Some general thoughts on media, especially games, and the future

Before I get to the core of this post, I apologize if some of it sounds like cultural pessimism, it is actually meant to be the opposite.

A while ago I've read about Roger Ebert's claim that games aren't art, which was followed by many angered reactions by the gaming community, including many people who didn't quite seem to get what he said. He later relativized it (in this blog entry).
Ebert's approach is based on his personal experience, how the game involves him and if the characters make him care, regardless of the overall concept etc. The problem with this approach is that it is far from being academic, yet it is comparable to Roland Barthes' "Camera Lucida", about photography.

Yesterday I watched the ending credits of the latest entry of the Sherlock Holmes franchise and thought they look so different from all the current games (at least the ones I know), just because of slight contrast changes and color modifications (so that the overlapping surfaces get have the respective opposite color, so that there is a certain compositional rhythm etc.).

I'll come to the part of my little epiphany that could easily be misunderstood: I do actually think that as of now, games aren't really art. We have perhaps the 4th or 6th pioneer generation (well, I haven't read any literature about this so I couldn't tell), and we already have achieved a lot, but we didn't reach the point yet where games are actual art. My reasoning is different though - I'm 20 and I've played at least one game of every genre (including The Graveyard, "a visual poem"!); however I agree that the mere act of playing itself isn't art, neither is making a game. Just like most Mangas aren't art simply because it was Manga (which is why most art teachers don't consider kids talented that can only draw Pikachu but nothing else. It's like claiming that every single snapshot is art, or an oil painting. Most of it is just S***, but thanks to our stupefying pop culture the art market is as brainless as ever).

Let's take a look at what art does and what video games don't.

1) Video games aren't part of public discourse and they don't cause any debate aside from the question whether they can make loners and neglected people run amok (CSS), or if they cause people to be addicted (WoW), or if they use "state-of-the-art"-technology (LA Noire). A game's plot needs to be more profound, and they need to stop imitating Hollywood blockbusters (Heavy Rain was basically a shallow Who-Dunnit where you could switch between the characters, even if the technology was stunning) or TV shows (The Wire or The Sopranos, or even Breaking Bad can be interpreted as a portrayal of the perverted American Dream, same for GTA).
One could argue that's one of the reasons why movies based on video games suck, apart from the fact that you can't identify with the character. The movie is predictable because it tries too hard to be like the game that tries to be like a movie. To summarize, dare to make the stories (= the superficial action) of your game enable your visuals (= the "subtle" action) to prompt more questions than it answers. The average video game's plot doesn't let a lot of room for interpretation, neither do its visuals.


2) Video games look all the same to me. Now that is another blunt statement and if it offends you, please read further before you post. I think that currently games just lack the artistic variety that is already possible. Games either try to be "photorealistic" like Assassins' Creed or FIFA or most ego-shooters, or "stylized", like most hidden-object-games. The former is typically a criterium for games that are part of a larger franchise, and it depends on cutting-edge technology. It's great that these companies keep researching (even though they usually hold back a lot of the stuff they already have planned for the next game to make us buy their products), but such games simply fail at being what they try to be because 3d models still aren't still the same as photos, if you use a normal computer. It's a bit like Plato's "idea-shadows". You know what the 3d modeller tried to do, but youre constantly reminded that his technological capacities are still too limited for it. As a gamer, I find that a little frustrating. That doesn't say these games would be a bad thing, but they aren't anything that could be considered art. Drafts perhaps.
The other category, "stylized" means that you basically hire some wannabe-artist who can provide you with pseudo-cartoony "artwork". To put this into perspective, just find "game concept"-images on google. It's difficult to verbalize, but I'll try nonetheless - after all that is the purpose of this post. You'll basically get the same results, over and over again. Robots/people with cone-shaped legs, small bodies, big heads, large eyes, often next to no details, the same generic face expressions, and either everything is round, or everything is angular - but it's all superficial. This trend isn't limited to video games, it applies for TV shows as well.

Just go compare

McCay's humble first animation attempt,
or Hergé's Tintin,
or Lotte Reiniger,
or one of the old Superman-themed Fleischer Cartoons

to stuff like

(while we are already talking about DC heroes...) Batman:The Animated Series, which has been called the "best animation series of all time", according to Wikipedia (regardless if the plots aren't as naive as in the 40s/50s, its "art" is still horrible compared to the Superman films),

or Family Guy (regardless if it's actually funny),

or the hyperrealistic yet completely meaningless spectacle Spielberg called a Tintin film, that resembles more a hit-and-run game than a movie, bears no artistic significance and is the complete opposite of everything Hergé accomplished with his "ligné claire" (reducing things to say something and challenge the readers as opposed to Spielberg's embellishing to say nothing and make the viewers forget the whole thing after a day or two.)

One could say I'm focusing too much on AAA games here, but the problem is that most Unity developers seem to imitate them (with cheaper means), instead of doing something completely different the Unity engine is already capable of.

I'm not just railing against a cultural decay here, but think about alternative sources of inspiration that seem to have been forgotten. Why not try a game that looks like Sempé or Ronald Searle, or Gerald Scarfe (I'd be the first to buy "Pink Floyd - The Wall - The Official Game")? Even if you aren't as talented as any of those, please put more effort into it. Or even something impressionist/surreal (Monet-like Textures, Magritte/Dali-like worlds...there are so many things that haven't been tried yet, or at least not successfully).

Speaking of Tintin, at the same time TV shows and (action) movies now seem to imitate a video games' formerly unique characteristics (cameras attached to the main protagonists even during action scenes, wide angle shots, or the text snippets that are integrated in the scenes of BBC's Sherlock, as if the viewer had a HUD.)

Video games should use the technology, not celebrate it without having anything else to offer.

3) Thanks to the internet, there is no such thing as an art market for video games, where you have only one or two copies to sell. That is a huge advantage to get rewarded for your work, I think. You need to travel to New York to see the MoMA in all its glory.

4) There seems to be next-to-no academic foundation. People in the game industry perhaps know what the Mona Lisa is and some even have an art background, but being good at 3d modelling doesn't mean you're a talented artist, neither that you can sell your games and make a living of it. Games are only art if there's a concept behind it other than making money, if it's actually thought-provoking, profound, and if the "graphics" are part of the whole.

