Can video games be considered art?

[Autumn]

This is the entire purpose of my English class: to examine video games as a text form (akin to studying novels and looking for deeper meanings therein) rather than purely a form of interactive entertainment. So I figured I might as well pose the question we're currently discussing to a forum of gamers: can video games be considered art in the same sense that books, plays, movies, paintings, architecture, music can be considered art?

An argument by Roger Ebert why they can't be art. Agree or disagree? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

 

[shy ♡]

My opinion is that anything the creator puts serious effort into can probably be considered art.

 

[Adriane]

There is absolutely zero reason why film can be considered art, but not video games.

Ebert's counterargument is well-written, but it's very apparent he is just not a gamer. The video game medium is a synthesis of landscape design, spectacle, music, and storytelling. Because these elements are context-dependent (i.e. on player input) and immerse the player [in them; Aria di Mezzo Carattere scene always comes to mind], I would even argue that video games have a greater effectual palette than film.

This is not to say every video game is art -- but you cannot tell me that every film is art, either?

 

[Teh Ebil Snorlax]

Ebert's argument is bunkum because it essentially says bad art doesn't exist and basically reaches a point where he's all but saying "video games can't be art because I don't think they are, so nah". His whole spiel is based on the fact that video games don't stir anything in him, therefore they can't be art, which actually implies that video games are art, because they have that effect on others, but he apparently manages to skip past that in his sheer doublethink.

I think the whole "what is art is subjective" idea is arseways, but Ebert is being particularly egregious here. As far as I'm concerned, the state of being art is an objective quality, namely that of having been created by one or more humans. What's subjective is how good the art is. This just seems self-evident and obvious to me, and I genuinely don't understand how people can reach beliefs like Ebert's logically.

 

[Minish]

An argument by Roger Ebert why they can't be art. Agree or disagree? I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Uh, pretty weird.

No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.

?? What about shit poetry and films and stories. This just doesn't really make aaaany sense. Like, there is art he considers really good and that other people generally consider really good, but he hasn't found any video games he thinks are as good. Okay? You can't define art as 'people think it's really good consistently throughout history'. I don't even know where he's going with this.

He's using the idea that 'you win a game, you don't merely experience it!' But you want to progress in a game so that you can experience more of it. Like, there are lots and lots of games that aren't about winning and more about following a story? You don't 'win' Ace Attorney, you interact with it so that it continues and so that you reach the end.

I feel like he would consider the full experience of a piece of art something you can only have by looking at all of it - 'completing' the experience, right? (Lots of games are more about 'completion' than 'winning'!) Like if you read the first chapter of a book, you've experienced it just as you experience the first half an hour of an RPG.

Even if lots of art mediums weren't about experiencing it all, as a whole - if stories and films weren't things you're meant to complete - who cares!!

She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.

We come to Example 3, "Flower" (above). A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is "about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural." Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card.

The three games she chooses as examples do not raise my hopes for a video game that will deserve my attention long enough to play it. They are, I regret to say, pathetic.

He's just making loads of weird value judgements. He makes lots of points but it basically amounts to 'video games aren't as good as good artists/good art' and I don't know why he thinks that's a reasonable way of going about the question. He is really silly. Wow.


Anyway, sure! It doesn't depend on video game creators putting 'serious effort' into it, either. This dude laughs about bad effortless writing a lot, but there's still the implication that it's as 'art' as any of his favourite stuff. I at least agree with him on that point!! 'Art' is a pretty vague thing anyway!

I mean, you can just define art in a certain way and then decide if video games meet the criteria, and then I guess you'll have some kind of personal answer. It's kind of hard to define art in a way in which lots of people tend to agree, so you're just going to meet more problems if you want everyone to accept it.

