I honestly don't even understand how this is a debate.

Well, actually I do, because everyone I've seen on the "video games aren't art" side says somewhere in their thing "Now, look, I've never played a video game" or "I haven't played a video game since Asteroids." So there's why. They're uninformed and they like it that way -- which infuriates me as a general rule, regardless of the subject at hand.

I share your confusion as to why the dynamic/interactive nature of video games is somehow a hindrance to their possible artistic merit. I thought the whole point of art was that you as the observer of the art bring something of yourself to it, that you can interpret it and participate in making it a complete experience for yourself. That's what you're doing when you read a piece of literature or look at a painting you appreciate as art -- engaging with the work. Full-on interactivity strikes me as being a logical extension of this aspect of art -- how can someone argue that it is somehow a detriment to the artistic potential of the medium?

I can dig it if it's not your kind of art. I'm not really that into paintings or poetry (although I should probably give them another shot now that I'm older). But to say it cannot be art, objectively, because [hand-waving bullshit] but really just because you don't get it and don't care to -- that just strikes me as vacuous and ignorant.

I would say that whether or not a game can be art and whether the act of playing it is art are two separate things.

I will assume we can agree that the act of looking at a painting is not art. Does it follow that the painting itself is therefore not art?

There was an article about this on Cracked that I think is worth a read. Personally, I think art is kind of an abstract term, and what is or isn't art can very wildly from person to person. For example, I don't think something like 4' 33" is art, but there are probably people out there who think it is. And I'm ok with that.

I cast a fairly wide net in defining art, and am an avid gamer, so I have no problem saying games are art.  In fact, they are art on a couple levels.

Making a game, is definitely an artistic process.  The creators are designing a very literal journey to take a person on, and through mob encounters, level design, and progression of story they are manipulating the players (or, patrons) emotions and feelings, like any good art should do.

The other aspect to this is the art the player creates through playing the game.  If you're like me and consider things like athleticism to be art, then you can understand this.  For instance, I don't have to know much about Basketball to understand that Magic Johnsons no look pass was an artistic expression.  You don't have to be a fighter (but it helps) to watch Genki Sudo fight and recognize that he is a performance artist while fighting.  In this sense, any kind of performance can be interpreted as art.  So when I see a kid making amazing combos in Street Fighter 4, or someone do a brilliant timed run in Left 4 Dead 2, that is an art unto itself.

This is me responding before reading Ebert's article.

I don't know what the hell "art" means. So I consulted a dictionary. The first definition says, in a nutshell, that art is any deliberate application of skill and imagination to create something which is meant to be evaluated primarily on aesthetic terms. As good a working definition as any, I guess.

The definition of "aesthetic" is pretty clear: of or concerning beauty or the appreciation of beauty. Judging whether something is fun to play is not an aesthetic evaluation. It's another kind of evaluation.

So no. Video games, by virtue of the fact that they're primarily meant to be fun, cannot be art. Because art is primarily meant to be beautiful. Different goals.

Find me a video game that isn't meant to be fun and I'll call it the exception that proves the rule. Video games are aren't designed with some close cousin of "fun" in mind are exceptional specifically because they're unusual. If video games evolve to the point where saying they're usually meant to be fun is an unreasonable generalization, then video games can certainly be art. Because the nature of video games will have changed.

Can video games have artistic merit? Sure. Everything humans do can be evaluated aesthetically, and frankly I think things should be more often. But the subject of the debate is whether video games can be art, the noun, and until and unless the commonly accepted notion of "video game" changes, I say no.

Now, this is me responding after reading Ebert's article:

Okay, Roger was far less simplistic than I was. He rejected the notion of working from objective definitions and instead spoke subjectively about what "art" means to him. That's why he's the genius and I'm a guy with a laptop.

But I still think there's something to be said for the question of intent. What is the creator's (or creators') intent when they made Run Around With A Gun VII or whatever? Were they merely trying to amuse? Were they trying to Make A Big Point? Were they trying to seem profound without actually taking a stance on anything? None of these are, in my opinion, art. Ars gratia artis, and all that. Art is that which is done solely for its own sake.

What we now call "video games" but would be better described as "interactive audio-visual computer programs" are indeed a medium. It might well be possible to create not just art — which I'm sure has been done — but successful art in that medium. I can't name a successful work of art in the interactive-audio-whatever-I-said medium, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist. In fact let's say, for sake of argument, that at least one does.

Is it a video game?

And just like that, we're back to definitions. Games are meant primarily to be fun; art is meant primarily to be beautiful. It's silly to assert that one is inherently more noble or worthy than the other. They're just different classes of human endeavor.

