Alright. So now we've got consensus. Video games are art in the same sense that installing drywall is art and whenever you can consider thermonuclear warfare and masturbation to also be art.
Still, I think that the majority of people would assume that art requires creative input as its core component.
I never said it didn't require creative input. The very fact that it is not linked to direct survival means there was a point of creativity used in the process. Masturbation is a special case where in it is an ingrown desire to do so, but the act of doing so may take creativity.
Before I begin, I should probably set down my own definition of art, which I mostly just shamelessly borrowed from Scott McCloud's definition of art. In his informational graphic novel Understanding Comics, he writes (and draws):
Art, as I see it, is any human activity which doesn't grow out of either of our species' two basic instincts: survival and reproduction! Example: here's a prehistoric male chasing a prehistoric female with only one thing on his mind-- reproduction! So strong is this instinct that it governs his every move! Not one step is wasted in the pursuit of his goal! The female-- afraid for her survival-- manages to hide. Now, deprived of his goal, the male stands indecisive. Suddenly--!
[sabertooth tiger roars and starts chasing after caveman]
Now all of his thoughts and actions are focused on that other vital instinct-- survival! Again his legs propel him forward with maximum efficiency! Trapped on the edge of a cliff, his mind can only conceive of one path to survival! He takes it! And survives.
[caveman grabs a branch from a tree and hoists himself up, making the predator miss its target and accidentally run off the cliff]
His next move might be to look for food (survival) or perhaps another female (reproduction). But instead...
[caveman blows a rasberry at the falling cat]
Art.
Now, he isn't saying that there isn't an art to cooking or mating. It's when you go beyond just sustaining yourself that it becomes an art; you don't need to cook a five-course meal using the finest ingredients to survive when you can just pop in a Hot Pocket in the microwave for a minute or two whenever you're hungry. The former is art, the latter is just survival.
This broad definition of art, of course, means that a lot of things are art. This includes games. And why not? They're certainly not needed for survival, and there is skill and emotions involved in the process of both creating and playing.
Now, I'm not sure how many of you did this other than Rather Dashing, but I actually decided to read Roger Ebert's article for myself. What did I think of it? Ehhhhhhhhhngh. Take a look at what he had to say about Braid:
Her next example is a game named "Braid" (above). This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.
That bolded part especially bugged me, because it was there that I really started to feel that Ebert wasn't even trying to see Santiago's point. It's the equivalent of a high school student saying The Great Gatsby was a dumb book and that the green light in the distance didn't actually mean anything. Certainly, he can say The Great Gatsby sucked, but it's unfair for him to say that there was no symbolism in there. He may not have derived any emotion or hidden meanings in there, but many others have.
Let me tell you a story. There was once a time when I was still in high school, doing paintings for my AP Studio Art class. I claimed that my concentration was "people in their dreams," which in reality was my excuse to paint whatever the heck I wanted. One of my paintings for that concentration was just a profile of a young man with a leech-like creature sucking on the back of his head. Said creature had lines from They Might Be Giants songs covered all over him. After it was done, I thought the painting needed something in the background, so I just painted numbers all over in the background. Needless to say, it was a pretty terrible painting that I didn't really put too much thought into. HOWEVER, to my surprise, when I took it in for a group critique, all my classmates were composing interesting theories about what the painting was about. Was it about stress? The mind numbing nature of mathematics and science? Our overbearing society, deeming us worthless if we don't submit to daily labor of some sort? To all this, I said, "Sure, why not?"
So what does this have to do with anything? Basically, Ebert has a lot of nerve saying that because he can't feel emotionally for a video game, then that game has no emotional value. Especially since he said this about Braid of all things. I don't know about any of you, but when I've played that game, I have learned about my own past by correcting my mistakes. Haven't any of you ever thought about how your life would be if you could just rewind and avoid making any mistakes whatsoever?
Anyways, Katsuro brings up a good point about art and its 'rules,' although I think Roger Ebert and Rather Dashing are specifically talking about rules set for the audience, not for the artist. Still, I don't see why rules should negate games' status as an art form. Maybe I haven't read this thread thoroughly enough, though.
In fact, I'm just going to stop now and let people reply to this before I go on.
Sex and murder, maybe. It's at the very least arguable. But what about suicide?
As far as I'm concerned, suicide is the ultimate self-preservation. You chose to end your own suffering, physical, psychological or I guess otherwise if that exists. I agree you can't very well call it "survival" instinct but it seems to be a fairly common instinct to end someone's suffering if it feels there is no escape, including one's own.
I'm sure you can kill yourself in an artistic way, though.
EDIT: I don't own it anymore so I can't say exactly what he's saying, but this is the book where Scott McCloud talks about it (although it might have been "Reinventing Comics". I owned both. I think it's this one though).
You can borrow it from the library or something and take a look if you want.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't talk about suicide though.
In your profile, you say you have "been an artist since you were five". That is a very vague thing to say, Fawful. Since an artist is a person that does something with skill and technique, you could be doing just about anything.
When someone says "games are not art", they are not saying "games are not things that are made by skilled people". It's obvious from the context. You can go ahead and say that games are the Work of an Art under the definition you posit, but it doesn't carry any weight to it because you're saying that an art is every single profession from the guy behind the fast food counter to your accountant.
