Will gaming ever be an art form?

For me I think it really is and has been for a long time.
For the industry and the majority of the gaming public, I don't think so.
There's such a rush for the hype train for maximum short term profit and a total discarding of the old from the public that it's rather hard to think they have any will of treating this medium as an art form.
 
It definitely is already.

I do think there are some challenges revolving around production costs that currently set it apart from other media. Indie music and film can cheaply achieve levels of fidelity that indie games clearly cannot with comparable financing.

I think the advent of indie gaming is a good thing, but toolsets are not yet where they ought to be. Highly creative people work around these limitations, sure, but ideally creators can focus on content and experience as opposed to overcoming technical hurdles.

The current state of game criticism is another problem. Certain critical approaches, common to the point of innocuity, suddenly set the internet on fire when applied to games. Gaming is a big tent, and it should be able to weather multiple perspectives without losing its collective mind.

But, yes, gaming is art, and its potential for providing audiences with powerful, unforgettable experiences has yet to be fully tapped.
 
Hindl said:
It can be, it's not there yet to me. Sure, there are artistic games, but to me a medium becomes an art form when it can express it's story and ideas in a way that isn't as effective as in other media.
Click to expand...

Do you really think games haven't already done that? I mean really they've done that since they were created
 
Video games are, in fact, a new form of literature. Interaction with a confluence of systems over time can produce deeply meaningful emotional truths about the human condition. Not all games do this, certainly, but there are many designers that are absolutely aware of this potential, and tune their systems to exploit this in order to engender specific emotions.

Examples include the commentary on terrorism and suicide bombing techniques from Red Faction Guerilla on normal mode, the crushing bureaucracy of Papers Please, and the zen break from loss of souls as a consequence in Demon's Souls.
 
Hindl said:
It can be, it's not there yet to me. Sure, there are artistic games, but to me a medium becomes an art form when it can express it's story and ideas in a way that isn't as effective as in other media. We're getting there, especially with indies, but too many games are tied to the cinematic approach, where the player plays the game for a while, and then is ripped out of the action for a cutscene. It's fun, but to me it seems that developers aren't taking advantage of the medium completely yet.
Click to expand...

We *are* there, unless you want to specifically discount games like BioShock and The Stanley Parable.
 
Sushi Nao said:
Video games are, in fact, a new form of literature. Interaction with a confluence of systems over time can produce deeply meaningful emotional truths about the human condition. Not all games do this, certainly, but there are many designers that are absolutely aware of this potential, and tune their systems to exploit this in order to engender specific emotions.

Examples include the commentary on terrorism and suicide bombing techniques from Red Faction Guerilla on normal mode, the crushing bureaucracy of Papers Please, and the zen break from loss of souls as a consequence in Demon's Souls.
Click to expand...
I don't disagree with you on Games being another form of art but with your logic movies are another form of literature (and pretty much all art forms).
And I don't think I can agree on that.
 
not every thing has to be an art-form to have value. like, take a beer. I can drink it and it can have a pleasing taste, even without being considered a piece of art. or take a car, it's value might be determined by something like MPG or 0 to 60 time or it's top speed, however those same qualities would be considered irrelevant when judging a painting. what do you think the mona lisa would get on meta-critic?
 
We've already enjoyed several facets related to games as art since the inception of the medium. Though I think we could probably let games mature as an artform at a faster pace once the industry and culture at large gets over the ridiculous inferiority complex it has towards the film industry.

I've noticed that when games are featured at art exhibitions and such, they usually choose to focus on the things that are unique to the medium like abstract visuals. I once saw a painting of de_dust from Counter-Strike that was made from a spectator perspective where you can clip outside the map boundaries to see the whole thing floating in a giant skybox like it was in a map editor or something. I think these are the kinds of things gamers seldom ever think would be worth celebrating because it's such a "gamey" thing and subsequently treated negatively.

I also think about Brothers. This game was made by Josef Fares, an acclaimed Swedish film director (same guy who's responsible for that funny cop gif that's been making the rounds online). I found it very ironic that a guy from the film industry coming into games understands the medium's potential for artistic expression in its own right better than a lot of seasoned game designers who act more like they'd rather want to make films.
 
