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

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

A+ gif, would watch again

portrait of the artist as a young snake

oh my god

that gif was literally the most thrilling thing i've seen all year

could feel my blood pressure going up tbh

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

― Philip Nunez, Friday, June 14, 2013 12:19 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

i don't think the way i, as a gamer, make decisions in the middle of a game of poker or mario or whatever, has anything to do with the way i make decisions when working on a creative project. at all. there is nothing aesthetic at all about a decision i make to fold or raise. sorry but i dont buy this.

I guess... Get better at poker?

yeah i'm skeptical of that too but idk anything about the brain so who knows

what i've read about the 'flow' state of the brain while people are at work doesn't really line up with playing a game to me

xp lol zing damn

getting deathdroney up in here

comparison of games to art is one thing, but what about the comparison of games to work?

do you games-are-arters think that sports are an art form as well? is football art?

if not, i'd like to know why.

when you practice any activity a lot it becomes internalized and much of it becomes automatic so it's at that level that expression is really visible.
but even as a beginner some expression leaks through but mostly it's frustration

if i want to express myself through creating a video game, i can. i can make a video game about another world or about school shootings or about geometry or about football. if i want to express myself through football...

what if the creator of football wanted to express something about human dynamics or war or something?

in your first case, you're a creator, in the second you're a player, so i don't think that works

because one gives you the opportunity to create and one doesn't!

is football art?

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Friday, June 14, 2013 10:35 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

if not, i'd like to know why.

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Friday, June 14, 2013 10:35 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

now u know dog

is horseshoe throwing art?

i guess we're at the that point in the thread now, huh

because one gives you the opportunity to create and one doesn't!

― sleepingbag, Friday, June 14, 2013 12:42 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

what? i don't get your point here at all. you're using two totally different set of criteria for each.

well is it? is horseshoe throwing art? if not, what makes it different than pong?

comparison of games to art is one thing, but what about the comparison of games to work?
― goole, Friday, June 14, 2013

what? i don't get your point here at all. you're using two totally different set of criteria for each.

― we're up all night to get (s1ocki), Friday, June 14, 2013 10:44 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because they're two categorically different things, qed

xp tbf that was before BIOSHOCK INFANTTIT

because they're two categorically different things, qed

― sleepingbag, Friday, June 14, 2013 12:47 PM (33 seconds ago) Bookmark

you're saying video games are art, because you can express something by CREATING a video game
but that football isn't, because you can't express something by PLAYING football

An interesting analogue is operating systems where creators certainly express a certain philosophy about how to do things, but like games (and you can think of operating systems as a kind of game), the constraints of what make for a good os will forever blunt your expressive capacity.
For example I'm pretty sure everyone would be happier if ios7 were approached by apple as a craft rather than an art.

xp you can create another football with different aesthetics i guess if you want, and maybe if others join in you can start a burgeoning artform that way, but the way they exist now means you can create a video game to express something particular where you can't really do anything analogous in the realm of sports far as i can tell

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/55/Baseketball.jpg/220px-Baseketball.jpg

ur flailing a bit s1ocks

i think of athletes as artists to the extent that athletics when done well are creative motion and displays of improvisational and choreographed movement at peak efficiency and grace, so sorta related to dance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__SoKrmlHn4

Vince McMahon expressed something in particular in forming xfl

i wouldn't argue Pong is art. but are you seriously comparing horseshoes to Parappa the Rapper, Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus, the entire canon of all videogames created in the last 30 years, etc. etc.?

is horseshoe throwing art?

let's ask her

Pong can be art!
http://www.citypaper.net/cover_story/King_of_Pong.html

i wouldn't argue Pong is art. but are you seriously comparing horseshoes to Parappa the Rapper, Final Fantasy, Shadow of the Colossus, the entire canon of all videogames created in the last 30 years, etc. etc.?

― Nhex, Friday, June 14, 2013 12:54 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

um... yes?

in the same way that i could compare a mondrian painting to a jerry bruckheimer movie—one is way bigger and more detailed but they're both recognizably "art"

xp whoa

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=eFh8aI9TbQw

like i said above, more than once, i do agree that you can call basically ANYTHING "art"

so yes, you can say that pong on a skyscraper is art, especially for someone just watching it

but that doesn't get us closer to the real question, which is "is playing pong an artistic experience?" nothing in this thread has convinced me of this

i think of athletes as artists to the extent that athletics when done well are creative motion and displays of improvisational and choreographed movement at peak efficiency and grace, so sorta related to dance.

are soldiers in combat artists?

the motivation for any given action in sports or in games derives from non-aesthetic considerations. this is a huge & fundamental difference

commercial considerations really ought to be let into play then if that's the route.

describing it as art might be a neat or illuminating (or metaphorical) way to "think about it," sure, but it seems like you're missing the bigger picture there

and i think a lot of that comes from a sense that video games will only be recognized as "worthy" in some way if we can convince everyone they're works of art. why not exalt them as ludic masterpieces? as their own and awesome category of Things Humans Do?

A really great game to me would be exalted more like a really great pencil or brush is exalted and there isn't a center for critical writing utensil studies necessary

xp s1ocki i think the answer to that is because they are v. obviously artistic to at least some extent, if you want to stop short of calling them art that's fine if you have justifications for it that make sense to you, but clearly games come from creators and allow for expression (from those making them, as well as sometimes from those playing them) of ideas and aesthetics, which to me seem to be commonalities of artforms.

are soldiers in combat artists?

the motivation for any given action in sports or in games derives from non-aesthetic considerations.

Hmmm, I've always thought of the "art" in a game is the game mechanics, what those mechanics are modelling, and what that model says about stuff. Most obviously this is in the sims, where life is described as a series of needs and wants that the player must fulfill, culminating in the luxury of being able to get nicer virtual things. Tetris is about exploring the game mechanic and having fun organising randomness. A great deal of the pleasure in xcom is the way it forces teamwork to overcome incredible odds. I suppose fpss are the least gamey on this scale, cos its always essentially run, shoot some guys, end.

I think craft can become an art when practiced at the highest level, but mechanics to me are the province of craft -- constrained and motivated by environment rather than internal expression.

the one facet of this where i can kind of see s1ocki's point is that i think games can be more than art, which i guess is a way of saying 'different than art', in that games can be sports, games can be trivia, games can be simulations, games can be war (drones/enders game lol) etc... but i don't see anything that categorically excludes games from being art either! i do see something though that excludes sports or war from being art, the absence of creation.