Hooray. You got one. And by got one I mean you managed to grasp what I was saying. Now you seem to thin you're turning it against me somehow. How droll. To be honest, I can do anything I set my mind to. Except grasp what you were trying to say or do with this post, or if this post even has a meaning to it. Oh wait, no that's because it doesn't. It does carry weight to it, because while there are millions of works of art, not all of them are good. Look at Deviantart. With such a huge website that has millions of pieces submitted to it every day, somehow some few people still manage to be special among it. And before you go out with your "well why shouldn't people start submitting wooden beams and their studies on ancient Egypt to the website" well that's because its a website for a certain medium of art.
You know, for a person that is against a sarcastic tone, you're not very good at avoiding it yourself. But okay. I'll play ball.
I'm terrible at not being sarcastic.
Is Pong art? I really doubt that it is. It is just two rectangles and a square. These rectangles and squares operate under certain rules. This is the "game".
Now, let's say I added graphics. Okay, graphic design is an art. Let's say I add a story. Okay, writing is an art. Lets say I add a sweeping orchestral soundtrack, changing camera angles, and maybe even deep and emotional themes.
Is there creative work there? Yes. But nothing about it is specific to games, it's just kind of dropped on top of Pong. There's nothing special about it creatively that can't be done in another medium.
Please excuse my use of the word "art" in an apparently unacceptable way.
Maybe not to you, but would you find anything special about this piece of art
versus this one?
As I implied before not all games, like E.T. or Jekyll and Hyde, can be considered works of art, well that is if we're going by your standard. By your standard any simple child's stick figure drawing couldn't be considered a work of art either. To me, Pong is as much a work of art as a drawing of stick figures.
Hooray. You got one. And by got one I mean you managed to grasp what I was saying. Now you seem to thin you're turning it against me somehow. How droll. To be honest, I can do anything I set my mind to. Except grasp what you were trying to say or do with this post, or if this post even has a meaning to it. Oh wait, no that's because it doesn't. It does carry weight to it, because while there are millions of works of art, not all of them are good.
I don't see how art as "Anything people make with skill and techniques" is a definition that carries weight. I don't see how "Art is generally bad" supports that it does mean, well, anything at all. Especially for colloquial usage.
I'm terrible at not being sarcastic.
Then please refrain from telling me to stop being sarcastic until you're willing to give me the same courtesy.
Maybe not to you, but would you find anything special about this piece of art
versus this one?
This is absolutely not relevant, as I'll explain below.
As I implied before not all games, like E.T. or Jekyll and Hyde, can be considered works of art, well that is if we're going by your standard. By your standard any simple child's stick figure drawing couldn't be considered a work of art either. To me, Pong is as much a work of art as a drawing of stick figures.
I don't think you know what my standard is at all. Children's drawings totally are art. I used kids' fingerpainting as an example art in a previous post. You're obviously missing my point here entirely: Neither Pong nor the hyper-advanced future game I hypothetically made from Pong is art. One contains art elements, but the game is not art. The game is tennis.
As far as I'm concerned, suicide is the ultimate self-preservation. You chose to end your own suffering, physical, psychological or I guess otherwise if that exists. I agree you can't very well call it "survival" instinct but it seems to be a fairly common instinct to end someone's suffering if it feels there is no escape, including one's own.
I'm sure you can kill yourself in an artistic way, though.
EDIT: I don't own it anymore so I can't say exactly what he's saying, but this is the book where Scott McCloud talks about it (although it might have been "Reinventing Comics". I owned both. I think it's this one though).
You can borrow it from the library or something and take a look if you want.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't talk about suicide though.
I just don't see it. This definition makes philosophy, religion, keeping pets and cleaning your house as "art". I just find it lacking, because there should be some creative initiative to it all, some sort of authorial intent.
I just don't see it. This definition makes philosophy, religion, keeping pets and cleaning your house as "art". I just find it lacking, because there should be some creative initiative to it all, some sort of authorial intent.
Well, keep in mind it's not my definition, it's my recalling of someone else's :P
Also, don't you know that philosophy is the art of going forward without getting anywhere? (Mmh, not sure how well it translated into English).
...I'm not sure if this is one of those phrases that translates well?
It basically means that with philosophy you're constantly making progress, but ultimately you never get anywhere, there is no end to it, only more questions.
And it also strongly implies that it's a totally pointless activity, that has no goal or purpose but to stimulate you, and is I guess what you call intellectual masturbation.
No, Dashing, you completely see. You've gone as far as invalidating an entire definition from the dictionary itself, the basis of the English language, just because you don't want to see any possibility that video games are art nor do you want to give any opinion any leeway other than yours. You're not going to "see it" because you're stuck on nothing but your own opinion.
Then please refrain from telling me to stop being sarcastic until you're willing to give me the same courtesy.
Don't stick your nose up so high! Something may fall out of it. Like your brain. Seriously the earlier point wasn't really about your sarcasm, it was about how you took my words and then changed the point of them in order to insult me. In fact you've been insulting me throughout this entire discussion like an asshole because it seems to be the only way you can argue with someone, so of course I'm returning the favor. I mean since we're both in an intelligent discussion, this does seem kind of silly, doesn't it? You see I like to give people a taste of their own medicine. I notice you don't like it to much when people treat you the way you treat people all the time.
Oh, btw, I don't give a damn what you don't consider relevant. Because throughout this discussion you've done nothing but call my opinion irrelevant, and every single thing I've said has been irrelevant for you. Anything I say will continue to be irrelevant for you until the end of time, because you're stuck on "what Rather Dashing thinks".
Also, if art is there just to be pretentious, then by all means don't count games as art. I don't want my gaming community to go around and say they have more culture than those who don't play games.
