Could and Should a Video Game Be Piece of Art?

[vimes]

We all know already that games are full of art : graphics, design, sound, storyline... but is it possible that, one day, a game would be seen as a piece of art ? Isn't the fact that games are meant to be fun preventing them to reach a new state ? Should we hope for this "ascension" or not ?

The only games that come to my mind as a piece of art is The Dark Eye, an adaptation of Poe's short stories in which you incarnate both the murderer and the victim of a crime. It made the player experience feelings and made him thought about matters that couldn't be encountered in any other game and in a way other media couldn't propose.

And now, I call defense.

[OftenK]

Absolutely. At one time, motion pictures were nothing more than a novelty, but now there are films out there that are pieces of art. I think as the game industry evolves (as rapidly as it is), there will definately be games that are considered "just for fun", and some that will be considered "art." (And who said art couldn't be fun?)

I don't know if we should "hope" for this "ascension", but I personally think it's inevitable.

[shbazjinkens]

For some, it's already art.

Art has become so arbitrary though that it varies much from person to person whether anything is considered art. Some discount items for anything from lack of originality to lack of effort, or obscenity.

I think it's art just because it takes creativity to do it. Zelda is art to me.. but I'm saying this from the perspective of someone who looks to such things for motivation.

Perhaps you mean the whole package though, with the story being a part of the art?

[Jayel]

I still don't know how to define "art"

[vimes]

I still don't know how to define "art"

To me, it is something, whatever its form, that "speaks" to you, that makes something within you move.

[Chris]

To me, it is something, whatever its form, that "speaks" to you, that makes something within you move.

If that's the case, I suspect we had video games as art for quite some time.

[vimes]

If that's the case, I suspect we had video games as art for quite some time.

I was thinking about things that aren't related to basic reactions such as fear, enjoyment, excitement... well quite like these but all mixed up and whose origin is quite unidentifiable at first.

I didn't mean

" POP is a piece of art : you really feel strong when you play the prince 'cause you can do whatever acrobatic movement comes to your mind."

I was thinking about reaction I can get, for example, by looking at some paintings by Magritte.

Pff, well, I should have agree with Jayel

[Jayel]

About 10 years ago or so I used to define "art" as a physical marker of yourself that lasts through ages, as a proof of your existence much like your children

but then it excluded some widely accepted form of art such as cooking and ice sculptures...

so I redefined it as anything that embodies a piece of yourself.

But that's a little too broad,

so nowadays I just say "I don't know"

[Salka]

I have found, over the years, that the people that claim to appreciate art the most are the people who understand it least of all. They have expensive, abstract paintings from snotty artists hanging in their designer living rooms, just above their stylish Elaine E. Curtis sofa, which cannot actually be sat on in case it damages the delicate designer fabric.

These people are the very same ones that deny that video games could ever become a legitimate art form.

I remember in school on year, we read this ridiculous poem in English. I can't remember the name of the author, but many Irish people consider him a genius. The poem goes something like this;

The Snail Moves

On the hovercraft of itself

Slowly,

Like butter on a hot frying pan,

Oh Snail,

Let us reach out to you,

As you hover,

Like a bee,

An angry bee.

I have to admit, that although I am writing this poem,

I actually know pretty much dick

About Snails.

And I think the same guy, or maybe it was a different idiot, wrote something like this;

The Hedgehog,

Is just like Jesus,

Except pricklier

And slightly smaller,

But the comparison I am drawing is this;

The Hedgehog, much like Jesus

Wears a crown of thorns!

Get it!? Do you!? Do you see the clever comparison

That I am drawing?!

I am a genius.

I know absolutely nothing about hedgehogs, by the way.

But I do know a lot about Jesus.

And although they really have nothing in common,

I am going to continue to draw this abstract comparison,

Because, like the emperors new clothes,

You will have to pretend to understand it,

Or risk ridicule

At the hands of your fashionable peers.

See, I don't consider that art. I consider that pretentious bullshit. Maybe some consider it art. But then, some consider the painting that I made three years ago as art. I dipped by baby sister's ass in a pot of red paint and made her sit on a canvas, and then repeated the process with black, green and orange paint until she started crying and trying to eat the paint. Yes, some people consider the painting I made with my sister's ass art. They say they think they can see an image in there.

Yes. It is an ass imprint.

What I am trying to say is that Video Games have been an art form pretty much for years, but nobody likes to admit it. They boast amazing art, skilful programming, clever design, intricate stories, and awesome scripts. Or at least, the good ones do. Like Grim Fandango, for instance.

I don't think an Ass Painting is quite equal to Grim Fandango on terms of artistic ability and talent, but many people (non-gamers) would have you believe it.

