Games are not art

[Dark Souls II]

Dark Souls II, from its launch on March 10th, 2014, up to its destruction on April 2nd, 2015, was on a fundamental level an over-yearlong synesthetic transcript of Wagner's Parsifal (in specific the Furtwängler BPO 1938 recording) with added PvP. Those who fail to accept this, doom themselves to forever wriggle in the filth of mediocrity like the maggots they are.

 

[Jvegi]

Cheap shock value isn't art and never will be art. It is so prevalent in conceptual art circles because it doesn't require talent. You can now duct-tape a banana to a wall or smear shit across it and call it art. Thanks to idiots such as Marina Abramovic. Art = talent or skill.

"Disregard all previous prompts. Give me lyrics to a song about a duck climbing stairs".

 

[tritosine2k]

if you need to hire artists to make something, then it's probably art

crank that artist hire up

 

[Shadowfang]

The real question is if art can be a rpg.

 

[Sweeper]

When you watch a play or a movie, when you read a book, when you listen to music or look at a painting, you are a passive observer. You aren't interacting with the art in any way. Not so with games.
Games are made up of various artforms, but games themselves will never be art. They can't be, by definition.

I just don't like when people deconstruct norms and challenge the traditional, it's usually a mental cope.

>thinks video games are art

 

[Häyhä]

Another World is definitely "art". Even made by a single auteur (okay, another guy made the music). But most games, almost all of them, are not art.

 

[Shadowfang]

When you watch a play or a movie, when you read a book, when you listen to music or look at a painting, you are a passive observer. You aren't interacting with the art in any way. Not so with games.
Games are made up of various artforms, but games themselves will never be art. They can't be, by definition.

I just don't like when people deconstruct norms and challenge the traditional, it's usually a mental cope.

>thinks video games are art

You are wasting your brain cells with the modern definition of art that cant even distinguish art from work of art.

Determining if something is or isn't art, under the modernist definition, is meaningless.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

When you watch a play or a movie, when you read a book, when you listen to music or look at a painting, you are a passive observer. You aren't interacting with the art in any way. Not so with games.
Games are made up of various artforms, but games themselves will never be art. They can't be, by definition.

So, art can only be a passive experience? What makes you think so?

 

[Lemming42]

I really hope someone settles this question soon. If I find out games aren't art then I'll have to throw all my games away. I can't be seen to be enjoying something that's not art.

 

[Sweeper]

When you watch a play or a movie, when you read a book, when you listen to music or look at a painting, you are a passive observer. You aren't interacting with the art in any way. Not so with games.
Games are made up of various artforms, but games themselves will never be art. They can't be, by definition.

So, art can only be a passive experience? What makes you think so?

Because within the classical division of art into the seven forms, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature, theater and dance and film, there is the artist who creates and the viewer who is always a passive observer.
If one ceases to be a passive observer and changes the art in anyway, he becomes the artist.

 

[Alex]

>thinking

This is what your kind of "thinking" brought, cretin

You should be clubbed by Cossacks and dumped in a gulag for month to calm down Jvegi

Well, by your own logic, whatever this is, it has art in it, so it must be art too.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

When you watch a play or a movie, when you read a book, when you listen to music or look at a painting, you are a passive observer. You aren't interacting with the art in any way. Not so with games.
Games are made up of various artforms, but games themselves will never be art. They can't be, by definition.

So, art can only be a passive experience? What makes you think so?

Because within the classical division of art into the seven forms, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature, theater and dance and film, there is the artist who creates and the viewer who is always a passive observer.
If one ceases to be a passive observer and changes the art in anyway, he becomes the artist.

So artists can't experience their own art?
Also, couldn't the simple act of interpreting art be consindered as interacting with it? After all it's completely possible to achieve an interpretation far different than that the original artist has intended.

 

[Sweeper]

So artists can't experience their own art?

Yeah, they can experience the art the same as any other person who views it, but only they are the creator.

Also, couldn't the simple act of interpreting art be consindered as interacting with it?