 

[Butterfree]

This also applies to vague questions, which usually only lead to meaningless squabbling parading as a debate. For instance, imagine a debate about the question "Can video games be art?" The word "art" is an extremely vague, muddy, subjective concept, and asking this question in a public capacity will lead to a horrible tangle of disdainful artists and offended gamers all going "Well, art is..." However, if the question were just to be redefined in some meaningful manner before people start responding to it, it would turn out that actually almost the only disagreement to be found in the whole shouting match is on the definition of the word "art" and not actually on the merits of video games; in fact there isn't any proper debate to be had about it because the answers to all the potential questions you could pose about the merits of video games tend to be ridiculously straightforward:

"Can video games be aesthetically pleasing?" Yes.
"Can video games, at least in theory, tell complex, engaging stories?" Yes.
"Are video games a pure, noninteractive expression of a single artist's intent?" No.
...and so on.

And yes, that Roger Ebert post was the precise argument I was thinking of when I wrote that bit.

 

[ultraviolet]

I feel like I can talk about this because I've studied communications for the past eighteen months or something and I'm taking an arts degree with a minor in videogame culture (probably). But yeah be warned: liberal arts student yapping.

I repeat: "No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets."

This quote alone makes it very difficult to take this article or this person seriously because I feel very much like he is missing the point.
He privileges art that has already been established as good or influential or useful far too much! Many art movements (especially revolutions) were heavily criticised for 'not being art', for being too obscure, too weird, too scandalous, etc, etc. Pretty much all of them are remembered and have influenced art that we have now (all art is influence), and many of them are considered high culture in modernity (eg. cubism, surrealism, expressionism, lots more). You'll see this attitude a lot if you ever study arts or have an art space at a university that has frequent student exhibitions. Contemporary art is laughed at a lot for 'not being art' because it's weird and it pushes boundaries and it doesn't make anybody very comfortable. "Why can't you just make some cool surrealist paintings? Why do you have to project videos of spiders crawling on the walls (video here: content warning spiders)? How is that even art? Get out and go learn something I am comfortable with and then I'll call you an artist." But then a lot of the time, things come full circle as this weird sort of stuff gets popular, critics either are talked over or change their minds, and new art forms enter the public consciousness and sometimes they're revered as a classic above all others. This happens all the time, and this guy is either not very practiced in art history or just being kind of obnoxious if he can't see that. This is not anything especially unusual, particularly because videogames are a very young medium. I think it's a very silly thing to do to judge whether something is a piece of art by holding it up and comparing it to its predecessors, which are almost certainly chosen with personal preference. It's just not a very useful activity and this is why:

• Whether something 'can be considered art' is kind of a moot (and irrelevant) question. It is art if someone is considering it as such, because it's a communicative exercise. It's an action held both by the creator and its audience. It might be read differently and treated differently by each party, but in a broad sense, if someone's made something and someone else is viewing it, it's art. Because that's what art is. Art is an interactive activity, even though some might not seem that way at all, like paintings or sculptures or something, because part of the process is the response. Art isn't produced in a vacuum and is produced with intent. The creator wants to elicit an emotional or thoughtful response. Because of this, nobody really has a right to say what is or isn't art, and whether they do or not ultimately does nothing for its status anyway (in fact, there is a lot of art based around challenging people's perceptions of what can be art).
  
• This kind of question also means that you have to try and define art, which is a real pain in the ass (as demonstrated by this ridiculous article); you're going to find an exception to every rule you lay down. For this reason I think it would be a good idea to prove your point by describing how some videogames (whatever examples you have) fit inside their cultural and artistic paradigm and how they are influenced and influence other videogames. Videogames frequently have social commentary, aim to elicit certain emotional responses, and the process behind that, because that's what successful art does - there are lots of highly-regarded texts commonly considered to be 'art' that you could use as an example. Don't describe them in terms of what art is, describe them in terms of what art does. This gives you a lot to work with because videogames are very immersive; you've got music, aesthetics, animation, conceptual drawings, scripts, storytelling - tons of stuff. Videogames are an interesting subject because they are possibly the most interactive artistic medium available to us right now and they're very enriched texts. You could talk about how videogames have gradually become more sophisticated texts and have become better at blending other art forms (music, visuals, etc.)
  
