Are video games art?

Video games is not an art-Hideo Kojima. Games aren't art, says Kojima

Most games lack the needed unity to be called art, Imo. But most have artistic elements.

Certain games, yes, just like in any other medium. Movies can be art, but not every movie is art. Books can be art, but not every book is art. Video games can be art, but not all video games are art.

I challenge anybody who says otherwise to play Silent Hill 2 and see how it uses the game medium to tell its story in a way no other medium can. People who say video games aren't art simply have their heads stuffed up their ass and need to be more open minded.

Yes, obviously, under any definition of art that includes movies, TV and books.

Agreed.

Like games that do something very hard without seeming like they are even trying (e.g. Super Mario Galaxy) than shit straining to come across as high concept "games are so much more".

i think they are.

but the great games focus more on craftsmanship than art imho.

a very simple answer....yes

Good question. You don't often see sports fans arguing over whether sports are "art".

Who cares?

Gamers are an odd bunch. They want games to be recognized as art and sport. They want game stories and presentation to be respected in the same light as literature and film. I'm not saying they're wrong in doing so, I just don't see the point though.

Here I am just wanting my games to be games lol. I enjoy this interactive medium. I don't need it to be recognized as something greater and I don't need it to directly compete with strengths in other mediums. Especially when striving to do so often diminishes the better aspects of gaming while at the same time fails to compare to what those other mediums do so well.

Video games are a unique and varied form of entertainment on their own, they don't need to be anything else.

I believe the one mistake we're making is how we constantly think of aesthetics when we talk about whether or not a game qualifies as art.

Essentially, a work of art is a work of expression. A way for one's thoughts, beliefs and/or perspectives to be implemented into a form of media. This is next to non-existent in the AAA-sphere, but I do believe indie developers have taken the mantle by taking what is usually a set of rules and mechanics and using them as a form of expression itself for whatever underlying theme may be at play. The medium has a long way to go into making the art actually meaningful, but I also believe it's taking steps in the right direction.

It has nothing to do with how well a person can draw, how amazing a piece of music sounds or how much fun it is mechanically, but instead how it uses those tools to actively express and enlighten an entity upon the recipient.

Odd bunch is putting it lightly, for starters given how the responses are in this thread, or the "some games can be art" rhetoric, art apparently means quality (and it fucking doesn't), and art apparently has something to do with whether or not a game can tell a story, and that's not true either given that Sculpture is a thing. Yeah it can convey a mood or a time frame or reflect on something, but it's not exactly spinning a yarn.

In typical gamer fashion they put the pussy on the pedestal (pussy being art this time), and don't actually know what the **** they are talking about. The fucking worst.

Getting super high scores in Star Fox Zero is pure art at its finest. Afterwards, i bask in my greatness by posting them to Miiverse for a few likes.

This is still a very young medium. For decades there were numerous conversations as to whether or not films were truly works of art. What gamers need to understand is that the development for the medium needs to be natural. If games aren't art right now, that's perfectly fine, because it doesn't need to be. Besides I've never played games to achieve new artistic or worldly perspectives like I do film. I play for the mental stimulation, the challenges and most of all fun.

@jagoff: "I play for the mental stimulation, the challenges and most of all fun."

Thats art.

They are different things to different people. There is no simple correct answer.

Yeah. Not even remotely.

@jg4xchamp:

Hey, that's the spirit! ;)

Yeah, see that's the shit that bugs me. I don't care what side of the line you fall on when it comes to this subject, but have some fucking consistency.

If you're going to say that games are art then whatever, but then you have to look at them as varying degrees of quality, you can't pick and choose the ones that made you feel like a special snowflake. There is a such thing as shitty art and that would still apply to games if you held such an opinion.

@jagoff: You dont think so? Thats what art is all about. That mental simulation, challenge, and pure fun. Every time i paint, this is what i seek. This is what motivates me.

Ha, just look at my very first post in this thread.

Man, it always plays out exactly the same lol.

Why would that be any less of a representation of gamings argument as an art form, vs games that try to tell some doofy video game story?

Because the emotional response is still there, it's very directly your own reaction to a given gameplay scenario. As far as reflection, actually there as well plenty of games be it indie or even heavily directed by one man triple A stuff get plenty across about a person. Hideki Kamiya's games have always shown his appreciation for the old arcade days, and how being the showoff at some badass arcade shooter with a crowd watching inspired a lot of his later games: Devil May Cry, Viewtiful Joe, and Bayonetta.

None of these are exactly waxing philosophy about there, but they absolutely are exceptional works of design in this space.

At least the stuff you mentioned speak to the strengths of this medium.

Yup, they have artists that have to create the models. I do some 3d modeling myself, definitely art.

For instance if I take a lower tier game with less effort put into the models the enemies are often incredibly simple. Most free mmos have bland uninspired models, take a game like Bloodborne which is the exact opposite. The enemy details reflect the game world, evoke a story about the origins of that entity and try to create an emotional response.

