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

This thread is a continuation of sorts of Ebert Video Game Commentary Hullabaloo

and references a couple of things brought up towards the end of RPGs are better in 2D. Discuss!

here's an article about a discussion that MoMA did have about 4 years ago.

From his statement:

While my body, mind, and self-perception changed since my first affair with Adventure!, its code laid dormant, neither growing or changing, so that when I returned to the game after a decade’s absence I encountered a shell of my past identity. I remembered how my body used to fit it: I was a homunculus inside the mind of a tiny rectangle, exploring the vast mazes of a 4kb Atari cartridge.

Adventure! is the first video game I remember playing, and is the first time I experienced and became aware of the multiplicity of identity. I was to become that little square and my disordered, confusing body was displaced as I grabbed the controls and became a tiny, perfect rectangle. The form I took was entirely abstract. I made it a humanoid; I made it sympathetic. By playing it, I authored it.

Screencaps, clips, and artist's statement are here:

http://www.r-p-l.org/TEAMS/DUST_BUNNIES/PROJECTS/persistent_clips_main.html

He's a cool kid, check that shit out.

I can't help but think more of sports than literature or graphic art, at least regarding the role of videogames. Is chess art? Is football art? Sure, in their own ways.

http://www.neatorama.com/2006/09/05/jason-huangs-lovepixel/

has anyone else been keeping an eye on the upcoming jeff minter game, space giraffe for the xbox360?

new screenshots up on yakyak

http://www.yakyak.org/viewtopic.php?t=65244

(warning, large images)

see also, his visualiser that is bundled with all xbox360s.

he's been writing about it in an edge column for a few months now. I am pretty excited by it.

holy shit, new yak game? amazing!

Also, where the hell is SPORE already?

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1082/708958045_8981045405.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1166/709080033_60a8345bf8.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1203/708734823_54d6c8324e.jpg

what is this

GTA:LCS I believe. I like them Ste, I like the last one most of all.

Yes it's me going crazy with a camera on GTA messing around with shutter speeds and the photoshop perspective tool With all this rain at the moment I can't take pictures of anything else!

Yeah I blurred the cranes and bridge in that last one, which I think works to some rainy effect level.

one more

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1347/708875089_5012a91efc.jpg

I like the effect but I think that if you're softening the rider you need to soften all the sharp edges especially on the wheels. Does that makes sense?

i would be really happy if you could do this for Ico

do you mean the riders head? it was accidentally softened because of where the blur mask was set down the screen, i guess i should have art-history'd his head back in focus.

I meant his knees as well, the wheels aren't as rounded...

yeah i don't know what happened at the knees, i think the contrast between the white bike and the black outfit blew out when I curved it to death.

I... don't know what that means...

its a tool in photoshop, the curve tool. i use it to enhance contrast and colour. which i used to the max on this one.

Ah. Cheers. More plz.

I like the last one best, it looks like those faux-model train miniatures shots that were all the rage on ILE for a few days way back when

Oh the larks as people tried to recreate them. Good attempts though and definitely one or two successes! Can't find thread though, sorry. Had something to do with model railways in the title.

It looks like a miniature trainset but really, oh that one really is: Olivo Barbieri and fake tilt-shifting photos

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1158/672349917_cd085ef7f1_b.jpg

Tracer, a star is you.

Ste, loving those! May we use them as wallpaper?

yeah course, do what you want with them.

and thanks

loving the graphics on this up and coming release

http://www.machinarium.com/

that's just concept art, right?

No, it's a 2D adventure game, that is the actual art. I remember the flash games that guy made, pretty cool looking stuff.

looks and sounds good! very lucasartsy.

i just checked out the flash game, very nice indeed

http://amanita-design.net/samorost-2/

some interesting picks.
http://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/archive/2012/games/winninggames.pdf

hmm... "interesting" indeed

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.

