrace that, by its very nature, it should be a different experience for all users.

And I suppose that's why I thought about this in response to Dave, who has a great point about art being, in some ways, a collaboration between artist and "user."

I realize that the kneejerk response to this is that what I'm suggesting is perhaps not physically possible -- that a gaming disc can't hold all of the data that would be needed to create such an experience. It's a valid observation, but another reason that I don't consider games to be art.

I'm pretty sure that "difficulty" has never factored in as a key feature of art. Incidentally: Easy mode.

It's still art - it's only that the author has arguably changed from Joyce to Joyce and Burgess.

The irony is ammusing that between the Bioshock film and the video game that preceeded it, only one is considered art.

I also think the reason some people get caught up in the idea that art is defined as someone's expression -- a statement that they wish to communicate -- is because we're on a movie message board, and most of us love to talk about films.

And film is a medium where the best artists must embrace how authoritarian it is. That it is shot, edited, scored and manipulated in all sorts of way to express something.*

And while that is perfect for film, it is so opposite of what I imagine a video game experience should be, if we're thinking about it as art. A video game producer is not presenting a product that the user interacts with, but in an entirely different way from how that same user would approach a film, or an album, or a painting.

* Yes, there are obviously filmmakers who play with these notions and expectations; in the interest of this broad conversation, I'm making broad statements about a majority of films.

No - GTA4 is brought up more in mainstream discussion than Shadows. New York Times even calling it a dawn of a new artform (sorry, that happened with Tetris).

Why you find it sickening is beyond me.

The reason Shadows is brought up, and the reason it is every bit on the level of say - No Country for Old Men - is because of its perfect crafstmanship, and synergy of ideas to create a whole thematic experience. And because of the way it best shows how games can be art when thinking of it in narrative terms.

The most basic theme of Shadows is that of obsession, and becoming what you seek to destroy. There are very deliberate story choices and design choices that seek to best express this theme. The first being the abstractness of your goal. It is a girl, you do not know, that you want to bring back to life. The player has no understanding as to why she is dead, who this boy is. However, when given a task, the player, as a player, must achieve it. Even when it becomes more obvious that this Colossi are perhaps innocent, perhaps even good, and that your true motivations may even be wrong, the player continues as that is what you do. As a player you do as you are told in a narrative game. This is using the principles of gameplay to highlight a theme.

There are no NPCs, no one to talk to. Only your horse. The design decision to have you whistle for your horse is two fold. It is a practical application to keep the player from becoming frustrated (this is an artform in of itself) and to create a bond between playerand horse. I am sorry it did not effect you, but Argo was a friend to me for 8 hours. He was my horse. He wa animated so elegantly, given so many subtle nuances in animation and attitude, I cared for him.

When he falls, it is because of your pursuit for the final Colossus. It is a sad moment. And it is well earned, and done with grace.

Shadows is a work of art. And more than one filmmaker has said so. Its story would not work as well as a movie because of what games BRING to the table. Something Devin, you, and others are so narrow minded to see. I am personally involved in the obsession. I am personally trying to achieve the goals. I am personally responsible for the deaths.

It is considered art because it broke game convention after game convention for the sole purpose of creating a thematic experience. It is considered art because it is a prime example of gorgeous art, story telling, music, gameplay, and design to create a whole experience.

The biggest problem is the idea that art is narrative. I dont understand how you can call sculptures, pottery, dancing, abstract painting, and any other non narrative art form, as art.

You know what games are high art?
Rez. Tetris. Civilization 2. Mario Galaxy. Pikmin 2. Sins of a Solar Empire. Katamari Damacy.

Narrative is not needed. And there are more complex ideas in Rez, and more self reflexive ideas about ART ITSELF in Rez, than nearly any film in the past decade. And story be damned.

Good points, although I'd add that whether the artists or even audience acknowledge it, the authoritarian nature of art is mostly illusory. In other words, though it might make for a more appealing work for an author (I use that term loosely) to embrace his power as authority and for a reader (likewise) to buy into the author's primacy, I don't think it's necessarily how things really work. The decision of a reader to accept an author's role as dictatorial is, itself, establishing an interpretive framework. To use Vonnegut's term, it's a "foma."

No Mario Paint?