Basically, in games, it's not you who is winning. It's the developer who decides whether or not you are on the winning side in the end. Some pieces of art purely exist to give us some riddle to solve.
Not to mention art does follow a set of rules. For poems, the rule is that it should follow a certain meter or else it just plain blows if not executed right. For novels, even a plain "read from left to right" is a simple rule.
Thing is, games are never "win/lose", they're "win/did not finish", basically what all forms of media and art is. You can look at a painting and decide, I don't get it. However, people who are pretentious enough to look into every detail will sometimes "get" the painting, basically, they "won" something, basically the message of the piece of art. Losing in video games is something virtual, it's basically non-existent. You can never lose a game, because you are always given a new chance at finishing it.
Hell, most arcade games only have the "did not finish" part, mainly because losing is the only way to end your game.
Basically, it's not the story or the graphics that makes art. It's what you want to bring over, what message you want to tell. Everything that tries to tell you something is art, even comic books, or television series. Even the cartoons you love or loathe.
Short story: Rather Dashing is pretentious and this topic just proves my point.
I just don't see it. This definition makes philosophy, religion, keeping pets and cleaning your house as "art". I just find it lacking, because there should be some creative initiative to it all, some sort of authorial intent.
You don't see any kind of creativity involved in any of those? Really? Philosophy involves thinking outside the box and creating theories about life's many questions. Similarly, religion is the creation of stories that explain why we're here, among other things. Keeping pets is a creative way to keep yourself entertained and happy; after all, you come up with games to play with your pet and sometimes you need to get creative with how to train and care for them. And I would argue that cleaning your house is considered survival, what with sanitation being a health issue, but even then, you can create your own cleaning agents with natural ingredients and create a little dance with your broom while sweeping the floor.
All of these things have been created by somebody intentionally. And so long as none of these things were created in order to survive, then they are art.
Keeping pets is a creative way to keep yourself entertained and happy; after all, you come up with games to play with your pet and sometimes you need to get creative with how to train and care for them.
Actually, I'd say keeping pets is part of our instinct to care for other beings, which is necessary for the survival of the species.
No, Dashing, you completely see. You've gone as far as invalidating an entire definition from the dictionary itself, the basis of the English language, just because you don't want to see any possibility that video games are art nor do you want to give any opinion any leeway other than yours. You're not going to "see it" because you're stuck on nothing but your own opinion.
The dictionary isn't the basis of the English language. We did not write the dictionary and then start speaking. That's not how language works. Language is a living thing, not a rigid thing. Words also have multiple definitions. Notice how all definitions of the word "gay" don't all apply at once. "Is _____ gay?" is not generally answered with "Well, he's a generally jovial fellow, so yes."
The definition you use is a valid one in some contexts, yes. It's a real definition of the word "art". But when asking if something is art, if something is an art form, people don't generally use it.
Don't stick your nose up so high! Something may fall out of it. Like your brain. Seriously the earlier point wasn't really about your sarcasm, it was about how you took my words and then changed the point of them in order to insult me.
I don't believe I ever changed your words, or even insulted them. Again, in your own words, installing drywall is an art. This doesn't hold much weight, it isn't the kind of "art" that we're really talking about, and even though the definition works it does not really "elevate" video games over, say, chess in terms of artistic expression. That's not changing your words, at all. That's not even an insult. You get this idea that I'm trying to insult you, and it has spurred you on this crusade to teach me some sort of moral lesson or something, but the effort is entirely misplaced.
In fact you've been insulting me throughout this entire discussion like an asshole because it seems to be the only way you can argue with someone, so of course I'm returning the favor. I mean since we're both in an intelligent discussion, this does seem kind of silly, doesn't it? You see I like to give people a taste of their own medicine. I notice you don't like it to much when people treat you the way you treat people all the time.
That's nice. Maybe you should read this over and see how angry you've been coming off. It feels entirely misplaced.
That sounds cool and all, but I think I could more easily establish this by saying that games like Eufloria are art. I could easily rack up indie cred(though Eufloria is relatively mainstream) to sound pretentious. And see that in parenthesis? That's probably pretension right there! But this discussion? Well, I wanted to discuss what art is, and why I don't think games can fit into this label until the rules and objectives and interactivity that separate games from everything else is used to convey something. Not the art, or the story, or the music, these things are existing forms of art, but the actual gameplay and ruleset need to be art for games themselves, and not just their supporting elements, to be artistic. The problem is that games themselves need to have objectives(rack up as many points as possible, solve the puzzles, defeat your opponent, et cetera), and that's their core element. Can that be art? Pretty rarely, if ever.
Also, if art is there just to be pretentious, then by all means don't count games as art. I don't want my gaming community to go around and say they have more culture than those who don't play games.
That's OK, the indie gaming scene has enough pretension for everybody. I'm sure I've bought and loved titles a lot of you would call pretentious. That's great and all, but it's the stuff I enjoy. I'm sure the average frat boy Halo fan would find Telltale a bit high-brow, but fine.
I think the word "pretentious" is thrown around as an insult a bit too much. Is there something wrong with genuinely wanting to know more about a thing, its make-up, and what makes something "art" in the first place? I don't think that's the case.
Basically, in games, it's not you who is winning. It's the developer who decides whether or not you are on the winning side in the end. Some pieces of art purely exist to give us some riddle to solve.
Not to mention art does follow a set of rules. For poems, the rule is that it should follow a certain meter or else it just plain blows if not executed right. For novels, even a plain "read from left to right" is a simple rule.
