Bioshock Infinite

[Tantalus]

Watch out guys we got a shakespeare here

Dying.

They can't be art, don't be silly.

[Siva]

How can a video game be anything BUT art?

[Aidan]

art

/ärt/

Noun

The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture,...: "the art of the Renaissance"
Works produced by such skill and imagination.

[Clancy Stein]

I see viedeogames as an artform because they evoke ideas... like art just does. The beauty of something artistic is the aesthetic lure to retain your attention to it, and thus express more through the captivation of the senses.

Problem is that games focus on looking good rather than being games.

Well it takes some taste to discern the shiny shallow commercial product with an actual piece of mind. A game that has replay value for being fun and has the depth to engage you is just as artful a creation as a film or album that is worthy of your collection.

Though I might be barking up the wrong tree if the only thing worth replaying to you is multiplayer. But a game with great mechanics, realistic AI, clever writing, an excellent soundtrack, talented voice acting, and spectacular graphics does an artform make. If its imaginitive and immersive and not something that puts you in a trance because it's playing itself for you or cuz it's a mindless multiplayer shooter you just have to gain muscle memory to play some people can appreciate that. It's all taste really.

[Tantalus]

There's nothing profound or revealing about a bloody video game. There are rules that you stick by and it's supposed to be about you having fun. In a lot of instances, it's about becoming loyal to the franchise and buying extra stuff related to the game. In that case, it's commercial exploitation, not art.

Any attempts at an art game become a self-masturbatory goo fest between people that wear fedoras and tweed jackets.

But so what? Games can be incredibly engaging, meaningful, fun, emotional without being characterised as art. Just because a game looks really pretty and has characters that don't say "SHIT YEAH!" doesn't mean it's a piece of art. Similarly, I could be really fuckin' emotionally engaged in a game of Monopoly, but I wouldn't call it art. There's a prime objective of entertainment, and if that's the objective, then it cannot be art.

I genuinely don't think Irrational Games wanted to suggest Infinite was a piece of art, it was retard fans that like to give it this ethereal meaning when really it's a game about shooting people in the face with a storyline.

EDIT: let me just clarify by saying that visual styles and music in games can have artistic qualities or be art in themselves (visual styles somewhat less), but the MECHANICS of a video game cannot be art. AI programming is not art, shooting is not art, jumping on platforms to reach a goal isn't art, as a whole interactivity inside the norms of a video game cannot be art.

[Clancy Stein]

You either get it or you don't, I find. If the central idea is lost on the audience because of the context or the delivery being too distracting from the point, then the target demographic, or "the retards" as you put it, will be the only party inspired. This typically has little reception from one sided thinkers.

[Tantalus]

I tend to think of art as a vivisection of the artist, exposing something profound about themselves or how they see something in the world; not as someone who wants to paint a pretty picture, or make lovely music.

I know what I 'get', okay? To me, games can never be art. Pacman isn't art, Tetris isn't art, Bioshock Infinite (a game ultimately based around completing objectives and shooting people) isn't art. Don't talk down to me like you're some connoisseur.

As Hideo Kojima has said in interviews about this very point: "To me, games are a collaborative art, or a synthesis of various things—technology, story, and art. I think games take a lot of these various elements and combine it into a whole. But unlike traditional art or music, it’s not something where the creator’s vision can be conveyed completely 100 percent to the user. It’s something that has to go through the medium and it’s something that has limitations within the scope of the service that’s being provided to the consumer. In that respect, I still don’t think games are maybe not fully art...To put it in perspective, the service game creators provide is kind of like Disneyland—a setting for players to have fun in. If you look at each part of that service, break down the parts, then you’ll see that each part is comprised of artistic elements. But on a whole, it is more of a service than an art."

[Clancy Stein]

As for series, the more commercial success they get the difference in obligation to the development. The first titles usually have the most creative integrity in wanting to make a good idea with meaningful intimations make a difference with a truly unique experience, the likes of which don't appear on the subsequent contracts made just for biased fanboys and suckers with no taste.

Whatever you can appreciate.

[Siva]

imma delete this post because the topic gives me a headache

[Clancy Stein]

It is more of a service NOW, because it's an industry. It's not a rule, though, that every group project that gets published must therefore not be art. There are such things as collaberations between people sharing a vision. It's much rare and deserves recognition when it's pulled off.

