An interesting look at why video games (Probably) are not art

"Perhaps the arguement can be made that Video Games COULD be their own artform, but that's not the current state of the industry."

Are photographs we take of our family art?

"Is Carnival Games art? Big Rigs? Going away from video games, is the movie Die Hard a piece of art? What about Uwe Boll's movies? "

Are photographs we take of our family art?

Cop out answers?  Dude, I posted this article to inspire debate, but I'm not playing the everyone on Giant Bomb vs me game.  I have a 16 hours a day job and I can't keep up.  I'll do my best to counter the points you make but don't expect me to sit at the PC all day so I can try and shoot down your opinion and tell you why my opinion is better than yours.

I am considering what you say, the problem is the article is what I happen to agree with, and what you say in no way negates the article.

The article says that the only thing distinguishing films from other art forms is editing but editing exisited well before cinema did so does that make film a less valid art form? No it doesn't. Just because it incorporates other aspects of art doesn't mean it itself isn't a unique art form.

Also he says that videogames aren't unique because interactivity has existed well before they did. That's true but that's more passive interactivity like going to a concert or the theatre, you don't have an overall effect on the events that take place. Videogames give you direct interactivity. You physically have to carry the game forward by your input otherwise nothing would happen. So yes, interactivity in art isn't new but it doesn't exist to the same extent as it does in games.

He also complains that games are predefined in their endings but this true for movies or music or nearly every other art. What makes games different is how you get to that ending. They give you more freedom then anything else in how events proceed and every person could experience the same game in a different way depending on how they played.

I personally think that games are art and people are just being too narrow-minded. It's the same thing when cinema first came about and people thought it would never be considered a proper art form compared to theatre. Maybe the industry isn't mature yet but that doesn't mean it isn't a form of art, it just means it has yet to Citezen Kane or whatever revolutionary moment other fields have had.

There are several posts here that directly confront the article. You're not going to get anywhere unless you are willing to address those points. It's kind of like using text from the bible to argue Christianity to an atheist. It's pointless if you can't find a way to defend the credibility of the source material.

To decide whether Video games are art you must first clearly DEFINE what ART is.
Heck in the Article Devin admits he has no clue:
"But we still haven't defined art. And honestly, we're not going to do so here"
    Two Criteria come to mind: Art has to be observable and Art must convey a message (political?)

Art:
    is Visual arts, Music, Movies
    is Man Made
    Has Value
    is Made to convey a message
    is Sound Effects
    is apparently not defined well enough if Movie Critics keep arguing what is and is not art

Gam3r3000 I strongly disagree that art must convey a message, especially a political one. This is known in literature as didactic art and it is a very popular and often used form. Didacticism is the idea that the art contains an underlying message and teaches the audience some form of lesson, be it moral, education, factual, etc. While this is incredibly popular and is featured in many of the greatest pieces of art our culture has it if most certainly not required. Once again I'll bring up Wilde, he believed that art was simply about beauty and anything else inside it is unnecessary, not bad but not required. A perfect example of non-didactic art would be Wilde's short story (and my favourite piece of literature) Lord Arthur Savile's Crime.

It also must be noted that didacticism often hurts art as the author must build to his lesson rather to their story. For instance, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's sherlock holmes' story The Adventure of Yellow Face is often considered the worst sherlock holmes novel as it contains many logical fallices and plot holes. It is however remembered because it was written in the 1880s and publicly stated Doyle's stance in support of interracial marriage. This is often brought up as situation where didactism detracted from the artistic value. Of course the oppostie extreme is something like To Kill A Mocking Bird, a wonderful piece of art that benefitted greatly because of it's didactic purpose.
 
The point I'm trying to make here is that art does not require a message, Beethoven is another example of art for art's sake.    

@cdstacker: Well it would be no fun, if everyone agreed with my opinion. I suppose works of music and abstract art don't need to convey a message (but they can).

Before we can ask whether games are art we must first have a definition of art we all agree on.

Trying to define art defeats the very purpose of art. No artist likes being constrained within their medium and that is why constantly experimented. Poetry only exists because some writers got bored of prose. Arguing about what artists should be allowed to call art just seems like an attack on creativity. 

