I really don't want to have a games as art debate because I thought we were past this, the debate has been over for a while. There is no question that games (yes all games) are art. You are completely missing the point about what it means to be art. Something being qualified as art has nothing to do with its success as a work of art.

Games are an art form. Some have more artistic merit than others, and most have very little artistic merit, but that doesn't make the medium anything but an art form. Just because Michael Bay films are the most popular movies doesn't mean films are not art, even the shitty ones. You can't say "Well, I think Braid and Journey are art but not Call of Duty"; that's not how it works.

The way you talk about certain games "being close to art" is just totally not understanding what being art means. Something is either art or it isn't, and being art doesn't mean it's well made or deeply profound. There is vastly more shitty art in every artistic medium than there is great art, but quality has no bearing on the fact that it is still art.

Just because you don't personally consider something to be art doesn't mean it isn't.

I don't know if I want to call games "art" yet. However, if they are art, or are to become art, then an embrace of the interactive part is necessary. Even you said that the disparate parts of a game are a form of art but no game has, as a whole, become art. What can you do with mechanics? What can you express through them, and what can players feel through their actions? The "game" part is integral to the art form, what's holding it back is the attitude that the game part is the least respectable. As someone who has courted the idea of becoming a game developer several times, I DESPISEthis notion. What do you have without gameplay?

Also, if your definition of art is "something that brings out emotions", well, Journey definitely brought something out of me. It used its interactivity to carry the player through a world and showed a story visually. Its mechanics and gameplay are simple but the developers get a lot of mileage out of them. It made me feel wonder at the world before me, curiosity in exploring it and coming to my own conclusions about it, fear when those flying dragon-things first appeared, and even a desire to help and travel with whatever companion had showed up in my world (and all non-verbally, too!) I'd say that's art, and it simply could not be the same without the core interactive part.

EDIT: One thing I forgot to express - you cannot take a still picture from a form of art that requires motion and point to it and say "Does this look like art"? No, of course not, it looks like a screenshot. What is the rest of it like?

I think all of those things are art...even your blog. I think it's fair to label anything that features any creative input 'art'. Art can be art even if it's ugly, boring, frivolous, trite, lazy, etc...

I believe art is self-expression purely for the sake of self-expression.

That makes most filmmakers, musicians, writers, sculptors, and painters workmen rather than artists, because their main focus is financial or professional gains rather than the creation or recreation of ideas.

I believe this is a harsh view, and I expect most people to not share it.

There are plenty of movies, games, music, and traditional art pieces that I enjoy that fall outside of my definition of art. A dining room table may not be art but it can still be a useful and beautiful thing.

Games are Art in the sense that they are a spectacle to be marveled at. Just like all "artistic" mediums, they can elicit powerful emotional experiences or be something completely shallow and depth less. Art, at least as I perceive it, doesn't solely mean just a pretty picture or presentation. It's not based solely on it's success or financial merit, It means something you can you can go to and take something away from. It's not one absolute thing. Art is whatever you make of it be that negative or positive. It's also extremely relative to one's own point of view. What I consider a treasure, you might consider trash.

In the end, I believe games are art and just because I believe that doesn't mean I want every game to be Dear Esther or Heavy Rain. I don't expect every game to be revelatory or existential. Watching movies, listening to music, reading books and playing games are all hobbies to enjoy on a variety of levels. I can still apply an artistic connotation to them even without examining them on a deeper level. The very fact that they are the result of self expression makes them artistic achievements.

@ll_exile_ll: I'm not really sure the debate is over, just less heated. For me, simulations of actions that appear in reality, be they pulling a gun trigger to get a head shot, holding a companions hand or walking along a beach, aren't any more artistic than performing those actions in real life. I would also argue that just because a game has rules, mechanics and systems, doesn't give it any more artistic merit than a game of chess, poker or twister.

I also don't really think that just because a game has a story and music- both art forms- means that the medium is artistic, only that it has elements of things that are art. Just because you can create art within a medium doesn't mean that every use of the medium is inherently artistic either. Casablanca is a work of art, but that doesn't mean that a recorded cooking program or news broadcast is just because they're both recorded.

