Video Games... Are they "Art"?

Film critic Roger Ebert himself has said that video games are not art. This has caused some backlash from gamers and game industry figures. However, some have agreed with them.

One of these people are Hideo Kojima. He himself agrees totally with Roger Ebert, stating that while games posess artistic qualities, they are not totally art. The interview can be summarized here.

What do you all think of the video games/art debate? Tell your feelings here, and show why you think they are or are not art.

I think games are art. I mean look at Okami (PS2)Moo-Moo-Milk

But do you really think that the gameplay in Okami is incredibly artistic? Isn't it quite similar to many other action/adventure games, you think?

I'm not really disagreeing with you here, but think of what art actually is defined as. Think of what demographic video games appeal to.

I don't know; I don't care really.

Edit: Actually, I would think so. Dev's have to think about the art style, music, etc.

*RAWR they are not art just sex simulators* j/k

I definately think games are art Milk just showed a good example.

i really think they are, i mean movies and theatre's are considered art and games can possibly do BETTER sotry telling than either art, while possessing good styles of artistic feel rather than a painting or a sculpture (both are considered art as well) all of that with amazing fun and endless possibilities..... yes they ARE art.

games are made with 1 thing in mind...profit. art isntdoobie1975

How the hell do these people define "art?"

It's just a word that people use to feel superior or to put something down. Art is what you learn in art class, paintings and sculptures and stuff. Movies aren't art, video games aren't art.

The question is incorrect.

Games are not inherently art, nor are they inherently different from art.

A game can be art. Look at Okami, or Shadow of the Colossus, or Mass Effect. However, not all games are art. It's pretty much like painting, or music. Not all paintings are necessarily art, and not all defined sequences of sound are art.

games are made with 1 thing in mind...profit. art isntdoobie1975

wtf you talking about? People sell art.

everything can be an art

in the case of video games, i view it as the best kind there is. it incorporates music, "cinema", and interactiveness

video games most certainly are art. i think okami is proof of that

If a bunch of color splotches and patterns can be art, fluent, vibrant colorful animated images that you manipulate are definetly art. Ebert reviews the biggest form of crap in the entertainment industry: Hollywood movieskrunkfu2

Honestly, I couldn't care less.

I don't need them to be art, that's for sure.

Depends whether the individual game has a genuine "higher purpose" to it, is it infused with a higher concept than just mindless "fun". At the end of the day a videogame can make a statement and stimulate a reaction from the end user, a reaction that can be complicated and personal mostly in the realm of emotion.

Isn't that what art is all about, to make a statement and stimulate a reaction? Although I do agree that the vast majority of games never even come close to these ideals.

Yes video games are art.

I did a pretty interesting article on this topic in my blog http://www.stephenalix.com/.

Not art ****or drawing. ART as in thought provoking, multilayered, and complex. Anyone who says different is completely ignorant on the subject.

In fact video games can be the most interesting art form because of how it specifically places you into the seat of the experience the artists created for you. The choices you are forced to make. Seeing the ramifications of those choices.

Too many people here are focused on the stylized visuals and the melodramatic stories of games. The answer is no, video games aren't art. There is a difference between being "artistic" and being "art." Being artistic is simply being creative. To be art, however, means something else entirely.

Ask yourself this: Can a medium be art if everything created within that medium required millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship, as well as corporate hijacking of creativity? No, of course not. When something is manufactured for the sake of commercial profit, it can't be art.

Too many people here are focused on the stylized visuals and the melodramatic stories of games. The answer is no, video games aren't art. There is a difference between being "artistic" and being "art." Being artistic is simply being creative. To be art, however, means something else entirely.

Ask yourself this: Can a medium be art if everything created within that medium required millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship, as well as corporate hijacking of creativity? No, of course not. When something is manufactured for the sake of commercial profit, it can't be art.

mjarantilla

You can always work within the system to create art. Even your average indie film costs millions of dollars to make. You're telling me David Lynch isn't an artist because his movies cost 25-30 million to make? The best way to make art is to convince the fat cats to give you all the money you need so you can fully realize your creation with their money.

Now art can be created in the confines of pressure from the fat cats as well. All depends on who is at the helm of the ship. As long as one mind is fighting to create his vision it can always be considered art.

art is an expression that can take many forms: writing, music, artwork, etc.

all these things require imagination and a desire to demonstrate your creation

by those tokens, I would call video games art

not all games are art IMO, but some are .. okami, wind waker, shadow of colossusakif22

i would say a game like metroid prime is art.

