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

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.

& i think the idea that the poker player is an artist or is engaged in a creative/artistic act is just ridiculous, sorry

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.

― i didn't even give much of a fuck that you were mod (forksclovetofu), Friday, June 14, 2013 11:46 AM (25 seconds ago) Bookmark

comics still work as every art form does, with a passive audience reading/watching/etc and digesting it as such

they're only similar in that people have argued about them being art or not, which doesnt prove anything

so it's not art if it requires active participation from the viewer, is that your argument?
am i gonna have to reference scott mccloud's "gutter" argument here?

xp i don't get why you're so hung up on these fixed roles for audience and creator, like art only works if the Artist hands down his works from the mountaintop

no, that's not my argument—i think games require a DIFFERENT kind of participation from the viewer, and that kind of participation for the most part has nothing to do with the way we experience art

The distinction is very much made in games when people talk about game creators as the artist which causes the confusion because they are no more an artist than the guy who makes the canvases for a painter.

wow, don't agree with that statement at all

so your argument is that video games are art, but the players are the artists, and not the creators?

sorry but this is such a tortured way of trying to shove video games into the category of art, it's really not convincing

In saying video games aren't (if they are actually games) art because they are media.

movies can have hundreds of ppl working on them. we don't limit the 'artist' category to just the director (unless you're still a particularly hardcore auteurist theorist in 2013). once we've allowed bodies of work to have multiple 'artists' working on them from different angles, why not include the audience participant as well?

This whole idea of 'In Your Face' theatre really affected them. The conceptualization, the whole abstraction, the obtuseness of this production to me was what was interesting. I wanted the audience to feel the heat from the fire—the fear—because people don't like fire, poked, poked in their noses. You know, when you get a cinder from a barbeque right on the end of your nose, and you kind of make that face, you know?

i think i see the our main difference here - i don't see the definition of art as something that has to be experienced a certain way, but more important is the intentions of the creator and what they are creating

we tend to blame singular people for the vision expressed by a movie even though an actor and a team of writers and artisans were responsible for jar jar

well if someone wants to make the argument that the player is an artist and that each play-through of a video game or poker is a unique work of art, i'd like to hear it, but i'm dubious! it seems like you're just looking for a way to define video games as art because you want them to be (as forks has kind of admitted to doing)

in this reader's opinion, it's more that the arguments against are not convincing so games might as well be art whether or not anyone can pinpoint why

xp lucas signed the checks!

s1ocki i think you may be leading a little bit here. video games are products created by individuals or team of artists, often self-described as artistic works with artistic intentions. isn't that enough to go on without the accusations?

i think games deserve to be "taken seriously," and written about well. i wonder if the wish to call them art doesn't consist of basically just that.

I'm really more descriptive rather than prescriptive, but my preference would be for video games to be exempt from art altogether so that we can get more video game equivalents of the shaggs not being compelled to do 4/4 time because of these art expectations that are thrust upon them.

so your argument is that video games are art, but the players are the artists, and not the creators?

Achievement Unlocked: Cried in Front of Marina Abramovic

it seems like you're just looking for a way to define video games as art because you want them to be (as forks has kind of admitted to doing)

i think games deserve to be "taken seriously," and written about well. i wonder if the wish to call them art doesn't consist of basically just that.

― goole, Friday, June 14, 2013 12:04 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i totally agree with this!

i think that there are more interesting ways to write/think about games than slotting them into the art category, and that trying to wrestle them into the art cage limits the way we think about them

But re: players as artists -- you express something through play and players at the top level are expressing more than simple button presses

s10cks, you're kinda lumping all and any arguments here into a target for your larger point which seems to be games aren't art because... because why now?

that's what i've spent this entire thread trying to unpack d00d :)

xp to philip: i don't feel video games are being forced by expectations to conform as a medium. for AAA million dollar projects, yes, but that's no different from the film industry because of the money involved. if anything, the tools to make games are more accessible and easier to use than they've ever been, which lets more people make anything they want in flash, unity, whatever

btw forks completely otm here, thanks for expressing these things coherently

i'm not gonna cosign with "gamers as artists"... maybe closer to athletes i guess? there are exceptions, games that allow the gamer to create from within and some of those games are interesting and allow for artistic achievement (say, sound shapes for instance) but that's mostly art at the lego level: potentially interesting but as a rule more about playing within a set of parameters

let's just keep the commercial aspect out of this, i think it's well-established that commercial concerns have nothing to do with whether something is art or not

sorry i meant "athletes"

hand/eye coordinathletics

that's mostly art at the lego level: potentially interesting but as a rule more about playing within a set of parameters

Does anyone else think this is a meaningless statement? AFAIC, all art is about playing within a set of parameters.

I think critical expectations can be just as damaging and constraining as commercial ones. In clowes manifesto he cites comic debasement as a strength in that respect

again i need to emphasize that my conviction that games are not art has nothing to do with how "low" or "gutter" the medium is, it's based on my experience with video games as being categorically different from the way i experience literally any kind of art—i think there is something going on in games, something very interesting, that is distinct, that very likely uses a different part of your brain

and for the millionth time, there's of course gonna be overlap, there's gonna be games that are art-like and art that is game-like, but i don't think that proves anything either way

idk why but this thread put me in mind of this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedge_maze

AFAIC, all art is about playing within a set of parameters.

I think this thing that goes on in your brain when playing games will map quite readily to that thing painters or writers experience in the midst of their creative fevers

ie something made to have a pleasurable experience purely of geometric space. sure there's a "narrative" in the sense of "i went in, i turned this way, i turned the other way, i got lost, i turned around" -- but idk if events merely taking place in time rly qualifies as narrative fwiw -- but story is not the point, experience in itself is

maybe, this, too?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandala

but i'm out of my element there

http://i.imgur.com/xQnJTqe.gif