Thread 715382668

Are video games art or do they just contain art? I'm leaning towards the latter. People don't call chess art even though it contains a board and pieces that can easily constitute art. The "game" itself is not actually art, even though the surrounding things can be. Video games, like all games, are predicated on player input. The gameplay (player input) is what makes the game and is the most important part of it, and properly speaking I consider that when you talk about a "game" you are talking about gameplay. When you talk about the story, music, or visuals you are talking about something secondary the game has that does not make it a game.
One might bring up visual novels as the story is kind of the point more like in literature but I do not consider them real games because the player input that is essential to making something a game is so shallow, making it akin to a choose your own adventure book. The gameplay has to have precedence over or at the very least equal importance to the other elements for it to be a game, that's why books aren't games just because you need to turn the pages.
This matters because the reason people call games art is mostly because of things outside the gameplay, i.e. story, aesthetics, and music. But the core of video games is gameplay, that is the fundamental element that makes a video game a video game and you cannot have a video game without it. How much you may value other elements is irrelevant, this is a basic definitional thing. You don't hear people say the player input of a video game constitutes art any more than you hear people say kicking a soccer ball around is art in the same way a painting is. So the core of video games being player input (like all games) means they are not art themselves but rather simply contain art in their secondary elements.

Art? More like... fart!

>>715382668 (OP)
>dbz spic trying hard to sound profound
kek

>>715382668 (OP)
This is art.
Despite the best attempts of painting everything yellow, games don't quite look like this, so they're not art.

They're not art and should never be art. The fags who push for gaming being "art" have actually zero love for video games.

>>715382668 (OP)
Now to be serious, games are art but not high art yet and most people working on it are going against the main features of the artform.
We're stuck on the hollywood musical era for a while.

It contains art like textures and models

>>715382668 (OP)
semantics are boring dude, talk about something real

No. Games are products and game preservation is poorly done.

>>715382668 (OP)
Anything can be art subjectively including something not intended to be. That said, the harder a product of any kind tries to be art while following all the typical constraints of a similar product, the less artful it is.

Take for example all those weird artsy things hippy chicks make to sell at swapmeets and etsy. It’s artistic when they do it, even if they’re making a fair livlihood off it. But as soon as a large company like walmart rips the design and mass produces them for like a quarter cost the thing loses it’s uniqueness and cool factor within a year or so.

>>715382765
honestly based. imagine caring about whether electronic toys are art

>>715382668 (OP)
If by art you mean something of worth made by a person deliberately in an effort of self expression then yes, obviously.
If you mean something made by a person to appeal to a specific singular group or person in an attempt to earn their adulation, then sometimes.

Video games are a creative medium, and in theory, any creative medium can be used to create art, but not all works of a given medium can be considered art.

Look at it like this: Citizen Kane is generally considered to be a work of art, but would you say the same of Michael Bay's latest CGI explosion-fest?

art is a threshold where critical thinking applied to a body of work achieves a specific response from people experiencing it. beyond that it doesn't matter what medium.

what is art?

>>715384640
in modern usage, a word that means 'I like this'

>>715382668 (OP)
Video games are art, I would even say the greatest form of art if done right just because it takes changes the dynamic from passive consumption to active participation.
The problem is that most gamers treat them like toys that can be replaced or even be made obsolete, even the ones claiming the that they are indeed art.
No other medium suffers from this like video games, paintings/movies/music etc are carefully preserved and valued for their own merit, imagine someone would replace the Mona Lisa with a modern interpretation "claiming" that it is better because it's new, made with better paint and we can throw the old on into the trash.
It also doesn't help that video games still have the "child" stigma on them that devalued their artistic merit to this day, the only medium that suffer in the same capacity is animation for similar reasons.

>>715382668 (OP)
Idk.

Art is a retarded word used by pseuds to sound smart, the only thing that matters is if you like something for being high quality and have enough intelligence to explain why you like it and how well it's crafted in specific
Video games are an interactive medium and the best games fully utilize that fact but most video games are corporatized slop made for the lowest common denominator and most people who play video games are fucking retarded and never properly engage with the game mechanics or experiment so truly good video games go under the radar and everyone thinks video games are inherently shit movies because they're too dumb to form their own opinions about anything
This applies to this board, which is normalfag and casual infested and any time you actually try to go in depth with a game you get ignored or treated as an autist as if this isn't the one fucking place that should have nothing but autists talking about actual video GAMES

>>715382668 (OP)
The moment something communicates creativity and intention it is art. No amount of sophistry about them being an "art gallery" or any other nonsense will ever change that. Rather, the greatest argument against video games being art isn't the media itself, but how people treat them.