I absolutely believe that videogames can be an emotionally enriching form of expression that can allow us experiences we wouldn't otherwise have from perspectives we wouldn't normally perceive but for me that doesn't change the points i've already enumerated here.

But who cares? That doesn't diminish your experiences with any game.

I may or may not agree with you depending on just what the hell you're saying. If you're saying that the interaction between the player and their environment is important to the narrative, then hell yes, I'll agree with you. If you're saying that the competitive (or pseudo-competitive, for single player games) nature and "fun" part is important to the experience, I'd definitely be more reluctant.

There is no such thing as art.

I think you're onto the real question, and this quote from Eberts blog just punctuates it:

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

He draws a very clear line between what is and isn't a game, yet we see so many products being released these days labeled videogames that doesn't fit his definition. They aren't games about rules, points and objectives, they are about the journey. You don't win them, you finish them, just like you finish reading a book. So ye, the question isn't really if videogames are art, it's "Are videogames games?". Which is another can of worms ofc, but things would've been much simpler if we actually started drawing some clearer lines. Unfortunately it will never ever happen due to marketing and business reasons.

(also, his point about validation is very much spot on.)

I agree with that.

Furthermore people are elevating the concept of art beyond what it deserves. Art is a scam slackers made up to get laid and paid. Good craftsmanship >> art for art's sake. Lazy and unskilled "artists" will of course disagree.

Journey for instance - great craftsmanship, solid visual design, coherent design elements, a pretty standard death-struggles-rebirth theme. Journey without the craftsmanship would have gone unnoticed.

Interesting read. The fact you don't refer to the Apple ad as art says something about yourself. I'm currently taking a Graphic Design course, and my tutor would chew your ear off if you said that to him. :P It ultimately depends on what you define as "art". Some people take it to mean any creation, others only label things that have been allowed a freedom of expression as "art", and others will only deem things of a high-standard as "art".

I don't really know where I stand on the argument. Sometimes I take "art" to mean any creation, therefore all video-games. In other situations I have a similar opinion to your own in which I think some video-games are incapable of meeting what I think of as art.

I'd say that both are equally valid ways of making a video game art, if they aren't one and the same. Isn't the competition with the things around you considered interacting with the world in a sense? If you kill a bear in Skyrim, that's a form of interaction with your environment. It might only be a small detail of your character's narrative, but it's there.

This must all sound kind of muddy. What I'm trying to express is that underlying mechanics of a video game are the most important parts. The differences of each weapon or the nuances of each enemy or the way the character moves, or maybe the way you have to plan out social links in Persona if you want to get them all or the mastery of gameplay concepts that you must have to solve all of the puzzles in Portal. Or, in Journey, how you must make your own way across the desert by figuring out all of the jumping, gliding, and environment navigating that you have to do.

Well, yes, games are "experiences". They can often deliver a story, whether it's a concrete one delivered through dialog and details around the world or one where the player talks about the ways that the experience affected them. But the part where you're interacting with the world is the most important part.

That's the part I'm definitely in agreement with. Every little piece counts, for better or for worse.

Is it though ? Over the last few years I've found myself playing more and more games where I'm not actually enjoying the interaction part, but only keep on playing because of the other stuff. Not that I disagree with you, I do enjoy games that focus on the interaction much more. But there's a very clear trend in the business lately where it's ok to make games that have "functional" gameplay, as long as they have story, characters or settings to keep your attention.

I think this is a very interesting blog and I really thoughtful way of approaching this question. This answer comes closest to my opinion

It all does come down to what we define as art. I don't think it can be as simple as anything with freedom of expression or creativity, otherwise cutlery is art, as are clothes and food. I am quite attracted to your definition that art has to be something which is created to elicit emotion and that inducing this response has to be its sole point. This seems to be the essence of what art should be, something which does not exist for any practical or even pleasurable function, but whose aim is to provoke and emotional and intellectual response. For a game to exist as art in this sense it almost has to be not a game, or the mechanics of the experience have to exist only to heighten this response. The gameplay should not be there to be enjoyed but to permit interaction with the experience, with the aim of strengthening the artistic response. I find this idea quite compelling.