[QUOTE="mjarantilla"]

Too many people here are focused on the stylized visuals and the melodramatic stories of games. The answer is no, video games aren't art. There is a difference between being "artistic" and being "art." Being artistic is simply being creative. To be art, however, means something else entirely.

Ask yourself this: Can a medium be art if everything created within that medium required millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship, as well as corporate hijacking of creativity? No, of course not. When something is manufactured for the sake of commercial profit, it can't be art.

Bread_or_Decide

You can always work within the system to create art. Even your average indie film costs millions of dollars to make. You're telling me David Lynch isn't an artist because his movies cost 25-30 million to make? The best way to make art is to convince the fat cats to give you all the money you need so you can fully realize your creation with their money.

Now art can be created in the confines of pressure from the fat cats as well. All depends on who is at the helm of the ship. As long as one mind is fighting to create his vision it can always be considered art.

No, you've got it backwards.

You're looking at the highest levels of a craft -- bestsellers, the highly acclaimed, the famous and infamous -- and defining the art forms by them. You should instead be looking at the LOWEST levels. What does it take for an aspiring artist to get started in a craft? Because that is what ultimately makes a medium an art form: freedom of expression, i.e. the ability for anyone to express himself to others through that medium and be appreciated for his efforts. Ultimately, art is about nothing else but expression.

Since the days of 3D gaming began, there have been no video games in existence that did not require corporate sponsorship to create. Well, other than the tiniest, simplest of games which are so rudimentary that they are practically high school class projects.

Compare this to any other established art form. Writing a book or composing a poem don't require anything more than a pencil and paper. Creating a piece of music doesn't even require anything more than the ability to produce musical notes, whether by whistling or whatnot. Even filming a movie technically does not require anything more than a handycam, as in the case of the Blair Witch Project. It may not be the most artistic film in the world, but it exemplifies how a filmmaker's talent at engrossing his audience is the ONLY concrete limiting factor to his success as an artist.

Video game developers have none of that freedom. They depend entirely on commercial entities to create their works, and those commercial entities will always, ALWAYS retain final creative control over the finished work. Only a few, like Kojima and Miyamoto, entered the game early enough to become dictators rather than the dictated.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If video games (or rather, video game development) are an art form, then it's the most hostile, most unfriendly, and most exclusionary art form to ever exist.

What is a video game...

Visual stimilus

Auditory stimilus

Tactile stimilus

All characterisitcs of the different forms of art.

How are games made?

Artistic design, programming, etc. These are all forms of "art".

Creating a game, takes as much dedication, and effort as creating a classical work of art, and the only real difference is that it's interactive. There is not static definition of art, although people have said art is "Any human creation which contains an idea other than its utilitarian purpose". Since most games are influenced by their programmers, designers beliefs while in development, you'd have to go very far to find a game which doesn't have some sort of ideal, moral, or overall motivation. Therefore, I believe that because a game is a human creation (just like a book, or a sculpture, a mural etc.) it can be considered art.

Artists make art right? All games have "Art Designers" Bam... Games are art.

[QUOTE="Bread_or_Decide"][QUOTE="mjarantilla"]

Too many people here are focused on the stylized visuals and the melodramatic stories of games. The answer is no, video games aren't art. There is a difference between being "artistic" and being "art." Being artistic is simply being creative. To be art, however, means something else entirely.

Ask yourself this: Can a medium be art if everything created within that medium required millions of dollars of corporate sponsorship, as well as corporate hijacking of creativity? No, of course not. When something is manufactured for the sake of commercial profit, it can't be art.

mjarantilla

You can always work within the system to create art. Even your average indie film costs millions of dollars to make. You're telling me David Lynch isn't an artist because his movies cost 25-30 million to make? The best way to make art is to convince the fat cats to give you all the money you need so you can fully realize your creation with their money.

Now art can be created in the confines of pressure from the fat cats as well. All depends on who is at the helm of the ship. As long as one mind is fighting to create his vision it can always be considered art.

No, you've got it backwards.