That's where the art portion comes in, when game assets elicit an emotional response be it fear, awe or curiosity. The best games are the most artistic. Last of Us, Uncharted, Star Citizen, Crysis, Mario Galaxy all have that one element in common. The 3d assets have so much effort and passion put into them they elicit a reaction instead of reinforcing a repetitive grind.

My favorite definition of art is: "Having no purpose other than itself"

Video games are a form of entertainment and are created with a purpose in mind. Starry Night surves no purpose whatsoever other than to be one of the most beautiful creations in the history of man.

Video games may be an expression of art, but they will never be art.

And I can understand that when you're the one creating it, but I believe the circumstances are different when you're on the recieving end of that creation. You're being tested in a way where it's interesting and enjoyable, but at the end it's still just a test. One that usually requires inside the box thinking where the reward simply leads to more tests.

The attempt in overcoming challenges and obstacles in games do create senses of joy, anger and frustration. But those sensations while playing a game rarely go beyond the immediate emotional impact you describe. For example, if you lose a boss fight, you're not going to linger and dwell on the failure. You're simply going to try again. If you succeed, you're elated, but for a brief moment before you're simply back into the fray and on to the next challenge. These moments never lend themselves to something beyond those brief reprives, nor do they lend themselves to be open to interpretation.

A game doesn't need to try its hand at a compelling story to make a point (I say "try" because, of course, 99.8% of VG stories are awful). I honestly feel the medium does better when it momentarily breaks the fabric of the rules a game sets for itself in order to implement these moments of expression. I'd like to think the final level of Braid is a decent example in this regard.

You make an excellent example with Kamiya. It's clear as to where his passions lie whenever he finds himself in the director's seat, and his games are much stronger for it. But as I mentioned above it's a different circumstance when the challenges and obstacles are moulded in your image and by not being the hamster in the maze. The line becomes blurred in this sense, because with this example you can argue something like a final exam can be considered a work of art as well, as it can provide the same feelings a challenging video game does.

I think so, at least I want to believe so too.

At the very least it's an avenue for artistic expression. Some devlopers more than others make an effort to elicit a strong emotional response from the player or demonstrate a world view.

I guess I would say video games are art, just a very weak form of it.

Shameless wiki quote:

Art is a diverse range of human activities in creating visual, auditory or performing artifacts – artworks, expressing the author's imaginative or technical skill

Its all the same stuff mate, art is what you make of it. Anything can be art. A guy practicing sword fighting is an art, a guy creating sword fighting techniques is an art, and a guy creating the sword is art and so on.

Even the simple task of making tea is an art. Cooking is an art and so on. Anything can be turned into art. Basketball for instance is an art. Of course you didnt invent the game, a different artist did that, but that doesnt mean you cant master the art of the game.

From Oxford dictionaries:

"The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power"

Sounds like video games fit the bill just fine. I'm not sure how someone can say that movies, novels, and paintings are art, but video games somehow aren't. That makes absolutely no sense to me. This medium has evolved beyond just being a family toy at this point.

Yes

Sports are the purest form of games because they have no music and graphics unlike video games and require tremendous amount of physical movement. They do have similarities with multiplayer video games though. The stories they produce are endless and special just like Starcraft, WoW, etc. We are talking specifically about video games not games. Not all games are video games but all video games are games.

SP video games are more on the side of films, books, paintings, etc. while MP video games are more akin to sports. When people talk about video games as being art, usually MP video games are left out.

On a side note, isn't cooking considered an art?

Sports are considered an art also, its why we have the Olympics. Shooting bow is art. Ballet is art, dance is art, baseball is art, tennis is art. All sports are art. We wouldnt call them sports if they werent.

No. They're entertainment designed simply to create revenue for corporations.

As do movies,but movies are considered art.Why not vg?

Experience Okami.

@ConanTheStoner I see no reason why video games can't be both an art and a sport. I don't really care to get into a bogged down debate whether something like starcraft is literally a sport, because it seems like semantics to me. Like the question if chess is a sport, but regardless video games are both a form of expression as well as competition. That's the versatility of the medium.

Not all games

I don't think I have said anything about sports not being an art. Baseball, kyudo, dance, etc. are all art in the sense they require skills to master and exhibit beauty when greatness is shown. When you see how MJ or Kobe Bryant makes a seemingly impossible move and see how awesome it is one would call it art.

I was saying sports and video games can't really be compared with one another except for MP-focused video games because of competition and the requirement of skill and mastery compared to brain dead UC4 :P It's why it's called e-sports now.

.... And why are they not art? Because you don't like them or find them complex enough? We have paintings with literal black lines across blank canvasses.. We have music to some that just sounds like explosions and heavy thuds going off.. Art can be abstract, and music is the most abstract of art forms, so darned right those movies and games can be considered art.. Art doesn't need to be considered good, to actually be considered art.