I am struggling to think of a game which would qualify as art under this definition. I would maybe say The Walking Dead, only because the gameplay is so broken it doesn't count, but I am being flippant. It probably doesn't help that am mostly a console player. Maybe Papers Please counts in this respect, as the gameplay mechanics are all in service of the overall purpose, but I need to think about this further. Now I need to get back to GTA5, which if it is art is of the lowest kind - and all the more enjoyable for it :)

@mannymar: I think this ultimately comes down to whether you consider books and photography Art.

I won't spam a tonne of videos links, but I think it would also be worth checking out some of the Extra Credits stuff. Particularly the mechanics as metaphors video. Those guys do a better job than I could at talking about games as a medium.

@ares42: Yeah validation is something we all want when it comes to things we love, likewise it's tough to see something you love get hammered by everybody for all kinds of reasons.

@beachthunder: You almost made me blush with that statement, and I know my blog is a bit lazy and trite. I also agree that quality doesn't necessarily equal art. Especially when you got dudes getting $15,000 grants to pee in jars with crosses in them.

@mlarrabee:Yeah, I kind of with you on that definition.

@video_game_king: We're on same wavelength on this subject.

@sunbrozak: Funny thing you mention that about your Graphic Design course, when I was taking my graphic design course in college my professor brought the idea of "applied art" to the table when it came to that ad. Which he then proceeded to say, "It's art with a function, but it isn't really art." I guess that's where my current point of view of art started to form.

If you asked me if games were art when I was 22, I would've probably said yes. Now, over the years working on projects in and out of the games industry I've reached the point where I consider my contract work to be applied art, and my own personal stuff to have more artistic merit.

Also, I thank all you guys that have replied so far for being civil and such. Trust me when I say I respect all your points of view. The concept of art is not an easy thing to grasp and not everyone has the same definition of it. Also, hey if you think it's art by all means own it because you see something this jaded old fart doesn't and I'm glad you feel that strongly about it.

Although I'm not an art history major, I have to imagine an art history major would slap the shit out of you right now. For most of its history, art has served the practical purpose of demonstrating power.

A game that I can think of where I looked at it as art was El Shaddai.

Graphically the game was just aswome to witness. I found myself being relaxed and just taking in the atmosphere, and the music was fitting for the environments your placed in. Had an aswome good time playing this game, hell I've collected all the trophies and unlocked all costumes. I've learned all the combos and kicked all those Angels asses. I still hope to see a sequel one of these days, its got potential.

Like I said I am not entirely sure what art is exactly but I found the OP's concept attractive.

I am not sure exactly what you mean by demonstrating power. Do you mean the ability of some rich patron to show of their wealth or something? Whatever you mean I would have thought that this was a secondary characteristic, not something the artist had in mind when creating his work, unless I have misunderstood you. Care to elaborate/slap the shit out of me? :)

Yea, that's pretty much it. The only thing I'd add is that the artist had much less creative input than you'd like to believe. Why do you think medieval/Renaissance Europe has so many paintings of Jesus and the Virgin Mary and other such things? That shit was popular at the time.

So if I shit on Guernica does it cease to be art? I think Duchamp would say no.

You can also, look to Warhol's entire career Brillo Boxes. When an Artist creates Art with no "purpose", that happens to be identical to Art intended to advertise, is it somehow not art?

Those are rhetorical questions, because there really is no answer.

Art is not a thing, in itself. A painting can be art, a movie can be art, but you can never have a thing that is art not connected to something that can be experienced otherwise. So here is the point...

The word "Art" is a subjective description of anything one has had an emotionally communicative experience with. Calling something "Art" is completely reliant on an individual's interaction with the thing. It's not a discription of the media, so much as it is a description of the interaction. A painting in a gallery, or a urinal in a gallery, or anything anywhere are in no way inherently "Art" until one has an experience with them.