So no. I still come down on the side of video games never being art. But on the other hand, art can never be a video game. So there's that.

Hey screw everyone that says they aren't, thats what I say. I think you have to be pretty god damn stupid or ignorant as fuck to say they aren't. Penny Arcade said it best:

If a hundred artists create art for FIVE YEARS, how can the result not be art?

I agree with the respect for Ebert, he was one of the few critics I would actually have followed. But this just infuriates me to no end. IMO it's like he is saying "no one living now will be alive to ever see anyone or personally catch a baseball".

It is fucking INTERACTIVE ART. It is a movie, THAT YOU FUCKING PLAY! When is the last time you watched a movie for 60 hours and were entertained by the characters the visual style the music and oh yeah you got to decide how to story unfolds and control the main characters instead of just watching them. Not only are video games art, they are art that allows you to create more fucking art by playing them. They are fucking Art^2! HULK SMASHHH

Last edited by TrowaGP02a (2010-04-22 23:54:48)

Right. This is as if my experience with movies began and ended with SyFy's Movie-of-the-Week and I went on to say that movies cannot be art.

Whereas your position on movies is:

I challenge you to formulate a clear, non-tautological definition of "art" which applies to movies and not video games.

Many modern video games are more akin to participatory movies than they are to Sim City. They tell stories, they have characters with arcs and histories, they're thematically and emotionally powerful.

Okay, then I reject the notion that there's inherently a line to be drawn between fun/beauty, fun/function, or beauty/function.

Eddie came up with the example of martial arts on Twitter. I believe that martial arts can, indeed, be a work of art in the same way that ballet or other physical expression can be art. It's beautiful to look at and it's fun to do, but the intention is neither. The intention first and foremost is to be functional.

Granted, there are certain offshoots of martial arts -- like wushu -- which are developed more toward beauty than function, but something which is functional can still be beautiful, and fun, and if it's not art then I don't know how you define it.

And again, I freely admit it's an arbitrary distinction. But if we're going to talk about this at all, we have to have some notion of what both "art" and "video game" mean. Otherwise we're just smearing words on each other.

And I reject your definition of art if this is what it is. The notion that something must be useless in order to qualify as art is absurd, and I'd like to know how you can define movies as art under this paradigm, and video games as not-art.

That's an assumption on your part, that they are only considered "artists" because they call themselves "artists." Whereas I think Penny Arcade would say they can be safely called "artists" because they create "art."

You got it.

Smart - I can go with this. He's smarter-than-average, but not nearly as smart as he seems to think he is.

To give a not-happening-right-now example, a while back Ebert made a post on his blog that made him sound like a Young Earth Creationist -- the earth was made in 6 literal days, 6000 years ago, things were created with apparent age, a worldwide flood created the geological formations we see in a day and not millions of years, etc.

People were shocked, and told him so. And the next day he responded, "Guys, I don't really believe that. It's satire, like Jonathan Swift. Are people so uncultured they don't even appreciate satire anymore? Gosh!"

What Ebert failed to understand, apparently, is that the point of satire is to take an argument to its logical, absurd, extreme conclusion. To a point where no one would possibly agree with it, and from there they can take a step back and see the absurdity of their own less-extreme but related belief.

All Ebert did was parrot things that people actually believe and acted as though the absurdity should be immediately apparent to all -- which it isn't to the people who actually believe it. If Jonathan Swift had written A Modest Proposal in a time where politicians were actually advocating for a legistlative policy of the rich eating the babies of the poor, it would not have qualified as satire.

What he should have done, and would have if he understood satire, was take the extreme position of beliefs that should trickle-down from a belief in a young earth and no evolution. Saying, for example, that "Modern medicine, which is based on evolution, has not reduced mortality rates by 85% in developed countries since the development of antibiotics." But of course, sneaky sneaky, he's actually saying the obvious opposite of what is true (I don't know if it's 85%, I made that up, but if I were writing the article for real I'd research and get the exact numbers). But saying something that is obviously the opposite of reality, but follows as the logical extreme of what creationists believe, would make it clear that the creationist beliefs themselves are absurd and antithetical to reality.

That's not what Ebert did. But that's what a smart hell-of-a-writer would do. Jonathan Swift was a hell-of-a-writer.

Which brings us to thoughtful.

Ebert doesn't think. Ebert reacts, and whatever Ebert's knee-jerk reaction is becomes Ebert's reality. If Ebert were thoughtful, he would consider dissenting opinions, respond to them thoughtfully, and possibly even be persuaded by logic and reason.

Ebert doesn't do this. Ebert says "If you think I'm wrong, you're wrong, and also stupid, and probably ugly."