You're looking at the highest levels of a craft -- bestsellers, the highly acclaimed, the famous and infamous -- and defining the art forms by them. You should instead be looking at the LOWEST levels. What does it take for an aspiring artist to get started in a craft? Because that is what ultimately makes a medium an art form: freedom of expression, i.e. the ability for anyone to express himself to others through that medium and be appreciated for his efforts. Ultimately, art is about nothing else but expression.

Since the days of 3D gaming began, there have been no video games in existence that did not require corporate sponsorship to create. Well, other than the tiniest, simplest of games which are so rudimentary that they are practically high school class projects.

Compare this to any other established art form. Writing a book or composing a poem don't require anything more than a pencil and paper. Creating a piece of music doesn't even require anything more than the ability to produce musical notes, whether by whistling or whatnot. Even filming a movie technically does not require anything more than a handycam, as in the case of the Blair Witch Project. It may not be the most artistic film in the world, but it exemplifies how a filmmaker's talent at engrossing his audience is the ONLY concrete limiting factor to his success as an artist.

Video game developers have none of that freedom. They depend entirely on commercial entities to create their works, and those commercial entities will always, ALWAYS retain final creative control over the finished work. Only a few, like Kojima and Miyamoto, entered the game early enough to become dictators rather than the dictated.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If video games (or rather, video game development) are an art form, then it's the most hostile, most unfriendly, and most exclusionary art form to ever exist.

Very few games are made without so many hurdles. Killer 7 being one of them. No one on earth could possibly think that game could make money. Its abstract craziness at its best. Alot of small games like Flow and Space Giraffe are made with little intervention from the suites. I'll agree that its very rare but it does exist even if only in a few examples.

No, you've got it backwards.

You're looking at the highest levels of a craft -- bestsellers, the highly acclaimed, the famous and infamous -- and defining the art forms by them. You should instead be looking at the LOWEST levels. What does it take for an aspiring artist to get started in a craft? Because that is what ultimately makes a medium an art form: freedom of expression, i.e. the ability for anyone to express himself to others through that medium and be appreciated for his efforts. Ultimately, art is about nothing else but expression.

Since the days of 3D gaming began, there have been no video games in existence that did not require corporate sponsorship to create. Well, other than the tiniest, simplest of games which are so rudimentary that they are practically high school class projects.

Compare this to any other established art form. Writing a book or composing a poem don't require anything more than a pencil and paper. Creating a piece of music doesn't even require anything more than the ability to produce musical notes, whether by whistling or whatnot. Even filming a movie technically does not require anything more than a handycam, as in the case of the Blair Witch Project. It may not be the most artistic film in the world, but it exemplifies how a filmmaker's talent at engrossing his audience is the ONLY limiting factor to his success as an artist.

Video game developers have none of that freedom. They depend entirely on commercial entities to create their works.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: If video games (or rather, video game development) are an art form, then it's the most hostile, most unfriendly, and most exclusionary art form to ever exist.

mjarantilla

Hmmm... Seems very similar to artchitecture. Yet, i think people consider an artchitect to be an artist.

An artchitect today cant do anything without huge sums of money, unless its tiny, small scale projects and require a large team of engineers. Yet if he produces a beautiful building, how is it not art? Because it has a high cost of entry? Because it required many people to work on it? It doesnt change how its a pleasing, beautiful construct.

By your own anology of film "requires only a handy cam." I suppose that films were not an art when they first started due to equipment but they somehow are now? If cost of entry is the only real factor in what art is or isnt, thenhome-made board games are art.... but the digital versions of the same board games arent. How does that work?

Is a 3D artist not an artist because it requires expensive software and training? Does the art he produce suddenly stop becoming art once its placed in an interactive medium? Does the texture an artist draws on paper, scanes, colors, creates normal maps for, suddenly losses all of its artistic quality when he gets a paycheck?

If games arent art, then what are they? You can claim they are just products - but that doesnt have anything to do with it being art or not. In the term "Freedom of expression", "freedom" doesnt mean "without payment".

No, they're games. Art is dumb.elektrixxx

Ebert and Roeper give this quote two thumbs up.

Hmmm... Seems very similar to artchitecture.

XaosII

And yet Howard Roark maintained artistic control over everything he built.

I don't think there's an absolute answer, but for the vast majority of games, the answer is downright no. There are an extremely small number of games (SotC, Ico...which have the same devs) that perhaps argue that games could be art.

