Video games as an art form.

D

DoubleClutch

Banned
I'm sure we'll all agree that games are and should be considered art.

Assuming you had to convince a non-gamer of that view, what would be one game you would use to convey it?

It can only be one game though.
 
Final fantasy, the art presentation is very imaginative and simple enough for lot of people to grasp the concept in this game.
 
These things are always subjective, have em play the Riven remake, Firwatch Sorry one game, Firewatch then, it's a simple almost poetic journey and makes you care about the people invilved, no fancy graphics, just really great constructed world building
 
I'm alot about great narratives, so the recent Riven remake whas a fucking amazin g surprise. Saw the fan work over the years so glad they for to geather and jusr did it, played it on the og ex box
 
DoubleClutch said:
I'm sure we'll all agree that games are and should be considered art.
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I actually disagree with such a broad stroke statement. so, no... I don't agree lol

but if I had to show someone that games CAN be art I'd probably choose REZ, Tetris Effect or Child of Eden... if I had to pick only one, then Tetris Effect
 
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If you want to convince someone into books that games can be art, go with something like Pentiment, Citizen Sleeper, or Disco Elysium.

If you want to convince someone into film that games can be art, go with Hellblade 2, Still Wakes the Deep, Immortality, As Dusk Falls.

If you want to convince someone that the interactivity can be classified as a new form of art, go with stuff like Tears of the Kingdom, Roblox, Minecraft, Dreams.

If you want to convince someone into music that games can be art, have them sit down and listen to a bit of Final Fantasy XIII, Starfield, Hi-Fi Rush.

If you want to convince someone into drawing that games can be art, show them RPG Time.

Trying to limit it to just 1 game is a little pointless when games are the fusion of almost every other type of art already out there, and you can showcase that from multiple different angles.
 
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NieR and NieR Automata. Utilizes the gaming medium a lot. Maybe Undertale as well. It's something that you can't put in writing or film. It only works on that medium.

Final Fantasy for the musically inclined. I've seen so many people surprised the music actually came from a game. It's definitely one of Final Fantasy's defining traits and as much as the quality of their games in the series has arguably dropped, their music remains top tier.

Any Vanillaware game. It just looks so gorgeous like an artwork. The cooking and food sections especially remind me of Ghibli films own food scenes.
 
kevboard said:
I actually disagree with such a broad stroke statement. so, no... I don't agree lol

but if I had to show someone that games CAN be art I'd probably choose REZ, Tetris Effect or Child of Eden
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Games absolutely can be considered art, if the developers and artists work their asses for thr good at the end vision. I agree with the broad strokes, shit money grabbing fad games are not art.That's why indie games can be cool, no big Corp with investors running a shit show of ego boosting nonsense
 
I personally think so.
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Any form of expression through a medium is art, whether good or bad, it's subjective. If something is art to you, then it's art, it doesn't make it special, it just make it art.
 
Holographicman said:
Games absolutely can be considered art, if the developers and artists work their asses for thr good at the end vision. I agree with the broad strokes, shit money grabbing fad games are not art.That's why indie games can be cool, no big Corp with investors running a shit show of ego boosting nonsense
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I have more an issue with the fact that often the actual interactive parts of a game have no real artistic value.

for example, mowing down the same goons for the 30th time in Spiderman 2 lacks any artistic expression of any kind.
while on the other hand the cutscense are basically movies and do have artistic expression in them.

for me, to consider the actual game as a whole as a piece of art, the whole thing has to be a cohesive expression of creativity.

which is why the 3 games that came to mind were REZ, Child of Eden and Tetris Effect, because Takashi Ishihara's games come closest to this in my opinion.
most other games that fall into this category are sadly often either those barely interactive narrative games or straight up walking sims devoid of actual meaningful gameplay and game mechanics
 
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Might be a bit of recency bias, but as a whole I think NieR: Automata would qualify as a perfect example of an actual work of art in video game form.
But to someone not used to gaming it might be a bit hard to appreciate it as a work of art in the moment to moment gameplay.
 
kevboard said:
I have more an issue with the fact that often the actual interactive parts of a game have no real artistic value.

for example, mowing down the same goons for the 30th time in Spiderman 2 lacks any artistic expression of any kind.
while on the other hand the cutscense are basically movies and do have artistic expression in them.

for me, to consider the actual game as a whole as a piece of art, the whole thing has to be a cohesive expression of creativity.