5) As far as I am concerned, most game communities are missing an opportunity here. There are so many forums and discussion boards, but the basically 50% of the topics are dick-size comparisons in one form or another. Yet they are such a great chance to have sophisticated debates about questions that were raised by the "ideal game" I have tried to outline. I don't know if this comes automatically with the "ideal game" or if some kind of moderator would need to get the ball rolling. I know I am exaggerating. What matters is that it's a huge difference from anything we have seen so far. There will always be idiots, but maybe it could make the world a little smarter (e.g. "He's so depressed his dreams look like something Goya could have painted" instead of "wow the final boss is total badass!!!111!!").

6) Same as 2), but for the linkability, rationality and likeliness of characters and gameplay instead of art. Everything on this topic has already been said in this Guardian article by Charlie Brooker. I'd add that ithis is one of the reasons for many people to distinguish between virtual and real world, so they can use the internet as some kind of sandbag, and most of contemponary games are entitled to support that notion, although it is counterproductive if games want to be accepted as art.

Disclaimer: I don't want to promote so-called "edu-tainment" here. I advocate games that parenthecally educate.
To illustrate this, watch this and pay attention to all the scientific remarks that concern crocodiles...
(yeah, I realize it is a little over the top)

(I hope this was halfway comprehensible...I apologize if it wasn't)

 

The whole 'video games aren't art' is a silly statement.

I can throw a load of leaves on the floor in a random pattern and call it 'art', I can take a dump on the passenger seat of my car and call it 'art', if it provokes an emotional response to me. Art itself is contextual to the viewer (not the creator). If someone sees something and it stirs an emotional response or they feel influenced by it cognitively, then it's art.

To me, paintings aren't art. I look at them and nothing happens... I just see paintings. It is fair for me to say "to me, painting isn't an art" because it stirs no emotion in me at all, it's just... paint on a canvas. However, when I listen to music or play a computer game, they both stir many emotional responses to me therefore, in the context that matters to me computer games and music are an art.

Your 4th point is riddled with anti-truths and out of context statements, the idea that someone has to have a background in art to create it is just silly.


Do NOT think of art as 'paintings' and 'music' etc... Art is when someone sees something and an emotional response is provoked E.G. (Watch any of Derren Browns shows, they are art.... In my opinion of course! (As is the only one that matters, we are talking about art here, and it is implicitly in the context of my mind.).

I have played games that have stirred such an emotional response from me that I've been nearly brought to tears. I've played games that have made me laugh till my sides hurt and I have tears in my eyes (I'm not exagerating here, when I first heard ClapTrap (Bordlerlands 2) shout 'PROTECT ME SQUIIIRE!' I couldn't stop laughing). These are very strong emotional responses.

I will admit, there is an over-saturation in the market with AAA games (and indie for that matter). It's strange that this makes any money tho, you don't see painting artists copying the mona-lisa in different shades and contrasts, because it just wouldn't sell. I suppose it's the emotions that these art-forms are attempting to influence that affects how easily something can be 'copied'.

Just a few of my thoughts on your (thought provoking) post. Now I need to go do some work!

P.S. A last thought that springs to mind is: I have had long winded conversations with a philosophically minded friend of mine about the topic 'Is programming an art form'. These arguements have gone on for hours but we finally settled on this: Art is contextual, it's meaning is different to everyone and the responses people get from art are contextual to themselves, the fact that something is art or not is entirely the opinion of the person in question, as is the context of the art when that person experiences it. Therefore; Me being a programmer, see it as an art form (I get excited when presented with a new challenge, and I have fun discussing programming with others). But my friend doesn't, so it's not art to him.

I love this sort of discussion. Always interesting to hear how other peoples minds work .

 

Art is a "status" by academy and, as that, reserved to the past and to the happy fews, not to the present / general public. That said, many human expressions are artistic, with or without the formal excellence and a revolutionary impact.

Also, there are as many arts as the number of tools that can be used by humans: it is the approach, the will to explore beyond the normal use / capability (in order to conceive a message or simply for exploration's sake) that puts the experience into the art box.

Therefore, why no videogame can be called art? Minecraft, for example, stands as a good attempt already.

 

Art isn't a status. That's just silly, try and apply art in a sentence in the context of a status.

'I went on the train and I felt very art when compared with other people'
'I went on the train and felt very middle-class when compared with other people'

middle-class can be used in the context of 'status'.

Again. Art is NOT defined in the context of the creator. It is the viewer. If a mechanic is particularly good at using a spanner, does that mean his use of the spanner is artistic? You can't define art in the context of the creator OR the tool.

Minecraft, to me, is an art. It provokes interesting thoughts about others (why we play with lego, for example), and stirs emotions (I enjoy playing it, creepers make me laugh and make me angry etc).

 

But that's such a black and white statement. It's saying "there is no single game in existence which can be considered art" and "something can not be art if it is also a game", both of which I find to be ludicrous.

To pick the most recent thing I played which I think easily fits the category, I'd call Ico art. To pick a few more examples, I'd call Bioshock and Bastion and Torment art. And they're all commercial titles, I'm not even going near the huge number of smaller games made purely for artistic purposes. There are plenty of games which I wouldn't call art, or which I would consider to be crappy art, but that doesn't discount the form of media as a whole.

Which is kind of the point. There are films which I would consider art, and there are films which I would not. Most of the arguments you have above apply to film as much as they do games. Film as a medium itself is neither art nor not art, it's a medium. The same can be said of a canvas - you could paint or draw an artwork or a technical drawing or a diagram, that doesn't mean that all things painted or drawn necessarily are or are not art. The same can be said of written word or recorded audio.

It's not the medium which you should be looking at, it's individual works.

If you'd said "most games lack artistic value" or "the cultural quality of most video games is low" or anything along those lines, that'd be fair. But to discount a whole medium as "not art" just because you haven't personally seen much of cultural value in it? I think that's a little short sighted, to say the least.