Anything can be used to create art. Video game mechanics in themselves are no more art than a backhand lob in tennis is art though. The whole experience must come together to evoke (or provoke) a reaction in the way other mediums do.

Most games will never be art though in the same way most commercial films aren't either. The goal from the start in many cases is simply a piece of commercial entertainment to make money and nothing more (which is fine in its own right but you don't go demanding it's taken as art by association of the medium). You've got to set out to create art and few games will be the result of someone doing so.

But sure in principle nothing's stopping the medium as such.
 
The "Is gaming art" conversation is one of the stupidest things ever.

Art is not good. Art is not special. Being called "art" does not mean that you're exceptional. It does not mean that you're worthwhile. It does not mean you're esteemed. It does not mean you're deep. It's just a random thing you can be that is barely even worth mentioning.

And of course games are an art. Anyone who says otherwise is an absolute loon, prick, or someone who just hasn't bothered to think things through (which is understandable given the inanity of the topic). It is still a young and crude art form, but it is an art form, and it it has been since Pong and before.
 
MormaPope said:
Tons of games have used gameplay, actual gameplay bits and mechanics to tell story or present themes of a story. Storytelling through gameplay has been a thing for a long time now.
Click to expand...

AESplusF said:
Do you really think games haven't already done that? I mean really they've done that since they were created
Click to expand...

Roto13 said:
We *are* there, unless you want to specifically discount games like BioShock and The Stanley Parable.
Click to expand...

As I've said, there are games that have done this, but it hasn't become standard yet. One thing I think that is holding back games is the lack of a common foundation to build off of. These games did interesting things with storytelling, but it hasn't been developed. Look at music, art, and film. They all have core design principles that the artists can build off of to create their unique pieces. Film has cinematography rules, with the effects of lighting, camera angles, and scene architecture to get certain emotions out of the audience. Fine art has rules of composition, including the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, while music has music theory to explain chord progressions and dissonance and why they are satisfying. Games don't have that. Developers have only vague ideas of why games work, not exact principles that can be used as foundations.

Here's a quote from a Gamasutra article about this:

Historically, the process of understanding games has been limited by numerous factors ranging from messy experimental practices, spiritual reliance on untested theories of play, and confused terminology. We are still alchemists of our trade, mixing two parts impure story with one part polluted game play with three parts market voodoo.

As an industry, we need to beyond the mystical hand waving that defines modern game design. It is now possible to craft, test and refine practical models of game design built from observable patterns of play. We can describe what the player does and how the game reacts. Recently, we’ve begun to crack open why players react to certain stimuli and are able to create models that predict pleasure and frustration.
Click to expand...

Source

There are definitely games that have excellent stories, and games that do interesting things with stories. But for the most part, game storytelling is terrible and developers don't know how to solve it. With the indie boom, more experimentation is happening, and I hope more developers look to games like Bioshock and the Stanley Parable for how to create new ideas. But in an industry that is so quick to bury the past in search of the next big thing, it's frustratingly hard to get there.
 
Mael said:
I don't disagree with you on Games being another form of art but with your logic movies are another form of literature (and pretty much all art forms).
And I don't think I can agree on that.
Click to expand...

Well, as you'll note, I focused on interactivity as what sets games apart. Movies are solely a passive experience; though some "deep reading" is of course possible, the presentation will never change. However, one new facet - be it system, mechanic, or even an item description - can change the entire flavour of a game, and affect the emotions it creates in the player.
 
It already is in so far as it's a medium for creative output. I think when a lot of people bring up the topic, they're more wanting to be able to put gaming on some sort of pedestal of high culture, which I'm not entirely sure games have reached yet.

While there have been some decent stories in games, they still need to be qualified as "being good as far as games go" but don't really hold up compared to the best that film and literature have to offer. I'll take the works of Hardy, Dickens, and Proust any day over the best stories to make their ways into games.

