Do you consider video games to be art? If so, what games made you feel this way?
Do you think video games will ever be taken as seriously as movies or literature?
Blizzcon?
WOW movie
Doom Movie
D&D Movies
Halo books
Resident Evil
Silent Hill
Just a few things that came to mind
I’m playing Horizon Zero Dawn right now, and I’d bet that the cut scenes alone would make a decent movie. People do cobble that stuff together and make youtube videos, but they’re really long. I haven’t watched this one, but I’ll leave it here in case someone with a lot of time to kill wants to see it.
Of course video games are art. Interactive art.
I recently played Inside. Absolutely they’re art.
Trine 2 was absolutely beautiful.
I’ve certainly played games with strong artistic elements. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that gelled together in my mind as “art” as a whole. Like maybe the graphics were well done in some manner but I could look at a screenshot or a video, removed from the context of “the game” and enjoy them fully on their own which implies to me that the rest of the game wasn’t really a necessary element. In which case it seems wrong to say that “the game” was art. Or “walking simulator” style games where they tell a story and maybe a good one but the actual game play is practically nil and you’re not really playing a game in more of a sense than flipping pages in a book is playing a game.
Absolutely, and unquestionably. I don’t see how they could not be considered art.
I don’t believe video games are art.
They can be art, but are not inherently so. In addition, video games are distinct from other media in that they require active participation from a player. The player - and only the player - can transform the dead data into an actual work of art. The story, the graphics, the sound, and everything else - these are not the art that goes into game, but only side aspects of it. The art is what the player creates by his or her action.
This makes them unique among all forms of known media. When one reads a book, you should get the same experience as everyone else who reads it; what you bring to it can matter, but not as much as the work itself. Same for music, movies, etc. Games do not do this. Every player will get a distinctly different experience depending on their own actions, inactions, and preferences. It is these differences which can make a game into a work of art, or not. In that sense, video games are inherently more ephemeral than any other media. What makes it good, bad, or just interesting is the intensely personal, which is probably one reason.
Of course games are art. I’ve seen and felt too many emotions evoked by games to ever think otherwise. They’ve made me stop and reconsider my perspective. They communicate. They do what art is supposed to do. (Obviously, some games do it better than others, but any game that garners an audience is scratching some kind of emotional itch.)
As to examples…The Last of Us packs more emotional punch in its introduction than most movies do in their entire runtime. Undertale has a massive guilt-hammer hidden behind its back, which it uses to make players view their gaming behavior in a new light, and can make people cry in the middle of a boss fight. The Last Guardian invites us to share an emotional bond with an extraordinary animal, even though the creature isn’t real, and builds the relationship so well that players often become genuinely distressed when the beast is in trouble. Outlast 2–disregarding the anxiety and jump scares of a horror game–evokes a profound revulsion for its chief antagonist.
There are some critics who maintain that this is true of all art. Not sure I agree with them, but the view is out there.
As to a game as a whole being art, rather than just one element of it like the graphics or the music: Sometimes it really is the whole thing, including the gameplay. For one recent example: In Starcraft: Wings of Liberty, there’s one mission that’s a prophetic vision of the future, or rather of one possible future, the one where you fail the main quest. It’s a hopeless last stand against the darkness; you cannot win, even with more firepower than you’d ever seen in the game to that point. And, OK, that’s easy enough to implement: The level designers just didn’t program in a victory condition, and put the enemy bases off the edge of the map where you can’t reach them. But more significantly, they made it feel like a hopeless last stand against the darkness that you can’t win. It’s really psychologically draining to play that mission, because even though you know that it’s just a vision and you’ll be safe back aboard your flagship once it’s over, it doesn’t feel that way.
In short, the game as a whole (including the graphics and music and so on, but also including the gameplay) conveys emotion, and thus it is art.