 

Very interesting read from the both of you I agree with timsk that art is subjective/contextual but I also agree with Word that atleast the majority of games can't be called art. However some little gems like tetris or snake are played by millions and in it's simple elegance in the mechanics I do feel they have become art over the years.

 

I agree with angerypenguin above.

I think. If we were to take your post and take it out of an artistic context and throw it into a 'quality of craft' context, it would make perfect sense.

There is a big problem with this kind of argument (trying to judge the quality of things based on opinion): I hate the latest CoD games, I think they are lazily designed re-hashes of the same game with slight engine upgrades and a different lick of paint. I can sit here for hours going into detail about my well constructed issues with the latest CoD games and how they damage the game industry etc.., the problem is: If the person I'm trying to convince enjoys the latest CoD games, they don't care about the quality of the game, they only care whether they enjoy it or not. They can reply, to all my well constructed evidence: "I dunno, I just enjoy it", and all I can reply to that is "Well... good for you, ignorance is bliss and I'm glad your happy".

This can be placed on most things. I don't see why the Mona Lisa was so popular, and I don't enjoy looking at it. Someone could sit there for hours pointing out why I'm wrong (and they could present many valid facts, based on real evidence). But at the end of the day, these facts don't matter to me. I just don't like it.

 

But it is largely a quality of craft thing. I could argue that Call of Duty isn't art, but whether I enjoy the game or not (which I do, it's just beside the point) someone could argue right back that it is art because it tries to express the brutality of war. The original did a pretty good job (from being put in the boots of a Russian soldier and handed 5 rounds and no rifle which you later had to scavenge from a fallen comrade while under fire, to the quotes about the futility of war each time you are killed, it just worked well as a package), but the later ones... not so much. The later games don't make me think "wow, that was messed up, and it actually happened". In actual fact, they don't make me think a lot, even though they do the same thing in updated scenarios. It's not that it is less arty than the original, it's that it's not as good at being art because it's less about the atmosphere and feeling and more about gung-ho aggression and a power trip when you kick ass.

I wouldn't say CoD 9 is categorically "not art", but I'd happily describe it as having pretty low artistic value or something along those lines. And yes, it's subjective, but when talking about subjective stuff I'm happy just to accept that such things are stated as opinion rather than fact, and leave it at that.

 

I guess this is a point I was trying to get across. Art is always spoken from the opinion of the viewer.

That's fine, to you, CoD isn't art.

That's fine, to them, CoD is art.

The problem with all of this is when people try to give something a universal artistic value, it's simply not possible. Which is what the OP was doing, I think?

 

In my mind, Minecraft is comparable to Lego, so it's essentially a "system" game which enables you to build something, regardless if the result is art or not. I'd say it's a tool you could use to create art, but I wouldn't consider the tool itself art. And again, nothing is art just because someone made it in Minecraft.

Well, I think I explicitly stated that I don't think anything can be art solely because of the technique (see "I'll come to the part of my little epiphany...")

That's precisely why I said the opposite. I said you may have received a solid education or you're really talented but that doesn't make your video game art by default. What I meant by "academic foundation" is that you learn how to use your "art background"/talent/knowledge just like a good director usually knows a little of everything and is able to combine that.

I have played such games as well, but what made me emotionally respond weren't so much the visuals, the audio or the gameplay, but the (mostly pre-rendered) sequences where the game imitated/was a movie and the player's role was again reduced to a spectator's. That's why I don't consider it art.

@angrypenguin: I think I can make a relatively strong case for Bioshock not being art (by my definition, that is), because the story and character design is sooo run-of-the-mill to begin with. It's just what I described in 2). I don't see that as original, or truly creative, or artistic. Large robot suits with fat arms and legs and a big head and a girl in a dirty post-apocalyptic world. Just more of the same to me.

That's not what I did, then I wouldn't have needed to write such a long post and didn't add "(yet)".

In CoD you hunt Zombies while controlling JFK, and shoot him. That's perhaps satire or just tasteless (because he can't defend himself anymore), but not really art.

You can't know that. If you had a better art teacher perhaps you'd change your mind.

 

Ahh, but that's my point. I don't consider it "not art", I consider it "low quality art". I don't consider something to be "not art" unless it's clearly primarily functional in nature.

 

It depends on the tradition / education system you come from. The only universal thing is using tools in a non conventional way.

The emotions of the viewer are local to one of the recent leading academic theories in the Western world and if you're comfortable with that, it's ok and perfectly legit.

 

Crap story and average character design are your arguments as to something being "not art" when there's so much more to it than that? You can't be taken seriously when saying that a work as a whole is samey based on the two most derivative parts of it. Especially when in one of those cases you're not looking past the surface.

Running through your points:
1: In terms of debate and discourse, the game's plot and characters discuss the Objectivism and the philosophies of Ayn Rand at length, not to mention the more general themes of power, desire, perfection and corruption. I observed (and to some extent took part in) multiple discussions that arose as a direct result.
2: Bioshock has a relatively unique look to it. I recall many contemporary games looking like Call of Duty 4. I don't recall too many other games set in a 1930's style art-deco vaguely steam-punk underwater leaking city. Water is featured extensively, something which was typically avoided in prior games. And, other than Bioshock 2 and perhaps Hydtophobia, I can't think of too many games using water similarly now.
3, 4 and 5 I'll skip, as I don't see them relating to any games in particular.
6: Yes, the game is just a shooter on the surface, but if you're looking for art don't you need to look past the surface? If I look no closer the Mona Lisa isn't significantly unique from paintings of other contemporary women. Clearly the surface isn't where the value comes from. If you look a little further into Bioshock at the more subtle things - the (unfortunately shallow) good/evil choices with the Little Sisters, the presentation of the Little Sisters with their Big Daddies, the discussion of philosophy and human nature through the environment and the characters, the whole "would you kindly" thing which took advantage of the medium of video games so amazingly well - there's plenty that's unique about it.