Even from a visual standpoint a lot of what seems to be pursued has been greater and greater levels of photo realism. There've been a few exceptions from major developers who have gone for something very different (prime examples being Okami or Windwaker), but it's largely indie developers in the last few years that have really tried to break the mold in terms of bringing new, unorthodox visual aesthetics into gaming (Fract and Antichamber, for instance), so I do see things improving in that regard.

There is one problem that I think has yet to be hammered out, and I don't know how the industry would go about it. I remember seeing an interview with Frank Zappa years ago where he was criticizing the direction mainstream music was heading, and he felt that people were more concerned with making a product than with making art, and I do think this is something that the game industry suffers from. Any facet of a game seems to be whittled down to a bullet point that the producer's PR team prattles on about ad nauseum, stripping away any joy that it may have brought, making it feel almost sterile after it gets chewed up by the company's marketing machine.

Personally, I think that it's important in a creative endeavour to think, "I'm fucking doing this, and to hell with what everyone else thinks." It could be amazing, or terrible, but when it's good, it tends to be brilliant, and can bring about a whole new movement in whatever corner of the creative world that it sprung up in. Granted, this is a lot easier to do in the realm of painting, literature, or music, as the financial barrier to entry isn't all that daunting. However, games are inherently more expensive to put together.

As such, the people behind them probably aren't going to be able to self-fund their project, and need to look elsewhere for capital, be it a publisher, or crowd funding. At that point, they're forced to treat their game as a project that is worth investing in. A publisher will want a decent return on whatever they give the devs, and even stuff like kickstarters see people who threw money at different projects demanding more and more say into the direction it is taken. With that, it strikes me that developers can't be 100% free to indulge in their own artistic freedom since they're beholden to one paymaster or another to even get their game completed, and prevents them from fully expressing themselves, forcing their game to be more product that art.
 
I don't understand how anyone can argue over something that is factually subjective by definition. Art is whatever you want it to be, regardless of another person's opinion on it.
 
Hindl said:
As I've said, there are games that have done this, but it hasn't become standard yet. One thing I think that is holding back games is the lack of a common foundation to build off of. These games did interesting things with storytelling, but it hasn't been developed. Look at music, art, and film. They all have core design principles that the artists can build off of to create their unique pieces. Film has cinematography rules, with the effects of lighting, camera angles, and scene architecture to get certain emotions out of the audience. Fine art has rules of composition, including the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, while music has music theory to explain chord progressions and dissonance and why they are satisfying. Games don't have that. Developers have only vague ideas of why games work, not exact principles that can be used as foundations.
Click to expand...

Well that's just straight-up untrue. Like, very, very untrue. Go watch Extra Credits or something. If you think everyone's just winging it, you clearly know nothing about game design.
 
Of course it's an art form, but not all pieces are art, if that makes sense.

When will be generally respected as an artform? When the whole industry, especially publishers and large sections of the community, get their shit together
 
I also think we need to decouple the individual artistic components that compose a game from its value as art. There is no question as to whether composers or texture artists or modelers or animators or gameplay designers are artists - of course they are.

What games offer as art is a synaesthesia of all these elements, over time - and that part is key - in order to create new emotions in the player.
 
pQBHI8s.png
 
Hindl said:
Developers have only vague ideas of why games work, not exact principles that can be used as foundations.
Click to expand...

Is that why Nintendo has had critical darlings and hits since the mid 80's? What about Hideo Kojima and the MGS franchise? Rockstar and the Houser brothers with GTA?

Open world games have followed the GTA template for a decade. The majority of fighting games have been 2D since Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. 3D stealth games still revolve around cones of sight and noise.
 
Will games ever be an art form? Possibly and I would say it is close but at the moment the main art in games comes from other art forms. Unlike film, literature, music, painting, drawing and the like games are made up of various other art forms, some of the procedurally generated stuff and games such as little big planet, minecraft and project spark are what I would consider the emergence of games potentially becoming an art form that is unique to itself.

