No the part you quoted was not intended to be an argument at all.
I was simply saying those who hate rap music, or video games, are free to call rap bad poetry and video games bad art.
If that eases their discomfort about associating grand terms with something they hate.
Bad analogy. You can take away that wrapping and the pencil still functions just fine. The images and sound in a game are integral aspects of the game.
Also, for the analogy to be like for like, the Mona Lisa would be an image designed and created specifically for that pencil. If the original place that the Mona Lisa existed was on a pencil then, yeah, probably people would consider that pencil to be a work of art.
My answer is long and contains spoilers for Undertale, so I’m boxing it.
[spoiler]
In Undertale, you can play a pacifist route, opting not to kill the monsters you fight. There’s a battle mechanic for this, and it relies on figuring out things about the monster and appealing to their character, bringing them around to a point where they don’t want to fight you anymore. Then you can use the Mercy option to end the fight peacefully.
If you’re playing pacifist, the Mercy menu is your friend the whole game. It’s how you resolve everything, and the results make you feel good about it, rewarding you with funny, friendly characters. Then you encounter the King of All Monsters. You’re probably very committed to not killing anyone at this point, and NPCs have told you that if you just talk to him, they’re sure he’ll let you go home, because he’s a big softie.
And he is. He really doesn’t want to fight you. He’s awkward, and sad, and doesn’t quite know what to say. But your death is the key to freeing his people from eternal imprisonment, and he’s sworn to do that. He can’t let you leave without a fight (and you can’t get out without fighting, either, as it happens), so he waits for you to start it.
Then he smashes the Mercy button. Literally attacks and destroys part of the game interface that you’ve been relying on the whole game. It’s a shock. It dumps ice water over those warm-and-fuzzies you’ve been getting from being nice. You’re forced to confront the kill-or-be-killed scenario, and it’s not against some ravening beast, but against a dorky, fatherly guy who was watering his flowers when you walked into his house. It’s a BSOD moment for a lot of players. They freeze up, go into denial, scramble for ways out of the fight, or even just let themselves lose.
So, there you go: a point where the interactive part of a game is key to evoking an emotional response. (It’s not the last time Undertale does this to you, either. The final battle is an emotional rollercoaster; it’s the one I was talking about when I said it made people cry.)[/spoiler]
But they’re not integral which was my point. You can still enjoy the graphics via video or screenshot without playing. I’ve never thought a game looked prettier just because my fingers were on the WASD keys. You can listen to the soundtrack without playing (and many people do). Both of those are often created by completely separate teams than the people involved with the game mechanics. The question is whether the game as a whole is art, including the mechanics aspects. The fact that it has interesting graphics and/or a compelling soundtrack isn’t enough.
I’ve played Life is Strange. If anything, the mechanics step all over the story in the final chapter and detract from whatever “art” it has making it painfully obvious that you’re fumbling around with a controller or mouse rather than being immersed in a story or creating an emotional response.
I think even Grand Theft Auto V is art. Take away the shooting and violence and you’ve got beautiful free-roam of a virtual slice of Southern California. People walk down the street talking on cell phones, cats roam the alleys, people walk their dogs, people build bonfires on the beach, and cars navigate the streets. Wildlife like deer and cougars roam the countryside. There is a day and night cycle, thunderstorms, and lots of activity day or night. And every billboard, random pedestrian comment, and even the in-game radio advertisements are great satire.
I read an article about Read Dead Redemption a while back that I can’t find right now, but it had an interesting take on this concept. Some spoilers for the game coming up:
RDR is set in the old West. You play a former outlaw who’s given up crime and is trying to settle down with his wife and kid. One of your old compatriots is still out there wrecking shit, and a government agent “arrests” your wife and kid, and uses them to force the protagonist, John Marsten, to strap on his guns again. Once you’ve hunted down your old partner, you return to your homestead to meet your wife and young son. But that’s not the end of the game. The main plot has resolved, but the game isn’t quite over yet - and it’s pretty clear where its going. The government agent reneges on his deal, and sends a bunch of soldiers to finish you off. John Marston and his wife are both killed. Then, there’s a time skip, and you play a small epilogue as John’s son, now grown and looking for revenge on the man who killed his parents.
The author’s take on the ending was interesting. As soon as he got home to his wife and kid, and the game didn’t end, he knew what was coming. He’d become pretty invested in the character of John Marston, and wanted the character to have a happy ending… but there was still more content. And he knew, pretty well, that that content would include Marston dying, and not getting to live the rest of his life with his family. But he wanted to see that content, so he kept playing - and effectively chose to give the protagonist a bad ending.