 

[QUOTE="angrypenguin]I don't consider something to be "not art" unless it's clearly primarily functional in nature.[/QUOTE]
the arts drive the economy, they're functional too. art education means more creative workers in every field, and more people who later buy art themselves. however most artists themselves benefit little from that. I'm German but I know that republican conservatives tend to criticize public founding of the arts.
Here's why they shouldn't, although you gain a 7:1 return.
http://www.artsusa.org/pdf/informat...es/economic_impact/aepiii/national_report.pdf

 

Yes, art performs a function, and some functional things can be expressive/artistic too. Hence the word "primary".

 

1. Using Ayn Rand's philosophy is just an alibi. Did the game have anything genuinely new to say? No. Did it imitate a movie? Yes.

2. Well, you seem to be stuck with the idea that it's a great piece of art because it is set in a retro-futuristic underwater world. Why? There already have been games showing the opposite, does that make it original or good? Or that they borrowed from older design forms and just put them in a different context? The Mafia games mechanically copied nearly the complete Los Angeles of the 1940s, but would it be completely different if they'd put it underwater? That's like Damien Hirst claiming that a shark in formaldehyde is art - and it's exactly the perception that is pressing real art out of sight.

4 is part of the reason for 2, 5 is part of the reason for 1 (people think "oh the game is vaguely based on Ayn Rand's book so it must be philosophically profound!", but not many will read the books because of that)

6. I'd argue that you're confusing uniqueness with profoundness, and you ignore the intention. The Mona Lisa was painted to say something, or to be an Enigma, to preserve an individual's beauty (other paintings are painted to show the ugliness of war for example, or Ron Mueck's giant sculptures outline human vulnerability - there's a wide spectrum) - games like BioShock (if there are any that can be considered comparable) were produced to get sold, to get played, to get enjoyed so you buy the next game. That some Ayn Rand philosophy is in it doesn't mean anything - the game wouldn't need it to be a work of art. When EA made their Godfather games, FF Coppola tried everything he could so they couldn't abuse his work like that.

 

The more I read discussions of "art" and what is or is not considered "art", the more I'm inclined to say that we can decide if something is "art" by analyzing the conversation itself.
If, in the process of discussing the topic of whether something is "art" or not, there is significant use of as much of the following as possible; linear thinking, anecdotal evidence, logical fallacy, hyperbole, and irrational belief, the subject matter clearly IS "art".

Therefore, I conclude by evidence of this conversation itself, that video games ARE ART!

 

If you declare every discussion topic to be art, what's the point of this?

I'm kind of disappointed that this discussion seems to get misdirected, even though that is most likely my own fault, since my post was so vague in many respects. The question what is art and what isn't, is certainly part of this (well, I admit I chose a provocative title), but what concerns me more is that my points from 1 to 6 basically apply for all video games - even if they actually are art by some other definition, they're all redundant and fullfil at least one of these clichés. As I tried to point out in my previous post, even though the BioShock developers happen to have been influenced by Ayn Rand or early 20th century design/architecture, they don't do much more than just reproducing it, unaware of the fact that isn't much more than unimaginative reproduction. The problem is that these clichés are celebrated as if they were the Holy Grail of video games (same for "stylized" graphics, or cutting edge technology), but they're purely superficial and don't even say anything about the thing that inspired them (hopefully that is understandable...);to me they are the exact opposite (with the exception of 3, the art market).

Watch the videos I linked (McCay, Reiniger, Fleischer, and so forth) and tell me, is there any game where you can see that this much effort and talent has been put into the images (I'm not even beginning to talk about the idiosyncratic style of each of them)? Imagine what one of them had done with something like Unity or any other game engine and you get the idea. That's why I think the "Mona Lisa"-game that establishes video games as an art form has yet to be made - to put it in a more nuanced way.
In 30 years the critics will perhaps call games art regardless if such a game exists, because they are from our generation and don't know anything else.

 

No, the game wasn't profound because it explored those things, it was interesting. Most games have a gameplay style and an art direction and that's about it. The story, if it's there, is a framework to introduce various gameplay elements and give the player a reason for doing whatever they're doing. In Bioshock, that wasn't the case - the design effectively meshed the gameplay, the art and the plot, and explored a philosophical theme as it did it.

No. First up, I never said it was "great art", I just said it was a game that easily fits the category. And the fact that we're having such a lengthy discussion about the details about how good it is as a piece of art kind of shows that. Secondly, no, the setting was never why I think it's art. I brought up the setting only because you claimed the game was unoriginal, and it's one shining example of where the game is fairly original.

I honestly don't get your point here. Are you saying that art can't be inspired by previous art, style or literature? Are you saying that art can't be something that already exists with a twist? Applying those descriptions to Bioshock is trivialising a lot of the game, but even that aside there is almost nothing created by human beings which is not somehow influenced or inspired by prior works. I don't see how that effects whether or not they're art. And I definitely don't see how you jumped to the shark example...

Hold on, though, you're claiming that the game is neither unique nor profound, because it has no new ideas of its own and it is artistically derived from prior works or styles. How can I confuse one for the other if neither are there in the first place?

What are you getting at here? That something can't be art if there are commercial intentions? Plenty of famous paintings, unarguably considered "art", were made under commission, ie: for money.

You're right, it doesn't need it to be a work of art, but who said it did? It could have been exploring communism vs. capitalism or chosen religions, but it didn't. It explored Ayn Rand's philosophy because that's what the designers wanted to explore. And holy crap, doesn't that on its own indicate some form of expression? It doesn't need it to be art, but it's one of the many reasons that Bioshock can be considered art.

You're looking for reasons it can't be art, but all you're managing to find are individual things which, as you say, alone don't cause something to be art. But you're willfully avoiding taking the sum of the parts into consideration.

 

This goes back to things I've asked or alluded to above. Do you think that anything inspired by, influenced by or derived from prior works is necessarily not art? Because if so, almost nothing can be art.

Unimaginative reproduction? Have you actually played the game? Have you seen anyone else mix 1930's architecture with sci-fi and a plot that explores philosophy (any philosophy)?

Yes, it's obvious where their inspiration comes from, but that isn't the same as being a striaghtforward reproduction. It's easy to pick people apart for being unoriginal if you start at the finished product and work backwards, but you're barking up the wrong tree if you think it's just as easy to go the other way around, and you're completely wrong if you don't think any new work goes into it.