Thing is, games are never "win/lose", they're "win/did not finish", basically what all forms of media and art is. You can look at a painting and decide, I don't get it. However, people who are pretentious enough to look into every detail will sometimes "get" the painting, basically, they "won" something, basically the message of the piece of art. Losing in video games is something virtual, it's basically non-existent. You can never lose a game, because you are always given a new chance at finishing it.
Hell, most arcade games only have the "did not finish" part, mainly because losing is the only way to end your game.
Basically, it's not the story or the graphics that makes art. It's what you want to bring over, what message you want to tell. Everything that tries to tell you something is art, even comic books, or television series. Even the cartoons you love or loathe.
You've both not been paying attention to the forward movement of the discussion, in which I admitted that "winning and losing" is a poor choice of words, more in the line of "objectives and rules". More than this, you say that I'm saying things "with rules" cannot be art. That's not true at all, though I'd argue that all forms of art have people that break every rule in the book and it's still art.
No, games aren't art because they ARE rules, not because they have rules.
Short story: Rather Dashing is pretentious and this topic just proves my point.
The dictionary isn't the basis of the English language. We did not write the dictionary and then start speaking. That's not how language works. Language is a living thing, not a rigid thing. Words also have multiple definitions. Notice how all definitions of the word "gay" don't all apply at once. "Is _____ gay?" is not generally answered with "Well, he's a generally jovial fellow, so yes."
The definition you use is a valid one in some contexts, yes. It's a real definition of the word "art". But when asking if something is art, if something is an art form, people don't generally use it.
Well they should.
I don't believe I ever changed your words, or even insulted them. Again, in your own words, installing drywall is an art. This doesn't hold much weight, it isn't the kind of "art" that we're really talking about, and even though the definition works it does not really "elevate" video games over, say, chess in terms of artistic expression. That's not changing your words, at all. That's not even an insult. You get this idea that I'm trying to insult you, and it has spurred you on this crusade to teach me some sort of moral lesson or something, but the effort is entirely misplaced.
It was the tone, the way you said it, that was insulting. And please, my "crusade" has hardly been any different from anyone else in this topic. To defend my point of view. Which I'm prepared to do until the end of time because I'm right and you're wrong.
That's nice. Maybe you should read this over and see how angry you've been coming off. It feels entirely misplaced.
Every single thing I said is the truth and I mean every word. I'm not trying to show you anything, sir, except how I've seen your conduct this entire discussion.
It was the tone, the way you said it, that was insulting. And please, my "crusade" has hardly been any different from anyone else in this topic. To defend my point of view. Which I'm prepared to do until the end of time because I'm right and you're wrong.
Well, I'm pretty sure nobody else called someone in the discussion an asshole, but alright.
Every single thing I said is the truth and I mean every word. I'm not trying to show you anything, sir, except how I've seen your conduct this entire discussion.
That's nice. I'm not feeling particularly introspective, but okay.
Well , I'm pretty sure nobody else called someone in the discussion an asshole, but alright.
I never went to finishing school. And DAMN am I glad that discussion is over now. I got tired of it last night and wasn't looking forward to coming back and replying to anything today. That's probably part of why I'm so irritable today.
So, I was going to flip to the last page and make a relevant point, but decided to read a bit first, and the OP starts with what I think is the defining thing about Ebert's claim- That exact paragraph in the OP:
One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.
Means that you can never be proven wrong; As soon as a video game actually qualifies as art, you no longer classify it as a video game. I don't think the argument is valid in any way shape or form, and this discussion is already really long, so I'm not going to talk much. Just understand that if your reasoning for games not being art includes the point "And if it is art, it's not a game" then your argument is insane.
Also, paintings can never be art, but once a painting is good enough, it ceases to be a painting and becomes a representation of a story. Those are things you don't just look at, you can only experience them.
The dictionary might not be the basis of the English language, but the English language IS the basis of the dictionary.
In fact, language is what makes the dictionary possible. The dictionary is an absolute, it defines what the common consensus is about the language. A table as defined in the dictionary is the table we all defined and recognize. Everything defined in the dictionary is in fact a fact. You cannot take anything in the dictionary differently, because that would mean the meaning of the word has changed, which would mean that the meaning of the word had changed.
So yeah. Basically what I'm trying to say is, if I ever get around finishing my novel and it gets translated, you should all buy it ZOMG SHAMELESS PLUG.
The novel wasn't taken seriously as an art form when it first emerged. Gaming's still in its infancy really considering it's not going to die out any time soon
Having only skimmed this thread, I just want to state my own personal opinion without being influenced by all of the other arguments going on. To wit:
GAMES CAN BE ART.
To start with, here is the definition from Wikipedia: "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions." Based on this definition, I think you would be hard pressed to say that all video games are art, but there are CERTAINLY examples where the game AS A WHOLE was designed to evoke an emotional response from the viewer/player. This is more than just the game being a container for various pieces of art, the game itself has a purpose and an emotional intent.
I think the easiest example of this is Rez. Rez is a game that is clearly point/skill based, but nevertheless intends to create a certain level of emotional involvement in the player. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the better you perform in the game, the more involved you get. As become more efficient with the game, you become more a part of the experience. The music thrumbs to your rhythm, the experience is crafted around your actions, and the more accurately you perform your task, the more intensely you become a part of the game.
I suppose some might argue that because there is a player involved at all, it takes the intention out of the designer's hands. But with Rez, for example, the entire point was to create this interaction. The very interaction itself was what was intended to be significant.