>>715390775

p.s >>715386489 this anon hits the nail right on the head. Art is timeless and it is as good 100 years after coming out as it is 10.minutes after being created. If we honestly act as if masterpieces like RE4 or SH2 can be improved and replaced then they aren't art, they're toys

>>715390775
So when I swirl my stream of piss around the toilet boil it's art? Seems too broad.

>>715382668 (OP)
you can lose at games, but you can't lose at a movie or a book or a painting. The closest equivalent to losing at a painting would just be being fucking dumb and not being able to comprehend what's really being conveyed. In that sense though, I supposed you could make a video game that could be art, but it would stop being a good video game. Kind of like how high artsy films can be legitimate works of art but are usually boring as fuck and stupid.
Giving a player autonomy over the world and choices and predicating understand on actual skill kind of stops it from a fundamental stage of being art

>>715391718
If you piss in the snow to make a smiley face, that's art.

>>715382668 (OP)
Lets say you are listening to Beethovens 9th and you review it and have lots of profound things to say about how it made you feel and the craft of the composition. It is high art, its objectively a high quality piece of art. Now take tetris and replace the background bmg with Beethovens 9th. Its just Tetris but with good music, its just a competition to get the high score with threat of a failure state. A game is a competition with failure state, the background music being high art does not make it more profound. Attempts to make it more artistic amount to turning it into something of a roller coaster, an 'experience' like Tetris Effect. Tetris Effect has lots of nice easthetic choices but its still just tetris, albeit with bells and whistles to highlight the flow state high level play greets you with. SO id say no games are not art and the best they can do is mimick movies to try and "become art" but it only ever negatively impacts the gameplay. And the closer they become to reality simulations the more boring they become because reality is boring. And this doesnt devalue gaming, it doesnt have to be art.

Shitposters who also say "anything is art" are playing word games and ignoring we are obviously discussing literature if you think a toilet is art youre only succeeding in fulfilling your extremely low standard when if we simply switch to "literature" that paradigm doesnt work anymore. If anything is or can be art then sure games are art but they are not literary works or high art.

>>715382668 (OP)
i aint readin allat but video games are art because gameplay is art. simple as

>>715391718
Only if you did it with intention, anon. Did you compose it? Were you experimenting with symmetry, contrast, commentary on the impermanence of form in the face of natural decay (aka toilet flush)? If not, it’s just you pissing in a bowl. But if you really meant it-yeah, maybe it’s art. Still smells like piss tho.

>>715382668 (OP)
>art is when you draw le pretty picture and play le music
designing good gameplay is an art too, fagnuts
you think a programmer just types IF X=1 THEN GAMEPLAY=GOOD ELSE GAMEPLAY=BAD and the gameplay magically becomes good?
no. there's a fucking guy who has to use his brain and creativity to make it good.

>>715382668 (OP)
>hear people say kicking a soccer ball around is art in the same way a painting is
People absolutely talk about the way athletes handle the ball and move around as if it's a work of art conducted by the player. Basketball and soccer especially

>>715393057
>move around as if it's a work of art
>as if
bro got filtered by a simile
no one is seriously suggesting being skilled at a sport is art, they're just saying their skill is highly refined. They might refer to it as AN art which is contextually very different than saying something IS art.

Art assets + Gameplay mechanics = Video games
Any other questions?

>>715392959
1). Something being "an art" (in the same sense as e.g. craftsmanship) is not the same as a thing *being* art. These are two different terms and people typically mean the latter when they talk about video games being art, not "the art of game dev."
2). What matters in something being art is less the means of creation and much more the end result. I can put a monumental amount of creativity and effort into shoveling shit and putting it into a pile efficiently, that doesn't mean that pile of shit is art.

>>715395819
What matters most in art is intention. Art is the expression of creativity coupled with intention.

>>715384640
The capacity to express yourself through the mastery of a craft

>>715382765
Look at him go!

Art is whatever a sane person would feel is beautiful or significant in a non-ironic way. So if you find a game pretty to look at, it's art.
>why so you exclude ironic usage
Because it's too self-referential and self-referential definitions inherently make no sense.

>>715382668 (OP)
>Are video games art or do they just contain art?
Contain. Videogames are electronic children's toys, some people with too much nostalgia have troubles facing this fact.