

Wolfire Games: Are games art? - zitterbewegung
http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/01/are-games-art/

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jerf
Step one: Define art.

Step two: Define game.

Step three: Read off from your definition whether games are art.

It is only people's insistence on running this algorithm backwards, or that
there are universal definitions for either term, that keep this pointless
debate alive. The answer is yes and no and maybe, for some good definition of
either. It can be worth thinking about, but don't think you can actually
answer the question once and for all.

You'd think after the thirtieth or fortieth medium that we'd all understand
this. "Well, I guess musique concrete is art and I guess interpretative dance
is art and I guess these 'moving picture' things are art and I guess the
crucifix in a jar of piss is art, but I DRAW THE LINE at video games! No!"
Sheesh. What a crock.

~~~
sutro
Step one: Cut a hole in the box.

Step two: Put your junk in that box.

Step three: Make her open the box.

And that's the way you do it!

------
unalone
There are two largely accepted definitions of art. The first is the view of
art simply as the mastery of a certain action or craft. The second is the view
of art as something that changes the person that sees it.

By the first definition, video games are inherently piece of art so long as
there is an objective standard behind games. There's an art form behind, say,
the comprehensive control scheme from Super Mario 64, which is in my opinion
the best platforming control scheme I've ever used. There's an art to creating
responsive and beautiful worlds.

By the second definition, games still qualify, but we're in a poor position in
that thus far games are still parroting movies by-and-large. The large
advancements that we've seen in gaming - I'll cite Shadow of the Colossus and
Grand Theft Auto IV as the two pinnacles - are ones that, in terms of message,
are still parroting movies. Shadow of the Colossus gives us the sense of loss,
Grand Theft Auto IV gives us the sympathetic - and fully-fleshed - character.
These things can be compared dismissively towards movies, since they're far
more primitive in nature.

That's not to say that video games will remain as such. People are entering
the field with ambitious minds right now. Many games are starting to hint at
an expansion towards the sorts of things that gaming and gaming alone has to
offer. I think that the "are games high art" argument will be moot 20 years
from now, if not sooner. The gap is closing.

(I'll also say that if not the games themselves, music in video games is the
least compromised that any forum of music has been for a century. I'm thinking
of Nobuo Uematsu, whose soundtracks are regularly 4 discs+ long, who releases
piano arrangements and orchestral and rock arrangements of all his pieces, and
who - unlike, say John Williams - is given an incredibly wide scape of
emotions to portray with every game he works on. His output is impressive, as
is the output of Koji Kondo, though he isn't nearly as evocative in my
opinion.)

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sh1mmer
Interestingly I think this article misses a fundamental point.

I have a dear friend, a long time artist (who went to Goldsmiths and the Royal
Academy) and who paints 8 paintings a week, rain, snow or shine.

He has always talked about the need for art to emote, or at least provoke
thought in (in the case of much modern art) the viewer. His art, he says, is
trying to capture a moment in his life and display that in a way that others
might glimpse his life even though they could never be him.

By these criteria perhaps video games present the most formidable medium in
order to achieve the lofty goal. While one cannot directly control the exact
interaction a good video games can steer a player in the same way a good
director or leads the audience or an author leads her readers. By setting up
scenarios and situations which create the opportunity to feel or think an idea
that is entirely novel to us because we have been guided to it.

The power of interaction can bring this to a new level over traditional
mediums because of the exploration of the player. In basic computer science we
are taught about the difference between data, information and knowledge. The
knowledge being that information which a person is not only able recollect but
also directly apply. As an IT trainer I know from experience the way people
gain knowledge is by taking an abstract piece of information, and discovering
how it works. The phrase "let them work it out for themselves" is common,
because it reflects the simple truth.

If art is about experience, emotional or cognitive, interaction offers the
most concrete vehicle of human learning to reach states of exerience as never
before. I would contend that video games are indeed art of the highest order.

------
ken
I really didn't get Shakespeare until I saw it performed. His plays are plays
for a reason, after all. That's enough (for me) to blow away the "requires
authorial control" theory: no two performances are the same.

Or any book: everybody reads it and has a different mental image of what's
going on. (How many people read Dune and saw it as Lynch did?) In a book,
you're given fixed words and given free reign on the visual and auditory axes.
In a game, you're given fixed audiovisuals and given free reign on plot. I
don't see how one could be inherently artistic, and the other not. Only a
movie reviewer (where virtually everything is fixed) could claim that lack of
viewer participation is the defining attribute of art.

------
matthew-wegner
I guess Ebert's definition meant to have another word:

"Video games by their nature require player choices, which is the opposite of
the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires [EXCLUSIVE]
authorial control."

Games simply share this authorial control (some games share more than others,
like Spore or Little Big Planet). If you take Ebert's definition literally
then, indeed, games are art, and it kind of backfires on him.