In fact, I'd say viewer interaction is frequently inherent to the artistic process. Take Miranda July's The Hallway for example. If this installation was merely a big long paragraph, would it still have the same impact and meaning? Expecting the viewer to slowly continue down the path, pausing to take in the individual cards. Your perception of the cards are guided by the sense of claustrophobia and confinement, waves of bemusement, frustration, and thoughtfulness. The experience is affected by your personal involvement with how long you've been in the installment, unable to see the end or turn around to the beginning. And the cards play off these emotions, just like a good game does.
It knows your frustration, it knows your involvement, and it crafts your experience around it, guiding your feelings. Sure, there are rules and guides in a game, as well as the nuts and bolts of programming and so forth, but they are intelligently crafted in such a way to create a larger experience. Saying that a game can't be art because programming isn't art is like saying a metal sculpture isn't art because someone had to smelt the iron. Or because it has to obey the laws of physics..
Anyway, I'm getting on a tangent. The point is that games can be art, even with varying levels of player interaction or even BECAUSE of varying levels of player interaction.
In Ron [Gilbert's blog] post he says "Why is Monkey Island not art, yet, the Pirates of the Caribbean movie is art?" Later, in his update to this, he says "Roger replied that he did not think Pirates of the Caribbean was art."
Now, WHY THE HELL NOT?
I dont care if you like the movie or not. Explain to me why it is not art.
Personally, I just think Roger Ebert's definition of art is flawed.
I don't understand why being made to follow a set of rules into order to "view" or "experience" the art within a video game negates the possiblity for the game itself to be considered art.
You know... what I find interesting here is that though the original post was about Roger Ebert's blog post, I feel like because Rather Dashing is trying to shoot down the arguements of people posting here, we're having to argue why Dash is wrong to defend Roger Ebert, instead of us arguing about why Ebert himself is wrong.
In fact, I'd say viewer interaction is frequently inherent to the artistic process. Take Miranda July's The Hallway for example. If this installation was merely a big long paragraph, would it still have the same impact and meaning? .
I have to admit the only instalations I seen in my life are of Nicanor Parra, the Chilean Anti-Poet. The one I like more were a long sentence in the floor which describes how an instant train Santiago - Puerto Montt (Two chilean city way appart one from another) could work. His most famous is a Cross without the Christ with the leyend "Voy y Vuelvo" (Which pretty much like "Out to Lunch" in good Chilean) and a drawing of someone calling to the House of Culture and been greeted with the spanish version of "Yes Motherfucker!".
He's also a Doctor in Physics and some of his instalations are big chalkboard with humorous stuff written with Math Formulas. Sadly, his work is way too chilean, and maybe that's why he was nominated to the Nobel Prize a lot of times and never win. But, of course, he'll never raise any hope about it, until he see the money.
Everything I would have said had I decided to actually post my thoughts on this topic, but put in a much clearer and more intelligent manner than I am capable of conjuring up.
I will if you promise me TTG isn't planning on making a game based on Lost.
Yeah, I don't want a Lost game either.
Oh, and also, this is what Tycho from Penny Arcade (I forgot which one is his real name) had to say about it:
There are many, many replies to Roger Ebert's reeking ejaculate, from measured Judo-inspired reversals of momentum to primal shrieks which communicate rage in a harrowing, proto-linguistic state. Thatgamecompany's Kellee Santiago chose to respond to him, which gave the whole thing a kind of symmetry, seeing as it was her TED speech that drove that wretched, ancient warlock into his original spasm.
That was very polite of her, behaving as though she were one side of a conversation. For what it's worth. Which isn't much, honestly, because this weren't never a dialogue. He is not talking to you, he is just talking. And he's arguing
1. in bad faith,
2. in an internally contradictory way,
3. with nebulously defined terms,
so there's nothing here to discuss. You can if you want to, and people certainly do, but there's no profit in it. Nobody's going to hold their blade aloft at the end of this thing and found a kingdom. It's just something to fill the hours.
Also, do we win something if we defeat him? Does he drop a good helm? Because I can't for the life of me figure out why we give a shit what that creature says. He doesn't operate under some divine shroud that lets him determine what is or is not valid culture. He cannot rob you, retroactively, of wholly valid experiences; he cannot transform them into worthless things.
He's simply a man determined to be on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the human drive to create, and dreadfully so; a monument to the same generational bullshit that says because something has not been, it must not and could never be.
Art is a matter of personal opinion... what is beautiful for one isn't necessarily going to be beautiful for everyone.... For someone to discredit an entire art form because they do not like the medium is pretentious and narrow minded.
Oh, and also, this is what Tycho from Penny Arcade (I forgot which one is his real name) had to say about it:
Tycho is Jerry Holkins. Gabe is Mike Krahulik. And I was hoping to see that someone had posted this over here. I really liked Tycho's take on the whole thing. Maybe tomorrow, when I'm not in desperate need of sleep, I'll actually try and read this thread (especially Will's post) and actually get involved.
This was the last straw, after that I HAD to check what that meant, since people kept using it here.
(If anyone else is wondering, it means "too long; didn't read").
I thought it would be something like "translation" or something, because when I first saw it, it was in Dashing's posts, where he sums up his posts in the end in a usually comical manner.
I like how "too long; didn't read" is apparently also too long to type, so people felt the need to find a shorter way to say something that's already very concise.
I like how "too long; didn't read" is apparently also too long to type, so people felt the need to find a shorter way to say something that's already very concise.
Did you fail to provide us with a link where we can buy it, or am just that stupid?
First, this is the Net. What else did you expect from a series of tubes?