Edit: Actually, no I missed the point there. Yes, there are many games where that much effort and talent has been put in. You should also check out the "demoscene", because stuff in there might be more up your alley. And I have no idea how you jump from any of those examples to the "Mona Lisa"-game, because none of your examples are a Mona Lisa of their field.

 

The simple act of creation, is art in itself.

Sure we can debate all day long if x is art or y is art, but the fact that driven individuals come together to make something interesting, or entertaining, or thought provoking is enough for me to call it art. Medium is not the arbiter... and art does not require a message...

The 20th century has turned art into something that is supposed to be new, and different, and thought provoking, or something that illicits an emotional response even if if it is disgust! I don't personally agree with this state of affairs, but fine. there it is. Look at anything in MoMA. I think it's crap... but one person's crap is another persons jewel. And I have to respect the fact that someone has worked to put their idea into existence, regardless of my opinion of their skill or their oh so important message. this is the true value of art, the fact of creation over consumption.

All this aside, the shear amount of technically trained artistic skill that goes into creating even the much maligned and ridiculed money driven franchise of COD is by itself quite staggering. Yes this is art folks, but you don't have to like it.

 

If money is being used as the most successful and accurate way to ascertain whether or not an product is art or not then the medical arts are astounding in their success and video games astounding in their failures.

 

Well, I still think it isn't.

No, I'm saying it should be able to destillate something genuinely new out of the available material, which BioShock doesn't, in my opinion. A shark isn't art but the opposite - nature. and the act of putting it in formaldehyde isn't art either, even if some rich cretin thinks it is and buys it for millions of dollars. Same if you use an existing concept of architecture (or design etc.), put it underwater, and then get the reputation of a great innovator. And aside from that, I'm not so much complaining about using and rearranging existing material as I am about the redundance of the styles that are used. I don't define a twist as "putting a 1930s city underwater" as significant enough for that.

Why not have a game that looks as if it was drawn by Roland Topor?

Why do 2d games always have to look like some fake airbrush crap?

Not what I said. The game is neither unique nor profound because it has no new ideas of its own. That elements of it are derived from prior works or styles is perfectly fine, I'm actually advocating a bigger variety of styles here. But it's basically reproducing them in 3d and adds nothing of his own beyond that, or does it? The architecture doesn't have a function or a connection to the plot, it's just decoration. Or would the mood be any different if the game's setting was the sewerage of north korea?

No, that there's nothing beyond that, that games have nothing new to say although they'd be the ideal medium for that.

So you're thinking that the sheer demonstration that the developers have read Ayn Rand was one of the reasons it could be considered art.

That is not what I am saying. Current video games fullfil at least 2 of my criteria and shouldn't be regarded as art as long as they do so. The harmony of "the sum of parts" is what I am missing, not what I am avoiding.

Yeah, and the obvious answers to the 2nd question would be Grim Fandango using Hugh Ferriss, or any Jacques Tati movie (although it mocks the architecture of his time)...

How aren't they? McCay: Apart from the fact that he produced 4000 drawings in one month and didn't have the technological means of Disney or Pixar, the drawings themselves have more detail and motion than everything that came afterwards. Reiniger: Has there ever been another artist whose shadow plays' figures had a similar quality?

They perhaps aren't the best possible animators, but the best that has been done so far came from them, even though they were the pioneers. It's embarrassing how nothing today comes close to them.

 

See that? You see what happened there? You are trying to take something that is based solely on the opinion of the viewer and define it universally. I already posted why this is silly.

If your going to debate on an intellectual level, always take the points already made into consideration when arguing your point.

That said. You are well within your right to say "Well, I still think it isn't". It's just not good debate material (It's almost argumentative, it puts up a social wall that your opposition have to smash down, rather than reason against)

 

not really true, I just didn't bother to repeat my reply from the previous post. I pointed out that the game shouldn't be considered original because of 5 different things - that it uses some philosophy, that it happens to use 30s architecture, that it didn't/won't start a culturally relevant discourse, that you've learned nothing when you finish it - it's not like most of the people who watched The Dark Knight Rises will go read Plato (which Nolan seems to have misunderstood, haha) or Marx.

And that it isn't an artistic triumph because it uses the latest 3d rendering technology. In fact, I sort of mixed the viewer's and the creator's point of view. That doesn't mean the game can't be art, but not because of these pseudo-criteria.

 

Games aren't always necessarily art but they require creativity to produce. At least the good games do. Some genres less and others more. For example the standard FPS, racing games etc might not require much creativity but the fantasy/RPG type games usually do.

Thats my opinion

 

I do believe that "art" and "originality" are two very different things.

 

As are art and creativity... This discussion seems to be going downhill ...

 

Just adding on to that, Some of the Fantasy RPG games these days have more interesting story lines than the average Hollywood Movie. The kind of audience that usually plays these games might not lend themselves to much depth in the story lines but what they lack in depth they usually make up for in complexity.

I remember when playing Baldurs Gate how surprisingly interesting the storyline was

 

And that, right there, is a massive trivialisation that's willfully ignoring... well, quite a lot.

Please find me a "1930's city" that looks anything like the one in Bioshock, whether or not it's underwater.

Because how is that any different to making it look like its set in a "1930s city underwater"?

You're making a lot of distinctions without differences, here.

Basically the message I'm getting is that if something derives from classic art or whatever art it is you see value in, then it's ok, but if it doesn't or it has other influences it's not.

 

My personal view on art is that it's a medium for communicating information. (And thoughts and emotions are means by which we process that information.) Based on that notion of information, I come to two propositions:

1. Since the more entropy there is in a system, the less information it can contain, one mark of great art is low entropy, for example, Bach's Art of the Fugue. Ergo, art involves a lot of hard work. If it was easy, it probably wasn't art.
   
2. The kind of information great art conveys is itself intrinsically tied to hinting at or showing something beyond the ever-increasing constriction, destruction, and uniformity of entropy, whether by direct illustration or by contrast. Hero versus monster, benefactor versus predator, love versus hatred.

So, I conclude games have the capacity and potential for great art, while the primary obstacle is perhaps the desire and economic necessity to get something done and on the market without committing to the amount of hard work required to make something like an Art of the Fugue.