~~~
ja2ke
There's a strong misunderstanding going on here of what "authorial control"
means, though. Anything you can do in a game, even a free-form game, is taking
place within a system of rules set down by the game's designers and
programmers. Games are interactive, and obviously accept input from the
player, but they are as strongly, and really, as exclusively authored as any
other medium.

Ebert comes at it entirely from a film point of view -- video game players can
(depending on the game) have control of the camera, of the movements and
decisions and dialog choices of the protagonist, or even in some cases,
control of the narrative! Every movement in a game, though, is restricted (or
it might be better to say, "allowed for" or "enabled"), by the designers.
Unless it is a poorly constructed game, you can't go walking off out of the
game's predetermined accessible areas. Every line of dialog was written by a
writer, or recorded by a voice actor (or, if it uses some sort of procedurally
generated speech system, is operating under rules built by a programmer and
game designer). Some games are more forgiving of "emergent" moments than
others -- having gameplay systems which are built to intersect and collide in
unexpected ways -- but all of those underlying systems were designed and built
with the purpose and expectation of creating interesting collisions.

The problem is that Ebert is framing games like he'd frame a piece of serious
film or literature -- defining authorial control in terms of narrative, or at
least in terms of character, which is ridiculous. If Ebert ventured into a
gallery space and encountered an interactive art installation which created
some sort of projection which responded to his body movement, voice, and an
artist-chosen soundtrack, would he declare that it inherently wasn't "art"
because it wasn't a painting?

I think he's confusing the presence of a protagonist and the use of filmic
storytelling tools and cinematography for a classic narrative work, and then
sees players diverting that narrative and shaping that narrative and tearing
it apart, and decides that there can't be anything valid there.

Narrative can be a great tool, or even a framework, to build into a game, but
the rules of conventional narrative not what games are inherently about, and
that makes them a misguided criteria by which to judge them.

~~~
unalone
The big point to be made here is that every form of art is inherently about
the medium. Games have different rules from movies. Camera work doesn't
matter, but creating a world such that every camera view looks equally
beautiful does. The authorial control isn't the control of the actual actions
but of the _results_ of said actions.

~~~
eru
Yes. And camera control does matter. But for most games programming the camera
is more like good craftsmanship than art. (This is the way it should be for
those games.)

~~~
unalone
The one really good camera movement I've seen in gaming is in Shadow of the
Colossus, where the camera blurs when it moves too quickly. It means that
suddenly there's a visual effect for switching camera angle. And for whatever
reason, most shots in that game are gorgeous without the player trying.

------
zitterbewegung
Good response to roger ebert and his ranting about the topic.

~~~
unalone
Yeah. Shame on Ebert. I love the guy and he's an incredible writer, but I
think he's wrong on this one.

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sh1mmer
I was disappointed the author flaked out of drawing his own conclusions. I
felt that he raised some reasonable, if obvious, points about the dismissal of
new mediums throughout the history of art.

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Dilpil
Is sound art? Is a colored plane art? Is a rock art?

It depends.

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snprbob86
Yes. Art is in the eye of the beholder. The end. Can we let this silly
discussion die please? (I didn't read the article)