"Diamond said:

"'Art' doesn't mean anything at all.The argument has reached a high level of stupidity.With the way 'art' is used as a word in the English language today, videogames ARE art, period.  Does that mean anything at all?  No."

What? How can you say the word art means nothing? Art means a lot of thing to a lot of different people."

Let's look at the definition as written in answers.com :

1. Human effort to imitate, supplement, alter, or counteract the work of nature.

BOOM, games are art.  /thread

2. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

BOOM, games are art, again.  /no really, thread

3. High quality of conception or execution, as found in works of beauty; aesthetic value.

Games are still art, who'd a thunk it.  /art

Diamond, I think you're arguing with the wrong person here.

"Diamond, I think you're arguing with the wrong person here."

Interesting topic.

I myself have never really concerned myself with this issue... Generally, I've observed that whenever someone attempts to define art in a public forum like the author of that article, it's usually for the sole purpose of excluding some medium from being considered as art, usually the new medium on the block. As might already be apparent, my thoughts generally mirror that of the second post in this topic.

The article in particular was so dizzyingly circuitous that it's hard to line up the points he made in my head. But I do know that I disagree with him personally. Normally, I would just call the whole thing an elitist plot and move on, but since he said he was sort of a gamer, I really don't know what the hell to think.

"For art to be art it has to have no purpose other than itself."

If people look upon something and appreciate it as an art form, doesn't that make it art? Art is too undefinable, it's different for everybody. It's what a person takes away from art that makes it, the feelings you experience as you examine it and enjoy it. You can't pin them down anymore than you can catch a shadow. They happen as you experience the art, whatever it may be. When you hear the beat, contemplate a face, read a word or in this case, toggle an analog stick. Everyone experiences different things from different forms of art but if some do and some don't, what gives certain people the right to say it's not art?

Bottom line is that you feel what you feel and you like what you like, stop bitching about everyone else.

In his article, I think Devin fails to acknowledge the importance of play in regards to video games. Play is how a game can convey its experience and illicit an emotion from the player. He points out the elements of a game such as graphics, music, and story, but fails to see how play brings them all together in a way that can't be achieved in another medium. To argue that play isn't the driving force of an artful game is to say that film isn't really art either, because if you leave out the editing and presentation, then it's nothing but a series of photographs shown in rapid succession. If you are going to evaluate whether or not something is art, you should look at it on its own terms, and you have to take in the entire package.*
Comparing the level and purpose of the interactivity in games and in theatre is wrong. I've done interactive theatre, and it's nothing like playing a game, for any party involved.
 He also goes down the false path of saying that games are trying to become more like movies, which is only true if you look at a very narrow selection of games, blockbusters in particular. Bring more small games and indie games into the mix and you see how some of the most emotive games are also the least cinematic. I think if this guy had really taken some more time with Rez, Flower, Everyday Shooter, Braid, or Portal, then he might see that they have a lot to offer underneath the graphical surface, and that they can be fully experienced and appreciated only through play.

*This reminds me of some criticism of Crackdown, basically that if you took out the Agility Orbs it'd just be a fairly weak shooter. Well, yeah dude, and if you take the fat out of milk then it's just like a white-colored water. Saying "if you take this integral part out of the thing, then it's not the thing anymore, and probably wasn't the thing to begin with" is such bullshit.

Video games as art should no longer be  viewed as a debate, or an arguement.  I most definately do not view Braid as a form of art. However, I can see how a game can be viewed as art. I listened to a podcast recently that discussed this very same topic, and one of the speakers brought up a situation where a game could NOT be mistaken for a purely "game" experience. Say a game placed you in the shoes of a prisoner at Aushwitz. An alternate history game, where the player lived and breathed the horrors of the Holocaust,  but eventually planned his own escape, and sucessfully carried it out. While I won't go into detail about those horrors(as most of them are truely unspeakable), you can imagine how the player would feel witnessing these horrors firsthand, or at least a virtual version of them.
A game like that could not be compared to something like Street Fighter or Halo, because of everything it would be "saying", I personally would consider it more of an "art", just as a film about the same thing would be considered as art.