Obviously, that’s not unique to video games - if it had been a novel, instead of a game, and Marston dies in the last chapter, you could just stop reading the book before that chapter, and sort of have the same thing. But only sort of, because inherent in a lot of games is “skippable content” - stuff that you don’t have to do to finish the game, or is only there for the obsessive completists, or can only be reached through arcane tricks or multiple replays. RDR’s epilogue isn’t quite like that, but it still exists in the context of an artform where “finishing” the work doesn’t necessarily involve experiencing the entire work.
It’s not a grand simulation spreadsheet either. I doubt YamatoTwinkie meant it could only be literally one of those two things. In the case of Kate, it’s wrapped around a simple memory game: Do you remember this and that factoid from earlier in a multiple choice test or do you make an ass of yourself by saying Kate’s non-existent cat will miss her?
Some gamers want their hobby to be taken seriously by society, so they defend it as art. When it’s criticized as art, the wider gaming audience tends not to respond well. Some people want to stick it to Ebert’s ghost, or soothe their guilt about “wasting” time on a childish activity like video games instead of some adult pursuit, like binge watching a series where a naked blonde hatches dragon eggs.
I think it’s odd to cite recent games bloated with cutscenes and lore dumps that most players skip as the definitive example of games as art. Why not Pacman, Tetris, Mario Brothers, or Doom? Apparently mechanical mastery, conquering challenges, and fun is immature, definitely not art. You need dead kids or meta-commentary on player choices delivered by anthropomorphic goats to be taken seriously.
Are board games art? Dungeons and Dragons? Laser tag? Pinball? Some athletes are described as displaying artistry. Is basketball art? If anything produced by human hands that provokes a reaction is art, even if it’s a urinal, then I’m not sure how culture critics can make a distinction.
If they didn’t provoke an emotional response then there’s not much of a point. Maybe one could make an argument that they’re complex Skinner boxes, certainly true of some games, like Diablo or MMORPGs.
Running away from monsters in horror games is scarier than 99% of horror movies or books, although the spell is broken if it actually catches you. I once saw a pretentious video that explained how Missile Defense (Atari) was a commentary on the futility of nuclear war, so I’m sure you could do that sort of analysis for nearly any game. Exploring a strange world is satisfying and scratches your adventure itch in ways that other mediums can’t. Want to circle around and see what’s behind that building? Then do it.
You can find lists of games that people call art because they force the player to make uncomfortable decisions and weigh their moral philosophy, but I don’t think they’re the sorts of games most people play. Games like Papers Please or whatever isn’t the foundation of the industry.
I’m not sure if this is meant to address specific posters in this thread? I don’t think that, “Not wanting to look childish,” is really a major concern, here - not when, as you note, stuff like Game of Thrones has so much mainstream critical and commercial success. Fantasy and escapism are in. Not too many people are hung up about only being into appropriately “grown up” pursuits.
Those aren’t the definitive examples, they’re the most accessible examples. If you’re trying to convince someone that video games, as a medium, are a valid art form, then it’s easiest to reach for examples that are most analogous to established art forms.
Upthread, I used the narrative-heavy Red Dead Redemption as an example of video games as art. Does that mean that I don’t think Pacman or Super Mario Brothers aren’t art? Of course not. But it’s much more difficult to explain game mechanics as an expression of artistic intent, then to point out that a cutscene is basically a short movie, and movies are art, right?
I’m not sure that culture critics need to make that distinction.
Which is true of virtually every art form. More people are going to go see the latest Fast and Furious movie than will see all nine of last years Best Picture nominees combined. But when people talk about movies as an artform, they’re more likely to talk about Moonlight than a Vin Diesel/vehicle vehicle.
There’s probably more art to the “childish” stuff, though.
If you want a list of largely forgotten films, try assembling a list of “artistic” ones. Ultimately, what makes something art is that people actually do give a damn about it. That may be a silly definition, but it’s (half of) mine.
But that also is…wrong. Those very aspects are nothing more than retreads of other media, and involve nothing whatsoever about games. It’s not that these aspects can’t be art, but rather, they aren’t videogames.
Well, yeah, but that’s the point where I think this division has come down.
The thing is, videogames are not one thing exactly. The media is so diverse that some games are really just movies or books or whatnot with some other flourish applied to it. And that’s not bad. It is important, however, to recognize that the artistic part may not actually be the game at all; may even be fundamentally opposed to the game. If you end up pointing to cutscenes (and not *just cutscenes, but using them as an example) then you’re actually arguing against the game.