But, of course, perfect is the enemy of good enough. It doesn't need to be great art to be good art. For example, I feel like a good epic story, told well through a game, is art enough, at least for this discussion.

 

Word's question is a hard sell to people on a game design board. Can we please divorce the idea of "art" from something qualitatively good or bad? It's all too easy to get defensive about it, otherwise. Saying that games (so far) aren't art isn't an insult, you know. But it is a disappointment to some of us who are both game players and have had a liberal arts education. Reading mind-blowing literature, gazing at the perverse and the sublime in painting or photography, and being overcome by the mastery of great filmmakers all share a profound, tectonic soul-altering quality that I've never encountered in a game. Perhaps I'm a philistine, but I have to trust in a lifetime of critical thinking to believe that the difference between these media is not solely personal.

My training is in literature / creative writing, so I first went looking to Chris Crawford and Janet Murray for an academic explanation of "interactive storytelling," but was never convinced by the media dawn they promised games would bring (Shelley Jackson's Frankenstein was on one of my undergraduate course lists even back in 2003), and I've become even more skeptical since. I just don't see games becoming a form of contemporary "art" in the sense that Don DeLillo's or David Simon's works can be: not as long as the purpose of a games remains primarily to entertain (and not, in contrast, to express or to inspire or to inform or persuade or argue or subvert or or or...). And furthermore, I don't see games becoming art until we see one cohere with authorial intent.

The most important thing that divides the experience of a film or TV drama, a great book (comic or otherwise), an arresting painting, etc, from games is the integrity of the authorial vision. Much ado has been made this century about "the death of the author," and postmodernists including myself celebrate the democratization of the experience of art, but readers today in "traditional media" still relate to the intent of the author; in all great art there is a theme that resonates through every minute of film, every paragraph of prose, every daub, one that resonates so completely that every iota of its composition is essential to the communication of the whole. But in games, how can that ever be? We have experiences so branching and various, so supposedly "empowering" to their players (be cruel or be kind? Such liberty!) that no one experience of the game can ever cohere as authoritative. Without textual authority of any kind, what else can current games do to be consistent but try and communicate obliquely with an aesthetic style? Games are so roundly criticized for "linearity," after all. So many of the "desirable" characteristics of a game - replayability, customization, simulation, and on and on, are anathema to the authorial vision.

No one will ever agree on a definition for art, but it would be foolish to ignore its etymology in "artifice," "artificial," and even "arm." Art is a product that is synthesized for an author's purpose. As long as the answer to "what purpose?" remains first and foremost 'entertainment' (often wish fulfillment), and the answer to "whose purpose?" is unclear or even actively rejected, games will at best be a minor art.

 

How isn't Bioshock? Or Ico? Or <every other possible game>?

You qualify your examples based on technical excellence (quality, detail, motion) yet somehow the same doesn't apply to video games?

It really seems to me that games simply don't exhibit the things you appreciate artistically, and as a result you're arguing that nobody else should appreciate them artistically either.

 

Thank you for this.

Fallout and Grim Fandango, but that's irrelevant for my argumentation. That's like saying "please find me another game where you fight the future North Korean army other than Crysis and Homefront".

Well, to simplify it, I view 3d modelling, or drawing with photoshop as "cheating", even though I'm aware everyone who owns Photoshop can call himself an artist nowadays (I don't include architecture here because architects need to use that technology so they can put their plan into practice.). The reason for my opinion is that as a PC user you can always "cheat", for example you can just add filters or undo the things you don't like until you're happy - that's why I prefer 2d animation over 3d animation, it's less perfect, fluid and more random, or human; you see the effort that was put in it.

The tools are practical, no question, and I often use them myself, but I would never be pretentious enough to call it art.

So to sum up, if someone uses his 3d software to copy a model of a few 1930s avantgarde houses, that isn't art to me. If he puts it underwater, it still isn't. It would be different if he'd form them out of actual clay and then scan them where your threshold of originality isn't dragged down by these other factors.

You also seem to confuse art with kitsch - hence the Damien Hirst comparison earlier, but as the discussion continues I'm starting to think you believe that Kitsch should be regarded as art. Well, in that case we just disagree and can save time.

See above.

No, you don't get it. Video games embody technical excellence, but I'd say that a real artist doesn't let a computer do all the work. I qualified my examples by the talent they have and how they're using it relative to others, by their originality, and by the "difficulty level" if you will (not so much the technical effort but how the overall concept fits together in the final product - if it succeeds to say what it wants to say; that includes all the criteria every art teacher uses to mark a piece of work)

You are right, I don't consider them art yet. Craft perhaps, but not art. It's a bit like when art was still dominated by the church (not to mention the Greek and Roman emperors' propaganda) and slowly liberated itself - except that games follow Hollywood trends instead of the church. Current games aren't profound because they pay hommage to a past style or a certain philosophy, they're more some kind of Disneyland in that regard. When Grim Fandango came out it was praised just like BioShock because of its architecture, it just took the ideas from someone else and put it in a latin-American environment (instead of underwater).

Not really, I'm saying you should look beyond your nose.

 

So this is going back to the medium and/or tools you use determining whether what you make is art?

Ahh, well, as far as I'm concerned it's discussion over. If you honestly think that the use of tools somehow devalues the things that people create there's really no reasonable discussion to he had here. I mean, how far do you take that back? It's not really art unless you did it with a paintbrush... it's not really art unless you used a rock to mark the side of a cave wall... it's not really art unless you scratched it in the dirt with your fingers...

None of your points are based on any kind of reasoning, and there's no actual discussion to be had here because you're not actually exploring what anyone else has to say - just calling it wrong.

 

Not what I said. I think that using such tools is OK, but as soon as you make use of an undo button and filters, it's cheating, not art. Actual artists don't have a time machine.

(I'd take a more nuanced stance concerning copy+paste, since it's comparable to Warhol)

It seems to me like that is exactly what you're doing, but I don't want a kindergarten debate either. You seem to read stuff I didn't say out of my posts just so you have any counter-argument at all.