Will commercial games ever be Art? the type that is in of itself art with the primary objective of being a work of art? No because the objective is to be a game. An oil painting isn't Art because of the medium used, a painting that is Art is such because that was the intention and the only intention, it is artistic in multiple ways but that does not make it art, what makes it art is when the creator decides the intention for the piece. If it is to have any function outside of art then it is design. However games can be used as a medium for art such as "What It Is Without the Hand That Wields" by Riley Harmon, and the interactive entertainment Dys4ia is art that uses many techniques found in computer games.

Could gaming (the action of playing) become an art form? I don't think so. It can be skilful but essentially an art form is the act of creating and as a player you are playing within the confines of what the designers and programmers have created. However that could be a good subject for a piece of art: When does a game stop becoming a a game and become creation software? If the emphasis moves too heavily towards the act of creating you are now creating rather than playing and essentially no different that Adobe CC. Or can you re-program games to also create art , perhaps with movements relating to a point in 3d space that can then be printed out, how much could that be controlled, etc.
 
Hindl said:
As I've said, there are games that have done this, but it hasn't become standard yet. One thing I think that is holding back games is the lack of a common foundation to build off of. These games did interesting things with storytelling, but it hasn't been developed. Look at music, art, and film. They all have core design principles that the artists can build off of to create their unique pieces. Film has cinematography rules, with the effects of lighting, camera angles, and scene architecture to get certain emotions out of the audience. Fine art has rules of composition, including the rule of thirds and the golden ratio, while music has music theory to explain chord progressions and dissonance and why they are satisfying. Games don't have that. Developers have only vague ideas of why games work, not exact principles that can be used as foundations.

Here's a quote from a Gamasutra article about this:



Source

There are definitely games that have excellent stories, and games that do interesting things with stories. But for the most part, game storytelling is terrible and developers don't know how to solve it. With the indie boom, more experimentation is happening, and I hope more developers look to games like Bioshock and the Stanley Parable for how to create new ideas. But in an industry that is so quick to bury the past in search of the next big thing, it's frustratingly hard to get there.
Click to expand...

I mention Silent Hill 2 as the GOAT because it's so great with the storytelling. What it tells you is so weird and cryptic, but as a player while experiencing and walking around Silent Hill, meeting people and visiting places, you realize it's all symbolic and you have the opportunity to piece together the story through what the game presents you. The game tells a great disturbing story, but behind all that is a very real and human story.

I can't explain it well since I ain't a writer, but SH2 to me is the best and most striking storytelling I've experienced in a videogame. It's a story that could not be told the same way in a novel, nor a movie. It's not just cutscene exposition, it's you as a player experiencing this subconscious symbolic world. It makes sense as a game.
 
Anything can be art and art can be created with, and out of, anything. Games are and always have had the potential to contain art because they are a human creation and a form of expression.

Because art is subjective there will always be discussion over just what kind of art a particular example is, or how "good" it is.
 
sasliquid said:
Of course it's an art form, but not all pieces are art, if that makes sense.

When will be generally respected as an artform? When the whole industry, especially publishers and large sections of the community, get their shit together
Click to expand...

Art sucks quite often.

The only thing getting in the way of universal respect for games is self-respect from the industry. Start acting like pompous museum curators instead of neckbeards living on Mt Dew and it will get the "respect" it craves for some bizarre reason.


lazygecko said:
Ubisoft have game design down to I V VI IV
Click to expand...

It was all I could do to refrain from trashing Ubisoft in my post, glad you covered it. :)
 
Mr Nash said:
Personally, I think that it's important in a creative endeavor to think, "I'm fucking doing this, and to hell with what everyone else thinks." It could be amazing, or terrible, but when it's good, it tends to be brilliant, and can bring about a whole new movement in whatever corner of the creative world that it sprung up in. Granted, this is a lot easier to do in the realm of painting, literature, or music, as the financial barrier to entry isn't all that daunting. However, games are inherently more expensive to put together.
Click to expand...