Another example is the original Portal (the sequel to a lesser degree, but especially the original). There’s something in gaming called a “sequence break”, where by pulling off just the right stunt at just the right place in just the right way unanticipated by the programmers, you can manage to skip over significant parts of the game. Like, maybe there’s some wall that’s supposed to be impassible, but if you gather up assorted debris from all over the area and pile it up against the wall steeper than is stable, and jump just right so you’re jumping from the top of the pile just before it collapses, you can make it over the wall, when you weren’t supposed to be able to. When you manage to pull off a sequence break in a game, it’s a lot of fun, because you feel like you’re outsmarting the programmers.
Well, Portal has a sequence break built in about halfway through the game. It’s not a real sequence break, because the designers intended all along for you to do it, because otherwise you can’t continue the game at all. And in fact, they did a very good job of preventing real sequence breaks, even while giving the player a tool that makes stopping up all of the gaps extremely difficult. But it still feels like one, and so gives the player the same rush that a real one would have. That’s art, too.
Spec Ops: The Line does the same thing (more or less) in one sequence – spoilers for game from 2012 – where you are set against a large opposing force and given the option to use white phosphorous. There’s no actual getting around it; you can shoot guys forever and never kill them all so eventually you have to pull the trigger and do something you likely feel is morally wrong.
The thing is, it never really affected me. I mean, I held off on using it because I felt it was “right” until I eventually had to but it didn’t leave me feeling drained or vulnerable or upset. I don’t think I’ve ever played a game that really affected me in any meaningful, lasting way which I can’t claim for music, film, visual art, etc. Maybe I have a moment of “Oh, that was kind of cool” or “Oh, that story was interesting” but nothing that really ties it all together in a way that I can say the game impacted me.
That’s just me though, others who have had different experiences of course likely feel differently.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus. Two very well made games, with beautiful stories, awe inspiring visuals and music. Same company as The Last Guardian.
All great examples of video games as an art form.
Totally agree with* Last of Us* as well.
Reminds me of the “Is rap poetry?” question. If someone is such a snob that those two nouns being put together gives them the vapors, then let’s say all rap is terrible, awful poetry, and all video games are vulgar, low-brow art.
We could give examples of games that deliver incredibly rich experiences and have had huge cultural impact, but there’s no need. Modern games are made by professional artists making 2D and 3D images, professional composers composing music, and professional writers writing stories. How could someone claim that all these elements that individually are art forms, somehow become tainted just by being near a joypad?
I’ve seen and can understand the debate on whether rap is music, but poetry? Yes, of course rap is poetry, and I’m not even sure how one could argue otherwise.
I hope that wasn’t supposed to be a convincing argument. I like games. I’ve played tons. I own tons more. I don’t think that they are vulgar or low-brow but that’s not an argument for calling them art.
Because “the joypad” is what makes it a game and becomes an integral part of determining if the game is art or if it’s a product that has artistic components.
If I wrap the Mona Lisa around a pencil, is the pencil “art” as a whole or is it a pencil with art wrapped around it?
The worldwide gaming industry was over $90 billion in 2016. Someone takes that seriously. For comparison, the global film industry was only about $38 billion.
If you mean “take seriously as an art form”, I think the answer is “depends”. Certainly a great deal of artistic creativity goes into making many videogames. But how much lasting cultural significance or relevance does any game have after a few years? Will there ever be a videogame that in 500 years stands up to the works of Van Gogh or Mozart?
Do videogames contain art: absolutely.
But I’m struggling to come up with good examples where the player interaction (the actual “game” portion of the videogame) is central to conveying/provoking an emotional response. I think that’s where the distinction resides as to whether a videogame itself is art, or whether its a series of cutscenes, music, prerecorded dialog, and a beautiful lighting engine wrapped around a series of twitch shooting galleries and physics puzzles.
Fights that I fail repeatedly provoke quite an emotional response in me! 
Yes I’ve heard the “Is rap poetry?” thing many times, including, I’m sure, here on the Dope.
It’s amazing how passionately some will argue that it is not, with no actual reasoning beyond “Eww!”