Are games art ?

hooradiation

Grumpypants wrote: »

what if the first one was a back drop for a play?

Then it's a backdrop.
The play would be the primary focus of the audiences attention in that case, i should hope.

Jazzy

is this film art?


technically yes, but **** that - its a load of crap.
it just depends on how you use the term. when I talk about 'art' Im generally talking about something in a positive light. heck theres even a phrase - "a work of art" which is used to describe something as beautiful or brilliant, from a goal scored in a football match to someones verbal ability to express a point. If you talk about games being art, talk about the ones that actually are. Bioshock, Doom, Starcraft, Deus Ex, Half Life 2 and Super Metroid are ones that spring to mind for me. each one of those games has an element of brilliance about it which defines it as art (in the way I would speak about art). Halo, Gears of War, Call of Duty are just good games, much like The Book of Eli is just a good film... I wouldnt classify any of them as art as the way I view art is in how something excells, not how something is playable or watchable.
there is no way I would classify Plumbers Dont Wear Ties as art much in the same way I wouldnt classify Little Man in this category. They are simply things that exist, if an individual chooses to classify them as art then go right ahead, as what is art if its not personal?

Aldebaran

hooradiation wrote: »

Then it's a backdrop.
The play would be the primary focus of the audiences attention in that case, i should hope.

The backdrop and staging are as much a part of the play as anything else though.

richymcdermott

why i made this thread cause i read these from developers themselves

http://www.qj.net/ps3/news/fredrik-malmberg-games-are-art.html


http://www.qj.net/ps3/news/far-cry-2-dev-unimpressed-with-la-noire.html


http://www.destructoid.com/david-jaffe-criticizes-media-praise-for-art-games-196368.phtml


like i said above i don't believe games are art but one day they will be ,games ,like Braid, Sotc ,Ico Fahrenheit, heavy rain and recently la noire are all stepping stones on the possible future of it will happen.
Of course im wrong cause art is in the eye of the beholder and what makes art, ART * is it emotion

Why music is art cause it makes you feel rather joy , sadness it makes you feel. I get the same feeling when i write music or playing on my guitar.
same feeling i have towards movies like black swan for an example it overwhelms me with emotion.

i dont get that from games , maybe some of ye do when a character dies i have no emotion for a character cause ya dont feel the emotion in the persons death or anger or happiness.

the closest i felt sympathy for was the horse in shadow of the colossus , for a split second i felt an emotion thats a stepping stone on the posibility

thats what i think on the subject , there is no right answer just an interesting question left to be answered

Retr0gamer

You're probably just not playing the right games then if you want emotion. Sure there's cheap deaths to try an illicit emotion from the player that are really forced but but there's some that really do it well. As for the horse dying in SotC, that wasn't in there to feel sadness but to show how selfish the main character was and make the player feel alone and equally selfish. If you want to class art as something that can make the player feel overwhleming emotion then there's plenty of games out there that do that just don't expect them to be in the mainstream.

I guess what some people are arguing id that the core of the game can't be classified as art. However for art you have to take the piece as a whole. A painting isn't just what's depicted on the canvas. A sculpture is not just a piece of rock that has been well modelled. The mona lisa is more than a simple portrait. A film is more than the images that have been filmed. In the same way a game in not defined just because of the underlying core gameplay. It's a combination of everything including the story, writing, visuals, audio. It all has to be taken into account and looked upon as a whole.

You can't take say a play and not call it art my looking at it's individual pieces. It's not art becuase the script is simply writing on a piece of paper, the backdrops are just painted walls and the actors are simply saying their lines.

An unmade bed isn't just an unmade bed when presented as art.

You can't just say a game isn't art because it has the core mechanics of a game. You have to take into account the whole production.

Grumpypants

hooradiation wrote: »

Then it's a backdrop.
The play would be the primary focus of the audiences attention in that case, i should hope.

So its art until someone stands in front of it.

richymcdermott

Retr0gamer wrote: »

You're probably just not playing the right games then if you want emotion. Sure there's cheap deaths to try an illicit emotion from the player that are really forced but but there's some that really do it well. As for the horse dying in SotC, that wasn't in there to feel sadness but to show how selfish the main character was and make the player feel alone and equally selfish. If you want to class art as something that can make the player feel overwhleming emotion then there's plenty of games out there that do that just don't expect them to be in the mainstream.

I guess what some people are arguing id that the core of the game can't be classified as art. However for art you have to take the piece as a whole. A painting isn't just what's depicted on the canvas. A sculpture is not just a piece of rock that has been well modelled. The mona lisa is more than a simple portrait. A film is more than the images that have been filmed. In the same way a game in not defined just because of the underlying core gameplay. It's a combination of everything including the story, writing, visuals, audio. It all has to be taken into account and looked upon as a whole.

You can't take say a play and not call it art my looking at it's individual pieces. It's not art becuase the script is simply writing on a piece of paper, the backdrops are just painted walls and the actors are simply saying their lines.

An unmade bed isn't just an unmade bed when presented as art.

You can't just say a game isn't art because it has the core mechanics of a game. You have to take into account the whole production.

i do not take away one mans mind and idea to make a game meaningful , i do take into account of its story, art music emotion , i have played many games the more different than others so cant pass judgement on right games i have or not played , as i said some people may feel from a game others wont , i fall into the other category im not criticizing nor am i saying games will never become art im saying it will happen but not now.

sarumite

hooradiation wrote: »

Then it's a backdrop.
The play would be the primary focus of the audiences attention in that case, i should hope.

So its art, unless I take that piece of art and make it a backdrop in which case it is no longer art? Say I take a backdrop from a game, print it and put it in a frame and hang it from my wall, is it still a backdrop?

Retr0gamer

richymcdermott wrote: »

i do not take away one mans mind and idea to make a game meaningful , i do take into account of its story, art music emotion , i have played many games the more different than others so cant pass judgement on right games i have or not played , as i said some people may feel from a game others wont , i fall into the other category im not criticizing nor am i saying games will never become art im saying it will happen but not now.

Well it's more that I think there's very few games that can actually illicit an emotional response and they're not really in the public eye. I'd count SotC as one. Which proves you are emotionally dead inside (joke :P). I can get where you are coming from about not feeling anything in a game that tries to be emotional, I think a lot of games try to force emotion from the player cheaply, such as a cheap characters death like Aeris in FFVII.

richymcdermott

Retr0gamer wrote: »

Well it's more that I think there's very few games that can actually illicit an emotional response and they're not really in the public eye. I'd count SotC as one. Which proves you are emotionally dead inside (joke :P). I can get where you are coming from about not feeling anything in a game that tries to be emotional, I think a lot of games try to force emotion from the player cheaply, such as a cheap characters death like Aeris in FFVII.

your man at 1:40 mins describes it best


in the end its in the eyes of the beholder what is art or not

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rNeuuUx-SQ

Randomer.

Are games art? Is there art in games?

Imo there could not be games without art. Does music cease to be artistic once its used in a video game?

Imo art can be found everywhere in games. Whether the game itself is art? Depends on the game I guess.

dunworth1

Art can and is everything it is how you view the object it what defines it as art.

games are art
sport is an art

hey even picking your nose and flicking it is an art.

art cannot be defined to one particular form or another for that very reason it is art.

art is made with the intention of stimulating thoughts and emotions so anything that makes you think and feel is art.