His response (one of them, anyway) to the video game brouhaha: "I'm not too old to 'get' video games, but I may be too well-read."

Translation: if you like video games, it's because you're most likely borderline illiterate.

If that's a thoughtful response, here's mine: Fuck you, Ebert, you condescending asshole.

Or how about his response to people objecting to his "Kick-Ass" review: "Them: I was too old to get it. Me: My problem was that I got it."

Ah, the "I'm rubber, you're glue" defense. We'll need a Master's degree in rhetoric to even consider a counter to this one.

Add to that, a thoughtful man would bother to investigate the things he says. I remember being shocked when he said this in his District 9 review:

In WHAT fucking universe are "none of the weapons...superior to those of the humans"? The only explanation I can conceive of for Ebert making this comment is that he didn't bother to watch the third act of the film. But hey, why let that stop him from giving his opinion as if he watched and/or paid attention?

Then there's the recent Kick-Ass review, which focused exclusively on the fact that an 11 year old girl has been trained as a remorseless killing machine and thinks nothing of murdering a roomful of men and then going for ice cream. He's shocked and appalled that the movie depicts such gleeful violence as being glamorous and exciting and never once asks any questions about the moral implications of desensitizing children to violence. 

Never mind that the movie clearly does not approve of the brainwashing that Big Daddy has done to Hit Girl, that a character refers to it as such, that Kick-Ass is horrified the first time he meets Hit Girl and that the entire point of the subplot is to ask questions about the moral implications of desensitizing children to violence.

No no, Ebert says. The little girl says "cunt," so the film must necessarily have no merit.

And then of course there's the impetus for this discussion. "Video games can never be art. No I've never played one. No I'm not going to. You're stupid if you do. I'm right. Because."

Ebert isn't thoughtful. Ebert is thoughtless, and proudly ignorant of many of the things he espouses on; and if you're informed about them, then you're stupid for informing yourself about something he thinks is stupid, and he'll hear nothing in its defense.

What he is, is articulate, and he has made an entire career out of fooling people into mistaking one for the other.

So now windbag. Well, I've already described how he's essentially full of hot air and proudly so. How routinely he arrogantly dismisses the possibility that he might ever be wrong with a multisyllabic "NO U." It just needs a little more egotism to push him over the top...

Oh look. He runs a film festival called Ebertfest.

Even Harry Knowles, the biggest, most desperate attention whore I have ever seen, has the self respect not to call the film festival he runs "Knowlesfest," or his site "Ain't It Cool Knowles."

If you and I are just "the guys with the laptops," he's just "the guy with a laptop, a thesaurus, and a platform." Let me know if he ever justifies his positions with better than "Because I said so and I'm Ebert goddammit!" and I might consider changing mine. Because I'm, you know. Thoughtful.

I already have. Well. I didn't formulate it. I paraphrased it from the Dictionary application on my laptop. Art is any deliberate application of skill and creativity where the end product is intended by the creator to be judged primarily on its aesthetic merits. I won't defend that definition, 'cause I've already confessed that I don't know what art is. But that's what that dictionary told me, so that's what I went with. I'm happy to hear other definitions, 'cause I'm sure a better one can be come-up-with. I just gave up on that after struggling briefly to find a definition that was useful in deciding what wasn't art. Cause (cue Syndrome voice) if everything's art, then nothing is.

I'm sure that's true. Remember, I'm not a total idiot when it comes to games. I did play Call of Duty last year, and I remember well the part where your helo gets knocked out of the sky by the nuclear explosion, and what comes after. Totally gripping, totally engaging, totally … erm, "beautiful" is the wrong word entirely, but it did have aesthetic merit. It's just that that game wasn't (as far as I know) created with the intent that it be judged primarily on aesthetics.

Oh, that's just silly, brother. Of course there's a line to be drawn between these things. Otherwise we wouldn't bother having different words for them. Are there grey areas in between? Of course! But that doesn't mean the distinction between "fun" and "beautiful" doesn't exist. Something can be fun without having aesthetic merit at all; I think it's fair to say that the old-school Donkey Kong game wasn't easy on the eyes. And anybody who's taken an art-appreciation class from a bad teacher knows full well that you can have beauty without any fun at all.

I can totally go along with that. But again, there's the question of intent there. If you're (pulling an example out of my ear here) beating up a bunch of muggers in an alley someplace, you can do it in a graceful, elegant, visually pleasing way, but it's not art. Because you're not doing it just to be graceful or beautiful. You're doing it to whup ass.