Second, yes he did provide a link to buy it... sort of.
Comments
Sorry, I said no meaning yes.
I'll shut up now though, since I know we agree at least on something.
I'm sure a lot can be said with just a few carefully placed H-Bombs.
actually...
I never said it didn't require creative input. The very fact that it is not linked to direct survival means there was a point of creativity used in the process. Masturbation is a special case where in it is an ingrown desire to do so, but the act of doing so may take creativity.
Before I begin, I should probably set down my own definition of art, which I mostly just shamelessly borrowed from Scott McCloud's definition of art. In his informational graphic novel Understanding Comics, he writes (and draws):
Now, he isn't saying that there isn't an art to cooking or mating. It's when you go beyond just sustaining yourself that it becomes an art; you don't need to cook a five-course meal using the finest ingredients to survive when you can just pop in a Hot Pocket in the microwave for a minute or two whenever you're hungry. The former is art, the latter is just survival.
This broad definition of art, of course, means that a lot of things are art. This includes games. And why not? They're certainly not needed for survival, and there is skill and emotions involved in the process of both creating and playing.
Now, I'm not sure how many of you did this other than Rather Dashing, but I actually decided to read Roger Ebert's article for myself. What did I think of it? Ehhhhhhhhhngh. Take a look at what he had to say about Braid:
That bolded part especially bugged me, because it was there that I really started to feel that Ebert wasn't even trying to see Santiago's point. It's the equivalent of a high school student saying The Great Gatsby was a dumb book and that the green light in the distance didn't actually mean anything. Certainly, he can say The Great Gatsby sucked, but it's unfair for him to say that there was no symbolism in there. He may not have derived any emotion or hidden meanings in there, but many others have.
Let me tell you a story. There was once a time when I was still in high school, doing paintings for my AP Studio Art class. I claimed that my concentration was "people in their dreams," which in reality was my excuse to paint whatever the heck I wanted. One of my paintings for that concentration was just a profile of a young man with a leech-like creature sucking on the back of his head. Said creature had lines from They Might Be Giants songs covered all over him. After it was done, I thought the painting needed something in the background, so I just painted numbers all over in the background. Needless to say, it was a pretty terrible painting that I didn't really put too much thought into. HOWEVER, to my surprise, when I took it in for a group critique, all my classmates were composing interesting theories about what the painting was about. Was it about stress? The mind numbing nature of mathematics and science? Our overbearing society, deeming us worthless if we don't submit to daily labor of some sort? To all this, I said, "Sure, why not?"
So what does this have to do with anything? Basically, Ebert has a lot of nerve saying that because he can't feel emotionally for a video game, then that game has no emotional value. Especially since he said this about Braid of all things. I don't know about any of you, but when I've played that game, I have learned about my own past by correcting my mistakes. Haven't any of you ever thought about how your life would be if you could just rewind and avoid making any mistakes whatsoever?
Anyways, Katsuro brings up a good point about art and its 'rules,' although I think Roger Ebert and Rather Dashing are specifically talking about rules set for the audience, not for the artist. Still, I don't see why rules should negate games' status as an art form. Maybe I haven't read this thread thoroughly enough, though.
In fact, I'm just going to stop now and let people reply to this before I go on.
As far as I'm concerned, suicide is the ultimate self-preservation. You chose to end your own suffering, physical, psychological or I guess otherwise if that exists. I agree you can't very well call it "survival" instinct but it seems to be a fairly common instinct to end someone's suffering if it feels there is no escape, including one's own.
I'm sure you can kill yourself in an artistic way, though.
EDIT: I don't own it anymore so I can't say exactly what he's saying, but this is the book where Scott McCloud talks about it (although it might have been "Reinventing Comics". I owned both. I think it's this one though).
You can borrow it from the library or something and take a look if you want.
I'm pretty sure he doesn't talk about suicide though.
I'm terrible at not being sarcastic.
Maybe not to you, but would you find anything special about this piece of art
versus this one?
As I implied before not all games, like E.T. or Jekyll and Hyde, can be considered works of art, well that is if we're going by your standard. By your standard any simple child's stick figure drawing couldn't be considered a work of art either. To me, Pong is as much a work of art as a drawing of stick figures.
Boobs: an artistic discussion.
Then please refrain from telling me to stop being sarcastic until you're willing to give me the same courtesy.
This is absolutely not relevant, as I'll explain below.
I don't think you know what my standard is at all. Children's drawings totally are art. I used kids' fingerpainting as an example art in a previous post. You're obviously missing my point here entirely: Neither Pong nor the hyper-advanced future game I hypothetically made from Pong is art. One contains art elements, but the game is not art. The game is tennis.
I just don't see it. This definition makes philosophy, religion, keeping pets and cleaning your house as "art". I just find it lacking, because there should be some creative initiative to it all, some sort of authorial intent.
Well, keep in mind it's not my definition, it's my recalling of someone else's :P
Also, don't you know that philosophy is the art of going forward without getting anywhere? (Mmh, not sure how well it translated into English).
...I'm not sure if this is one of those phrases that translates well?
It basically means that with philosophy you're constantly making progress, but ultimately you never get anywhere, there is no end to it, only more questions.
And it also strongly implies that it's a totally pointless activity, that has no goal or purpose but to stimulate you, and is I guess what you call intellectual masturbation.