Rumsfeld as architect of war

lol i don't think slocki is flailing nor is he being disingenuous

the fact that in a sport any action taken on the field is always and primarily for the purposes of winning and not aesthetics seems insurmountable to me

yeah I don't think that's a particularly controversial position either

i think that distinction is enough to render games different from art (if not "not art", idk?)

but again "pure" games are on a different plane from the competitive games of sports, going back to my crap up there about mazes and experience. or thinking about non-video games like, idk, those annoying old-timey catch-the-ball-on-a-string-in-the-cup. meaningless time wasting, a challenge w/o purpose, meant just to be fun to keep your hands and eyes occupied

any action taken on the field is always and primarily for the purposes of winning and not aesthetics seems insurmountable to me

well yes, everyone knows that Tebow is art

I mean:

http://www.imagecpr.com/imagecpr.com%20uploads/2012/09/TEBOW-HELMET.gif

was just trying to find that gif!

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Z326cvKjdUA/T6MKSgOiadI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/-4F1DR8j3yY/s1600/brushing+the+dirt.jpg

let's set aside what you think i meant by "on the field"

but really, don't, because, do you think tebow is praying because it looks good? or is he praying to win.

well strictly speaking he is giving thanks to his Lord and Savior for making a spectacular garbage play successful

Does Jordan sticking his tongue out provide extra lift for his layup and dunks?

I think winning as a motivator is much less of a barrier than money as a motivator in terms of negating aesthetic agency.

Like in that time punch art piece, if that artist was actually working a job where he was paid to punch a clock, that would have destroyed the thing. He'd just be working a job at that point.

http://thecitizenkaneofvideogames.tumblr.com/

hahaha

http://images.crispygamer.com/public/column-2288/kanethegame.jpg

http://bubsy3d.com/

flippin over how great this is

Yeah this is pretty wonderful. On a side note, isn't the 3D Bubsy supposed to be one of the worst games of all time?

that was awesome

http://0.media.dorkly.cvcdn.com/81/77/43361f45c29abdf0a2e713872c3237ec-creative-xbox-live-private-messages.jpg

probably a better place to put that than here but eh

I don't believe that's a real XBL message, since it doesn't contain racial slurs or homophobic insults.

Zone Recreation

http://hyperallergic.com/195863/a-video-game-lets-you-navigate-giorgio-de-chiricos-surreal-cityscapes/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xHqjSterB4

https://www.behance.net/gallery/63535513/300-Super-Nintendo-Logos-Fully-Remastered

holy cow woulda look at that

Making vector replicas of display type used to be my crack. I developed an entire typeface based on the Tron logo back in the day.

that's awesome

(Should mention I created the Tron font exclusively for use on a flyer for a college radio show that like four people listened to. It was a good use of my time.)

I'm preordering this thing: https://www.amazon.com/Game-Console-History-Photographs/dp/1593277431

Also highly recommend the Art of Atari book that came out a year or so ago.

oh hey another design student figured out the Adobe Illustrator Trace function

Now, now. Perhaps it's come a long way in recent versions but my recollection is that 'trace' isn't really all that. It involves some work to overcome Adobe's apparent insistence that a copy of a straight line should have 52 anchor points.

yeah its a little more complicated than that. im just being snarky (the Batman Return one in partic looks like he just hit trace and export). still, foregoing all that you could turn on the pen tool and trace one of these logos by hand in like 5 mins.

i like this

https://en.softonic.com/articles/gta-5-gun-violence-in-america

recent V&A videogames exhibition:

https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/videogames

specifically this magritte:

https://vanda-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/2018/04/06/08/26/58/28b0a0aa-5329-4a00-8e26-c12d6ddaef5f/960.jpg

vs this (kentucky route zero)

https://static.standard.co.uk/s3fs-public/thumbnails/image/2018/04/06/09/va-videogames-kentucky-route-z-0.jpg?width=1368&height=912&fit=bounds&format=pjpg&auto=webp&quality=70