…and also not what I was saying…

How do we judge good movies from bad movies? I know, I know, we all have our own taste, but in the broadest terms, how do we judge? A good movie is skillfully told, or beautifully photographed, or well performed, or … whatever. All the things good movies are. Bad movies lack the qualities good movies have. There's a set of criteria on which movies are usually judged, and those criteria are, at heart, aesthetic.

Video games are meant to be a challenge of skill, or an amusement, or things of that nature. They're intended to be judged on those merits for the most part. Are there exceptions? Sure. But we're generalizing here. Like I said, a "video game" that is meant primarily to be judged in aesthetic terms and not in terms of challenge or gameplay or fun or whatever maybe shouldn't be called a "video game," but rather something else.

Which was my whole point: That's the textbook definition of the logical fallacy of begging the question. You're (in this case, they are) taking the proposition under debate and turning it into an assumption, then drawing a conclusion from it. That doesn't tell us anything; it's just an assertion.

Look, we're still dancing around definitions. I don't like my working definition of "art" any more than you do, man. So help me out here. Give me a definition of "art" that can be used to declare that somebody is not art. If it's not totally nutso, I'll run with it and we'll see where we end up.

Yeah, I remember that one. It was, at best, an extremely poorly constructed joke.

I think you're right, in that that would have achieved his goal better than what he did. But I think his goal was kinda stupid. Too many people think satire is the end of a conversation. It shouldn't be. It should be the beginning of one. Stuff like that is sometimes called "provocative" because it's meant to provoke. "Ha ha, you dumb" isn't satire. It's just gloating. And yeah, Ebert sometimes does get pretty gloaty.

But then he turns around and writes something like his not-that-long-ago article on what it's like to be unable to eat or drink. I can't dig up a link right now 'cause I have to get back to work, but it's a really, really great read.

For what it's worth, I don't necessarily think criticizing somebody's Twitter for not being thoughtful enough is a very safe rock on which to build your nest. That said, you've written an impressive piece of rebuttalry here, and I salute you for it. I don't actually agree with much of it, but that's cool. Smart people can talk, disagree and then get on with their lives. It's the people of small mind, in my experience, that tend to grab on to a point of contention with the tenacity of a bulldog and lock their jaws around it, never letting go until either the person they disagree with, or their relationship with that person, is dead.

Those people are jerks.

Anyway. Getting back to art: Is there any class of human endeavor that we can declare, ex cathedra, not to be art? Or is it possible for anything humans do to be art, if it's done in the right way?

ON PREVIEW: Oh goddammit. You went and wrote more. Okay:

It's not. But Pac-Man wasn't created with the intent that it should be installed in a museum and judged on its aesthetic merits. It was made to be played. Hence, not art by the definition I've already asked you to replace for us.

Depends on what the guy's intent was when he added the stick. Was his intent that it be a participatory artwork, or was his intent that it be a game? That's where the line is drawn in the definition I've already said I'm happy to drop in favor of a better one.

Agreed.  So if we're all smart enough to recognize that the we cannot categorically say what art definitely IS, then we should not be so quick to say what art definitely ISN'T.  If Games don't feel like art, they don't have to be.  But don't say I cannot believe that. 

I think Art can appear in any medium, at any time, wether on purpose or not.  Someone mentioned the mugger's scenario as being absent of art because the intent is to survive.  I disagree.  It can be art PRECISELY because of that.  That specific moment in time, the muggers, that person defending, all meet in congruence to create the art of that moment.

If the literal definition of art is  "any deliberate application of skill and imagination to create something which is meant to be evaluated primarily on aesthetic terms," then how do you account for people with severe autism, like Stephen Wiltshere who can draw New York City skylines from MEMORY to exact detail.  He did this because he had no other way to communicate.  The application is not intentional and not done to be judged primarily on aesthetic purposes.  Is it any less art?

Or Christy Brown, the subject of My Left Foot?  Is his stuff any LESS artistic?  This is what happens when you try to take something so subjective and define it so clearly.

I like that definition.

And if I temporarily assume it for the purpose of this conversation, I don't think many games at all - seriously, very few - qualify as art. Most of them are expressly entertainment. Even many of the "cinematic" ones are simply exploiting an artificial emotional response for the purpose of entertainment. And there's a law of diminishing returns.

If we lived in a world with one war game and it was well made, it would be art by way of originality and the experience you have when you play that game. "This game is about war - I know! But it's amazing, you really feel the experience of it, it's totally unique and fascinating."

That's not the world we live in, so even Saving Private Ryan The Game would ultimately feel like a retread.

Using this definition, the abstract games are really the ones to be looking to for examples of art.

Is Blackhawk Down not art because of Full Metal Jacket and From Here to Eternity?