So the "are games art" argument is pointless. If you have an emotionally communicative experience with the Mona Lisa, or Pong, or a stop sign on the street, it becomes art.

Simple! Are we done now?

@joshwent: I tend to agree towards your general premise regarding art in general, but it sounds to me like the OP and some others are trying to discuss whether games can be "Fine Art". Just about anything created or manipulated by humankind can be considered "art", but our cultural understanding of value delineates art and Fine Art. So, usually, when this topic comes up regarding anything, games or otherwise, people are usually referring to the concept of Fine Art.

There can be an "art" to just about anything. There can be an art to commenting on a forum. But I wouldn't consider that a Fine Art in the historical context of what that means. I believe videogames do have the ability to be Fine Art. The question is more whether we have seen much good or significant Fine Art in videogames, and I am happy to say I think we have.

Only tangible things can be art, and since we live in a computer simulation that means everything is nothing, so nothing can be art. Now can't we go on with our AI routines and move past this compiling error?

The art wasn't created for the purpose of showing of someones wealth or power directly though. It is obviously a major concern to the person buying or commissioning the art but it means nothing if it is not a beautiful work. The artists desire is not to create something expensive, but something beautiful. Value will come, or not (no-one paid shit for Van Gogh's work in his lifetime) depending on the world's subjective view of the work, what is important is the intention of the artist.

EDIT:However I am not entirely convinced of this. Maybe whether something is art also has something to do with the point where the artist's intentions meet the perspective of the viewer. It is not something I am certain of at all but the OP's theory is very interesting.

@truthtellah: Yeah, I was thinking more on the idea of "Fine Art" rather than "Applied Art." I might just edit the blog post to reflect that.

@joshwent: You know as I typed that statement that exact image came to mind.

Yes games are art. Most games are bad art. This isnt a difficult concept I dont think.

Most of what I think has already been said here and said well: I agree that video games are absolutely art and I know this because I experience them and value them in the same way I value any art I connect with, no matter the form it gets to me. It's totally valid if the OP doesn't consider them art, but you don't get to pick what other people connect with.

I just want to add, huge respect for Ebert, but it's clear that he didn't experience video games as art. That's fine. To declare they aren't art and presume everyone has the same experience is ignorant and arrogant.

But this is where everybody gets tripped up. When you use qualitative terms like "good" and "significant", you leave the Art-ness of something open for question. Art is not reliant on whether one considers something significant, because as I said above, it's a term relating to the experience of a thing.

Super Mario Brothers might not be expressing any "significant" emotional concepts, but if I get that from it while playing, it becomes art. The "cultural value" of something, as you said, is entirely separate from that.

@mannymar I am curious. Do you consider photography, architecture, movies, or books Fine Art?

Art as a concept is the intangible. It functions entirely on a concept created by man, and is highly subjective. This is not a yes or no situation. I will say though, that if you believe one game to be art, then you have no right to claim that others can't be. It's all or nothing.

You could actually argue that advertising is the most successful art movement in the history of mankind. E.g. a commercial for McDonald's will make a person hungry and give them an impulse to go out into the world and buy a Big Mac, whereas a Picasso will leave most people confused. I'm not saying commercials control our actions, more that they're really effective pieces of "art". Like the Nike logo suggests movement and athleticism and for just a simply marking, it sure has come to signify a whole lot.

The better analogy to make is to compare video games and sports. Is the act of playing basketball art? In a broad sense I would say no, though it's fair to argue it's "performance art".

Again, I'm not disputing the art-ness of things imbued with artistic meaning. My laptop can become art in a certain context. That's not what I am arguing. I am suggesting that there is a time-honored understanding of the difference between art and Fine Art. The OP and others clearly seem to be discussing Fine Art and not simply the broader concept of art as a way of experiencing some things.

So, I would agree in what the concept of art is, but we're attempting to discuss Fine Art and whether videogames are a Fine Art. I would say that they are, and within Fine Art, we might have our own feelings on the relative quality of different works.