This fits nicely with what I was saying. The money is a real issue. It's cheap to record your band playing. Even a video camera is cheaper than making a game. ...and it doesn't cost extra to sound like an actual band, or look like people doing things. Indie game development is a different beast entirely & as you also mention the funding process works against the type of the "lone visionary" vs. the establishment. These figures have often led revolutionary innovation in other fields.
 
Roto13 said:
Well that's just straight-up untrue. Like, very, very untrue. Go watch Extra Credits or something. If you think everyone's just winging it, you clearly know nothing about game design.
Click to expand...

I've watched Extra Credits, and I've spent the last 5 years at college studying game design with top researchers in the field. They are all working to creating this singular vocabulary for games, but it hasn't been discovered yet. If you can find me foundations in game design similar to the rules of composition in art and music theory, I'll take a look. But I don't think they are there yet. Games are designed by looking back at previous successes and trying to emulate them. And design has even been simplified to corridors in many AAA games. Especially comparing modern shooters to old ones like Doom, where the player would have to traverse the same area in several different ways to move forward. Dark Souls and indies are bringing these principles back, and it's time the AAA industry took notice.

Servbot24 said:
Once games become "standard" is when, for the very first time, they cease to be art.
Click to expand...

So again, does the rule of thirds, music theory, and cinematography weaken the respective mediums? I don't mean standardization in that way, but in the way that there is a common foundation for games to build off of, such as in other mediums. This would allow developers to focus on creating something truly unique and different, rather than worrying that their fundamental design is sound.
 
There was heated debate about whether or not photography was art when it was still new, all this pointless debate about whether games are art is just part of the initiation.
 
Hindl said:
So again, does the rule of thirds, music theory, and cinematography weaken the respective mediums? I don't mean standardization in that way, but in the way that there is a common foundation for games to build off of, such as in other mediums. This would allow developers to focus on creating something truly unique and different, rather than worrying that their fundamental design is sound.
Click to expand...

This implies that avant garde, Musique Concrete, etc isn't real art.
 
pinkurocket said:
I mention Silent Hill 2 as the GOAT because it's so great with the storytelling. What it tells you is so weird and cryptic, but as a player while experiencing and walking around Silent Hill, meeting people and visiting places, you realize it's all symbolic and you have the opportunity to piece together the story through what the game presents you. The game tells a great disturbing story, but behind all that is a very real and human story.

I can't explain it well since I ain't a writer, but SH2 to me is the best and most striking storytelling I've experienced in a videogame. It's a story that could not be told the same way in a novel, nor a movie. It's not just cutscene exposition, it's you as a player experiencing this subconscious symbolic world. It makes sense as a game.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with you, SH2 has excellent world design and uses it to reinforce the message that it's story is trying to tell. I want more games to focus on the way games like that use environmental storytelling to find new narrative techniques. The problem is many games, even that game's own sequels, failed to do that.

MormaPope said:
Is that why Nintendo has had critical darlings and hits since the mid 80's? What about Hideo Kojima and the MGS franchise? Rockstar and the Houser brothers with GTA?

Open world games have followed the GTA template for a decade. The majority of fighting games have been 2D since Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat. 3D stealth games still revolve around cones of sight and noise.
Click to expand...

AESplusF said:
Hmm...what about the entire premise of interactivity?

Games don't need to have stories to be worthwhile.
Click to expand...

Those are mechanics, which are great and the foundation of games. But games as a whole have yet to really explore how to meld these mechanics with effective storytelling. There have certainly been examples, and they have been highly regarded, rightfully so. But then most games go back to the traditional cycle, and it baffles me. And also, I think having strong mechanics and gameplay doesn't necessarily make it art. The mechanics of soccer and basketball have been refined completely, but I don't consider them art.

Again, this is only my opinion, but I believe a medium becomes an art form when it tells a message or story in a unique way. Such as when a movie adaptation of a book comes out and it isn't as good as the book. That legitimizes the book as an artform because the story it told is maximally effective within books. And games are playing around with these ideas. These last few years have been tremendous in moving the medium forward, and I'm excited for the future. But in my opinion we aren't there yet. If you have another opinion on when games are art, you can disagree with me. My criteria may be a little strict, but that's what I believe. And games have so much more potential than they currently have that I want them to move forward. All of these games are classics, but I want them to become the "Citizen Kanes" of games, tho not in the sense that that's normally used. I want these games to be seen as the starting point for when the medium truly came into it's own, great examples of how to use the medium for maximum impact, while being rough and unrefined.

