
 On Art - wglb
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2010/05/27/On-Art
======
stcredzero
An example of gaming art: Shadow of the Colossus.

The gameplay elements are integrated into the storytelling in a way I can only
describe as art. Desolation, terror, desperation, and triumph experienced in
the gaming elements are as well integrated into the story as the best
soundtracks are integrated with the best made movies.

The experience of holding on by your fingertips, as the grip bar shrinks, the
horror experienced when scoping out the 8th colossus from a distance and
letting it close with you, the hopelessness of operating the last character to
appear... these are all integrated with the emotional intent of the part of
the story they are in, to the point where the gameplay is integral and not a
bolted-on gimmick.

Interactivity is just another element, like color, sound, music, CG, 3D, or
any number of technical innovations. It's just another tool to be used,
artfully or clumsily. It may start out as a gimmick, but creative and talented
people will figure out how to properly integrate it over time.

(Yes, soundtracks, color, CG, and 3D were once all pronounced to be gimmicks
that added nothing to the art of movies.)

~~~
megaduck
Seconded. Shadow of the Colossus is the best refutation to Ebert that I can
think of.

One factor that you're leaving out is the moral horror of painfully
slaughtering these giant and beautiful creatures. Often the colossi are
completely benign, and you have to figure out a way to injure them to get
their attention or bring them down to your level. My wife watched me play the
first level, and left the room horrified.

Thus, the emotional reaction of the player is a key component of the art. I
began the game tackling the first colossus with feelings of guilt and shame
for being such a butcher, but that was tempered by the knowledge that the kill
was a _necessary_ act. You have a love to save, after all.

However, as you progress through the game your revulsion subsides. You become
numb to the screams of pain, the frenzied attempts to shrug you off. It
becomes simple sport, instead of a vile but necessary act. The kills devolve
to "just a game". Your character physically reflects this, as you become
gradually darker and deformed, but at such a slow pace that you don't notice
until the corruption is quite far along.

And then, at the end, after you thrill to the final hard-won kill, the
morality comes rushing back. What you've done was wrong. Evil. Even though you
set out with the best of intentions, your soul is now irredeemable. The guilt
is intense. Then, finally, redemption of a sort.

SotC is emotionally richer than most films, and the responses that it evokes
would not be possible in any other medium. SotC is art of the highest caliber.

------
ihodes
I don't get it. In every post or essay about video games not being art, I've
yet to see a standard on which the statement is judged.

If smearing human fecal matter on different things, or squatting in a bus stop
and then cutting 1 ton of raw onions constitute art, then the beautiful
stories and and visual effects (and sounds and music and etc...) of video
games that arouses genuine emotion in the players who experience them should
indisputably be called art.

Simply because fun is one of those emotions that is often felt while
experiencing the games doesn't mean it isn't art. That's not written anyone.

What's even the point of not calling it art?

Absurd. All of these arguments.

~~~
bh23ha
What you don't get is that art is a social hack.

A long long time ago art, craft, science and even what then passed for
engineering and manufacturing, were all pretty much the same thing.

Over time we started to separate things, first science split off, but
eventually we even split craft from art.

And what's left in art is not some sensible definition like what can educate
the illiterate, enlighten the literate, and entertain the enlightened.

It's not even some fuzzy definition like what ever is a comment on the human
condition. The stand for an art piece could totally be that, until the artist
tells you it's just the stand the art is still coming. Even some artists who
make amusing and animated art have been accused of not making art at all but
some kind of crafty floss for the eyes bullshit that so totally not art.

(Please be aware that when I wrote the above I had sculptures in mind, not
video games.)

Art, and I don't just mean the products of art, but the all encompassing
culture, critics, buyers, sellers, "artists", groupies, the whole thing: it is
all a social hack.

If you totally buy into and can't use your own taste to tell something good
from something else, we'll then you've been totally 0wn3d.