Of course video games are art, ALL video games too. Not just some. If you're saying Journey is art but Call of Duty isn't you're a snobby pretentious dickwad.

Film is art. Almost everyone agrees on that. Adam sandlers "Jack and Jill" is just as much an artpiece as Citizen Kane. The difference is, ones fucking awful and the other is widely considered a masterpiece.

Art doesn't have to be deep, meaningful, emotional or anything like that to be art. It can be as silly as a childs drawing of a dinosaur eating a car or a video game about military dudes killing other military dudes.

As @nicked just said, Advertising is art. It's probably the most common artform we see in everyday life. Sure its all made with a purpose to sell things to you. It's still art though.

@clonedzero: I never said Journey was art or rather Fine Art. Just that it's almost there. Fine art is really defined by the first sentence you specified in your third paragraph. There is a big difference between creating fine art and applied art.

Dang it let me go edit this blog to reflect this.

I think it's entirely what we call Video Games might actually include both games (well established, very common in quantity) and fine art (relatively younger and rapidly growing) but while both are distinctly different the differences between the two are much more nebulous than in other creative media.

Just another way in which that Video Games is such an imperfect term.

Art theory is bullshit. Especially when you get into distinctions between fine art and commercial art. I went to art school for four years. I wrote several lengthy essays on this stuff. It's all fluff. Nobody cares. Nobody should.

With enough bullshit you could "elevate" the definition of any nonsensical indie game to some arbitrary pinnacle of aesthetics, certain games probably already suit your definition of fine art, multi million dollar games aren't going to deliver you fine art any more than Micheal Bay will.

What pisses me off about this dumb argument is that for some reason games seem to need to be "good" art before they are acknowledged as an art form at all, yet the people making Transformers get to sit next to everybody else at the Oscars.

See my point?

I'm also very annoyed by how poorly the English language serves this discussion. "Art" is typically used to refer to visual arts by definition in English (in most other languages when you say "a piece of art", the listener's mind doesn't immediately jump to painting, and that's not the standard for "artist", either). In fact, in some languages "artist" is by default a performance artist (that is, an actor or a comedian), which smooths out this talk quite a bit.

The truth is that games are an art closer to music than to painting. The artistry is abstract in gaming, because it's applied to the gameplay mechanics. The OP is right, elsewhere in games art is instrumental, games are a new art form in that they create feelings through a ruleset managed by a computer. A ruleset is always abstract, and, like music, it is more evocative than communicative. That means that people tend to discuss this issue entirely on the wrong level. I don't care if Journey is pretty. That is irrelevant to it being an artistic expression. It is unquestionably an artistic expression because it defines the relationship between two strangers through their managed interactions. But, perhaps more importantly, a pure entertainment piece like Saints Row is art because its rules are meant to be evocative of freedom and empowerment. It's a power fantasy, but not any less artistic at being that than your average Indiana Jones movie.

Well played, you got your conflagration all up in my convolution.

Eye of the beholder and whatnot.

It's not any more imperfect than "movies", which refers both to entertainment fluff and to arthouse pieces (and to documentaries, too); "television", which includes reality shows and game shows; "books", which includes textbooks and technical manuals; "music", which includes ad jingles and elevator music or "architecture", which includes copy-pasted apartment buildings.

I hate this impetus to try and separate arthouse games from commercial games by name, as if that was going to empower one type of games or appease the critics of the other.

Talking as someone who was exposed to a humongous modern art exhibition (Biennale in Cheongju, South Korea) a couple of days ago (seriously, I'm shitting modern art right now, it took up two whole floors of a huge, abandoned cigarette factory) the problem with modern art is that absolutely fucking anything can be called art. Also, as someone who's studied a bit of art, I realize this is a pretty ignorant thing to say. Many of the pieces were definitely evocative, stunning, brilliant and just-about-every-pretentious-adjective-you-can-think-of. Some of them were just fucking lumps of stone or brick or smashed pottery and frankly, looked like something someone just forgot to clean up.