Interesting post, DukeT. You dismiss Braid at the same time as praising a game concept that may be based on Auschwitz. Yet one reading of Braid is that the game is a metaphor for the history and effects of the atomic bomb, a subject just as weighty as the holocaust.

Put simply, we cannot rate a game's worthiness on some outward appearance. You cannot judge a book by its cover. Many great works of art may seem at first glance to be 'about' something trivial, for example a still life painting, or a genre piece like a film noir.

You also cannot just shallowly dismiss things that even a twitch game does. The combination of hand/eye movement, and the representation of such onscreen, and the way which they make us feel, are not necessarily irrelevant or worthless in artistic terms. Just because a game is 'about' the holocaust does not make it any more worthy than a surreal masterpiece like Space Invaders or Marble Madness.

UPDATE.

http://chud.com/articles/articles/18961/1/SHOUT-AT-THE-DEVIL-VIDEO-GAMES-AS-ART-EDITION/Page1.html

"People keep bringing up the early days of cinema, but cinema got disrespected because it was seen as a low form for low class people. That was a value judgment on cinema, not a categorization judgment, which is what I'm trying to do. What people were slinging at cinema in the day is totally different from saying 'Games and Art Are Not The Same Thing.'"

Why are some of the responses aligned to the right?! AHHHHHHHH!

Well, that granted enough insight into that guy's mind to fairly validate everyone saying he has no idea what he is talking about. What a strange man. None of his responses were rational. The decision to even do a response-piece wasn't even rational. It doesn't seem like he himself knows what his own definition of art is.

I hate the "You have no idea what you're talking about" response on the internet.  If there's a less descript and more arrogant phrase I haven't heard it.

Thank you come again.

Here's my valid argument:

I care.

Also, that definition doesn't seem to have anything to do with concepts generally attributed to the word "art", so I can't accept it for the purposes of this argument.

Definition of art: anything observable that is man made that can cause an emotional response (internally) in the viewer or a change in their mood; A craft (man made) that someone does well or is of high quality

Anything that yields a product, and is man made can be considered art. There is almost this irrational idea that art 'should not' be defined and that video games 'should' be excluded from the definition for art. Art is a vague word (it has too many definitions).

What I don't get. Why do we call something art in the first place? Does calling something art mean that it is somehow better than what is not art? Why are paintings art but comics not art? Why are movies art but video games can't be? We edit games just like we edit movies. A lot of effort goes into making games. That would make it a craft or an art.

In what way are video games art:
"Because just like any other piece art they involve design, imagination, creativity, and some are just beautiful to see. Some of them even have wonderful stories to go along with your game play."

Blah blah blah I like food

"gam3r3OOO said:

Blah blah blah I like food

Wait, I don't know which side you're on. Do you think they are or aren't art? (And I replaced your text because it became a huge, one paragraph mess. Nothing against your post, just against the format it became.)"

What I don't get. Why do we call something art in the first place? Does calling something art mean that it is somehow better than what is not art?

Wow, this is a pretty interesting forum thread because i see what "Sarneckl" is trying to say, but i also see what everyone else is trying to say as well...but there is only one way to really come to a conclusion and that is what is "art". Sarneckl is not saying video games is not art but that, at the end of the day it is really just a movie because the actual game mechanics is like a tool which lead to the finished product which is conpleting the game. So if you were to watch a replay of everythng you just did in that whole game then your just watchin a movie (i think that what some of that article was saying?) But what happens if you were to play a game that never really ends like World of Warcraft and MMORPG's in general? Doesnt that make it an interactive world that never ends? An interactivity that ultimately depends on your decisions. WOW cant be a movie becuase there is no "final product" it just keeps evolving.

So dosen't that make it a unique form of art? plz give me your opinions on this. 

Even if that were true, video games would not be "just a movie", rather "very similar to a movie", and there is no basis for the argument that it can't be called art on those grounds.

It isn't true, though, that's a very simplistic description of a very small set of games. Even the most cinematic of games (like the Half-Life series) are not meant to be watched, they are meant to be played and interacted with. A big part of the experience is the attachment the player gets to the world that he's interacting with.