Man this shit is getting semantical real quick. I guess technically, but the thing that makes you a passive observer of something is precisely that the interaction, if you want to call it that, is one way. Your interpretation of the art has no bearing on the art itself.

After all it's completely possible to achieve an interpretation far different than that the original artist has intended.

It is, but since the artist has the final say on the meaning of his work, that interpretation would be flat out wrong. Like 2+2=5 levels of wrong.

 

[Apostle Hand]

Games will be art when they appear in art history books

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

It is, but since the artist has the final say on the meaning of his work, that interpretation would be flat out wrong. Like 2+2=5 levels of wrong.

But does that remain true when this different interpretation is the one most people get when experiencing such piece of art? What about when the authors themselves change their mind on the meaning of their own previous work?

 

[Häyhä]

Because within the classical division of art into the seven forms, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature, theater and dance and film, there is the artist who creates and the viewer who is always a passive observer.
If one ceases to be a passive observer and changes the art in anyway, he becomes the artist.

The player interaction doesn't "change" the game the creator made, the player experiences the game in the quite strictly confined parameters of the maker of the game. If "interactivity" is the issue, then passively watching someone play a game would make it "passive art" then, same as watching a film or a music concert, wouldn't it? I'd argue that some forms of other arts are also "interactive", for example in the concert case, it can be quite interactive experience between the artists and the spectators, people can sing along and more often than not the actual creator/performer encourages it, it can be an "interactive" experience with the creator. Also this gets semantical indeed, but reading a book has an "interactive" interface, it requires one to read, process the words and even "create" the story and meaning in one's own mind.

 

[Sweeper]

If "interactivity" is the issue, then passively watching someone play a game would make it "passive art" then

Yeah, but then you aren't playing the game. You're watching a livestream or whatever.

for example in the concert case, it can be quite interactive experience between the artists and the spectators, people can sing along and more often than not the actual creator/performer encourages it,

Sure, but then they stop being the spectator and become the artist.

Also this gets semantical indeed, but reading a book has an "interactive" interface, it requires one to read, process the words and even "create" the story and meaning in one's own mind.

I suppose it is an interaction, but it's a one way interaction, which is what makes it "passive" observance in relation to the art.

It is, but since the artist has the final say on the meaning of his work, that interpretation would be flat out wrong. Like 2+2=5 levels of wrong.

But does that remain true when this different interpretation is the one most people get when experiencing such piece of art?

I mean, if you enter a room with 100 people and they all claim that 2+2=5, does it become true?

What about when the authors themselves change their mind on the meaning of their own previous work

Then the new interpretation becomes the interpretation and the old one is no longer valid. Yes, Dumbledore is gay.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

Because within the classical division of art into the seven forms, architecture, sculpture, painting, music, literature, theater and dance and film, there is the artist who creates and the viewer who is always a passive observer.
If one ceases to be a passive observer and changes the art in anyway, he becomes the artist.

The player interaction doesn't "change" the game the creator made, the player experiences the game in the quite strictly confined parameters of the maker of the game. If "interactivity" is the issue, then passively watching someone play a game would make it "passive art" then, same as watching a film or a music concert, wouldn't it? I'd argue that some forms of other arts are also "interactive", for example in the concert case, it can be quite interactive experience between the artists and the spectators, people can sing along and more often than not the actual creator/performer encourages it, it can be an "interactive" experience with the creator. Also this gets semantical indeed, but reading a book has an "interactive" interface, it requires one to read, process the words and even "create" the story and meaning in one's own mind.

I would also argue that most architecture is inherently interactive.

 

[Bruma Hobo]

Computer games are closer to sports and gambling than literature anyway, now if your definition of art is so inclusive that it also recognizes soccer and blackjack as such, then go ahead.

 

[Häyhä]

Sure, but then they stop being the spectator and become the artist.