[Chris]

I was thinking about things that aren't related to basic reactions such as fear, enjoyment, excitement... well quite like these but all mixed up and whose origin is quite unidentifiable at first.

I didn't mean

I was thinking about reaction I can get, for example, by looking at some paintings by Magritte.

Pff, well, I should have agree with Jayel

Ok, but in that light I still don't retract my original statement. Also, yeah, better to just agree with Jayel on this one probably.

[Marek]

Warning: long rant ahead

It's interesting how much the medium has a role in this never-ending debate. E.g. "Could games be art? Like this famous painting or sculpture?" A (long) while back there was an article somewhere titled "Are video games art?" The answer is "no", but the question is not properly formulated. When VoodooExtreme linked to that article they were like "hey, here's an editorial on if video games are art. In my opinion they aren't". Somehow I feel that these discussions kind of miss the point.

Can paintings be art? Yes.

Can architecture be art? Yes.

Can dancing be art? Yes.

Can a soap opera be art? Theoretically, yes.

Can a random pattern of leaves in my front lawn be art? Sure, just keep an open mind.

Can five meerkats doing a trapeze act while a bonobo plays the guitar be art? Freaking YES.

Can video games be art? ...... pfft no.

I mean, yes! The medium or format should be pretty much irrelevant.

Of course, the inevitable "so what is art?" question always comes up. Everyone has their own answer. I like the saying "art is when it looks back at you", but if you're asking for a definition of that, I don't know. I suppose art is something that intends to be more than the sum of its parts, often with a strong desire for self-expression, where the process of discovery while making the art is sometimes just as important as the end product. But hey, that could be a shit distinction, and I'm sure there's examples from the world of established art that don't have any of those characteristics.

I consider some games to have artistic merit. ICO, Grim Fandango, Rez, etc. But there's also some less-lauded games that probably deserve recognition for their artistic expression. It's admittedly hard coming up with names, though.

The thing is, games like ICO and Grim Fandango are easier to accept as art(istic), because they have great visuals or an involving story. These are things we can easily recognize in other media. I think the real issue is how long it will take for games to be recognized based on their interactivity. Okay, so the word "interactive" has been used infinite times, and by now has probably watered down in our collective minds. What I mean is that a player does something, and a game responds to it, which the player can then respond to, etc. It's like a dialog. Surely that aspect of video games will one day be valued similar to how other artistic works are being seen for what they are at their "core"? Most installations are already highly interactive, but when interactivity exists in the context of play, in a video game, it's suddenly very different (apparently?). That will change ... games will become more recognized, but it will take some time. I mean, it took lots of artists in the late 70ies and early 80ies to turn the VHS video tape into an accepted medium for art. At first people were saying "no video tapes are not art", but that turned around eventually. Now you have whole museums dedicated to video art and installations.

So there's that. On the other hand, I think you have to look at design versus art. I don't mean that in the "low culture versus high culture" or "functional versus non-functional" sense (which I think are both bunk). I mean the different mindsets. Design is often very deterministic, deliberate, rational, reflective, etc. Designers can get random inspiration from things, and use very personal experiences, but they're almost always still filtered through a very deliberate design methodology. Design is very much about navigating a sort of design space, trying to look ahead and determine your next few possible paths and picking the best ones.

Art is much more a process of discovery, with very little deliberation (or at least, the artists I know try to suppress any sort of design methodology). Artists often "just wing it", e.g. "I like eyes ... I'm going to make 100 sketches of eyes, and then I'll turn 3 into paintings". It comes from a very pure desire to express (but that also means it doesn't have any built-in "this-is-shit"-control....... nevermind).

Sometimes design is considered art. Architecture is all about organizing data, knowledge of materials, being able to work with a big puzzle of official requirements, proper layout, fire exits, etc. etc. It's all very technical, design-oriented and very very hard. But it's a trade that has been perfected over the years, and now a famous architect can say "okay, we're going to do all that, but this time the building will be shaped like a giant egg!!!!" That's still 90% design, cause people have to do shit in that building, and it shouldn't fall over etc. etc., but it has 10% art mixed in.

If making video games the way they're made now was anything like architecture, there'd be a 100-page description (in words) of a fairly straightforward rectangular building, with a team of 50 people of different disciplines trying to make sense of it. There'd be plumbers going around like "yeah, nice creative work on that wall, but we need this space for the water pump", and then various people would be like "shit, we need some materials to finish this building! we don't have bricks! make some bricks!" and even though the building isn't anywhere near finished, the carpet guy comes in and says "Ok, where do you need this?" and the architect would be all like "no no no, you're too soon, we don't even have a carpet pipeline right now, go help the plumbers". The carpet guy, of course, knows nothing of plumbing, and it takes him a week to get up to speed. Half-way through the building process, the real estate developer runs onto the construction site, yelling "this building isn't fun enough!!!" and demolishes the project.

