Video Games Can Never Be Art

[Chyron8472]

Why does interactivity negate something being art, if interactvity is the artists' intent?

I don't understand that.

[GuruGuru214]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

I don't think so. Can you really say something when you are giving authorial control to the viewer? Can you really deliver a meaningful message, without compromising the integrity of your own meaning or player choice? There are a few exceptions of course, especially if you want to convey inevitability, but I can certainly see how all existing video games are not particularly artistic.

That's the thing, though. Inevitability. For the most part, choice is an illusion in video games. Sure, you have the choice of sidequesting or stopping to just screw around, and maybe it's possible or even intended for you to be able to sequence break, but if you ever want to see that game's credits, there are certain things you will do and there's certain scenes that you will see.

Certainly, we all feel like we have control in the games we play, but when you take a step back, we all still manage to have nearly the exact same experience as each other, the experience the designers wanted us to have. Sure, some of us will stumble upon certain things that others didn't, and some of us will have a more difficult time than others, but the core experience remains the same. And yes, some will love it and some will hate it, but that's true of film or literature or any other form of art, and that's just different tastes.

I think that's what bugs me about your argument so much. You seem to be hanging up on the underlying mechanics of video games and using that as your reason that they can't be art, but that's not what this argument should be about at all. What matters is the experience.

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by Chyron8472

Why does interactivity negate something being art, if interactvity is the artists' intent?

I don't understand that.

Because that's not how it works. In games, the art and the game stand on opposite sides of a 100 mile-high wall. Adventures are somewhat better in this regard than other genres, but on the whole video games really seem to be mechanics supported by art assets, not a complete and cohesive art piece.

Originally Posted by GuruGuru214

That's the thing, though. Inevitability. For the most part, choice is an illusion in video games. Sure, you have the choice of sidequesting or stopping to just screw around, and maybe it's possible or even intended for you to be able to sequence break, but if you ever want to see that game's credits, there are certain things you will do and there's certain scenes that you will see.

Certainly, we all feel like we have control in the games we play, but when you take a step back, we all still manage to have nearly the exact same experience as each other, the experience the designers wanted us to have. Sure, some of us will stumble upon certain things that others didn't, and some of us will have a more difficult time than others, but the core experience remains the same. And yes, some will love it and some will hate it, but that's true of film or literature or any other form of art, and that's just different tastes.

I think that's what bugs me about your argument so much. You seem to be hanging up on the underlying mechanics of video games and using that as your reason that they can't be art, but that's not what this argument should be about at all. What matters is the experience.

But that's the thing: If this is the case, then art gains nothing by including games, and games gain nothing by being art. If the interactivity does nothing artistically, then the core intended experience of a game(the gameplay) is not art, and it's just supplemented by story and art elements which are overblown in their importance in comparison to simply making a compelling and fun to play game. If anything, games lose something if they're seen as art pieces.

[SHODANFreeman]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

But that's the thing: If this is the case, then art gains nothing by including games, and games gain nothing by being art. If the interactivity does nothing artistically, then the core intended experience of a game(the gameplay) is not art, and it's just supplemented by story and art elements which are overblown in their importance in comparison to simply making a compelling and fun to play game. If anything, games lose something if they're seen as art pieces.

I've been more thoroughly entertained and moved by most story-driven games than the vast majority of films I've seen.

You can't look at a game as a collection of individual elements, which is pretty much all you've been doing. The elements make up the whole. Just because the act of playing a game isn't art, that doesn't mean the game itself can't be art. Every game that has ever had a storyline more complicated than "aliens are bad, shoot them" was intricately written and designed in order to evoke certain responses from the player. The way you make it sound is like the writers and environment artists and concept artists are all separate entities making their own art, that some non-artist just haphazardly pastes together over Pong. Games are designed as games, not as individual art assets that someone decided to link together via gameplay.

It's literally like saying a painting isn't art, just the globules of paint themselves are art, or an album isn't art, just the songs on it, or a film isn't art, just the scenes in it. It's a nonsensical and completely arbitrary attempt to classify them as non-art.

[GuruGuru214]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

But that's the thing: If this is the case, then art gains nothing by including games, and games gain nothing by being art. If the interactivity does nothing artistically, then the core intended experience of a game(the gameplay) is not art, and it's just supplemented by story and art elements which are overblown in their importance in comparison to simply making a compelling and fun to play game. If anything, games lose something if they're seen as art pieces.

