@TheEroica said:
@jg4xchamp: damn it, you broke it champ
Cool, I'll go through the trouble of making a proper post now that it's unbroke, to rebroke it.
http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/culturehousedaily/2014/05/gaming-isnt-art-and-those-who-think-it-is-need-to-chill-out/
This was the article that made me recommend the topic, because fundamentally I think it is a well written piece (and other reasons, but whatever). I think there is a double standard that gamers need to correct before they run their mouth about art. First and foremost if you're going to play the "oh they don't know anything about gaming card" than you know must actually know shit about those other art forms to make valid criticisms and comparisons to why gaming is art or not. It should work both ways no? Cool now that we got that out of the way.
That piece is argued from someone who is in the art world for a living. The way the word was originally used to describe things like poetry, dance, theater, painting, sculpture, architecture, and music. With the exception of epic poems those aren't necessarily "story telling" mediums in the strictest sense. You can tell a story for instance, but it's not necessarily the driving force behind the work. Why mention story? I'm actually going to get back to that.
In that article dude outlines how art has been judged by people who live in that world, and what values an individual piece has in a museum and such. And why a film doesn't translate to that kind of expression. Why? Because it's taken completely out of context, a film is better enjoyed as a film. Start to finish, you sit down, you watch. It can't be trimmed out, put on display, and be discussed in any meaningful way without the rest of the context to justify every thought that can be made about the work. What was lost in his gaming isn't really art, and shouldn't aspire to be, was that he's telling you things film aren't art either. And when you think about it in those terms does gaming really get judged as a painting? sculpture? architecture? no, it's completely silly to even make that comparison?
So why do we make it? why make such a fuss about the label art? Why get infuriated that gaming has more in common with chess, checkers, and sports (the game, not the athletes part): than it actually does with film, literature, or poetry? Well lets go back to the article for a choice quote
Furthermore, because we can be talking about two different things when we talk about art – the first an institutional definition, whose boundaries indeed shift, and the other, which has a wider brief, about what possesses cultural significance – we can often find ourselves in a muddle. If we feel something lacks the cultural cachet it deserves – such as games – some immediately seek to validate it in terms of art, not just as something that possesses cultural value but that which should be accepted by the art world. And they seek to do so by listing criteria which no longer hold weight in the art world, such as how intricately made something is, how skilful its production, or how beautiful. Such are the confusions and convolutions we have arrived at after a hundred years of modernism and its off-shoots.
And that's always been my issue with this discussion. Gamers aren't making this conversation based on some wealth of knowledge on what art is, or actually having a proper look at the term beyond "well wikipedia this is the definition, so why bother having a thought process at all?". They do it because they need validation. A pat on the back. A word that vindicates all their time spent into something they enjoyed. And my question is what value does this word truly have? Even if you got it, all it offers is reduced ways of talking about things.
Bioshock is art: doesn't say anything. It doesn't tell you why you found the game compelling. What worked about the gameplay. What design aspects of the game stand strong, and are built to last. All it is is just a label at that point. A petty one where once you start stacking the other art forms: gaming sticks out as an outlier as it has the least in common with the rest. The same way film would stick out, because the expression is completely different. Which brings us back to the story thing.
Every bit of this word rests its laurels on "story telling" Modern era arm chair critics and champions insist gaming is art because of x games story, or y games narrative, or z games characters. Because to them art is a cute synonym for great story. But it isn't, and more to the point what would you gain about acknowleding gaming as a story telling medium? The part where it's subpar in comparison to better story telling mediums: Film, literature, and recently television wouldn't be invalidated. That argument would go strong for years. If you had given Ebert The Last of Us, he'd tell you it's a less compelling version of The Road, with some hint of Children of Men. Yes he wouldn't understand the value of the games execution in relation to other videogames, but he'd know how to compare its execution to how much more effective it was in film/literature. This is not to say The Last of Us isn't terrific (it is), but if you took its story telling in a vacuum against the other plots, it wouldn't hold much weight.
And the part that bugs me the most: In my 26 years of existence I have never heard the words: "Super Mario Bros. is art." It's laughed at by gamers when you say that. And I ask why? If gaming is art? if the process of making a game is the same process as creating art, how is the quintessential videogame, not art? The craftsmenship, the gameplay, every aspect of its design that show cases how it creates joy, challenge, and delight for a human being through a players input is somehow not the reasons a game would be art? The things that are actually exclusive to this medium, the things that define this medium, the things that separate this medium from the others: isn't the thing we want to argue for art, but WE desperately want that label? I'm missing the part where that makes sense.
Let's not talk about the brilliant boss designs in Shadow of the Colossus. Let's mention the religion imagery/nods in the game. You know the videogame equivalent of the curtains being blue: translation its fluff.
And not for five seconds do I buy: commercial vs art. Mozart wasn't exactly trying to be broke. Neither was Rapheal. And this just in: it's not like Ken Levine, Jonathan Blow, and Ueda aren't trying to make commercially productive games. Approach may be different, but the goal is similar: make the game they want, and then hope its successful for it: so they can pile on some money.
So yeah this is why usually I just bow out of the art discussion. I don't think that word the way its used in the gaming community is a good word. It's a stupid label made by the residents of Mt. Pious so some people can validate what they enjoy, so they can join the residents of Mt. Pious. It creates lazy discussions/descriptions about games, as opposed to well articulated thoughts. I'd much rather celebrate the aspects that make gaming different, and makes enjoying a game different: vs trying to put it in the same category as a painting or film.
My long ass 2 cents.
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