"In his article, I think Devin fails to acknowledge the importance of play in regards to video games. Play is how a game can convey its experience and illicit an emotion from the player. He points out the elements of a game such as graphics, music, and story, but fails to see how play brings them all together in a way that can't be achieved in another medium. To argue that play isn't the driving force of an artful game is to say that film isn't really art either, because if you leave out the editing and presentation, then it's nothing but a series of photographs shown in rapid succession. If you are going to evaluate whether or not something is art, you should look at it on its own terms, and you have to take in the entire package.*Comparing the level and purpose of the interactivity in games and in theatre is wrong. I've done interactive theatre, and it's nothing like playing a game, for any party involved. He also goes down the false path of saying that games are trying to become more like movies, which is only true if you look at a very narrow selection of games, blockbusters in particular. Bring more small games and indie games into the mix and you see how some of the most emotive games are also the least cinematic. I think if this guy had really taken some more time with Rez, Flower, Everyday Shooter, Braid, or Portal, then he might see that they have a lot to offer underneath the graphical surface, and that they can be fully experienced and appreciated only through play.*This reminds me of some criticism of Crackdown, basically that if you took out the Agility Orbs it'd just be a fairly weak shooter. Well, yeah dude, and if you take the fat out of milk then it's just like a white-colored water. Saying "if you take this integral part out of the thing, then it's not the thing anymore, and probably wasn't the thing to begin with" is such bullshit."

Hey guys, i looked up the definition of Art in the Oxford Dictionary ( a pretty old one published late 90's) and it described art as
"Human creative skill or its application. Branches of creative activity concerned with the production of imaginative designs, sounds, or ideas."

I think that's a pretty good definition of it and most definitions I've read about and heard of are pretty similar to this one. So if you agree with this definition doesn't that make Braid, Pixel Junk Eden or fallout 3 or Prince of Persia and so on, a form of art. Because there are games out there that can really mess with your head in a crazy cool kind of way that you cant experience in other mediums such as music or movies etc.    

"

This is my response to these people/threads now. There are many things that I disagree with in that article that I'm too lazy to address, so I'll just leave with the question "If this guy were writing this article in 1930, would he think 'cinema' was art?"

"

"Video games as a medium are capable of things no other media are capable of. Immeasurably powerful things. I think we'd all like to change the "games are trivial" attitude. As people begin to understand the potential of games as a medium, we can then begin to realize that potential. "

the easiest argument to make about art is that art is something created by the human mind, writing is an art, painting is an art, acting is an art, so most surely video games are an art.

@ xFRIGx

Yeah totally, and if you look at games that are quirky like the ones on PSN or Xbox live, it really comes to mind "how can this not be art?"

I wonder if the author intuitively sensed the weakness of his own argument, because he buries his reason for not considering videogames to be art halfway through the piece, then quickly moves on to try to disarm possibly counter-arguments.

The problem is that he makes two assertions upon which his whole piece is built that are quite weak. One is that videogames aren't art because they're made up of "rules" of a "game", and that's inherently anti-art, and the other is that videogames do not bring anything unique to the table as a medium because "interactivity" is nothing new.

The inspiration of all art is life; it is where we acquire a vocabulary of emotion--it creates a necessity of thought. Because we are living in a political world, we have political thoughts. Because we are living in a world of suffering, we know sadness. And at some point, we want to express that through our creations. That is where art is born. And I don't see how rules are inherently against this. Rules cannot express artistic thought? Really? Because every work of art has a rule system underneath it--in the technique used to produce it and world-view it conveys. Why is it any different for videogames? If anything, having an inherent "system" to artistic creation is one of the fundamentals to artistic creation that would preclude certain things from being art. And I should mention that it's perfectly legitimate to express chaos; but even that's a system. In a painting, the rule is that you can't represent anything, in a videogame, the rule would likely be that nothing can remain consistent (the control scheme changes every time you press a button, for instance). There's artistic potential in a videogame designed around politics, in which accepting money from lobbyists is required for you to gain any sort of foothold in Washington; by creating a game system, you have made an artistic statement that politics in America is inherently corrupt.

