salon.com — Developers are pushing the limits of storytelling, interactivity and design in games. Over the past three decades, they've gone from a geeky and often-ridiculed, kid-centric pastime to a cultural juggernaut with a massive adult consumer base. Is it time to consider video games to be forms of art?
Jun 20, 2010 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountJun 21, 2010
I think it's a poor question, though one that pleases critics to debate.Music is an art & one many create, participate in (e.g. dance) and analyse. While Ballet or Modern Dance are also considered art-forms they typically rely on music but only a few create it, fewer again participate in it but many still analyse. It's considered a higher Art than most because of its exacting nature & rarefied aesthetics. Video-games are a multi-part art-form that many create, many participate in & many analyse.It's because there are many people involved that makes critics pause over its artistic merits. If less people played & less people created it - it would have museums in every city already. Or in short, Andy Warhol beat all the critics to it and he'd be a gamer / game-designer by now & he's still a little hated for letting the cat out of the bag.p.s. Can't digg the article because of the 'Dead Space is like Aliens but in space' bit.
keillrandorJun 22, 2010
No - because the word art is NOT used in such a manner - if it WAS, then we wouldn't need words such as game, puzzle, competition etc. - they'd be USED and DEFINED within the language itself as different forms of art - which they are NOT.Games can exist INDEPENDENTLY of ART, which is why they CANNOT be DEFINED BY IT! (And video/computer games are labelled and defined as a type of GAME not ART!)<a class="user" href="http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenTomlyn/20100531/5278/Competition_Competitons_and_Games.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/DarrenTomlyn/201005 ...</a>
valynJun 22, 2010
YES transformers is art. It may be considered s**tty art by most people. Just because it sucks does not all of a sudden make it 'not art' any more. Same for video games.
aunttalithaJun 22, 2010
So those who perform music aren't performing art but those who watch it are experiencing art... Just like games the creators are the artists and the player participates like an audience member at a play or music performance (the audience members DO participate at any live event, performances are very much influenced by the people watching/listening).
aunttalithaJun 22, 2010
so we don't need words like photography, painting, sculpture, writing if they are art? so since we have those words they are not art?. If games can be its own form of art then how do they exist independently of art any more or less than film, drama, novels, paintings, sculpture, etc.? You say interactivity is somehow different than other forms of art which lets you say it exists independently which makes it not art. You are using circular reasoning.
exeprimeJun 22, 2010
Oh c'mon. Alice wasn't by any means revolutionary, it just sported an artsy-ish visual style and that's about it. Games such as Anachronox or Beyond Good and Evil are much more worth mentioning. But truth is, as amazing as those games were "back in the day", for the most part today's games are even better at creating atmosphere. Better visuals, more experienced developers, more money going into every aspect of the game from level design to voice acting... etc. I think that as an "old" gamer (ZX Spectrum debut for me, represent yo), it's really easy to misjudge many older games, nostalgia makes objective comparisons hard to make...