which is why the 3 games that came to mind were REZ, Child of Eden and Tetris Effect, because Takashi Ishihara's games come closest to this in my opinion.
most other games that fall into this category are sadly often either those barely interactive narrative games or straight up walking sims devoid of actual meaningful gameplay and game mechanics
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You really have a great point there, the dissonance between movie and interaction. Maybe if they would have added some choices (haven't played the latest) where things really could fuck it up as spiderman. I'm the best Star Dust endless player in swedenland, its a game and addictive, my late dad died before I got over his score, is it art. For us as family, it kind of went there as a bonding think.
 
skit_data said:
Might be a bit of recency bias, but as a whole I think NieR: Automata would qualify as a perfect example of an actual work of art in video game form.
But to someone not used to gaming it might be a bit hard to appreciate it as a work of art in the moment to moment gameplay.
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I've heard a lot about the game for years, recommended? I like diving into worlda as if getting absolutely fuck stuck in a book, pardon my expression 😁
 
Not sure exactly why, cause I think about this often enough, but the first game that came to my mind this time was Soma. That game is just perfect. Haunting. Beautiful. Thought provoking as all get out.

Also, my usual go-to is What Remains of Edith Finch. Another hauntingly beautiful game.
 
S
rabbity-thing said:
Not sure exactly why, cause I think about this often enough, but the first game that came to my mind this time was Soma. That game is just perfect. Haunting. Beautiful. Thought provoking as all get out.

Also, my usual go-to is What Remains of Edith Finch. Another hauntingly beautiful game.
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Yes, SOMA, is a great example, thank you
 
DoubleClutch said:
I'm sure we'll all agree that games are and should be considered art.
Click to expand...

It depends on how you look at it, from an art history point of view, and relating "art" to the contemporary art world, games are absolutely NOT art. Games are products of entertainment and consumption.

If you think about art as part of the human expression and the culture we create, in the broadest sense of these words, games, just like movies and music, can be considered art.

With that out of the way, and hopefully not sounding condescending, which is not my goal here 😅 I would say my favorite "game which I consider to be art" would be Death Stranding. Which kind of hurts, because I'm a very visual person and I love bright, colorful, experimental stuff. But the thought provoking nature of Death Stranding, not only about it's weird story and philosophical layers. But also the role and actions of you as a player. Transporting, manual labour, in order to fix something broken, to connect people again, with online connectivity too.

Damn. Kojima made something Precious.
 
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Video games contain art but aren't necessarily art in and of themselves.

To compare, think about something like D&D. The books without question contain art in the form of illustrations, but the game part is just a game. They combine to form the completely package.

The same can be said for video games, especially when you add music. Music is part of the arts, and is part of the experience. But unless Monopoly and Scrabble are art (no), a broad definition of video games necessarily being art is not something I would agree with.

When you first enter Elden Ring's Liurnia and look out over the cliff, that is undeniably a product of traditional artistic endeavours crafted in a modern medium. The crafting of those visuals and the use of colour is striking because it was meant to be. It's a traditional landscape piece created within the game to draw you further into the game.

But that doesn't mean every part of Elden Ring is art. It's still fundamentally a product designed for you to interact with the gameplay mechanics.

3949077-guide_eldenring_liurniapath_site.jpg
 
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DoubleClutch said:
I'm sure we'll all agree that games are and should be considered art.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure I agree with this statement. How can we put Fortnite or Call of Duty into the same bracket as Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel or Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov?
 
For me video games and keep classical style music relevant and fresh in the modern era since the 90s more than any other art form. A lot of the music can go on to fetch massive views and often millions. I know a lot of people from the older generation who love classical music but don't play games and I always think how much they're missing out on and they're unaware that the spirit of classical music is alive in games. Often combined with the kind of beats you get in rock music to make it a thing of its own (Uematsu and his legacy is the best for this).

Particularly FF and lots of Japanese games.

Spoilers for those yet to play FF16


Dat final phase


One of the many FF7 Rebirth battle themes combining the main theme and battle theme was a masterstroke.



So I think video games as an art form stands up there with everything else and certain aspects like music and art design in some series are the best you can get in capturing the imagination. There are probably now thousands of tracks I love from games across probably a hundred games or more.

A game where they put love into the music makes it much more memorable than those that don't imo.
 
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I have actually done this before, journey is what i used. The reason for that is because what it manages to convey so much without telling you. No dialog, only the journey and the emotion the player experiences while on it.

