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

okay so it's the expendables of the vita

There were plenty of art games and an audience for them before. I think there are less now because this sort of videogames as art discourse is gaining currency, and the kind of art games made now are of a narrow, academicky sort of genre that caters to that discussion, so to me it's had a chilling effect.

cool post DJP

That's what I'm talking about when I talk about "games as art", not games that try to be as much like movies as possible.

i kinda find it interesting that there are two directions the 'games-as-art' legitimization is going. stuff like the moma exhibition have prized non-narrative, mechanically inventive and often aesthetically pure games like tetris or cananbalt over other games. but in more middlebrow and populist spaces the argument for games artistry is often advanced by elaborate, deep-world games with narratives like bioshock or gta. i think the latter argument is the more pernicious because it emphasizes aspects of games that arent the best part of gaming but also because its the more beneficial to game developers. like its all well and good for some nerd to build an empire in dwarf fortress for the venice biennale but game devs/players wanna be taken seriously as like movies

canabalt has a weird narrative but I never got past whatever level it was to figure out what those robots in the back were doing

killing

destroying

charring

eviscerating with extreme prejudice

living their lives

speaking of which, it'd be pretty interesting, by which i mean horrifying, if 95% of all gallery exhibitions were wall-to-wall representations of brutal murders

games need to be taken seriously as books

in what way?

some of the "art" that i appreciate is "art within" a certain narrow frame of what games are or have been recently. idk if this makes them closer to a craft, as a definition. as in, something like furniture design or something. people have already made this point.

ie the choices that are made that make this marquee-title shooter or open-world quester distinct from others in their genre, how much wit and intelligence has been applied to what have become pretty narrow requirements to be that thing. how well is it doing at being what it is, kind of a thing

just playing the non-sequitur card

is it worth thinking of video games as something like pornography?

no matter how much you dress up porn or try and make it smart, it seems like people just want to elbow past it and get to the "good stuff"

DJP

the rhythm/trance aspect to non-narrative games is interesting, i def had that happen with dr. mario

is it worth thinking of video games as something like pornography?

mod communities would certainly be on board for this ;)

getting in the zone is more a property of game than art

tell that to a dancer

everything is art, fascist!

tell that to a dancer

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Thursday, June 13, 2013 12:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

thanks, i will!!

the dancing/sports connection has already been exhausted by that movie where that hockey player is redeemed by ballet

I wonder if there is an (unintentional? subconscious?) tendency to view art as the end result of an intentional expression of a specific craft, oftentimes without specific purpose, that puts the activity of videogaming outside of some people's parameters of what defines art.

Like for example, Shawn White stringing together a series of dazzling tricks in a snowboarding competition is in service of scoring enough points to win, whereas a dancer is performing dazzling choreography in service of expressing the choreography, making the former "not art" and the latter "art".

Or say, putting a refrigerator in a kitchen is a utilitarian design parameter but deciding to make that refrigerator a glass-doored pantry-style series of shelves over in the corner is an artistic decision.

So, following on from that mindset, the entire enterprise of videogames becomes abstracted from art because the process is too convoluted and (compared to other things that might be considered "art") too new for the average person experiencing them to identify the craft behind its making, plus the driving force behind the creation of the modern game privileges making money over expressing a mechanic? Kind of making up shit here obv.

Performing snowboarding/skateboarding tricks is definitely art but inventing the snowboard and skateboard and chess isn't art.

I mean you could make it art but often at the cost of making a good game. Basically media are poor media in which to express yourself.

So, following on from that mindset, the entire enterprise of videogames becomes abstracted from art because the process is too convoluted and (compared to other things that might be considered "art") too new for the average person experiencing them to identify the craft behind its making, plus the driving force behind the creation of the modern game privileges making money over expressing a mechanic? Kind of making up shit here obv.

― they are either militarists (ugh) or kangaroos (?) (DJP), Thursday, June 13, 2013 1:44 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno, could say the same thing about transformers movies

You could. In fact, you could say that about the modern blockbuster in general.

