Video Games and Art (Video Games AS Art) (and so on)

the idea that that kind of immersion is the sole province of video games will likely be this weird cul de sac in history as people who actually want to make art to that effect rather than games start making apps or something else entirely instead, like some google goggle gaggle.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7k-WY8MHLis/T27ywf2EPKI/AAAAAAAABwk/IThYXHJkOdU/s800/randomaccess.jpg

Or is this thing?

Xp I wouldn't say it's the sole province, but it seems to be the central one at the moment. I'd be all for non game immersive interactive art (but who's to say they wouldn't be games, hell it's all semantics anyway ¯\(°_o)/¯

Nothing I've read in a game has been better than a book, and nothing I've seen in a game has been better than a movie, and nothing I've heard in a game has been better than an album, blah blah blah

This is largely true; I've always been disappointed that video games I've played have never really reached the greatness-level of other art forms. Though, I must say, EarthBound comes very close in the text and music depts.

This is the 'video games are art they're just bad art' response, which strikes me as somewhat short sighted.

cf. sturgeon's law

i'd say games do reach that sense of greatness if you allow them to operate as games and let the players create the art (like a fischer-spassky match, or daigo vs whomever)

Philip Nunez described architecture as the creation of a "livable sustainable space" that requires "upkeep" and that is game design, no?

I mean, not across the board, but in any sort of game that features a virtual 2D or 3D environment, requires patching and porting, etc.

oh for god's sake everybody

people make stuff for other people to interact with, we can talk about the stuff itself or we could play a taxonomical parlor game that never ends

you aren't 'deciphering' it tho you're creating it.

welcome to art!

i wouldn't hamstring architecture to those constraints but what makes for good, livable houses often does not make for art, and likewise what makes for good, playable games won't jibe with art either. same problem with cuisine as art. having to taste good and be edible is kind of a downer if you want to make some kind of strychnine foam that evokes the memory of being poisoned by strychnine or something.

likewise what makes for entertaining and "readable" novels etc

ugh sorry i have to get on a bus i didn't mean to be aggressive and then immediately disappear but yknow i'll be around l8r

@ ledge and Stevie

I am only restating the "videogames make bad art" argument because while I believe it to be true, I also believe the statement to be worthless. Videogames should be assessed on different terms than "good plotting" or "character development" because they can, because they are games, not movies or books

I restated the argument too because I played MGS4 last night for about 30 minutes and I'm fucking pissed

man you guys are all lucky that ive drank away most of my philosophy cred because i just almost sent us down a deep wittgensteinian k-hole

since i would need to reread to provide any backup, ill go semi-unspecific - w. uses games as a perfect example of why accurately defining (wrt categorical imperative or whatever) is functionally an impossible task, its no surprise that trying to further define what would make those things art is prtty daunting as well.

the simple version would be that we recognize what is and isn't x by appealing to an internal constantly updated list of things that we see as x. so for some of us architecture or photography or films or video games are going to fail that appeal, for others they aren't.

i do think that rendering and mo-cap and cutscenes are a total dead end wrt this appeal tho, it's an attempt to take qualities of other art and apply them which is a dead failure. hence the resistance to photography in particular in early art history.

ludwig otm, jjjusten otm

i'm trying to think of the best way to succinctly illustrate the difference btw the space in which the player of a game operates and the space in which a consumer of art does but for me that's the key. i think these spaces overlap that that are artful games and gamelike art projects but i dont think 'unpacking' works at all the same in the two.

― Lamp, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 12:13 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

something like designer : composer :: player : musician, maybe?

something about working through the experience of the game as created according to the rules of its creation.

but the composer : musician relationship has a third element of the audience who is meant to be enjoying the experience of seeing the "designed object" (the composition iow) "gamed out" (played lol). for a game the player and audience are the same person. unless you like watching other people play, which nobody does.

xps yeah i find the definitional lassooing a really not very interesting avenue

difficult novels and paintings and movies do not have the quintessential constraints that houses, food, and games have as a fairly non-negotiable basis for their being (though movies are closer to games in requiring a lot of skill and capital, writing a novel requires literacy, so painting is probably going to win in a hierarchy of media most amenable to art)

for my own xp of games the best analogy is that i'm the reader tho. which probably explains some of my taste. i've never cared for goofy, abstract, endless or procedural games, or twitch-reflex challenge type games that reduce basically to a micro-athletics.

i like a little story, non-ludic and narrative elements (no this does not mean 'cutscenes' or even 'emotion'). i like to be shown something, i guess i'd put it.

lamp is mostly otm in this thread, i was just about to quote that same thing xxp

i would like to see an understanding of video games that takes them on their own terms rather than awkwardly shoe-horning them into a definition of "art" that doesn't really apply, or that just points to the nice decoration.

i like to be shown something, i guess i'd put it.

to go further, the 'art' of it not in the what-is-shown but how-it-is-shown.

Videogames should be assessed on different terms than "good plotting" or "character development" because they can

I suppose I'm down with this, but I think the idea that games will only ever make bad conventional art will seem increasingly outdated.

And yeah of course this is all a semantic argument. It's one of the better ones though, in that the discussion illuminates the subjects at hand instead of just being shouting about what words mean. Many xps.

you can't really blame people for borrowing language from movie criticism to understand games; a finite prepared audiovisual experience that takes place in time given certain technological etc etc, i mean, of course that would happen. it hasn't really 'helped' that as memory and computing constraints have lessened game designers have aped movies more and more.

I suppose I'm down with this, but I think the idea that games will only ever make bad conventional art will seem increasingly outdated.

Although as people still say this about e.g. sci fi, maybe not.

i don't think that they will ever make conventional art at all, they will always be games

i think from a narrative point of view, there's just this massive barrier that you cross when you take control of the protagonist. then they are no longer a character, they're you.

Is Final Fantasy XIII a game?

i don't think phoenix wright is really a game, but it's sold and packaged as one.

from the name i would hazard a yes-guess

by conventional art, do you mean, idk, romantic art? that breaks convention, has no practical use, 'pure' experience, operates by its own self-invented rules or struggles against them, w/e

i guess i'm trying to get at your definition of art that games must necessarily fall outside

see, i'm willing to include just about anything as art; industrial design, muzak, sure, w/e, throw everything in there

xp yeah the collapse in definition between 'protagonist' and 'reader' is impt, but i don't see how that kicks games out of the wagon

I think Norbit and Thomas Kinkade and Attack! Attack! are all art, even though I think they suck.

Has anyone addressed or mentioned how video games are almost exclusively made to entertain (not unlike television), whereas other art forms are more often rooted in expression? Like no one goes into the mixed media installation business to strike gold

i am always curious (and it maybe has a touchpoint for this whole thing) how people feel about whthr performers are experiencing art? ie is the dancer/musician/actor 100% a vehicle for the audience and somehow not having that "oh shit art!" moment? does that change during improvisation? as a player, am i experiencing art when i am "jamming" (ugh plz note i try never to do this)? does all of this require a passive viewer (real or imaginary) to be art instead of idk something else?

xp well there is also def the filthy lucre bias involved in some of this, ie if you have a massive company making billions of $ off something we hate calling it art, even if it is

I think Norbit and Thomas Kinkade and Attack! Attack! are all art, even though I think they suck.

― polyphonic, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:41 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i'm trying not to judge here, which is why i'm emphasizing that my definition of games as being something other than art isn't a value judgment, has nothing to do with quality, etc

i think games are their own category

and i think it is a great category!

but i think we don't really understand it that well and getting away from our inferiority complex about it and "real art" is a step in the right direction

i'm also going to stay away from the commercial consideration, i think that is irrelevant

without having to define what art is exactly, would you all agree that expression is a necessary aspect of it, and that certain things are less conducive to art because they have properties that value other things before expression? (i think we're going to have to allow that commercial considerations is one of these properties)

xp yes they are experiencing art as much as the audience and more so

see thats my leaning as well, which makes the video games aren't art because the audience is participating a hard argument to swallow

I dunno I really get into playing Chopin on the piano in a room by myself, reminds me of playing Tetris tbh

even though I'm playing pieces that Chopin wrote for his own performance, I don't think I'm "inhabiting a protagonist" when I'm playing them. Nor do I think I'm Link or Ness or w/e

Pursuant to notions of "self-expression" I have no time for that, I couldn't care less, I am mostly interested in what the art says to me about my life, if you had to "plumb your depths" to reach me then that's cool

i think the artist's experience is not that handy an idea to bring into this, unless you want to argue that when you are playing a video game, you are an artist. which would be an interesting argument, and by all means run with it! but i feel like it's torturing logic a little bit just to once again try and make video games fit into that mould.

it's not so much participation but control, and when the audience seizes expressive power, the art no longer belongs to the piece.
bona fide games are all about surrendering control to the player. you are the artist in a game like chess and people will watch you perform your art.