I see a lot of suggesstions here that push graphics or a specific style. But I dont think people are getting what people within the "arts" are looking for, I would say due to this misunderstanding it would actually enforce to these types that gaming is exactly what they think it is, its akin to pushing the Transformers movies as an example of how films are art.

Journey though rebukes all their arguments, it fundementally does what these types say "art" is. You get them to sit down and play that, by the end of it they will begrudgingly understand.
 
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DoubleClutch said:
I'm sure we'll all agree that games are and should be considered art.

Assuming you had to convince a non-gamer of that view, what would be one game you would use to convey it?

It can only be one game though.
Click to expand...

It's an artform in the sense that it's a medium for creative expression.

That doesn't mean that all games are art, just like not all films are art.

I think very few games really meet any kind of reasonable definition of art. A couple that come to mind are Rime and Inside, but can't think of too many others of the ones I've played.
 
The Fartist said:
Any form of expression through a medium is art, whether good or bad, it's subjective. If something is art to you, then it's art, it doesn't make it special, it just make it art.
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No that's just a cop out. Art means something - it's not just any expression by any means.
 
Hunnybun said:
No that's just a cop out. Art means something - it's not just any expression by any means.
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What? no.
It "means" that it's a an expression. If you want to put any qualifier to it, at the most it has to be an intentional expression and I'd argue not even that.

On topic though, I wouldn't do this by citing specific examples. Analogies work best, like for example saying how chess is a sport and going through why that feels unintuitive yet true. That analogy works better for explaining why videogames can be a sport, come to think of it, but it helps reframing your perspective in any case.
 
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The same people that claim videogames can't be art, are the same that then pretend things like this are art.

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Some games can be Arty but games are games. Just like you can have arty movies but movies are movies. Problem arises when people who like arty movie games push their likes to the forefront and claim that is what gaming is and should be, when Tetris is purer than that and just a game.
 
Preseznik said:
What? no.
It "means" that it's a an expression. If you want to put any qualifier to it, at the most it has to be an intentional expression and I'd argue not even that.

On topic though, I wouldn't do this by citing specific examples. Analogies work best, like for example saying how chess is a sport and going through why that feels unintuitive yet true. That analogy works better for explaining why videogames can be a sport, come to think of it, but it helps reframing your perspective in any case.
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So a doodle on the back of an envelope, say, is art, and nobody can say any different cos "subjectivity"?

Art isn't just any expression. It's true that clearly defining it is difficult, and the boundaries are blurry, but there are still lots of expressions that definitely are NOT art.

The kinds of qualities that might qualify something as art are an emotional resonance, profound ideas communicated on a deep, subconscious level, and ideally presented in a beautiful form (although again that's somewhat subjective).
 
IDKFA said:
How would you define art.
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For me it is anything that was created with artistic endeavour to elicit an emotional response, whether primarily or or not. But the emotional response can't be a by-product and must have been intended by the creator.
 
Could be , but I really dont give a shit .

Hot take : I think its so pretentious to make a game aiming for it to be an "art" .
 
bbeach123 said:
Could be , but I really dont give a shit .

Hot take : I think its so pretentious to make a game aiming for it to be an "art" .
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But who is aiming for it to be art in your mind to make it pretentious? the studio? the publisher? the individuals?

What about a game becoming art by (each or) any of the team not being pretentious and just working at their job and feeling emotionally invested in their creativity and wanting others to see that artistic investment? like maybe a carpenter on the Marry Rose might have or a sword maker like depicted in the Blue Eyed Samurai anime.

Surely games all become art in that way without being pretentious, no?
 
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PaintTinJr said:
But who is aiming for it to be art in your mind to make it pretentious? the studio? the publisher? the individuals?

What about a game becoming art by (each or) any of the team not being pretentious and just working at their job and feeling emotionally invested in their creativity and wanting others to see that artistic investment? like maybe a carpenter on the Marry Rose might have or a sword maker like depicted in the Blue Eyed Samurai anime.

Surely games all become art in that way without being pretentious, no?
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Sure.
 
winjer said:
Not as a urinal, for a start.
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I might be inclined to agree.
PaintTinJr said:
For me it is anything that was created with artistic endeavour to elicit an emotional response, whether primarily or or not. But the emotional response can't be a by-product and must have been intended by the creator.
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Interesting.

Don't all video games aim to elicit an emotional response?
 
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