Video Games as a Form of Art

[BumblebeeCody*]

I think a game can be considered art, such as Journey or Dear Esther, but something like Call of Duty...I think not.

How comes? It's a just as a valid as game as any others.

Well, you got a point there, I can tell what you mean.
But still Call of Duty is another FPS game where you pew pew a lot and things go BOOM which I like a lot I won't lie! Now when it comes to Journey or Dear Esther, these are games that are making you ponder in thoughts if you get my meaning.

I think a game can be considered art, such as Journey or Dear Esther, but something like Call of Duty...I think not.

How comes? It's a just as a valid as game as any others.

Fair point, but I just personally think that CoD lacks the depth to really be considered art. But hey, I'm no genius, it very may well be art.

And thus we have the biggest problem of gamers when it comes to art and CoD being bland.
I'll tell you now, the only reason I play CoD is for the single player campaign. I haven't played CoD in 3/4 years but I generally find myself invested in the story. It may not be historically accurate but the themes that it brings across are generally thought provoking. Playing through certain scenes in the CoD world war series does give you a decent idea of what the environment was like, the areas that were fought in and generally teaching you about some of 2 biggest wars in history.

Once they moved the series to the future they used current world affairs and politics to make a story. They used what effects/has effected us such as terrorism to create a story of government mistrust and backstabbing on it's own people(Bombing London or shooting an airport full of Russian civilians so the American people will call for war(very much like Iraq)) . The Mario series could only hope of actually telling a decent story for once.

But bashing CoD is the cool thing to do today or not considering it art when games like Shadow of Colossus use the same bland colour scheme.

I also question the whole point of games being art. I've read through all of this thread and if the game has a good story it's considered art despite the fact this thread should then be called "are games considered a good medium of telling stories like books or films?"
The initial posts states that games are just more than graphics, yet most of the games suggested a being called "art" because of their graphics like Okami or Zelda. But that's what this thread is trying to say they aren't. It also proves that a game should be taken into considering because of it's graphics whether the story is re-used and un-inspiring like Zelda or well done like Shadow of Colossus, but that falls under games being able to tell story and then if so, we can't have CoD being mentioned because I'm just going by the idea that "CoD sucks".

[aapjes]

If films and videoclips are considered art (which they are) then an interactive version (a video game) is art. Art is in its purest form self expression. So if in a game you can express yourself then it would be by nature art. At least that is my opinion on art.

[Yawackhary]

Art is a subjected word that can mean various things, is it just pictures and sculptures like in an art gallery or anything that is cultured? Even then how something is classed as art, is it that it made an impact on people's lives or is it just a bunch of snobby people deciding what is and what isn't?

Going by the pictures and sculptures angle, games do have art in them as sprites, backgrounds and textures while a sculpture can be like a model (even though you pose a model that would be very hard on a sculpture) but overall? I won't say cause I don't really know. Even then would you call a piece of Moorcroft pottery as an art?

Instead of asking whether games are art, it should be whether games are cultured enough for people to remember them in future generations like with paintings, music, literature, movies and other mediums. In that argument, I would say yes. Like lots of people know what the Mona Lisa is, people know what Super Mario Bros. is even if they haven't played the game, they can recognise the blocky NES graphics of Mario, the Goomba and the theme tune.

Even though the gaming industry is very young compared to movies (at least the late 1800s-early 1900s), paintings, literature (going as far back as BC times) and music (popularised by the likes of Mozart and Beethoven but was around before that); there have been games that are culture significant, not just by their popularity but the quality as well. I mean people can name Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Super Mario Bros, Sonic the Hedgehog, Tetris, Street Fighter II, arguably Grand Theft Auto that all had an impact on society. Pong triggered off arcade gaming (wasn't the first game but the one that started the spark), Space Invaders and Pac-Man popularised arcades, Super Mario Bros made console gaming mainstream in Japan and the US, Sonic the Hedgehog with his style, attitude and marketing techniques dominated Europe and the US, Tetris not only proved that an idea can be simple and come from anywhere in the world (remember Russians back then only had computers and Spectrum clones, the Dendy [NES/Famiclone] wasn't released yet) but also addictive puzzling aspect that can be put on anything providing that it has a computer in it, Street Fighter II popularised competitive fighting games to be like a sport (loosely though) and Grand Theft Auto triggered violence close to home even if looked closely is a satitical view of real life and caused controversies like many religious paintings did years ago (even if Mortal Kombat and Night Trap had their controversies too).

Even lesser games as in games that might not be recognisable to people who don't play games but have impacted people as well like Strider (the style), Streets of Rage 2 (the perfect beat em up to many) and Super Metroid where people go as far as the perfect game. Also designers/developers as well can be included like artists and directors. Just like people can relate to Lowry (matchstick men paintings) or Steven Spielberg, the gaming world has Shiguru Miyamoto, Yu Suzuki (obsessed with technical advancements), Yuji Naka and others. Paintings and movies all had their eras (like styles and for movies, silent films to sound films to technicolor films to CG effects films) and so does gaming from arcade gaming to the 8-bit era to the 16-bit era to early 3D gaming to later 3D gaming to "HD" gaming and now we are in the mobile/AAA/indie gaming era. I know it is classed as generations (we are pretty much in the 8th one now) but people who don't play games wouldn't know that and when I was younger, I didn't know people put it in generations.

