Videogames as art?

White and red? Nevermind. I would say that games that fail, fail because they lack artistic merit. However, “artistic merit” doesn’t (necessarily) mean the writing, or the art, or the music. The game mechanic itself can be a work of art. And chess is the perfect example of this: it’s arguably the most perfect game ever made. The rules are simple, the variations are infinite, you can play a game of chess every day of your life, and never play the same game twice. There are no strategies that guarantee success. There is no advantage in playing one side over the other. Chess is the very model of elegant game design, and that is a work of art.

Incidentally, “art” isn’t a genre. A genre is a subdivision of an artform, usually literature.

I don’t think I’d agree with you there… Computer games are probably one of the most complex artforms out there, in that they blend together so many different aspects, such as graphics artistry, sound effects, music, story, dialogue, gameplay, control schemes, etc, and each game emphasizes different aspects. Gameplay especially comes in very many different flavors, and can itself be subdivided into many different aspects (in RPGs, battle gameplay vs. puzzle-solving gameplay vs. interaction gameplay). And I think that just the gameplay aspect alone can be considered art…

But on the bigger picture, the “art” of a game may be best measured as how the sum of all of those different aspects manages to draw you in to its reality, how much involvement you have in its play (or viewing, for a movie, or reading, for a book). The best works of art absorb us, touch us, enthrall us, or make us laugh better than others.

Virtually everything can be seen as a work of art, and I have no problem with that. But not very many things are successful as works of art; not many things can tap into your emotions that well. While a scientist’s experimental procedures may be very creative and brilliant, I do not have much of an emotional reaction to it, so I consider it to be not very good art.

On the other hand, I consider Fallout and Planescape: Torment (RPGs by Black Isle) to be better works of art than the majority of movies I’ve seen, as the games absorbed me emotionally in ways that most movies don’t accomplish.

  • Wind

The question isn’t about videogames really, its about art. If your definition of art is limited to poetry, painting, prose, perhaps film and musical composition, then guess what: a game is never going to fit your concept because interactivity changes in a fundamental way the relationship one has to a piece of “media.” But if art is broadened up to mean the most creative human endeavors, then the best video games will be rightfully called art and their creators artists; just as the best engineers, mathmeticians, physicists, doctors, chefs, and parents are artists.

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