If you just like music and some other artsy type things, but don't get "it".
Well then you're doing much better then people who overpay for crap they don't
understand, but you still don't get it.

If you get recognition and/or fame, money, what ever, but you get for
something which requires a lot of work/effort/time/talent, what ever, then
you're really good at that thing! But you're not necessary also really good at
art. Even if the thing is something everyone agrees is super artsy, like
painting.

If you're getting paid, especially if it's a lot, for anything that doesn't
require much of anything, this includes work/time/loss of dignity/etc, if you
can get paid a lot from "art" for not doing much, well then you get it and are
winning at this particular game.

~~~
barrkel
The term Art has different meanings for different people, but ironically one
of the core characteristics of a work of art is that it itself has different
meanings for different people.

Art is the social objects that people like to own, produce, view, reproduce,
etc., in order to advertise certain aspects of themselves: their taste, their
wealth, their vow of poverty, their snobbery, their connection with "the
real", their flights of fantasy, etc.

Art is like rational argument, but with metaphor in the place of logic.

Art is that which is perceived while in a self-consciously art-consuming mode
of thought.

Art is symbols in a web of epistemology, postmodern constructs the mastering
of which generates academic status.

None of these is truly correct, and there may be many more. It's up to you
which judgements to use. But don't expect other people to agree with you if
you put all your eggs in just one of these baskets.

Myself, I hew most closely to the metaphor as logic approach. Art, for me, has
to be visceral, it has to engage the senses; as well as being interesting,
engaging the intellect; as well as being emotive. It should engage at all
these levels, and resonate with me, things in my experience of life, and make
it richer.

------
gizmo
Only one character in Portal? Don't forget about the Weighted Companion Cube.
That character is pure genius.

~~~
jerf
Ultimately, the weighted companion cube is simply an extension of GlaDOS. As a
character, it exists entirely in her monologue; certainly the literal box is
not a character, inasmuch as it is simply a box.

~~~
wwortiz
You must have killed your companion quicker than anyone else.

------
RevRal
I've thought about this quite a lot, and I've come to the conclusion that
calling games art is like calling reality art.

The specific thing that distinguishes video games are game mechanics. And,
self contained, game mechanics are basically the physics of the game's
universe.

Are well implemented game mechanics art? No. Game mechanics need to be
transparent, unless the game is trying to make a statement on game mechanics
or something (Braid?).

Video games are a nexus of things that are art, but it just doesn't seem
technically okay to call the game itself art.

The best thing video games have going for them is that they can be good for
the imagination. The very best video games are exploratory (Myst, Shadow of
the Colossus), where interaction is not inconsequential, and they use the
medium to its fullest potential. However, this inspires a sort of vacant awe
that really doesn't teach you more than "there are a lot of possibilities out
there."

Video games are basically just low-density information relays. They're like
those "Baby Einstein" videos for older people. Soothing to the brain, but
strengthen the wrong facilities.

Like anything else, moderation is key. You need a healthy diet of books,
music, movies, food, with a pinch of video games to top it off, to relax the
mind from all that high density information.

(Note: I am an old school gamer. These new games really do confound me, and
the only game I've purchased in years was the recent Rocket Knight.)

------
extension
Don't fall into the trap, as this Santiago has, of arguing that games are art
because they have become _really good_.

First, your opponent can counter with "I don't find them very good", and the
productive part of the discussion is over, especially if you are arguing with
Ebert.

Better yet, they can argue that subjective quality is irrelevant to the
definition (the point you should be making). If bad art is nonetheless art
then good non-art is nonetheless non-art.

As another commenter pointed out, the whole discussion is a tactic of
misdirection. It doesn't matter what's art, it matters what's _good_ , and
this quibbling over semantics is a diversion from that asymptotically complex
matter, which old farts like Ebert would rather not face.

Ebert argues that games are not art because they have failed to motivate him
to _ever experience one for himself_. If you need more than that fact to win
the argument, you are probably over thinking it.