Basically I think what I'm asking-but-not-asking here is "Are all films/movies considered 'art' and, if not, why can't some videogames be considered 'art'?"

Yeah i was gonna bring up that video games are primarily commerce driven but if that is a strike against art then just take a look at art history and you'd have to throw out a LOT of important stuff.

That's definitely where the thesis falls over but I also think some of those concerns for the people outside of those immediate areas of expertise that would tempt one down the "not art" path are smoothed over by time.

I'm coming back to the conclusion that something is "art" if society in general looks back at it after X amount of time and decides that it is art.

Basically I think what I'm asking-but-not-asking here is "Are all films/movies considered 'art' and, if not, why can't some videogames be considered 'art'?"

not all but some, the 'art film' is a genre at this point. and videogames can be considered art, no one is disputing this itt (i don't think), they just don't need to be considered as such

if you mean videogames that are really games, then I don't agree that they could function well as art, but very few videogames are games

We're all on the same page here
Some folks look at the highest moments of computational bliss and say "this is art"
Other folks think the world is full of insecure nerds who need their hobby legitimized
Everyone likes Tetris
Stevie D likes Earthbound

H4A that mechanics vs. rules response was very cool and I learned a new word (ludeme)

you can get an NEA grant for a game, case closed

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/13/arts/video-games/pixels-floating-on-the-art-worlds-margins.html

but this is totally convincing me you guys may be right if the "games as art" help support these kinda dumbass arguments: http://www.edge-online.com/features/junk-food-for-thought-why-microsofts-dew-and-doritos-deal-is-an-insult-to-our-industry/

DeeJayDragon says:
01:41pm June 14 2013
You only bring this up now, but these promotions have been happening for years. World of Warcraft, Modern Warfare and Halo to name a few off the top of my head. If you were really so concerned about it, and not just getting a cheap shot in at Microsoft, you would've mentioned this a long time ago.

i thought of a really good point to bring up in this thread last night as i fell asleep but i cant fucking remember what it was :(

i think it went vaguely like this:

when i'm playing poker, everything about the game as i experience—my competitive spirit, the way i interact with the other players, the way i analyze the game and make choices—is so distant from any way i experience any of the "7 arts" that i have to conclude that "playing poker" is CATEGORICALLY different from experiencing art.

what it's not that different from, is "playing super mario" or "playing settlers of catan" or "playing drop7." therefore, game-playing is, to me, in a completely different column than art.

i'm not denying any overlap—i absolutely think you can have aesthetic and emotional experiences playing games. but i also think you can have aesthetic experiences riding a train, or feeding the ducks, or eating a big mac, but i wouldn't put those activities in the realm of "art" either.

and YES, i do think you CAN call anything art, but i think that's an evasion when it comes to this question. you can say anything is a game too. that doesn't help us understand these things any better.

we've done this before of course
http://www.ninthart.com/

to me there's absolutely debate about whether comics are art or not

they're not

just kidding, of course they are.

i don't think that debate is material at all to this discussion because it all hinges on the "debasedness" of comics which i think, at least on ILX, is a thoroughly discredited criteria for whether something is art or not (or whether it is good art or not)

Dan clowes had a semi satirical booklet arguing why comics is the ideal medium for a singular artist who wants total visual control, and is especially sneering to newer media where this control is ceded to the audience.

when you play poker you are not the audience, you are the artist so of course your experience is different.

like... novels?

when you play poker you are not the audience, you are the artist so of course your experience is different.

― Philip Nunez, Friday, June 14, 2013 11:44 AM (14 seconds ago) Bookmark

i don't think this distinction exists in games.

the question of whether or not vidya games are art is VERY similar to the question of comics being a separate "new" art: both are amalgams of different established arts (design, drawing, architecture, music, etc) and the question was always if they should be judged within their peers as a unique art form or held up against ART... the old "is any comic as good as moby dick" fallacy argument. Which is another reason to consider games as their own art form: you get comparative criticism that's rigorous but not out of place in its assessments.