 

But it's exactly what you're saying, right there. Undo buttons and filters are as much tools as are hammers and paint brushes, but apparently anyone who uses them is "cheating" and therefore can't be making art.

You keep saying "not what I said", but in each case I could go and quote the exact place where you said it.

 

That's questionable, to say the least. If you are making a marble bust and it falls off the table you need to start with a new stone that is different from the other one (or you use glue, but even then you don't get the same result). If you use aquarel and you paint something black that should have been white you will never reach the same tone again that you've originally wanted. There are countless other examples for that. If you animate a walking cycle without a computer from a complicated camera perspective you can't see the character from every possible side (even if you use rotoscoping) and rely on your imagination and drawing skill - yes, you can always draw a new cell if one doesn't seem to fit, but you don't make a mathematically correct copy with a few different parameters as you can with 3d software.

Yes, undo buttons are software tools, but they aren't the tools of an artist. They are the opposite of creativity

...then you just keep misunderstanding me, like above.

 

I don't really get people whom tries to see 'art' in the game visuals, concepts or ideas. The core is actually role playing. I can find 'art' at those moments in Half-File 2, for example, when I run away from monster and I can hear him coming and I'm pressing the buttons and I'm fully inside game atmosphere, I'm sucked into it.
Remember the very first meaning of all games - to teach to be something/someone different, assuming that we are in reality.
Casual games are just time killers, like drugs.

Combination of visuals+sounds+gameplay does the trick, but what is most important:
game has to trick player, let him take some other role, let him feel that he is inside the game, sucked in.
Good picture artists is the one who can express his feelings with his drawings.
Good game creator is the one who can make player experience new roles with his games.

We should look for 'art' somewhere there

 

That's a little limited, don't you think? I can't speak for angrypenguin but I think he would agree with that as well.


I'd like to add something to my first point - the lack of games that cause a public discourse. By that I don't necessarily mean that games need to have a political agenda, like The Manchurian Candidate. But where is our War Of The Worlds? It's in the nature of video games that they're regarded as virtual; we think we are used to all the media, but perhaps we err here. Speaking of Welles, where is our "Citizen Kane"?

Why not have a game where you play Berlusconi as he has to resist Merkel, the mafia, and the Italian legislation, maintain his newspaper and TV monopoly while hunting threatened species with Putin and playing cards with Gaddafi (as a reward you can unlock new girls for your orgies, get more botox and old sexist jokes)? I'm exaggerating (and basically just using Berlusconi as the Kane/Hearst of our time - so it's nothing new either), but why are there so few games like that, and why do they all look so alike (regardless if there's some art-deco building here and there)? Games that comment the current or past events (or topics that people care about) on a higher level than a dime novel.

I'm not saying I have a fully fledged plan for better games, but I can imagine if this paradigm happens a lot of other stuff could be possible, far more entertaining and worthwhile.

 

Well... I do see that there can be art in the visuals and so on alone. But I suppose those aren't a game being art, they're a game containing art.

And aside from that, I agree largely with RyuMaster anyway, and he does raise a really good point for discussion. The games I would consider to have the most artistic value happen to be ones where the play experience is something much more to me than moving tokens within an arena to master or manipulate some mechanic in order to win, more than a set of structured rules and a goal I am to meet. All games are fundamentally just that, but on occasion they're made in such a way and with such skill that you don't notice, instead you're immersed in some kind of adventure.

In those cases of such strong immersion, I'm no longer simply trying to "beat the end of level boss" or "win the game", I'm trying to "save the girl" (to use a simplistic example) or whatever scenario the game has presented. Something important here is that the game can't purely focused on ludology, because that level of engagement simply doesn't happen if the brain can't relate to it. It needs some kind of story, because that's what we engage with - it's not the rules describing what we're doing, it's why we're doing it and what fictitious ulterior motive we are given. (Consider how much an action movie would hold people's attention if it had no story element and were instead reduced to "some guy gets in a series of fights for no particular reason".) And, considering that, games with artistic value very much seem to me to be about allowing the player to experience some kind of crafted scenario.

Compare that to visual art, which is very much about sharing some crafted vision. Music (and other sound art), which is very much about sharing crafted musical or audio pieces. Fictional literature, sharing a crafted imagined (or perhaps not) story. And so on. Games are about modelling experiences or scenarios, and likewise that is what they share. So I don't think that it's unreasonable at all to conclude that that's where their artistic value would reside.

Games can have all of those things - visuals, music, sound, story, writing - as components, but the bit that makes it art or not as a game is the experience it gives through interaction, not the dressings on top.

To stick with my example, Bioshock isn't art because of the characters, or because of the art deco, or because of the architecture, or because of the Ayn Rand, or because of the music, or because of the soundscape, or because of the plot, or because of the golf club twist. It's art because of the overall but fundamental interactive experience, of which all of those aspects and more are in support.


Also, can we please stop thrashing the whole "they all look so alike" thing? How can you honestly say they're alike, visually or otherwise, if you actually look at what's out there? Please find one example of a game where you can't find another that's significantly different. Perhaps you simply need to play more than "at least one game of every genre".

 

I understand what you're trying to say - I think. But "beating the final boss" vs "saving the girl" isn't a good way to put it IMO. Maybe you just want to friggin' kill that idiot.

Ryu and you advocate games which are good because you're emotionally involved as opposed to just score points so you win. That's fine - but I think there should be more a bigger focus on the intellectual components. For instance if you read the Ripley books by Highsmith you're sympathizing with the murderer but at the same time you're a little ashamed of yourself for doing so. Games, especially FPS games, tend to have a lower inhibition level. While that doesn't need to be inherently negative, it just strikes me how common it is. So I say to be art games not only need a crafted scenario (which makes them, well, craft), but also a strength in the other factors that can define it - not just illusion and escapism but critical thinking.

It's also very much about having something to say - expressing yourself, compressing/questioning/inflating/caricaturing a situation/feeling/person/event's basic aspects and reasons, having a concept and making people think. From protest songs, to gospel, to blues, to rock, to minimalism. Same for visual art, but we already had that, I think.