@phbz: I took an art class in college.....half of what passes for art today doesn't have the needed unity to be called art.

In the end, art at its core is a creative process. Video games take creativity to make.

I can't believe I'm agreeing with Elpresador :o

Except not all great art would need to be open to interpretation, there are plenty of examples of a play in theater (which is considered art), or works of literature or film (debatable) where you have works that are supremely preachy, and they are fine examples of those respective mediums, exceptional ones because the director/author didn't pussy foot it with the mantra of "I want my audience to have their own opinion" because that argument is wank.

So interpretation can't be the only thing, hell those brief moments of sheer rage at Ninja Gaiden Black, have stayed with me over the years, in a beautiful way only a game can provide. That absorbing feel you get when entering the world of Metroid Prime, that brief moment where you forget the rules, and are actual dealing with trying to make sense of a vague map and bought into the brilliant sound design in Thief 2 to give you that illusion, that you're not really playing a game, you're playing Garret, a master thief. And in between all that, I have hard time accepting that in this medium we'll make the argument for Shadow of the Colossus and Silent Hill 2 (two games I adore by the way), but then something like Mario, whose games are quintessential examples of what is great about this medium, wouldn't be art?

Video games are a poor story telling medium, because of inherent short comings and limitations of said medium. At the least they shouldn't be telling stories like Books n Films, because they are outclassed when they do it that way (The Last of Us is pretty solid, but Children of Men and The Road, shit on it), and even with that I'd still say there are reasonably good examples of video games that are reflective: Your braid example for one, Kamiya, Fez is Phil Fish bringing you back to when his dad left him hidden messages in the games his dad made. You have deeply personal stuff like That Dragon, Cancer or Papa & Yo, you have player created stories that are light hearted fun - XCom to genuinely sophisticated stuff in Papers, Please.

For the record, I am not a video games are art person, but not for the usual reasons of x medium is better (though, duh). My stance has always been that the art discussion is way too douchy, it gave this one 3 letter word so much weight, and I never needed it to describe why I thought something was well made or not. I don't need The Wire to be art, The Wire is an exceptional piece of story telling, and I'd bet the farm, a 100 years we still won't have a TV show as good as The Wire.

More or less, if Video Games can be art, than they are art. Because I'm with Conan, even the shitty things would be art, their poor craftsmenship wouldn't invalidate them.

I take all and every opportunity to say gamers are shit lol

Thank you. As you put it, considered. I do not consider that music, those paintings, those films, those games art. All in the eye of the beholder.

Relativism is a dangerous philosophy IMO.

I'm not going to get into, what is art, because as you said, it's endless.

However, with your 'set of rules' argument. Perhaps this could add to your thoughts. Try this analogy. When you produce a song, there's something called 'mix context'. It means to never isolate an individual track when mixing. Because the trumpets may sound great when you treat it in isolation, but terrible when then placed back in a mix against everything else. The graphics, music and story are there to come together and help bring you into the fantasy and the gameplay allows you to usually play how you want within limits in the role you are are playing.

There are rules in real life too. The laws of physics, the laws of man, biology etc, we're always bound by something. Everything is bound by rules, music is bound by music theory and sound science for example.

Games aren't usually so restrictive they don't allow you to explore how you want, playing in your own style.

I feel at the end it all boils back to the "what is art" discussion, which is a well proven way to have a debate run in circles in record time. It's capable of being an artform, but it doesn't need to be one at all in order to feel validated. It has yet to mature in the way film or television has over the decades so I think the bigger goal would be showcasing works that would make people on the outside try to take it a bit more seriously. Alas as of now, the industry makes a gigantic shitshow out of the medium.

Really there's only one thing I can actively disagree with here: I think Mad Men gives The Wire a run for its money when it comes to the TV drama crown. But by like half a strand of hair.

Mad Men is fantastic, but it's more character study of who Don Draper/Dick Whitman is, with a nice peppering of the farce that is The American dream. The Wire is a bit more reflective and thought provoking in how it handles subjects like inner city violence, the state of minorities or poor people in cities with corrupt or broken systems. The beauty of The Wire is, that it was relevant all of a sudden again with the stuff that happened in Ferguson or Baltimore.

That show high lighted broken systemic issues in our nation or the job field without breaking a sweat and handles it with grace. Games journalists trying to highlight systemic issues in their own medium? Translates into them asking why CDPR is apparently racist for thinking an area in Poland is predominantly white.

But yeah Mad Men is great, not too fond of season 6, though the Hershey's pitch is top notch. It took Jon Hamm way too long to get his overdue Emmy win, albeit I get it given Bryan Cranston and Kyle Chandler got the best of him.

I would agree that Mad Men might be a better use of the framework that is television week to week than The Wire is. The Wire works better when you watch a string of episodes in a row, Mad Men has more individual thematic episodes.