See, this is something else that bothers me about several of the arguments going on here. Art is a word. That's all it is, a word. How does anything gain or lose anything by the act of attaching a word to it? Video games, paintings, sculptures, films, books, all of them are what they are, regardless of what definitions we hang on them. Attaching words to them does nothing to alter their state of being. Of course, this basically renders the outcome of this discussion meaningless, but that's my point. Video games don't gain or lose anything by attaching or not attaching the label "art" to them, so all we're arguing about is whether or not the label applies to them.

[Thriftweed Fancy Pants]

^"...so all we're arguing about is whether or not the label applies to them."

Hence the importance of definition, and the reason why there will never be a single definitive answer to the question, "Are video games art?"

Edit: I would also like to add that I don't agree with Rather Dashing's response to Chyron. I believe his own definition has constructed a wall between games and art, whereas by the definition I wrote earlier, art can be anything that requires skill to do or make. Making or using the mechanics of interactivity require such skill.

[Rather Dashing]

[Avistew]

I don't remember this one. What red dot went with it?

[Secret Fawful]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

That's bullshit. Mona Lisa taken out of the display case is still considered art.

[Rather Dashing]

Originally Posted by avistew

I don't remember this one. What red dot went with it?

1. HOW DID I NOT NOTICE A GIANT RED BUTTON ALL THIS TIME?!
2. It didn't have a red dot.

Originally Posted by Secret Fawful

That's bullshit. Mona Lisa taken out of the display case is still considered art.

Haha. You missed the joke. Look up "Fountain" and "Readymades".

[Avistew]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

1. HOW DID I NOT NOTICE A GIANT RED BUTTON ALL THIS TIME?!
2. It didn't have a red dot.

I sense someone going back to check the second punchline of many strips
Say, did you also never notice XKCD had alt-text?

[Secret Fawful]

Originally Posted by Rather Dashing

Haha. You missed the joke. Look up "Fountain" and "Readymades".

Damn. For being a traditional artist I know too little about traditional art.

[JohanShogun]

Discussions about what art is and what art is not are always rather pointless. When it all boils down to it we cannot judge what art is or is not. If the creator says that his work is art, then it is art. If other people find something to be art then it's also art. There is no objective definition of art and trying to create one is silly.

One of the good examples of this is andy warhols art, nowadays I doubt there are many who would argue that he was infact an artist and did art. Enjoy the first six minutes of the movie "Empire State Building":
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7idi_5IaMrk it conintues for an other 8 or was it 11 hours with the most exciting thing being a bird.

[Irishmile]

Originally Posted by Secret Fawful

That's bullshit. Mona Lisa taken out of the display case is still considered art.

that kind of art is called "found art" using things not normally considered art in art.... the Mona Lisa is a portrait... and is different.

[Strong Max]

I tend to disagree, but I can understand where he comes from. Whatever art is defined as is subject to the eye of the beholder. I think that an art is something that can be created, but not mastered. Admired, but never fully understood except by the creator, and not even then sometimes. Has a game with a truley great storyline come along? No. The industry is currently under a stronger pressure than that of other artforms: industry and monopoly. Once we can get over the coporate needs of gaming and the and the complete desire to appeal to the majority. Art can't be defined as certain sections of media and not others, it depends greatly on example. Some games I know of are completly deserving of the title of "Art," while others are not.

By the way, since when does art need a story? Paintings, pieces of music, and foods never have stories and are still consittered art. Film isn't an art, it is the combination of the arts of storytelling, visuals, communication, rhetoric, and music to name a few. If films meets the qualifications for being an art, then gaming certainly does as well.

If gaming trully isn't an art, then film isn't, and neither is the theater. Combining arts to make a truley magnificent product has been considered arts for a long time.

The only difference gaming makes that may break he pattern is the introduction of the art of immersion, but isn't that what all other art continually tries to acomplish anyway? To see another's point of veiw is the act that directers and authors have been tring to make people do for years, now that it is done so simply, it creates the illusion that the art of immersion no longer matters. This is what people are picking up on from traditionalists who do not fully appreciate what gaming has done for the artisan community.

[Astro Gnocci]

Originally Posted by Strong Max

By the way, since when does art need a story? Paintings, pieces of music, and foods never have stories and are still consittered art. Film isn't an art, it is the combination of the arts of storytelling, visuals, communication, rhetoric, and music to name a few. If films meets the qualifications for being an art, then gaming certainly does as well.

If gaming trully isn't an art, then film isn't, and neither is the theater. Combining arts to make a truley magnificent product has been considered arts for a long time.

I've tried a few times to make that very point and failed miserably at expressing it in a slightly coherent way.
So thank you for bringin it up