Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Are games art?

Я games art?


  • Total voters
    120

Zed Duke of Banville

Dungeon Master
Patron
Joined
Oct 3, 2015
Messages
11,756
Was Roger Ebert right?
Roger Ebert wrote a favorable review of Cosmology of Kyoto in 1994. :M

RogerEbert said:
The Cosmology of Kyoto CD-ROM comes with a bare minimum of instructions, informing me in a few words how to move within the images. No goal is established and no points are scored; the game never informs me what the object is, although it discreetly tracks the levels of karma and cash I have attained and keeps an inventory of my possessions. The disc comes packaged with a large fold-out map showing the streets and principal buildings of Kyoto - circa 900, when, as Heiankyo, it was the capital of Japan. I begin to wander the streets.

The richness is almost overwhelming; there is the sense that the resources of this game are limitless and that no two players would have the same experience. I have been exploring the ancient city in spare moments for two weeks now, and doubt that I have even begun to scratch the surface. This is the most beguiling computer game I have encountered, a seamless blend of information, adventure, humor, and imagination - the gruesome side-by-side with the divine.

In this medieval Kyoto, people exist alongside ghosts, demons, and goblins. On my travels I have met - and interacted with - a dog eating entrails, long-winded old farts, tradespeople (who offered me medicines, dried fish, cloth, rice cakes, amulets, and a chance to lose money on a cock fight), a monk leading a prayer meeting, kids playing ball in the streets (one is beheaded by a passerby), a friendly guide dog, a maiden with an obscenely phallic tongue, and a gambler who taught me a dice game.

The graphics are hauntingly effective, using a wide-screen landscape format. The individual characters are drawn with vivid facial characteristics, a cross between the cartoons of medieval Japanese art and the exaggerations of modern Japanimation. The speaking voices are filled with personality, often taunting, teasing, or sexy. There is the sense, illusory but seductive, that one could wander this world indefinitely. This is a wonderful game.
It seems that Ebert found the game artistic and, dare I say, immersive. +M

57269-cosmology-of-kyoto-windows-screenshot-first-sight-of-the-city.jpg
57271-cosmology-of-kyoto-windows-screenshot-samurai-fights-demon.jpg

57278-cosmology-of-kyoto-windows-screenshot-who-knew-this-would-come.jpg

57280-cosmology-of-kyoto-windows-screenshot-market-place.jpg
 

DemonKing

Arcane
Joined
Dec 5, 2003
Messages
5,958
I'd say they have the potential to be - mobile games and other shovelware obviously have no pretentions to art and other games are often pushed out the door before they're ready, which can detract from their artistic impact. You would never confuse endless FiFA or Call of Duty games as art - they exist to meet shareholder's needs and nothing more. Sometimes though you can have the happy coincidence of a game that is not only fun to play but has artistic merits of it's own with regards to art, sound, music, story etc.
 

Monk

Arcane
Joined
Feb 8, 2010
Messages
6,810
Location
Wat
If art refers to anything made involving creativity, then they are works of art.
 

Unkillable Cat

LEST WE FORGET
Patron
Joined
May 13, 2009
Messages
27,088
Codex 2014 Make the Codex Great Again! Grab the Codex by the pussy
I'd say they have the potential to be - mobile games and other shovelware obviously have no pretentions to art and other games are often pushed out the door before they're ready, which can detract from their artistic impact. You would never confuse endless FiFA or Call of Duty games as art - they exist to meet shareholder's needs and nothing more. Sometimes though you can have the happy coincidence of a game that is not only fun to play but has artistic merits of it's own with regards to art, sound, music, story etc.

Games are first and foremost entertainment, meaning they're made to pander to someone. Art, however, is supposed to be a product of creative expression, not something that sells or made to be liked. Some art sells, but proper art should never be made with sales in mind. Therefore, 99.9(9)% of games will never classify as art, same deal with music and cinema.

This and this.

Software can be written that counts as art (though we haven't seen much of it) but you can't call it art and a game at the same time.
 