Servbot24 said:
This implies that avant garde, Musique Concrete, etc isn't real art.
Click to expand...

No because movements like Dada, Fluxism, etc. specifically rebelled against the foundations set up in art. Their core message was to disrupt current thinking that had become established, which hasn't happened in games. Also, that's ignoring the immense thought put into the compositions these pieces developed. It's like saying Jackson Pollack splattered paint on a canvas and called it art. He specifically used unprimed canvas to explore the possibilities of the medium. He used incredibly deliberate strokes and consistent, methodical splatters to achieve his art pieces.
 
Art is by definition something that communicates a meaning or message to its audience. Great art communicates its message very well using all of its material to serve that message (BioShock+political philosophy, among other themes) and weak art can communicate meanings completely by accident (Arkham Asylum+extremely critical of the mentally ill).

Games are already art and a select few are already great art that take advantage of the medium. The problem is that it is not respected for its artistic potential by critics or gamers. The success of The Last of Us will hopefully continue to change that.
 
How would you define the rules or foundation for stand up comedy or comedy in general Hindl? The only foundation for stand up comedy is a stage and an audience. The Citizen Kane of comedy doesn't exist, George Carlin didn't set the stage for all comedians to follow, neither has any comedian really.

Foundation doesn't mean jack man. Being unable to define why something works doesn't mean something is missing or something has to be done to add legitimacy.
 
The videogame is a medium that can be used as a means for creative expression, this is the "safest" position I can take on the argument.
It really is up to the developers, which is not really different from the other media if you ask me. While I see an artistic value in Never Alone or even No Man's Sky (we'll see), I sure as hell can't see a thing in Battlefield or FIFA. I see value in, let's say, "Her" or "Forrest Gump" but not much in "Escape Plan", I see value in Lords of the Rings but not in a collection of jokes. Pretty common idea I guess, no?

Unfortunately we're far from closing this debate because the public opinion of videogames isn't exactly .. up to date. People know about Destiny or COD, Wii Fit, Candy Crush etc which are the equivalent of the Hollywood blockbusters, not about To The Moon or Journey or Valiant Hearts. This is why success like The Last of Us can be very important. It's even more important, in this regard, to have educated critic but it seems like a dog chasing its tail, really.

There's also a big problem with money and the AAA industry that can't keep going this way, no wonder that most of the title I mentioned are mid-low budget.
 
To each his own.

Anything can be art depends on the one looking.

I personally think games have the potential to be the best art form around. Games like Journey make it clear for me.

In time it'll probably become a more popular thought, but games have some more growing up to do.

Most people I know still believe games are just, well...games. Not much more. It'll take time to change that line of thinking.
 
elhav said:
To each his own.

Anything can be art depends on the one looking.

I personally think games have the potential to be the best art form around. Games like Journey make it clear for me.

In time it'll probably become a more popular thought, but games have some more growing up to do.

Most people I know still believe games are just, well...games. Not much more. It'll take time to change that line of thinking.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with this, and this is what I'm arguing for. There's so much potential in games, especially since it's the only medium where the audience has direct influence, and I want to see the evolution into it's own. I just personally don't think we're there yet.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Will cloud gaming ever be a serious platform?
2
51
2K
simpatico replied
Video games as an art form.
2 3
101
3K
a'la mode replied
Will gaming ever transcend hardware?
8
515
YeulEmeralda replied
Horizon Series Voice Actor is Worried About Game Performance as a Art Form After an ‘AI Aloy’ Video Surfaced
Opinion News Drama  2
81
4K
Quixz replied
  • Poll
Switch 2 - will Nintendo games finally look as good as the box art?
27
3K
Soapbox Killer replied
Top Bottom