As for interactivity not being new, look at any art form, and the same could be said to be true to the same extent. The editing example is nonsensical, because it is entirely conceivable to film a work of artistic merit without editing it at all. Would it be as good as it could be? Unlikely, just as how removing a film of all its sound would probably not improve it; but for certain effects, it could be a conceivably wise choice of direction, and therefore hinging the definition of film's art on it is absurd and unwise. Not that films were the only medium to offer editing. Comics existed a lot longer than film; you can edit those. The difference? Not to the same extent. There is a clear difference between the level of interactivity that a videogame provides and what other mediums, even at their most interactive, provide. It's as big as the difference between shouting at a guitarist to play a certain song, and being that guitarist deciding whether to play the song, and if so, how to play it. Videogames are cause and effect all the way through; theatre, for instance, is ultimately about observation, even if you're given some say in what you're going to observe. Is it conceivable that a play be so thoroughly interactive that it approaches a videogame for number of choices? Sure, but then we're left with the quandry of whether it's still theatre (or whatever else) or if it's become a game at that point.

To me, this is just another person who has yet to play a videogame that is truly artistic (because really, there are few, and even those few are flawed in their artistic aspect), and therefore wants to offer up a logical argument as to why the form as a whole is not. If you keep playing shooters, JRPGs, puzzle games, action-adventure titles and strategy games, you're going to be hit over the head repeatedly with the sensation that what you are playing is not artistically moving. Or, you can play the handful of games that have an emotional impact, even if it's clumsily done, and believe firmly that videogames are art. The simple truth is that videogames are art, and that there isn't a game designer today that is making art out of this medium. There are some that have advanced the medium in that direction (ICO, BioShock, Braid, Beyond Good and Evil and The Last Express are all games that have pushed the artistic qualities of interactivity), but all of them are held back by primitive conceptions of gameplay, and what it means. It's a frustrating argument for me, because the people who are "on my side" will often cite Metal Gear Solid... when I'm ready to point to that game as one of the primary examples of how immature the medium is artistically.

But if you're looking for a less technical, more intuitive and subjective argument, I'll offer a very simple one. I'm an artist, in the classical sense of the word (I feel a need to express my feelings and thoughts through creation), and my artistic impulses, as strong as they are, are pushing me towards videogames (and music too, but that's another story). It would be awfully odd for an artist like myself to be compelled to move towards a medium that is not inherently artistic, when I can envision myself as an author, screenwriter or pure musician just as easily. I also believe that traditional videogame design is death to an attempt at creating art, because by its nature, it undermines the ability to express a spectrum of human thought and feeling. That doesn't change the potential of the medium itself.

Some things to address from the last few posts, like the dictionary defintion of art etc, I'll let Devin say it because I have no problem admitting he's much better with words...

Devin replies: Your argument seems to be that video games are art because we get to decide how to interact with them. I don't see how this is any different from any other art. You can hang a painting in any direction, or put it in a dark room and only enjoy the textures. You can watch a movie in slow motion, or reverse, or enjoy it as a series of still frames or as audio. Every art form is interactive, as we, the audience, must interact with it in our own way. I will get something very different out of a book than you will because I interacted with it in my own way.

Devin replies:There's an anger out there that white paint on a canvas is art but Halo isn't. This, to me, reads as one part ignorance of art (my guess is that most of the people who want video games as art have no actual interest in art and rarely go to art galleries/shows) and one part desire for validation.

Devin replies: This is the most common reply I got. There's a lot of people who feel that an amorphous statement like 'more than the sum of its parts' is enough to make a case, and I frankly don't think it is. Even if elements of the aggregated arts that make up a video game are art, those elements are the art, not the game. The visual design, the narrative, the music are art. The structure holding them together isn't. Just throwing a whole bunch of art on my bed doesn't make my bed art.

By the way, I don't have a lot of time for dictionary definitions of art. They're useless in a debate like this, because they serve only to give a baseline understanding of the word, free of all context. As I said in my original editorial, defining art is a fool's errand at the best of times.