So, why can't video games be art too? Just because games have, y'know, gameplay, doesn't exclude them from being art. And for that matter, there are some games that really, really stretch the term "gameplay". Look at something like Electroplankton for the DS, or that one I haven't played Prometheus(?) where the gameplay is really secondary to the experience.

There's also multimedia art, which is kind of a catch-all term for any artist who works in a variety of media, but some respected artists have made creations that verge on being video games. I would provide examples, but it was like ten years ago that I was into this stuff and the names of any of it eludes me. I do remember the existence of a few awesome, interactive web pages that were making waves in the art world back in the early 00s when Flash based websites were hotshit.

how the fuck was journey so close yet so far? lol

this is the conversation that happens between people who dont understand art, and have some skewed left brain originated definition of what it 'is'..

There is a very clear distinction though. A "fluff movie" and an arthouse piece are both expressions of the creators imagination. They are both stories told the way the creator designed them, they both have clear direction of what they are supposed to be.

When it comes to games however. You have the "experience" games that follow the traditional concepts of art, but then you have the "game" games which is the complete opposite. They don't have a designed story, they don't have any clear direction. They are rules and laws and leaves the user the power to direct. They allow us to create art ourselves (if we want to), but they aren't art in and of themselves.

Take a game like Minecraft. By itself there is no expression there. You cannot just play the game and follow the guidelines (in the same way you have to actually read a book or watch a movie) and you'll be treated to a wonderful or exciting experience. It's all up to the player to manifest the expression.

Is art video games?

Your mistake is generalization. Should we discount the whole medium "film" as a means to produce art just because of that huge amount of movies that are not exactly art but merely cheap entertainment? Your argument is basically "Call of Duty exists, so videogames can't be art", which is flatout wrong. There is a rising number of "games" that provide exactly the kind of interactive experience you're demanding.

I fail to see a distinction between fine art and applied art. All art, almost all human creative efforts, are designed to enact an emotion, even if the emotion is as simple as joy at a problem resolved.

You can draw an image, and that's art. You can write a song or record a series of sounds, and that's art. You can write words that make up a narrative and a story and this is art. You can perform a character with voice and movement, this is art.

But as soon as all these artistic elements are put together, suddenly it's no longer art. If I organize and script a series of events to happen for the benefit of an audience, it's art, unless I script these events in a playable environment, even if I've decided the rules of the environment so as to best entertain and emotionally touch the audience (even if the emotion is as simple as 'this is pretty' or 'this is cool'). How does painting an image or constructing an architectural facade qualify as art, but as soon as the image and the building are digital it's no longer art. I'm not buying.

You've said that you don't believe art needs a purpose, that it doesn't need functional value, to be art. You are right. But it also does not cease being art when it does have a purpose, even if that purpose is to entertain or to provide some benefit other than the emotional growth of the person. A knife is designed to stab, that is its purpose; yet we know of ceremonial blades, or artisan work that is designed to look beautiful or threatening or farcical, and we recognize it as being art in addition to the actual functional value of the knife. The purpose of food is sustenance, we still recognize the craft in preparing food, that it's designed for our enjoyment on more levels than satiating nutritional needs. We accept that there is an artistic, aesthetic quality merely to the placing of furniture within interior spaces, hence interior designers. That the placemen of furniture has a functional value, has a purpose, does not comment on the subjectve emotional reactions of those presented with a well-designed room.

Art is that which is created to inspire an emotional reaction. It is not merely those things that you cannot pin a functional value on in addition to their aesthetic or cathartic value. Fun is in fact an emotion. The industrial design behind a fun toy, the software design behind fun gameplay interactions, the construction of a useful, beautiful staircase is every much an art as the technique behind a beautiful brush stroke or the erudition of a novel in any language or a creative improvisation in jazz. In fact, I hold the kind of cultural elitism that says entertainment products are not art to be alongside those of every era who made claims of the illegitimacy of a form compared to those they are biased towards. You realize that for centuries, English was considered a backwoods trade language only suitable for merchants or farmers, the playwrights of the world spoke Romance languages, and you would be right alongside them laughing at the feeble attempts of Geoff Chaucer to write his silly little Canterbury Tales in an illegitimate medium. Even though without Chaucer we would never have had Shakespeare and Marlowe, without them we wouldn't have Scott, Austen, Percy, and so on. Realize people looked down on 'nigger music' for decades because it wasn't considered a legitimate medium, the idea of there being any artistic creativity involved in writing a blues song in 1933 would be roundly criticized, by this exact 'standard' of art appreciation.

