
An Exhibition That Proves Video Games Can Be Art - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/10/t-magazine/art/jason-rohrer-video-games-exhibit-davis-museum.html
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footpath
The HN discussion on Ebert's comment was quite fascinating:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273241](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1273241)

Jason Rohrer lived a very minimal lifestyle before 2012, as described here:
[http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/simpleLife.ht...](http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/jason-
rohrer/simpleLife.html)

 _We have set our yearly budget at about $9,756. Town, village, and school
property taxes eat up about $1500 of this per year. After that, we have a
budget of about $688 per month. We have devoted $200 of this to utilities
(water, electric, and amortized heat), and $65 to telephone and Internet. You
might be laughing: "No fridge, but you have DSL, huh?" Remember, I am a
computer programmer. After all of these expenses, we are left with about $423
per month, which must cover food and other purchases._

His computer setup back then involved a broken Dell Inspiron 4100 with 950 MHz
processor and 256 MiB of RAM:
[https://usesthis.com/interviews/jason.rohrer/](https://usesthis.com/interviews/jason.rohrer/)

His game _Passage_ is a free download from his website.

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EvenThisAcronym
As I understand it gaming enthusiasts regard games as being intrinsically art,
with no need to "prove" that they can be. Every game from Pong to Call of Duty
is a work of art. This whole discussion around whether games are art or not
seems to be coming from outside the gaming community, and should not really be
attributed much importance.

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beat
The definition of "art" is not "hung in a museum". The people who hang art in
museums would tell you that. So the real question isn't whether video games
are art, but whether they can address the kinds of questions addressed by
other forms of modern art (and do any do that well enough to be considered for
inclusion in modern art museums, alongside other works of concept and
technique).

This is aggravated by the mutual contempt between the "art" and "engineering"
camps, with each finding reasons to look down on the other.

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shockzzz
Not unlike the rest of the entertainment industry, the vast majority of
philosophically and ontologically compelling games don't make it into the
mainstream.

As bullshit as the Oscars are, they at least try. There is no equivalent in
the Gaming industry.

Just check out Galatea. Very few people know about that game, but it is
amazing.

~~~
BillTheCat
The Independent Games Festival gives awards out to plenty of games no one has
ever heard of.

Even the Game Awards, the most Oscar-like award show that video games have,
gives awards to smaller, more "artsy" titles. For instance "Her Story" won
best narrative for 2015 over more mainstream blockbuster titles like "The
Witcher 3".

~~~
eghad
The Witcher 3 can hardly be categorized as a "mainstream blockbuster." It's
more akin to a cult classic that was finally accepted by a larger audience.

Beyond that the original comment was lamenting the lack of a central cultural
authority on gaming, which there is none (and I don't think there necessarily
needs to be one given the lack of marketable personalities or reasons to watch
one beyond ad space). "Her Story" was recognized last year because of its
approachable, non-linear play mixed with FMV, but there dozens of other titles
released that would be easier to argue for as "art" that aren't going be
recognized in any notable manner. Does something need to have recognition to
designated as art? No. Neither sculptures nor paintings have award shows, so I
think it's fair to say that artistic merit goes beyond gaming having an
Oscars.

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rurban
I believe I proved that 20 years ago already. At least that's what the
relevant art historians write in their books. ArsDoom 1995.
[https://www.google.de/search?q=ArsDoom+game+art](https://www.google.de/search?q=ArsDoom+game+art)

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cousin_it
I don't buy any hard criteria for accepting something as "art". Ultimately
it's just a status contest. Will the hip folks accept video games into "high
culture", or will they keep sneering? Post facto excuses can be made for
either choice, but the deal maker is the opportunity for social
differentiation.

The best way to elevate the status of games is not by making art games like
Gone Home that try to tackle social issues with a veneer of interactivity.
That's a transparently wannabe tactic. Instead, gamers could project a
hipster-like appreciation of _pure gameplay_ as something that takes effort to
enjoy. There's a good case to be made that the unwashed masses don't actually
enjoy gameplay once you remove all the set dressing (art, music, plot...), so
there's an opportunity for an informed minority to claim better taste. Such
hipsterism could sow the seeds for eventually accepting games into the high
culture pantheon.

As a bonus, creating pure gameplay is much easier than asset-heavy games. It's
well within reach of a single brooding artist on drugs, and you can credibly
sell it as a momentary flash of inspiration later. That's convenient, because
picking out the name of one auteur from ten pages of credits is a real mood
killer.

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CM30
Personally, I think the biggest mistake everyone's making when it comes to
video game and art (and which is being made in this article) is that 'art' is
somehow only a thing when it's the one goal of a work's production. That
somehow, only more obscure games made to be 'artistic' can be 'art'.

Do these people somehow think Shakespeare made his works to be studied or
admired rather than enjoyed by general audiences? That works by people like
Charles Dickens and Jane Austen were made to be studied in literature class?

But that's not true. A lot of games are 'art'. They're not intended to be such
(or have that as their only motivation for existing), but they show the same
kind of meaning and quality of design and what not as any artistic indie game
you can think of. For example, a lot of people would say games ranging from
Super Mario Bros to Psychonauts to Half Life to the Legend of Zelda Majora's
Mask are 'art', but none of them were made specifically to be as such.

Games are already art, they're just not marketed as such.

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aikah
Only people who do not play video games feel the need to be convinced that
video games is art.

Digital art is making museums irrelevant. Artists can distribute a piece of
art, a performance ,even live, directly in a browser.

~~~
krapp
Your first sentence is defensible, even laudable, but your second sentence
goes too far trying to discredit the premise.

Seeing digital representations of non-digital art is in no way a substitute
for the real thing, however.

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SFjulie1
If being exposed in a museum is a proof to be art, then I still think Marcel
Duchamps Fountaine de Jouvence is better placed in toilets.

Art is a just a name to classify ways of expression, and the same way the rose
does not need a name nor a museum to shine in the morning, Video games never
needed museum to be Art.

But on the other hand, artists need to put stuff in museum to claim authority
on something they clearly don't understand.

~~~
halosghost
I completely agree.

In addition, I feel like there have been so many games which might qualify as
“artistic” that should be plenty (even for those who feel they have a rigid
line between “art” and “not art”) to qualify video games as a valid medium for
art.

For example, Kentucky Route Zero (talk about an incredible experience).

~~~
ashark
What's so distinctive about KRZ it that, aside from all the other great things
about it, it so fluently speaks the _language_ of video games and confidently,
appropriately leverages the conventions of its sub-genre, as compared with
other "art games" like Gone Home (which I enjoyed, mind you!) that live in
their medium only _superficially_.

Label either what you will, but IMO KRZ's among the best examples of what the
properties of video games _in particular_ can contribute to the expression and
experience of art. Gone Home could be translated to an (admittedly elaborate
and large) interactive art installation (think haunted house, but less
haunted, or like an escape room but bigger) and I'm pretty sure it'd be
_better_ for it—the immersive nostalgia of Gone Home _wants_ you to feel and
smell it, IMO... but you can't. It doesn't even do any of the media-blending
that something like Thirty Flights of Loving does that'd make it tough to
subject it to this kind of transformation. On the other hand I have trouble
imagining any similar removal from the video game medium for KRZ turning out
well. I don't even know where you'd start, or what you might change it into
without making it something else entirely, likely inferior.

Consider also many of the Twine games and their cousins, which could just as
well be choose your own adventure books—the "game" part may matter, the
"video" barely does. KRZ? It both _must be a video game_ , and _isn 't
middling-quality (but possibly fun!) genre fiction_. Very few video games tick
both those boxes.