Um, but you realize that is proving my point? Books, music and films are totally different from other books/films/music (yes I acknowledge that many works inspire other works of another or the same genre), except that they use the same material (paper/screen). No excuse. Look on the previous page where I collected some images and compared them to Topor. I could find a million more if I had the time. And they would all be crap.

And I think this is where you misunderstand what I intend to get across here. The reason I'm complaining is that a games visuals are just "the dressing on top" when they could be so much more. The genres follow the gameplay mode because there aren't a lot of them. Every FPS, MMORPG, or Hidden-Object Game follows the same gameplay scheme for the respective genre conventions.

 

Didn't read all of it, but I've heard this kind of argument here and there. I say, who gives a S***? Ebert is a fossil and will never understand the true impact of anything. HE and his partner both game Rocky a thumbs down!!! And we see where Rocky has gone. If he can say that games aren't art, I can say Van Gogh is some guy who smeared paint on a canvas, or Poe is a nut who talks to Ravens(and Ravens that talk back.)

I can go on about how movies are not art, also, so his job means nothing in the grand scheme of things.

However, we are not Vulcans who only believe in doing only logical things. We need to have fun as well, which is why stories, print, radio, TV and Movies, and video games were created(and that's in chronological order)

 

Are you serious?

Games are as different from one another as films are. Yes, there are some games which are very similar, by the same token that there are some boks/film/music which are very similar. At the same time, there are plenty of games which are very different from one another, and there are plenty of books/films/music which are very different from one another. Pretending otherwise is willful ignorance and is detracting from the discussion.

And you can pull up as many similar images as you want, it's irrelevant. Showing that there are samey looking games is not at all the same as showing that there are no games which look different. I could google a bunch of images of samey looking films or paintings and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't suddenly decide all works of those forms of media must therefore be samey, huh?

Sometimes they are, but not always. See: Bioshock. And please look past "art deco" and "underwater". The visuals tell a lot of the story, there's detail there, there's subtlety. You learn more about Rapture by inhabiting it than you do by getting told about it. And that extends to the sounds and the characters and writing and events you witness and other aspects of the design, as well. Yes, the visuals could be changed out for something different and the game could stay mechanically identical, but it wouldn't leave the fundamental interactive experience intact - because in this case despite the game fitting the 'FPS' category that fundamental experience isn't just 'walk around and shoot things'. Perhaps "fundamental" is the wrong word to be using there, but what I mean to say is that if you took any of the building blocks away you'd be changing (and I think damaging) the experience as a whole. In this case, those things aren't just dressing, they're an integrated part of a cohesive whole. No one of those things makes the game art, though they may be art in their own right, but the sum of their combined parts, in my opinion, is.

And again, applying your own arguments back to other forms of media... aren't most action movies every bit as samey as FPSs if you take away the dressings? "A guy has a bunch of fights."

 

No it's not, as I've tried to show in my first post.

No, that's a whole different story. Especially in the 2d area (well, 3d games could have different textures) games are alike, because nobody puts as much effort and talent in it as people did in the established arts, or dares to do something you'd consider surreal (I'd use "stylized" here too, but without my earlier connotation). Find me one 2d game that doesn't use crappy airbrush artwork but art by someone of the caliber of, say, Neo Rauch. You can't. That's the difference. I don't have to prove that some works are more original than others, and that's not the point of this topic.

I do agree with that (in general), but I've already explained why I find that the buildings BioShock in particular don't deserve to be called art. That they are a part of art is very well possible, but the game shouldn't be considered art because it uses these buildings. Just like not every drawing is art because it is black-and-white. Additionally they weren't created in a process that I'd define as artistic (see earlier posts).

Yeah, but not all (Tarantino, the early James Bond films, Matrix, Collateral, bud spencer films, leone westerns...). It isn't an argument against what I've said about the art direction and they way they all imitate Hollywood.

 

Google the game "Limbo". After that, please go and check out games that aren't blockbuster titles (which tend to follow a flavor of the month/year mentality which I fear is clouding your vision). Games are not all alike. No excuses.

If you think that the textures are all that there is to the artistic style in a 3D game, there's a lot you're missing out on.

I'm glad that we've finally come to agree about Bioshock. (Have you played it, by the way? All the way through? I'd still like to know.)

And yet you can't explain why.

Wait, how many games have you finished?

Exactly. And the exact same thing applies here.

No it's not, because I wasn't trying to argue against those things. I was pointing out that things which you're perfectly fine with in film somehow disqualify games as art.

But on that note, who says that games are imitating Hollywood? Some undoubtedly do, but it's also just as possible that they simply have similar influences to Hollywood. It's also possible that the same people work on both, or that people who work on both were trained by the same people. Plenty of people who do concept design, writing, and other parts of game development work or previously worked on similar things in the film industry. There's a significant crossover, and on that basis alone you can't trivially write all possible crossover off as 'imitation'.

 

I watched a gameplay video of Limbo, but it's not what I meant. I like the composition and the music, and the overall mood, but I'm talking about the quality of the drawings. Why does it always have to be in that simplistic "cartoon" style?

I don't, see first and previous post.

Uh, no. Crysis = Halo, Mafia = The Godfather = GTA and so on. Perhaps Bioshock is a first milestone, but that's about it.
The action genre is quite versatile. Just look at the wikipedia page for Themes of No Country For Old Men. Has there ever been such an article about a game?

Here's some inspiration for a platform game à la McCay:
http://tetheredhawk.files.wordpress.com/2009/07/little-nemo-in-slumberland.jpg

Hm, one short article that just transcripts some BioShock dialogue. OK, now compare:
http://kotaku.com/354717/no-gods-or-kings-objectivism-in-bioshock

 

You're still missing the fact that pointing out similarities does not prove a lack of difference, which is your point.

I'd still like to know if you've played Bioshock.

And I'd still like to know if you've made and finished games before.

 

Video games aren't art, their beyond that . I'm going to say that a good video game is the combination of several kinds of art , story telling, design, drawing, 3d modeling .

Like playing Flower, or that was Yesterday, and then saying those games have no cultural value is pure ignorance .

 

If I can squirt some paint on a canvas in no real pattern or style and call it modern art....... Games must be the freaking Holy Grail