Video games and designing gameplay _are_ art forms. As much as drawing, cooking, sculpting, composing, building, lighting, dancing, writing. Art is not relegated merely to the most passive consumption of new ideas, it can be as active and involving of the audience as anything else.

Play the opening of Resident Evil. Button through the opening and get to the sequence where you walk down the hallway. Everything about this scene is crafted to create an emotional reaction on the part of the player. The construction of the hallway, the placement of tables, the cinematography of the fixed camera (which leaves the window in the foreground as the player moves deeper into the shot), the timing of the howling from outside, the sudden sharp crack of the glass as the dog leaps through, the sudden rise of the schizophrenic music, the design behind the camera change as you turn the corner deeper in the room, the addition of a second threat as another dog jumps into the room, the attack pattern and damage capabilities of the dogs, the player character's control methods and average running speed, the options presented to the player. Experience this moment and then tell me how all the elements that went into its creation were not artistic, were not designed to inspire an emotional reaction, even down to gameplay. And then I'd like to know the reason why it is not art. Is it because Capcom sold Resident Evil for 49.95 that year? Is it because they based it on previous games like Alone in the Dark and Sweet Home? Is it because the player having control prevents an authored experience? In order to see the game to its completion it is at least necessary to witness the dogs leaping through the windows, even if the author leaves whether or not Jill gets mauled by the dogs up to the audience. What reason makes the Dog Scare from the original Resident Evil not a piece of art?

Yup. It's really hard for me to understand why some gaming enthusiasts still try to marginalize the art that they are probably most involved in.

The distinction of "Fine Art" was for centuries not a description of a functional vs. non-functional object (like people are arguing about here), but more of a social class distinction of the level of intelligence needed to be able to "understand" what was presented. "Fine Art" was the domain and possession of the wealthy. Sure, peasants had their wood carvings and religious icons and whatever, but it would have never been considered fine art by the elite, and would have certainly been shunned by galleries and critics. (Most of that stuff can now be found in galleries and is written about by critics, by the way.)

And these arbitrary social strata distinctions carry over still. "Erotica" is the domain of the upper class, while "pornography" is consumed by the dirty masses. It's all nonsense. And trying to find a way to reinvigorate the "discussion" is completely disregarding the point that has been proven by the last century of Art. As I pointed out above, Duchamp and Warhol did all the work for us already.

We've grown up as a culture. Games are art, too. Stop it!

@joshwent said:

@mannymar said:

I mean a toilet is a toilet, no matter how nice it looks you still use that mofo to shit in.

So if I shit on Guernica does it cease to be art? I think Duchamp would say no.

You can also, look to Warhol's entire career Brillo Boxes. When an Artist creates Art with no "purpose", that happens to be identical to Art intended to advertise, is it somehow not art?

Those are rhetorical questions, because there really is no answer.

Art is not a thing, in itself. A painting can be art, a movie can be art, but you can never have a thing that is art not connected to something that can be experienced otherwise. So here is the point...

The word "Art" is a subjective description of anything one has had an emotionally communicative experience with. Calling something "Art" is completely reliant on an individual's interaction with the thing. It's not a discription of the media, so much as it is a description of the interaction. A painting in a gallery, or a urinal in a gallery, or anything anywhere are in no way inherently "Art" until one has an experience with them.

So the "are games art" argument is pointless. If you have an emotionally communicative experience with the Mona Lisa, or Pong, or a stop sign on the street, it becomes art.

Simple! Are we done now?

The Duchamp Effect. I couldn't agree with you more, sir.