Going back to whether it is art or not; many people put games such as Okami, Journey, Unfinished Swan, Ico and various indie games e.g. Minecraft, Limbo as art but is it really? All of them had a graphical style that is not often used (well indie games often used the NES 8-bit style) but graphics while itself is an artwork, it is not entirely the focus of a game. After all text adventures exist and they usually have no graphics or even any sound but they are still games. If it is about the graphical style, then a good 90% of all Spectrum games apply as art due to the system limitations making a funky looking style.

If games were about stories and emotions, then what point of view is it? Is it about the emotion of the player getting happy/depressed/frustrated at the game? Is it about the story of the characters that featured in the game? Bearing in mind, many games beford the decline of the arcade had very little to no story and whatever story it had was either brief, hard to understand due to poor English or made up in 5 minutes by the marketing team in the instruction booklet. Sonic 3 and Knuckles does have a story but it was told without any animated/still cutscenes or writing, it was told by the characters by their actions in between the levels such as Knuckles laughing while Sonic drops down to Hydro City. Is it the story from the developers point of view with their emotions during development? If it is that point, even rubbish games like Aliens: Colonial Marines could be considered art. Even games that don't have a story like racing games, Tetris/Columns, arcade games, sports games can easily turned into a story by the imagination of the player like you can make Gran Turismo 5 which itself is a gaming form of motorsport [not classed as art] into a struggle of the drivers between cars, emotions, whether [name of your B-Spec racer] will win the race. People do try to make a story of Tetris, after all there are fan fiction going around regarding that game.

The whole point of a game is to have some fun that unlike paintings, movies, music, literature (apart from text adventures and to a degree choose your own adventure books) can be interacted without input from the developers or anything that is required apart from the controller that does different things in the game. With paintings you have to need some paint, paintbrush and a canvas or strong enough paper, a movie needs a camera and a location (optionally with people, a script and props) with a computer to do the editing, music needs an instrument, literature needs a pen and paper or a computer in terms of typing or writing it on a tablet to do the tasks. The states of these items are not as variable apart from the location in a movie or the amount of ink, space, size of canvas, film, hard drive/memory card space but in a game, a button press can be different depending on what game or even in the game. Like the A button can be a jump, an attack, to accelerate a car, to confirm an option (e.g. to start the game), to swing a golf club, to swing a bat, to run, to pass the ball, to shoot, to reload a gun, to throw an item, to pick up an item, a reaction press in a mini game. You can single tap, double tap or hold the button and sometimes they do different things like double tap to double jump.

Games are like interactive movies (some literally are like Heavy Rain) but they have way more variables that can be adjusted and that is why it is hard to judge than paintings/movies/music/literature. A game can even crash against the will of the player, something that a painting or literature doesn't do since they are fixed states with only age can affect it (like faded paint/ink or damage) while music and movies can glitch depending on the transfer or parts skipped. Besides games are made for enjoyment like movies and music and the main focus at the end of the day is the gameplay (not all developers choose this angle though).

Then again, pinball that at a couple of points was part of American culture people don't consider it art and neither are slot machines since apart from The Addams Family pinball machine, most are forgotten by the public (even if both like games feature artwork and for pinball had their designers like Pat Lawlor and Steve Ritchie) so maybe it is a case of remembering things?

Who is it to say that people will remember Call of Duty in 20 years time? I mean people are more or less forgotten regarding the original WW2 themed games and just focusing on Modern Warfare/Black Ops. Every FIFA/yearly sports game is forgotten as soon as the new one is released, I mean who remember FIFA 2002? Nobody apart from it is everywhere in a car boot sale and nobody wants it either. COD: Modern Warfare does have a higher chance of being remembered in future generations than the others in the series though but then Spec-Ops: The Line might have a chance as well (due to the Heart of Darkness theme in the game).

Again I'm not sure whether games are art but there are sides for and against and depending on the meaning of art.

[CryingWaffles]

Okami's gotta be there for sure.

Honestly I don't think Okami would count, because it's a video game based off of a form of art.

I think the OP is meaning original games that are made in it's own unique style, the way the game works, looks, plays, and sounds.

[gamemaster1991]

There are many different types of "Art." Let me list a few in a spoiler tag so I can get to the Video game point.

Spoiler

Art, as most of us know it, is pantings. We all know that this a good painting:
and we know that this is a bad painting:
but they are both considered art.
Music is also art, which makes people like Queen, FUN, and Justin Timberlake the same thing as LMFAO, Ke$ha, and Rebecca Black, because they make music.
Movies are also art, which would make Jackass the Movie, Birdemic, and The Room equal to The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, and Citizen Kane

So what makes Video Games not art? I do know that a bunch of things we play is not what I would call art, like Mario, Sly Cooper, Mortal Kombat, but what really makes these different from Toy Story, The Brave Little Toaster, and Saw. We have games that are made to tell a story and meant to be art (Shadow of the Colossus, Okami, and (maybe) Portal) but there are many that fall by the way side when it comes to "Class" (Kane & Lynch, need I say more). I don't see why it could not be art. We could always say no and just go watch Spring Breakers, the Kane & Lynch of movies, since it's so artsy.