Joined
Jan 14, 2018
Messages
50,754
Codex Year of the Donut
For what it's worth — SCOTUS justice Antonin Scalia seemed to imply they were (at least partly) a mix of literature and art in his majority opinion ruling against videogame censorship.
Like the protected books, plays, and movies that preceded them, video games communicate ideas—and even social messages—through many familiar literary devices (such as characters, dialogue, plot, and music) and through features distinctive to the medium (such as the player’s interaction with the virtual world). That suffices to confer First Amendment protection. Under our Constitution, “esthetic and moral judgments about art and literature … are for the individual to make, not for the Government to decree, even with the mandate or approval of a majority.”
 

yellowcake

Arcane
Joined
Dec 11, 2007
Messages
2,898
Location
Alas! in my skull
Is pottery art? Stage performance? Comic book? These questions have been considered by philosophers for millenia. IMHO only way of approaching these is accepting or criticising their arrangements.
 
Last edited:
Self-Ejected

theSavant

Self-Ejected
Joined
Oct 3, 2012
Messages
2,009
Yes but art isn't a mark of quality: There's lots of shit art. Art is a work made for entertainment, nothing more.

Yeah... back in my childhood I always associcated art with something "nice". Whether in looks (pictures), or sound (music), it should be "nice".

Later I found out that this isn't the case. "Art" nowadays can be everything or nothing. I also recall that day back in school, where some "artists" visited the school to teach the art teachers about art. And they said "it's art, if you achieve to put a toilet into an art museum" (and maybe with some "explanations"). My teacher was disgusted. But yeah, that's it. Everything "creative" and with some "explanations" can be "art" nowadays.
 

Egosphere

Arcane
Joined
Jan 25, 2018
Messages
1,909
Location
Hibernia
Art has a tendency to stay around for a long time. Most gamers of today would consider games from the 90s to be utter trash because muh graphics. This doesn't affect other mediums to the same extent. 300 year old paintings are still art, even if you can pump out flashier images with a graphics tablet and a copy of photoshop today.
 

The Great ThunThun*

How DARE you!?
Patron
Joined
Mar 8, 2018
Messages
583
Pathfinder: Wrath
Subjects become art when there is a structure to them which is communicable. This structure must be unique to that particular subject. For games, that structure is the player agency, i.e. that the player can insert their actions into the game and can have tangible influence. In that sense, games are well on their way to becoming art as designers are able to fill the mechanics, the presentation of the games to their capacity to communicate ideas specifically unique to games and not generically associated with visual or written media. Examples of such things are visually communicable C&C, attention to "immersive" mechanics etc. The fact that these are done *badly* is exactly analogous to other arts which can also be *executed* badly.
 
Last edited:

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,347
Location
Lusitânia
They have the potential as to be art, like every other medium.
The main problems are:
  1. Modern Art is absolute shit - so it's highly unlikely for something artistic to come out from a still very young medium in a age where people with actual knowledge of art are rare sight;
  2. Again videogames are a very recent medium, so the criteria for which they can be artistically evaluated is not well defined (and due to the above problem, proper characterization won't happen any time soon);
  3. Most developers that want to make artistic games (specially western ones), are ashamed by the fact they had to turn to videogames to ''express themselves''; this is quite clear as they never try to make actual games but cinematic/novel experiences and are more focused on delivering "muh feelz" than actual gameplay and content (you can even see on interviews that those kinds of devs never give out other games as sources of inspiration, they always refer either to books or movies, and the few times they do say other games it's also artsy-farsty games like the ones they are trying to make); they are the same people that think pure action games are preventing the medium from being taken "seriously" and becoming ''high art'', so they are people that in general don't like videogames.
  4. And finally they always try to make their games artistic not by playing to the medium's strengths and unique traits (that is the interactivity and reactivity) but rather by the visuals, script and audio (the strengths of other mediums)

Ultimately I would take a good, fun and challenging game that isn't afraid of being gamey and has very little artistic value. Over a serious, well written, "artistic" game with shallow mechanics and no replayability. Every time.
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom