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

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.

I find it interesting that everyone is mostly gravitating towards narrative-driven games in this discussion and not even considering rhythm games in the conversation

you are the artist in a game like chess and people will watch you perform your art.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 2:56 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i actually wrote an essay in university about how when marcel duchamp quit art to play chess that his playing was just an extension of his artistic practice, haha

but i don't actually agree that a chess player is acting as an artist when he or she plays. the player's considerations are not aesthetic. the goal is to win, not to play a beautiful game. when i drive to work, i'm not artist of the bicycle, either.

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 don't really think anyone is doing that here, but it is a major problem with the larger "are games art?" conversation. I don't care if people think games are art or not, and I have a sort of Morbsian contempt for people who are so invested in the artistry of games but have never seen, I dunno, Citizen Kane? It's less about appreciating games as art and more about giving games the status of "art". A validation. But for me the game/art issue is mostly taxonomical, and sadly I have a real passion for categorization.

But I think plenty of games have themes and visual imagery that have changed me and the way I think, in a manner very similar to how I am affected by other art forms. And it's different, but so is my appreciation of dance vs. sculpture or whatev. And sometimes that comes from the more filmic elements of a game, and other times it's a sort of procedural resonance (the logic of Minesweeper, for example, invaded my dreams for months).

i think i am ready to agree that games can have an impact on your mind / imagination / etc. but so can things that are not defined as art. so is that the best way to approach it i wonder?

from a strictly experiential point of view, i'm trying to think of a work of art that i "use" in any the same way as a video game. ie, i play it over and over again until i "beat" it or "make it till the end." the first part, definitely could apply to records, but it's the sense of "completing" the work in an active way that i get stuck on.

although theoretically that could apply to my effort to finish ulysses or moby dick, haha, but i don't think those are typical cases

what about a TV series?

I completed Twin Peaks
*achievement unlocked*

re: rhythm games, rez was mentioned a few times.
re: chess, in their pursuit of winning, the players reveal the sum of their philosophies on the game, maybe life -- it's totally an expressive act, it's that expression that's compelling about it. same with hot dog eating contests at the top level.

same thing. nothing i do changes the input the tv series gives me. xxp

re: chess, in their pursuit of winning, the players reveal the sum of their philosophies on the game, maybe life -- it's totally an expressive act, it's that expression that's compelling about it. same with hot dog eating contests at the top level.

― Philip Nunez, Wednesday, June 12, 2013 3:08 PM (37 seconds ago) Bookmark

i agree it's an expression of something (most likely skill), but not all expression is art, surely you agree with that! is football art? is sex?

Maybe not the way YOU do it. ;-)

lol

http://www.five.no/sandra/records/images/ArtOfLove.jpg