That may mean there actually is more value in the latest F&F movie than in the supposed “Best Picture”. I don’t claim that gross receipts are all that important, but I do think it’s worth remembering that art isn’t necessarily good and what’s good isn’t necessarily art - and especially that what appeals to the self-appointed artistic elite is often not at all what gets passed down as really worthwhile. And often, a critic is the very last person whose opinions matter.
For comparison, an awfully large proportion of the great literature now considered “classic” was basically just trashy genre fiction to start. We basically witnessed this process in one human lifetime with Lord of the Rings.
Portal is full of sly moments, and one is mentioned upthread. Another involves the Weighted Companion Cube.
The Weighted Companion Cube is nothing more than a heavy cube decorated with hearts. The game’s antagonist tells you repeatedly that it’s just a cube, that there’s nothing worth getting attached to there–and you hear that, knowing the antagonist constantly lies.
After using the cube to solve a series of puzzles, you can’t progress in the game without dropping the cube into an incinerator. And I, and a lot of other players of the game, hesitated there.
That hesitation is something that a novel can’t achieve: it was through the interactive nature of the game that I experienced a weird and hilarious layer of emotions. Superficially I felt mild dread at the thought of destroying the cube, along with some guilt. But then I knew that it was just a weighted cube. And as soon as I thought that, I realized it wasn’t a weighted cube, it was a series of ones and zeroes in my CPU, and even my character was fictional, let alone the weighted cube, let alone the weighted companion cube’s personality.
That was all there. And I still hesitated. And when I finally dropped the cube into the incinerator, and the antagonist mocked me for being a monster, I laughed at the upwelling of remorse I felt despite myself. For me, it’s kind of a touchstone moment when I think about how I respond emotionally to fiction, because it laid bare the irrationality of my reaction so clearly.
Don’t get me wrong. This was no Rosebud moment, no Shakespearean monologue. But the point is, the interactivity of the game allowed me to identify with my character in a specific way that noninteractive art forms could not do.
More art than what? I’m not sure what you’re comparing, here.
If I were assembling a list of forgotten films, it would probably be full of disposable cowboy movies and sequels to The Gold Diggers of 1933. If I were assembling a list of artistic movies, it’d probably look something like this. I don’t think there are a lot of forgotten films on there, but YMMV.
That doesn’t make what I said “wrong,” though. I do think that there’s an art to video game mechanics that sets them apart from other media. But that’s a harder argument to make, and one that’s not necessary to the argument that video games are art. Even if one views everything “artistic” about games as a retread from other media, that’s still sufficient in and of itself to carry the argument for video games as art. Obviously, not a new or unique art form - to make that argument, you have to delve in to what makes video games different from other media, not similar.
I’m not sure what you mean by “fundamentally opposed to the game.” Do you have an example in mind?
That’s fine, but doesn’t really relate to what I’m saying. I’m not arguing that Oscar noms are inherently superior to box office success, and I’m certainly not arguing that popular or genre fiction isn’t art.
Sure, and you can take a single frame out of a movie.
But the frames of a movie are absolutely integral, as if you remove them you don’t have a movie any more, and likewise with a game’s visual assets.
More than that I can’t say, as you seem to be using the word integral in a non-standard way. If I say the Mario Bros soundtrack is “integral” to the game, that does not imply anything about whether the soundtrack could be enjoyed as a distinct entity.
No, as someone who worked in the video game industry for approx 10 years I can tell you that is simply not true.
There is a lot of iteration in making a video game; implementing features and then modifying them, or cutting and adding, to get the look and feel right. The whole thing is done with artists, programmers and designers working closely together.
You’re telling me that games do not often have separate artteams? :dubious:
I realize that smaller games may be the work of one person or small teams of overlapping roles but even then you still often see one person taking on the art direction or using assets from other places.
Of course, there is a discrete role of “artist”, as I’ve alluded. And if you’re a Junior Artist you might report to a Senior Artist and a Senior would report to a Lead Artist and so on.
However they are in no sense separate teams.
Artists live in the same office, and work very closely day-to-day, with programmers and designers. For example, if you’re an environmental artist, you might work more closely with level designers than you would with other artists.
As I say, I worked in the industry for 10 years and worked on AAA games for the PS2 and PS3. I never heard anyone refer to an “art team”. Even when we subdivided the team (e.g. into scrum teams) each team had X artists, Y programmers etc.
Finally, a very common role now is some flavor of “Technical Artist”, because often you can’t draw a clear line between the art assets and the mechanics / physics driving them.