I'm not generalizing all visual media as art.

[James]

Silent Hill 2 is the closest game to art.

[Clancy Stein]

imma delete this post because the topic gives me a headache

Yes yes, better everybody agree lest we fall into a discussion.

[clyzm]

I disagree with all y'all nincompoops

Every single video game is art

Even We Love Katamari

But the truest paragon of video game art is the first playthrough of [spoiler]deus ex[/spoiler]

[Siva]

imma delete this post because the topic gives me a headache

Yes yes, better everybody agree lest we fall into a discussion.

What are you trying to say?

To me the issue is so open and shut that I'd rather watch this discussion than flail in it just to posit my own significance? c'mon m8 gimme half a chance im just tryin to moderate myself

[Clancy Stein]

I feel a lot of hostility towards any opinion here that breaches the consensus.

[clyzm]

I feel a lot of hostility towards any opinion here that breaches the consensus.

Pfft who you gonna get hostility from

What consensus

This ain't no Legion from ME2

This is the alpha forums

We're all bros here talking bout the vidya its all good man speak your mind

[Psychotic]

The answer to all your questions is pretty simple, really.

Art is subjective. So are the meanings behind pieces of art.

Agree to disagree.

[Tantalus]

It's good to talk about it. Just agreeing to disagree gets nothing done; although it does detract HUGELY from the original post.

Deus Ex will never be art to me, but that doesn't detract away from it in the slightest. To me, calling a video game art is like calling an apple an orange. It's just wrong, yet it doesn't detract away from the deliciousness of an apple.

[Siva]

It's good to talk about it. Just agreeing to disagree gets nothing done; although it does detract HUGELY from the original post.

Deus Ex will never be art to me, but that doesn't detract away from it in the slightest. To me, calling a video game art is like calling an apple an orange. It's just wrong, yet it doesn't detract away from the deliciousness of an apple.

Fuck it I have to ask

Games are comprised of two things, art, and code.

If the art in the game is not art then what is it

[Tantalus]

Games don't necessarily have art in them at all.

The elements: music, graphical design, landscapes, people etc. CAN have artistic elements.

However, when they are put into a game, a product designed for the enjoyment of a user and based around the norms of a video game (objectives, rules, controls, mechanics, challenge etc.), it becomes a service, a method of enjoyment. Art is not restricted by rules of design and serve no other purpose other than itself (yeah I'm a snob).

Example: Bastion.


Cinematic of the game.
The design of the character, the stages, they all may have an artistic element to them.


Music track that comes in about half-way through the game (no spoilers). It may have an artistic element to it.


Gameplay of the game. The playing of the game (the whole purpose of it) is not art.

[Siva]

things

Okay, to take something that is often barely regarded as art as an example:

How can writing have an 'artistic element' to it? Writing is art. Even the letters you compose to your grandmother are art. You attempt to channel your subjective reality onto paper in the most pleasing form possible to her, through the medium of an artform, specifically, writing.

Hypothetically let's say a game developer managed to create his very own game, with no intentions behind any of the artforms he deployed to deliver the raw functionality of the game itself. Despite this actually being impossible, let's say he managed it.

Would the game even be worth playing? Imagine he uses a giant penis for a gun, for he has little time and doesn't want to look beyond the models folder labelled 'dicks' on his hard drive, as he feels the shooting mechanics are solid and the visuals, description and sounds of the gun are completely irrelevant. Do you not think people would call him on that? Could he even take the game seriously himself?

Art is not restricted by rules of design and serve no other purpose other than itself

You can append definitions to art if you like, that doesn't make them true.

To make a game of the highest quality you possibly can -- which every developer should be doing (unless they were to be doing the opposite to prove some kind of point, which would be a highly artistic endeavour) you require art direction. Thus, games are comprised of art, as well as code. If you really want to delve into it, one can argue code too is art in certain instances.

This is why whenever I see anyone attempting to say 'games are not art' it gives me the biggest fucking headache. Such a thing is actually impossible, and even if it were, it would not be conducive to a good game.