• Also I've studied 3D and if you want to go into really discrete basic stuff, there are lots and lots and lots of artistic decisions made even when you're doing something really basic and behind-the-scenes as lighting (how will this make my environment look? frightening? unsafe? warm and inviting?), and something more complex like modelling usually has a lot of sketching and development behind it. If you want more information I could probably point you to some sources.
  
• Not sure if relevant but videogame developers frequently employ psychological theories to get their players to do what they want or become addicted to their games, which kind of shows a deliberate and sophisticated thought process and development.

 

[DarkAura]

Personally, I think anything that was made to please an audience is an art. Just like there are good and bad paintings, there are good and bad games.

Also, this quote here:

Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?

We could ask him the opposing questions: "Why are you so vehement about games not being an art when we can all have our own opinions on it?" Seriously.

 

[Scootaloo]

games have many art like qualities such as music, graphics, etc. so I see no reason why they can't be considered art.

 

[Edoc'sil]

I just came from a thread with an identical topic on another forum.

But anyway, after this link was posted, there wasn't as much left to debate. I mean, video games made it into an art museum.

 

[kyeugh]

The true answer to this depends on what you consider art. To me, art is anything that conveys a message. Conversation is art. Music is art. Therefore, video games are art.

To others, art is something of beauty. Music can be art, then. Video games can be art as well. Look at Journey, for example. Pure art.

So really, the answer really lies in what you think art is.

 

[Superbird]

We come to Example 3, "Flower" (above). A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is "about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural." Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn't say. Do you win if you're the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?

...He's not being fair to the game. That is, he's just taking it at face value instead of examining it closely. Is the game scored? > Does it need to be? I mean, with a game like Flower you really have to think about it in order to get it. Which is just the same as just about any Jackson Pollock painting.

In addition to that, if you can consider most paintings to be 'art', then you compare some of those to the sheer visuals in Flower, you can see that they at least match up in the visual aspect alone. And while some games really aren't 'art', I'll agree, most of the ones that I consider to be, like Flower, Journey, Shadow of the Colossus, etc. force you to really think about them in depth, and immerse yourself in them far more than just about any film could.

 

[Tarvos]

Video games are art in a way of course - so is everything that we make, but I wouldn't classify it as just art - we also produce video games for entertainment in a different way, it's also a product. And I find that that is a very different way to approach art (as a product), than as art for art's sake itself (you paint because it's pretty, you make a video game because you want it to sell and other people to play it). At least that is my experience with most video games.

Of course, that doesn't not make it that person's baby, but you know. Books are written to be sold as well as to please the author.

 

[Scyther]

No one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great poets, filmmakers, novelists and poets.

My gut response to this claim is to flaunt the Mother series. I remember some guy quoted as saying that the Mother series is the closest any video game has gotten to being a literary masterpiece, and I have to agree wholeheartedly. I actually only ever played part of Mother 3, and even though I only got about halfway through, I can certainly attest that they're deep themes in that game that affected me (and many others) quite a bit, especially emotionally. Maybe if he played, he wouldn't feel the same way - but personally, I hated Walden! Didn't make it have less have less of impact plenty of people over the years.

I see the same (more popular) attitude towards things like Justin Bieber and Twilight, really. I don't like either of these things. But literally millions love them! It's not my place or anyone elses to go around saying these pieces aren't "art" or that the emotions they felt while reading or listening to them are less legitimate in some way compared to how I feel while reading Le Mis and listening to Beethoven. (Because clearly I am very classy and thus read Le Mis and listen to Beethoven.)

My more meta response, though, is that this is a meaningless question. Art is one of those things that's pretty much whatever you choose to define it as. If you want to define art specifically as something that encompasses all mediums but video games, then that's fine, but it still is very capable of communicating messages and making people feel things. This guy just kind of strikes me as a bit of snob; trying to get a rise out of the Internet by saying something that's inflammatory and vaguely condescending. And it's weird to me that we're all still taking it seriously years after it's written.