Don't misinterpret all of the above as an insult to video game makers. On the contrary. They're pioneers. But I think once video game making gets its own established methodology, with familiar materials, designs that everyone understands, etc., then it will become a lot easier to switch modes every once in a while and do something artistic with it. Right now everyone is still (very understandably) stuck in a predominantly technical or creative design-oriented mindset, which is vastly different from an artistic mindset. Some people are really good at switching between those mindsets, but the conditions have to be right.

So, yeah, on one hand I think that games need more time to ripen. On the other hand, we can probably start discussing what makes a game artistic, especially since there have already been a few games to have been called that.

[Chris]

What Marek said.

Hey, I'm lazy.

[toblix]

What Chris said, only with the addition that the media or craft shouldn't be irrelevant. There's more to art than the swoozy feeling you get, or that it "talks to you". Nothing should be called art if it's the first try or just generated by accident. In all forms of art there's both the "art itself", ie. the motif, and the "craftsmanship" (or whatever you wanna call it. I'm not English), ie. the use of material and technique. Similarly, in a computer game there is both the need to consider a game as a piece of art based on the merits of the "game itself", which would be (off the top of my head) interactivity (unique for games), storytelling (as in a book), visuals (as in a painting), audials (as in a piece of music, and I know that's not a word), and probably some more stuff, and the merits of the craft of making the game, which would then be the programming (which is now by most people considered pure "work" and not particularly artistic, much like painting and sculpting and architecture was a long time ago), graphical techniques and what have you.

If you know what I mean.

[Salka]

Hang on hang on hang on. Lots of art is a first try or an accident. Some of the most crazy stuff is completely spontaneous.

[MrHoatzin]

I took time writing something long and cohesive up in Word before I posted it and Marek appeared there before me with most the points I wanted to make...

Crap, I say.

[Marek]

I'M THE THREAD CHAMPION!

[toblix]

Hang on hang on hang on. Lots of art is a first try or an accident. Some of the most crazy stuff is completely spontaneous.

Well, of course art can be spontaneous, but give me an example of someone making great art at the first attempt. I mean, even though a person is hightly artistic, he still has to master an instrument or a tool to express himself, and that takes time. And I don't consider someone tripping and falling into a grand piano art. I consider that comedy.

[Intrepid Homoludens]

Geez, I'm nearly all talked out about this subject. Marek, you do remember the very long and very winding discussion about it at the AG forums, don't you? Well, I'm not gonna ramble on about it, I'll save my energy for some brand new topics to bite on. But your long post more or less sums it up (however cluttered ).

BTW, I am an artist and designer myself (my degree says BFA), and I consider myself one of the biggest advocate whores for the use of technology to make art. Among my favourite artists are Bill Viola (video installations), Jenny Holzer (LED displays, mass media), and Laurie Anderson (performance, music, sound). There are already artists using games as platforms for their work.

[Marek]

Marek, you do remember the very long and very winding discussion about it at the AG forums, don't you?

Yes, but now we can do it all over again here like it was the first time! Do you feel the excitement?!

I mean, even though a person is hightly artistic, he still has to master an instrument or a tool to express himself, and that takes time.

Okay, then ... call that craft?

[toblix]

Okay, then ... call that craft?

Well, in most cases you have to master a craft in order to create art.

[hermes]

What's the difference then - between craftmanship, and art.....

[toblix]

Well, you know, they're actually synonyms.

The point I was trying to make is that I think that until the creator has mastered the tools and techniques of an artform, the work isn't really art. Of course, the technique itself can be art too.

But, of course, that's just my opinion. The term art is really subjective and vague. Like beauty.

Also, I'm starting to like these smilies.

[Marek]

Craftsmanship and artistry are definitely not synonyms. A plumber can be said to be an excellent craftsman, which means he practices his trade with great skill, but that doesn't mean installing a waterboiler or bending a lead pipe is art. Similarly, while a lot of arts require craftmanship (such as carefully handling of tools or technical know-how) a lot of art doesn't.

I was going to say that I agree that in most cases you have to master a craft in order to create art, but I don't agree that they're one and the same.

:noskatebo:deranged:

[MrHoatzin]

The difference between art and craft is the state of the mind of the creator. If hes/he/it is trying to something more than just a pretty image, or a formulaic thriller, it is art. Not all art needs an advanced level of craft, though, but it is beneficial for the artist to be able to say, Oh, I can make that hooker look exectly like she does in real life, but I choose to make her this way. If they have craft, artists can pull off a new artistic direction that is slimmer craft-wise and not be vilified by the critics as incompetent.

[Jayel]

I'm a good craftsman but a poor artist.