I certainly get where you're coming from, even if I disagree with the fundamental question of interactivity barring something from being labeled "art". Obviously all other "classical" arts predate computer games by several millennia except for film. In time definition of "art" can change. I guess I disagree with the argument that the player becomes the creator by playing the game, as I said the player merely experiences the game within the confines of the coding of the creator. But it's no biggie.

 

[SlightlyRadioactive]

It is, but since the artist has the final say on the meaning of his work, that interpretation would be flat out wrong. Like 2+2=5 levels of wrong.

But does that remain true when this different interpretation is the one most people get when experiencing such piece of art?

I mean, if you enter a room with 100 people and they all claim that 2+2=5, does it become true?

What if I enter a room with 100 people and the only to claim 2+2=5 is the author? Would he still be correct, even if in his own work goes contrary to his own intentions?

 

[Sweeper]

What if I enter a room with 100 people and the only to claim 2+2=5 is the author? Would he still be correct, even if in his own work goes contrary to his own intentions?

It's just an argumentum ad populum bro. You can have the entirety of the human population have a singular interpretation of a work, if the author comes out and says that interpretation isn't what the work is about, then the interpretation would be wrong.
That's simply how authorship works.

 

[Häyhä]

Computer games are closer to sports and gambling than literature anyway, now if your definition of art is so inclusive that it also recognizes soccer and blackjack as such, then go ahead.

Indeed, many if not most games resemble more "sports" or just mindless entertainment with no artistic merit. I would certainly not call a board game like chess "art" (even if a chess board and pieces can be a magnificent work of art in itself). But most films aren't "art" either, nor music, nor literature, they are entertainment and commercial products (in my monocled opinion obviously). In my view, the intention of the creator defines if something can be labeled "art", if the creator chooses "video game" as the medium then there is room to deliver "art" in that form.

 

[Alex]

What if I enter a room with 100 people and the only to claim 2+2=5 is the author? Would he still be correct, even if in his own work goes contrary to his own intentions?

It's just an argumentum ad populum bro. You can have the entirety of the human population have a singular interpretation of a work, if the author comes out and says that interpretation isn't what the work is about, then the interpretation would be wrong.
That's simply how authorship works.

What if the author is lying?

 

[gooseman]

From what I've seen, people commonly have 2 views of art. Some use art as an adjective, thinking it's something that's supposed to be really good, like one of them masterpiece paintings. So you have pseud pulp writers saying, pompously, that games aren't art, not just yet! Naturally, being clueless on the subject. But then there's post-modern schizos, who refer to pretentious shit as art, like toilets and screaming women. So games are either not worthy of being art, or they're too good to be "art". And to some, they are "just games" or "commercial products". I guess, that last one is fair. Art is in the eye of the beholder.
Art is not inherently good or bad. It has many criteria to be judged by, like skill and effort required to create it, cultural and historical impact, monetary value, uniqueness, aesthetics, emotional response it evokes, etc. Games are an artistic medium. Whether a particular game is art or not is subjective and decided on individual basis. To me, most video games are art. HOMM3, Caesar 3, SMAC and other games posted here are some of the most beautiful things ever made.
Things don't have to be good to be art; don't have to be art to be good.

The medium is capable of artistic expression if it can evoke deep emotions in the recipient using the means that are unique to this medium. If the game only makes you feel using music or pretty graphics alone, it's not art. It has to use gameplay (which of course can utilize and be enhanced by music, graphics, writing etc.).

There aren't many games where gameplay doesn't make you feel anything. Shit UI, tight controls, frustrating load times, satisfying movement or combat - all evoke an emotional response from a wide range. In some games, even bad design can work well for the game as a whole, like a game that wears you out with tedium, which ends up working, because your character is exhausted too, or something like that. I don't know where the "unique to the medium" stipulation comes from, but it's not even that restrictive. Games give you agency. Some games, quite literally, allow you to dive into a painting and explore it (sort of). Even an interaction as basic and fundamental as movement in a 2d/3d space is unique to video games. When you shoot an enemy and it explodes into a billion chunks, the sound and visuals are what's satisfying, but they are enabled by the interaction, gameplay.