Videogames Still Not Art?

[Marcus Dublin]

Here an interesting article(http://www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=6529&Itemid=2) on Roger Ebert's view on videogames not being art. While I've always argued in favor of games indeed being art, Mr. Ebert does make some good view points as well. I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts and views on this.

Marcus

[East]

Hehe, the (what seems to be) endless question :) I've always been more or less in Kojima's camp regarding this. I've never perceived a video game as a piece of art as is. It consists of many elements, some of which are in fact pieces of art. Overall I have never been comfortable putting labels on people and things, but I realise the way society is it is a necessary evil, so with video games I prefer to just call them video games and leave it at that.

Of course that way of thinking doesn't work if you are trying to put video games under some kind of legal protection by classifying it as something or another. For example, protecting explicitly violent games by classifying them as pieces of art. (For the record, I'm all for explicitly violent games, and love me some Manhunt action).

[BiG ToE]

I think Mr Ebert should check out this site, I mean it is called game "art"isans for a real reason.

We don't have video game challenges, we have game art competitions. And that's all I have to say about that.

[typhus22]

just b/c he checks out this website doesnt mean he would agree with it and what it stands for. personally i think he is a bit on the pompus side...

[Jill'san]

I think it's because they are looking at games as a hole. During a game, sometimes I pause for a few minutes because either a creature, a scene or something breathtaken has made me stop, gawk and stare. It's true that games could be considered a sport, but if you break them apart, I would fancy they are comprised of many fantastic pieces of art that could easily fall into these two twits philosophies; that art is meant to capture someone and radiate some particular thing or feeling.

[Amethyst]

Photography is accepted today as fine art, but it took many years before it got into the museums. Perhaps "Game Art" has the same struggle to establish itself as a higher artform. Inevitably, I believe this contemporary art form of expression will find its well earned recognition. As Typhus22 said:" Just check out this website....

[brian_h]

Well, Ebert obviously doesn't understand games or how they are made...honestly most games have a plot...a beginning, a middle and an end...just like a book, screenplay or movie. Hell, a good chunk of games are based on movies just as many movies are based on books. Ebert is obviously doesn't know what he is talking about.

The second argument is that because games attempt to satsify a large mass they are not art...come on your telling me movies are not aimed at satisfying the masses and producing profit? A stupid arguement that suggests that anything that is made for a profit is not art or some how less "worthy" art.

Games, movies, plays, television all pretty much use the same human elements and structure in their construction. There is a story, a crew of talented individuals who realize the story and an audience. Are games different than movies, yes, just as plays are different than movies...although the similiarities are more numerous than the differences.

Some might make the argument that games don't have actors so somehow they lack a certain artistic elements...but so do animated movies...that arguement would have you believe that any animated film is at best a sad attempt at mimicing art...a difficult proposition to make especially for those films that have won Oscars in the last 70 years.

Ultimately, this is not hard. Games are art, they, like movies are the creative constuct of a group effort, they ultimately rise or fall off the response from the audience in mass and when they are really, really good it is a joy...that is one of the keys to true art...that at a moment of true brillance, of clarity, beauty or honesty something is communicated or transferred beyond the work itself. Yeah, games are art...not all the time, not maybe even most of the time but art none the less.

Ebert just can't appreciate it, but that doesn't mean something isn't art...it just isn't for him. Hell, I hate Pollock but I acknowledge that it's art...just not my cup of tea.

[keo]

What's difficult about games is that the scope of any one title is not finite. By comparison, a movie has a set run time, a book has a set number of words, the shape of a painting or photo does not change. Each person who witnesses it will have a different reaction and interpretation, but they see the same things.

The interactive nature of games changes the rules, it's more akin to being an actor in a play than a member of the audience. A good game is like a whole season of tv scripts and an entire museum of paintings all wrapped up in a bright luminescent package that unfolds across a score of hours.

We really can't be suprised that a film critic finds videogames lacking since game player's performance doesn't generate a product that others would recognize as art. It's the experience of the game player that is important.

Games have the potential to teach skills and display moral lessons, not just rack up frags. I remember being terrified I would lose the girl to the shadow beasts in the first Ico game. Sure, I could reload my last save if that happened, but no book or movie ever puts you in the first-person actor role like that. At best, you are afraid for _them_, not for yourself.

As time goes by, I am certain games will reach a level of sophistication and cultural significance that will reduce Ebert's articles to an amusing footnote.

[brian_h]

A games running time IS finite, if it wasn't you would be playing the same game right now...there is a beginning, a middle and an end. The time it takes to reach that end doesn't disqualify something as art, if so books would be less of an artform than fiilm and if anything it is the other way around generally.

A game has a set number of props, characters and npcs...this does not change no matter how many times or how you play it. There simply is not more than what the creators of the game managed to squeaze in...the fact that you play it or experience it in different ways or at a different speed than others does not detract from the art of it...just as watching a movie and finding something different you didn't see or think about before doesn't change the movie or make it less art than it was before...if anything that makes it deeper.