Don't stick your nose up so high! Something may fall out of it. Like your brain. Seriously the earlier point wasn't really about your sarcasm, it was about how you took my words and then changed the point of them in order to insult me. In fact you've been insulting me throughout this entire discussion like an asshole because it seems to be the only way you can argue with someone, so of course I'm returning the favor. I mean since we're both in an intelligent discussion, this does seem kind of silly, doesn't it? You see I like to give people a taste of their own medicine. I notice you don't like it to much when people treat you the way you treat people all the time.
Oh, btw, I don't give a damn what you don't consider relevant. Because throughout this discussion you've done nothing but call my opinion irrelevant, and every single thing I've said has been irrelevant for you. Anything I say will continue to be irrelevant for you until the end of time, because you're stuck on "what Rather Dashing thinks".
FFFFF. Hahaha.
To sound very pretentious, which he does lately.
Also, if art is there just to be pretentious, then by all means don't count games as art. I don't want my gaming community to go around and say they have more culture than those who don't play games.
Basically, in games, it's not you who is winning. It's the developer who decides whether or not you are on the winning side in the end. Some pieces of art purely exist to give us some riddle to solve.
Not to mention art does follow a set of rules. For poems, the rule is that it should follow a certain meter or else it just plain blows if not executed right. For novels, even a plain "read from left to right" is a simple rule.
Thing is, games are never "win/lose", they're "win/did not finish", basically what all forms of media and art is. You can look at a painting and decide, I don't get it. However, people who are pretentious enough to look into every detail will sometimes "get" the painting, basically, they "won" something, basically the message of the piece of art. Losing in video games is something virtual, it's basically non-existent. You can never lose a game, because you are always given a new chance at finishing it.
Hell, most arcade games only have the "did not finish" part, mainly because losing is the only way to end your game.
Basically, it's not the story or the graphics that makes art. It's what you want to bring over, what message you want to tell. Everything that tries to tell you something is art, even comic books, or television series. Even the cartoons you love or loathe.
Short story: Rather Dashing is pretentious and this topic just proves my point.
That's hot.
By the way, if I recall correctly this is a form of modern art. I forgot how it was called, but yeah. I'll look it up.
You don't see any kind of creativity involved in any of those? Really? Philosophy involves thinking outside the box and creating theories about life's many questions. Similarly, religion is the creation of stories that explain why we're here, among other things. Keeping pets is a creative way to keep yourself entertained and happy; after all, you come up with games to play with your pet and sometimes you need to get creative with how to train and care for them. And I would argue that cleaning your house is considered survival, what with sanitation being a health issue, but even then, you can create your own cleaning agents with natural ingredients and create a little dance with your broom while sweeping the floor.
All of these things have been created by somebody intentionally. And so long as none of these things were created in order to survive, then they are art.
Actually, I'd say keeping pets is part of our instinct to care for other beings, which is necessary for the survival of the species.
Not that I'm complaining... *looks at Ghost In The Shell posters, wallscrolls, books, DVDs and other merchandise*
np: Cage - Holding A Jar Too (The Best And The Worst Of Cage)
The definition you use is a valid one in some contexts, yes. It's a real definition of the word "art". But when asking if something is art, if something is an art form, people don't generally use it.
I don't believe I ever changed your words, or even insulted them. Again, in your own words, installing drywall is an art. This doesn't hold much weight, it isn't the kind of "art" that we're really talking about, and even though the definition works it does not really "elevate" video games over, say, chess in terms of artistic expression. That's not changing your words, at all. That's not even an insult. You get this idea that I'm trying to insult you, and it has spurred you on this crusade to teach me some sort of moral lesson or something, but the effort is entirely misplaced.
That's nice. Maybe you should read this over and see how angry you've been coming off. It feels entirely misplaced.
That sounds cool and all, but I think I could more easily establish this by saying that games like Eufloria are art. I could easily rack up indie cred(though Eufloria is relatively mainstream) to sound pretentious. And see that in parenthesis? That's probably pretension right there! But this discussion? Well, I wanted to discuss what art is, and why I don't think games can fit into this label until the rules and objectives and interactivity that separate games from everything else is used to convey something. Not the art, or the story, or the music, these things are existing forms of art, but the actual gameplay and ruleset need to be art for games themselves, and not just their supporting elements, to be artistic. The problem is that games themselves need to have objectives(rack up as many points as possible, solve the puzzles, defeat your opponent, et cetera), and that's their core element. Can that be art? Pretty rarely, if ever.
That's OK, the indie gaming scene has enough pretension for everybody. I'm sure I've bought and loved titles a lot of you would call pretentious. That's great and all, but it's the stuff I enjoy. I'm sure the average frat boy Halo fan would find Telltale a bit high-brow, but fine.
I think the word "pretentious" is thrown around as an insult a bit too much. Is there something wrong with genuinely wanting to know more about a thing, its make-up, and what makes something "art" in the first place? I don't think that's the case.
You've both not been paying attention to the forward movement of the discussion, in which I admitted that "winning and losing" is a poor choice of words, more in the line of "objectives and rules". More than this, you say that I'm saying things "with rules" cannot be art. That's not true at all, though I'd argue that all forms of art have people that break every rule in the book and it's still art.
No, games aren't art because they ARE rules, not because they have rules.
Yay.
It was the tone, the way you said it, that was insulting. And please, my "crusade" has hardly been any different from anyone else in this topic. To defend my point of view. Which I'm prepared to do until the end of time because I'm right and you're wrong.
Every single thing I said is the truth and I mean every word. I'm not trying to show you anything, sir, except how I've seen your conduct this entire discussion.
Well, I'm pretty sure nobody else called someone in the discussion an asshole, but alright.
That's nice. I'm not feeling particularly introspective, but okay.
