Games +/- Art: A Preface
Dood, it’s President Nixon’s birthday today! Hahah, I rock! I turned 30 today too!
</double V sign from Airforce One>
So, I was thinking… I’ve been an artist all my life, and for 60 to 75% of that time, I’ve been a gamer… And with the current culture of gaming, striving and scraping for the legitimacy of film and music and television, I think to myself…
”Games aren’t art!”
How could they be? They’re… games! Yes, they rely on a level of artistic direction; visual and audio media create the sensory palette in which the game world is painted, directors live or die (figuratively) by their command over the narrative and the interactive…
But… art is something fundamentally different. And games, no matter the aesthetics, bring a very different sensation than art does. The development process addresses different goals & obstacles; the intention of a game can be almost directly opposed to what art attempts to achieve. Even the words (even THESE words) carry contexts that gamers or artists don’t see eye to eye on.
Or at least, that’s my position. And as something I’ve thought of very heavily, I figure this would be the perfect forum to voice that position, or give way to a change in opinion.
So, from here till doomsday or next wednesday (whichever comes first), let’s think about this for a minute…
Video games… art? What do you all think?
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January 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
I think that games can CONTAIN art, but that they themselves are not art. I’d say that it’s pretty clear that game designers often put a great deal of effort into the aesthetics of a game, and that shouldn’t be discounted off hand.
January 10th, 2008 at 6:16 am
Hmmm, so if you took an artist and a game developer, and had the artist make a game, approaching it as a piece of art only, using the developer as their tool to make the game, with no input at all on any aspect, essentially a pen or brush, would the result be art?
It all depends on how you define art really, you could claim that games are merely an amalgamation of other forms of art into one package in a different medium. The main question is whether anything interactive can be considered art, as without interaction, games are simply digital reproductions of other forms of media. If so, then its possible for games to be art.
January 11th, 2008 at 5:30 am
I honestly believe that a game is art.
Whether it is good art or not, that’s the true question.
As for the “feeling” that art gives, there is no universal “feeling” that art can give someone. Modern art makes me tilt my head to the side and ask, “Who the hell would pay for this crap?” And even the most wonderful Picasso or Van Gogh can bore me to tears. What is this “feeling” that art gives? When I am around pottery and sculpture, like that of Mesoamerican cultures, I am enthralled and I feel attached to it, which is a similar feeling to say, playing a particularly addictive puzzle game.
A game can often pull emotion from me in a more genuine manner than most art, as well. Should it not be classified as art because it is superior to a lot of art in that manner? Emotion is a highly unreliable gauge to use to define art.
Games can be art the same way that anything one puts enough craftsmanship into can be. While the more work that is put into something does not make it superior (I put more work into digesting food than many amateur poets put into their work, and some say that the output is very similar.), craftsmanship still begets art.
Just because something is built to serve a purpose, that does not mean it isn’t art. A man who spends a year crafting a high quality, beautiful cherrywood bedroom set that is meant to be used is creating art. Likewise, a programmer who is crafting a high quality, functional, elegant program with a minimum of bugs, is also creating art.
Pottery that is displayed in art museums is a result of function and use. They are not used for pleasure or aesthetics, but to carry water, protect the dead, ward off evil, or what have you. Some of them are even instrction booklets and schematics. They are the equivalent of long lost cookbooks, source code, and Sonic The Hedgehog 2 Instruction Manuals.
I don’t really have much to say on the question of if interactivity denies its definition as art. That just seems silly to me, but for some people, it’s probably a legitimate question. Not to mention, I’m out of stretched metaphors and similes.
January 16th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I think it’s fairer to classify games as a form of entertainment. Mediums of entertainment (music, film, theater) can be art but are not necessarily.
Contrariwise, anyone who states unequivocally that games are not art has never played Rez.