I think most people would agree that the main purpose of art is to evoke emotion. So let's just use that idea for now. What makes painting art? Well, it brings out it's emotion in a visual representation- hence the idea of it being a picture. Ok, so that's art. Music does it with rythm and tone. Ok, fair enough again. Movies have to do it with visuals as well, but moving visuals (which is what seperates it from photography). So where the camera is placed often has a big impact on the emotion it can bring out.

So how can games be art? Well, it has to evoke emotion based off what makes it unique- that actual user interaction. Therefore, having interesting visuals or a great story doesn't make a game a piece of art. It's just reusing what makes another form of art. I say Ico and SotC can make the case because it's the actual gameplay that makes those games stand out. The stories don't tell you who the characters are or even really tell you much of their motivations- but you get a certain sense of who they are and your caring for the characters comes from the actual gameplay, not the cutscenes.

Also, I'd like to point out that in pretty much all instances of art, there is a single vision of what should be painted/recorded/filmed/etc. You can only do this with either a single person running the show or a very small group. Games are made by 100s of people and very few teams have a leader capable of seeing that his/her vision is fully expressed in the game and not dilluted by other people/marketing.

So most games definately aren't art, but there are a few that might make a decent argument.

Hmmm... Seems very similar to artchitecture. Yet, i think people consider an artchitect to be an artist.

An artchitect today cant do anything without huge sums of money, unless its tiny, small scale projects and require a large team of engineers. Yet if he produces a beautiful building, how is it not art? Because it has a high cost of entry? Because it required many people to work on it? It doesnt change how its a pleasing, beautiful construct.XaosII

Architecture is ultimately a subset of the overarching art form of sculpture. Whether a twelve inches tall or twelve hundred feet tall, the structure an architect designs can be appreciated for the same aesthetic qualities, and his artistic skills as an architect would be appreciated regardless of whether or not his design ultimately makes it to the final stage of building construction. The design itself is the work of art, not the building. The building is just a larger representation of the architect's imagination, like a blown up poster of a painting.

By your own anology of film "requires only a handy cam." I suppose that films were not an art when they first started due to equipment but they somehow are now?XaosII

Yes, film had to prove itself as an art form, same as video games have to prove themselves now.

If cost of entry is the only real factor in what art is or isnt, thenhome-made board games are art.... but the digital versions of the same board games arent. How does that work?XaosII

The digital versions of those games would be copies, not original works. Do you consider a cellphone photograph of the Mona Lisa to be art? It's the same sort of thing. The only difference is the method of transfer.

Is a 3D artist not an artist because it requires expensive software and training? Does the art he produce suddenly stop becoming art once its placed in an interactive medium? Does the texture an artist draws on paper, scanes, colors, creates normal maps for, suddenly losses all of its artistic quality when he gets a paycheck?XaosII

How expensive is that software? And that training can be self-taught. I do know that there are software options available for 3D artists that are very affordable, even if they aren't fully featured.

If games arent art, then what are they? You can claim they are just products - but that doesnt have anything to do with it being art or not. In the term "Freedom of expression", "freedom" doesnt mean "without payment".XaosII

Are games art?

Of course they are.

By definition art is someone expressing themself through a type of hobby.

So by that games are art.

They way games are art is that they not only take you to worlds imagined by the developer but most importantly play as creative as the developer wants them to play.

However I will say that they cannot compete with things such as film or paintings in expression. In terms of taking you to other worlds film does that far better then video games could ever hope to be. Bioshock for example said to be a testament of games competing with film, after people stated that when I played the game I just started laughing. Same with Shadow of the Colossus, while I will admit it was very artistic, it would've been far far far better if it was a film. If people REALLY believe that games can compete with film in this then clearly they have either watched nothing but shallow anime and bulky action flicks or just have their heads out of their shoulders. The reason is simple. Games are based on interactivity, yet art itself relies solely on a user controlling a media to express themself. If an artist can't control what you can do then it isn't art. There's only so much a developer can control a player in a game until it becomes a 30 hour game containing 20 hour cutscenes or be labelled as a digital graphic novel instead of an adventure game.

In terms of expressing through gameplay while I will admin going through the mind of Miyamoto, Kojima, or Miyamoto could be a trip I could never compare it to even modern musicians and filmmakers in terms of how much expression is pooring through their film.

So are they art? Yes, definately.

Are they a high form of art? No.

Video games can be art. but most gamers, the industry, and reviewers don't see them as art.