In fact, to me games are one of the highest forms of art. It in itself combines various different artforms to create something attempting to be more than the sum of it's own parts. Games might even be above art completely as a result -- but you cannot divorce the two.

[James]

RE: Gameplay/Entertainment cannot be art thing; is not the skill of a player who has made the game his own not a practice or performance of art? With skill we usually refer to such things as evaluative rather than a descriptive sense: to commend their performance, not to describe their profession. But it is quite impressive what some players can do in videogame mediums, as with sports or martial arts.

I don't know, my perspective of art seems to lean towards how things are made and the work went into it. Rather than look at a piece (or finishing a videogame) I'd take great interest into how it was made and try to piece together why and how they made the works they did. Maybe it's that I'm interested in doing the same and look up to them, but I think that influence is important to me and succeeds in getting me interested in these fictional works.

There's also no doubt that the majority of videogame industry is for making money through entertainment, but there were an abundance of games in my youth that cared into pushing the practice further with each title and developed such perfect titles like "Super Metroid" that I would hold dear to my heart until the day I pass away. But the romancing of videogames = art argument is a fucking joke. God damn I am frustrated, more so than you over these pretentious stupid fucking games that come out. Videogames should be entertainment first before anything else, if you don't reach this goal, even at bare minimal to please the everyday crowd then you have failed to make a game and should stop titling it as such.

Let's just boil it down to this, I agree with Jake; videogames as art is as much as carpentry is to art.

[Siva]

Let's just boil it down to this, I agree with Jake; videogames as art is as much as carpentry is to art.

I agree with everything you said bar this part. Not because it's wrong, but because I think it's much easier to suffer an ugly table or chair than it is to suffer an ugly game

[James]

http://www.bogost.com/blog/carpentry_vs ... _dif.shtml

[Siva]

http://www.bogost.com/blog/carpentry_vs_art_whats_the_dif.shtml

I earnestly read that article twice and I am none the wiser as to what you mean

Edit: that said, I want to understand, would it be wise to buy his book?

[James]

No, no God no. Just a quick link, but it essentially re-enforces a common belief (reason 4 of comparison) that practice items cannot be art as they're part of practice first.

[clyzm]

Lemme ask you naysayers what do you think qualifies as art then if not vidya

[Siva]

No, no God no. Just a quick link, but it essentially re-enforces a common belief (reason 4 of comparison) that practice items cannot be art as they're part of practice first.

Considering his viewpoint, I find this very ironic. He wrote a book about the value of experiencing objects from their own viewpoints -- even apparently going as far as to delve into the morals of an object. Yet somehow he asserts that objects cannot be two things at once.

[Tantalus]

RE: Gameplay/Entertainment cannot be art thing; is not the skill of a player who has made the game his own not an not a practice or performance of art?

RE:RE: Gameplay as art. At the moment I don't see performance as 'pure' art, but I am definitely not going to totally dismiss it. I was more referring to the idea that using these elements for a set purpose, playing the game, makes it not art.

RE: The carpentry argument. Pretty much sums up perfectly what I'm trying to say. A table has a set purpose, a set of design norms that it MUST abide by to in order to fulfill its definitive purpose: to be a table. It can have artistic elements in its design, but these artistic elements must be constrained (however subtly) by its need to be a surface to hold objects on. Similarly, a game, in order to be called a game, must abide by certain norms like controls, mechanics etc.

What strict design rules are there to a painting, a sculpture or music? There are conventions, but these do not have to be abided by in order to express something in its rawest and distinct form.

I'm not belittling the work of someone by saying games aren't art, I'm not trying to say it's amateurish or something. If anything, it's an insult to vidya. Side note: really glad we're talking about something.

[Siva]

I think I understand the carpentry thing now, and I had it right the first time. Comparing a table and a game is a horrible analogy to me because the constraints are much looser creatively for creating a game than for any product of carpentry. Case in point, you cannot influence the very nature as to how you experience a chair without compromising it's function. All asses are relatively the same, and comfort is one of the closest things to objective that humans experience.

In the same vein, deeper mechanics or more complex controls do not always make a better game, so is it not the art as well as the fundamental differences between videogames in their genres that elevate and differentiate them from one another? Isn't harmony of all the elements of a videogame the desired goal -- and conducive to a better game? I could go on all day.