I never went to finishing school. And DAMN am I glad that discussion is over now. I got tired of it last night and wasn't looking forward to coming back and replying to anything today. That's probably part of why I'm so irritable today.
EDIT: Okay okay I could have been less harsh.
How are games only rules? And are you referring to rules placed on the creator or rules placed on the player?
Means that you can never be proven wrong; As soon as a video game actually qualifies as art, you no longer classify it as a video game. I don't think the argument is valid in any way shape or form, and this discussion is already really long, so I'm not going to talk much. Just understand that if your reasoning for games not being art includes the point "And if it is art, it's not a game" then your argument is insane.
Also, paintings can never be art, but once a painting is good enough, it ceases to be a painting and becomes a representation of a story. Those are things you don't just look at, you can only experience them.
In fact, language is what makes the dictionary possible. The dictionary is an absolute, it defines what the common consensus is about the language. A table as defined in the dictionary is the table we all defined and recognize. Everything defined in the dictionary is in fact a fact. You cannot take anything in the dictionary differently, because that would mean the meaning of the word has changed, which would mean that the meaning of the word had changed.
So yeah. Basically what I'm trying to say is, if I ever get around finishing my novel and it gets translated, you should all buy it ZOMG SHAMELESS PLUG.
GAMES CAN BE ART.
To start with, here is the definition from Wikipedia: "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way to affect the senses or emotions." Based on this definition, I think you would be hard pressed to say that all video games are art, but there are CERTAINLY examples where the game AS A WHOLE was designed to evoke an emotional response from the viewer/player. This is more than just the game being a container for various pieces of art, the game itself has a purpose and an emotional intent.
I think the easiest example of this is Rez. Rez is a game that is clearly point/skill based, but nevertheless intends to create a certain level of emotional involvement in the player. In fact, I would go so far as to say that the better you perform in the game, the more involved you get. As become more efficient with the game, you become more a part of the experience. The music thrumbs to your rhythm, the experience is crafted around your actions, and the more accurately you perform your task, the more intensely you become a part of the game.
I suppose some might argue that because there is a player involved at all, it takes the intention out of the designer's hands. But with Rez, for example, the entire point was to create this interaction. The very interaction itself was what was intended to be significant.
In fact, I'd say viewer interaction is frequently inherent to the artistic process. Take Miranda July's The Hallway for example. If this installation was merely a big long paragraph, would it still have the same impact and meaning? Expecting the viewer to slowly continue down the path, pausing to take in the individual cards. Your perception of the cards are guided by the sense of claustrophobia and confinement, waves of bemusement, frustration, and thoughtfulness. The experience is affected by your personal involvement with how long you've been in the installment, unable to see the end or turn around to the beginning. And the cards play off these emotions, just like a good game does.
It knows your frustration, it knows your involvement, and it crafts your experience around it, guiding your feelings. Sure, there are rules and guides in a game, as well as the nuts and bolts of programming and so forth, but they are intelligently crafted in such a way to create a larger experience. Saying that a game can't be art because programming isn't art is like saying a metal sculpture isn't art because someone had to smelt the iron. Or because it has to obey the laws of physics..
Anyway, I'm getting on a tangent. The point is that games can be art, even with varying levels of player interaction or even BECAUSE of varying levels of player interaction.
> Will is the man. I'm just sayin....
I'm also going to reiterate some of my previous posts
THIS MOST OF ALL.
I have to admit the only instalations I seen in my life are of Nicanor Parra, the Chilean Anti-Poet. The one I like more were a long sentence in the floor which describes how an instant train Santiago - Puerto Montt (Two chilean city way appart one from another) could work. His most famous is a Cross without the Christ with the leyend "Voy y Vuelvo" (Which pretty much like "Out to Lunch" in good Chilean) and a drawing of someone calling to the House of Culture and been greeted with the spanish version of "Yes Motherfucker!".
He's also a Doctor in Physics and some of his instalations are big chalkboard with humorous stuff written with Math Formulas. Sadly, his work is way too chilean, and maybe that's why he was nominated to the Nobel Prize a lot of times and never win. But, of course, he'll never raise any hope about it, until he see the money.
Yes.
ohh I wana play a point n click lost game!!!
Yeah, I don't want a Lost game either.
Oh, and also, this is what Tycho from Penny Arcade (I forgot which one is his real name) had to say about it:
Thanks for sharing that. I liked it.
Except the part where
Tycho is Jerry Holkins. Gabe is Mike Krahulik. And I was hoping to see that someone had posted this over here. I really liked Tycho's take on the whole thing. Maybe tomorrow, when I'm not in desperate need of sleep, I'll actually try and read this thread (especially Will's post) and actually get involved.
So much for tl;dr.
This was the last straw, after that I HAD to check what that meant, since people kept using it here.
(If anyone else is wondering, it means "too long; didn't read").
I thought it would be something like "translation" or something, because when I first saw it, it was in Dashing's posts, where he sums up his posts in the end in a usually comical manner.
I like how "too long; didn't read" is apparently also too long to type, so people felt the need to find a shorter way to say something that's already very concise.
Did you fail to provide us with a link where we can buy it, or am just that stupid?
First, this is the Net. What else did you expect from a series of tubes?
Second, yes he did provide a link to buy it... sort of.
he provided a link to this: http://jordanmechner.com/last-express/
on which page, provides a link to this: http://www.gametap.com/play/gameDetails/000425550
As yet, I haven't readily located the game for digital distribution on other sites, but I'm still looking.