The difference in the nature of art does not exclude others...a book is different than a movie, a play different than a tv show, photos are different than paintings. There is nothing truely interactive about games...you do realize this, right? Games are for the most part a "choose your own adventure" book put on disk...there is the illusion of chosing your path but usually you are going to end up at THE end just as surely as any movie or any book. You are not really interacting with anything but essentially going along for the ride like a roller coaster...in this way it really is more like a movie. All the rest is an illusion.

I'm not sure I have ever feared for myself while playing a game...I have felt tension or stress or excitment (as a matter of fact I have done some damn fool things because I knew it was a game and I would never do it in reality...ie just off a 2 story building into a fire fight) but I have felt these with the best of movies. My point was along these lines...you felt something...perspective isn't really the issue but the work conveyed something of emotion or thought beyond the mere collection of images...good or bad. Ebert's suggestion was that games are craftmanship and nothing more.

My simple point is that electrian's that fix power lines are craftsman, they belong to a guild that trains them to do this and they do a superb job. I have however never been moved to emotion by their work...they are craftsman and that is their craft. I have experienced emotions through playing a game just as watching a movie (good and bad) and that seperates them from craft to art on some level.

[EVIL]

I personally don't view games as art, I view them more as an art gallery.
* Within the game you have (most of the time) a fair piece of story, I consider writing a form of art.
* Within the game you also have music, sounds, etc. these are also forms of art.
* Within a game you have visuals. I consider these pieces of art.

So really, a game is just a player driven experience trough different pieces of art, thus an art gallery. would come closer to this description then a piece of art.

But when a game is REALLY GOOD! where everything jut flows as it should and it makes a real deep impact at players. I sometimes question the above view.

[brian_h]

Isn't a movie a collection of the same things that you mentioned...doesn't the motion picture industry even break their creations into those elements to recognize achievement in those areas (art direction, production, sound...etc.)...these categories by the way directly translate to games. They exist in games as they exist in a movie with even the same titles.

I might also point out that you descibe it as a art gallery not a piece of art...this is often called a collection or museum in the 'art world'. If I go to see the Van Gogh collection I don't view it as less art because of the grouping...they are parts of a whole. A collection often travels together from museum to museum and can be viewed in a very real way as art.

There are bad books, movies and plays, just as there are bad games...this is not the measure of their art but of their quality in executing that art or taste. I would also point out again that games are an illusion of a player driven experience...yeah, you shoot the guys coming out of the spawners but honestly, just as I pick what lane I drive to work this morning I still will end up at work the same...so it is for games for the most part.

To each their own on this. I personally have trouble considering them art because of all of the wrangling and compromise and struggle involved in creating a game from nothing. It is not the popular vision of the lone artist with a unique vision that art usually brings forth. But I know that movies are much the same and so are books (thus the director's cut)...there are compromises and struggle to create any art form especially a commercial one and that really is what I'm describing...these are commercial artforms. The struggle to create something that will sell in all cases...giving people something they want to see. Jerry Bruckheimer films sell, so does Gears of War...are they art...you decide. I'd have to say for myself yeah at some level.2 more cents.

[Jido]

I believe that any idea that is formed and created to be tangible by any of the human senses with the intention to evoke some emotion is art. All the things in your home, even your blender, has some sense of art since as a whole they provoke a mood for your home.

It shouldn't be in dispute that games are art. I remember when Will Smith led the effort to get hip-hop to be recognized as music to receive credible awards. It already was music, just unrecognized as such in the mainstream. The same is for games. So, by the time Brian writes a book on the subject, I'm sure some time in the future games will earn the same respect as film, music on the level of oscars and grammys. Until then, Game of the Year stamped by some popular magazine will have to suffice.

[BDStevens]

I think the definition of fine art has become slowly eroded and less relevant as time goes by. Certainly there are those that would even view all digital art in this category of "art but not fine art". I think the principles of game art in particular, are so foreign to the concept of western fine art as to be scary to someone from the art world looking in. The fact that games are a completely collaborative, team process which rarely (externally at least) name a single person as the creator is practically socialist when you think about it. Of course guys from Ebert's generation and those before that raged for individual creative expression and (more importantly) achievement won't be able to fit games into their narrow, individualistic views of art.

Like others have said, I don't feel that the question is really whether or not something is or is not fine art but whether, in a commercial society, if the distinction between commercial and fine art really matters at all.

[EVIL]

I think everyone has their own view or idea about what art is. So arguing this is rather pointless.

[brian_h]

Then what's the point of a forum? lol...I think everyone can clearly speak for themselves, I didn't think anyone was arguing really just speaking. Oh well, one man's argument is anothers dicussion.

B

[brian_h]

BTW arguing is only pointless if you are not willing to listen to other viewpoint...

[ThatDon]

http://games.ign.com/articles/809/809655p1.html