Games as Art

[Sindwiller]

Well, for me, games are some kind of art. Probably the most complex piece of art.

Game developing merges the difficulties and issues of movie making, like dialogues, story, mood and the way this stuff is brought to the consumer (resp. player), image painting, like colors, brightness, contrast, and sculpting, like shape and lighting impact on a figure.

The most difficult part is that on top of that, everything is more or less dynamic and interactive. A game nowadays needs to bring a specific atmosphere to the player, achieved by lighting, style and story, needs to make fun and be an experience and needs to have as much as less technical problems.

And that whole thing needs to be accomplished through teamwork. Which can be either troublesome or very, very helpful.

[Taylor]

If sticking a load of white boxes in a room is art, I can name about a million things more deserving of the title. Art is such a pointless label these days that you can stick it on anything. Games are creative and I think that’s the only requirement you need (though there is a strong emphasis on story and concept art these days to bolster that), sure most games these days are derivative because publishers like money, but that’s kind of moot.

Though as for games being taken as seriously as movies... well, I think that will happen when games start getting produced like movies. When everything planned is determined in preproduction and the only changes are bumps in the road, it doesn’t work like that right now. And Defrag had a good point about the older generation just not getting it, especially helped by the drivel fed out by the media.

Edit: Extremely late edit for readability.

[KoKo5oVaR]

I think that will happen when games start getting produced like movies. When everything planned is determined in preproduction and the only changes are bumps in the road, it doesn’t work like that right now.

Are you 100 % sure that Electronic arts isn't already doing this for the Call of Duty saga and other sequel licenses ?

[Taylor]

Point taken, EA have a good production line approach. But generally production contains a lot of "arrrgh."

[ReNo]

Think you mean Medal of Honour if you mean EA koko, but hey, it's not exactly difficult to mix up "something of something" WWII game titles

[Spellbinder]

The quality says nothing if something is art or not. Everything that involves creativity with the aim to create something visual appealing or at least interesting can be described as art.

This is what i want to say about art. Not game making. Everything is an art, making food, building a bike, building a couch, building a house, making a symphony, programming, write a poem, etc etc if you love what you are doing and put your soul and love into it, it is art. But then again art is in eye of the beholder. But my first statement stands.

[Sentura]

i partly agree with spellbinder. everything is art insofar that people are extravagant about it; a couch, a bike, a house made by an enthusiast who lets his creativity flow is art.

however, modern society viewpoints on arts are pretentious. people are making idiotic structures or paintings that have no deeper meaning, but the mainstream still goes, "OH THAT IS SO BEAUTIFUL". no, it's not. It's a crate in a room. it's a way of making money. it's definitely not art.

it saddens me to see these things getting such a high value in modern society when real artists who put their heart and soul into real art dont get the recognition they should have. that's another thing: a real artist will show you through his or her art piece how much work and inspiration he or she put into it, which in turn inspires the people looking at the piece of art. look at movies, look at buildings, look at furniture, and tell me, havent you been inspired by objects before?

[Warby]

kojima: of course games are not art ... they are museums !

[Pericolos0]

i cant think of a word that has more shit attached to it than art, please dont call games art . It sounds so damn pretentious for a thing thats supposed to be entertainment.

[⌐■_■]

i cant think of a word that has more shit attached to it than art, please dont call games art . It sounds so damn pretentious for a thing thats supposed to be entertainment.

Yeah I concur to that. Also: art is art. Stuff doesn't get art if people start calling it art and it's not always in musea of expositions. It's everywhere around us, in the nature, buildings, small drawings made by kids or mentally retarded, the compositions of food on a plate.. I guess in games too. But, as we like to say overhere in the Netherlands:

''A cow is an animal, but an animal is not a cow.''

[Sentura]

jesus read what i said

[Meotwister]

Well, a lot of the mainstream artists are pretentious and that sucks... but we can't really tell if there is a deeper meaning to a giant hall filled with thousands of polyethylene crates stacked in a specific manner... truthfully im sure no one here actually tried to look for a deeper meaning and instead saw a picture and was like "come on that's ridiculous" ... I myself thought similarly, but it's hard to get to that level of random creativity in our heads...

I kinda see games as a culmination of art assets with the explicit goal of entertainment... and the art assets don't really have any meaning but are there to make environments believable and/or interesting. Really it's the gameplay that has the potential to be an art form... unless you have a good story driven game or something..

[Vinny Testaverde]

I think the Egyptians 4000 years ago created some of the most powerful "art" this human race has ever witnessed, but they did not call it "art." That concept didn't exist to them, we attach that word to what they did. Jennifer Lopez and Snoop Dogg get called artists today. So I think its sort of a dead end to argue about what can or can't be called art.

Video games, Hollywood, television. etc are entertainment. They may use artistic ideas, but, they use them for commercial gain. Its about money in the end.

The paintings in the caves, 20,000 years ago is pretty much better than anything anyone is doing today, its hard to match up to what those paintings were about. I think a thousand white boxes in a massive space is a good attempt at it however.

[Naticus]

I don't know if the word "art" really means anything for purposes of this discussion and what game designers really want.

I believe the core of what the game designer wants is recognition and for his/her work to be considered important. Art is something created that is recognized and considered important by society. What exactly that "something" might be is hardly definable.

Lots of time and hard work are put into making films, music, and other things considered art. Recognition validates the creator and encourages more creation. I would argue that generally the things that are worked on and thought about more please more people. To move the gaming industry to the level of say film or music more effort is required of the designers and developers. Everyone working on games can think bigger and work harder.