I still haven't been able to play through Okami. I really wanted to like it, but it was so long winded! I got bored quick.

I need to get in a accident and become bed ridden. Then I will actually have the time to play through it.

Oh god, here people are trying to move on from Rev's Zelda review, and you guys mention it again. Kudos.

Okay, so I'm listening to the podcast, and I'm in the middle of it, at about 30 minutes in, when someone mentions 'a urinal in a hallway as art' or something.. and I had a thought. (A thought powerful enough to make me sit up and actually create an account to post it)

Shouldn't the question be "Can games BE art?" not "Are Games Art?", implying all of them are?

In the issue of games as entertainment versus games as art, it really should boil down to a piece by piece evaluation, shouldn't it? Just like movies and books and everything else, you would look at each seperately and ask yourself if it was art. You mention 'Citizen Kane' as a movie as art, and I'm sure it is, but does that mean that Bad Boys 2 is art as well? (I hope not) BB2 would probably just be considered entertainment only, right?

The same question can be applied to all the mediums you mention, like books: Are those crappy one dollar harlequinn romance novels art? Probably not, but we al know of a bunch of books we'd love to cite as very powerful works of art.

So, back to games, it becomes a question of 'Are any games art?'. And, in my opinion, only if you're able to look at every game that was, is, or ever will be and say that absolutely none of them are (or will be) art, can you say that games can't be art.

Obviously plenty of people here are willing to say this or that game is art already, so to them 'games can BE art'. Not necessarily all of them are, but individual games can be.

That logo is the shizzle

Well put, Amethystine. Like we said on the show, I think it's subjective. Games can be art if they're viewed as such and mean something more than entertainment to the player.

It's also up to the people who create a game. Titles like ICO, Killer 7, or Hotel Dusk are so amazing visually and tell such great stories, it seems they were most likely created to be viewed as art. However, stuff like Splinter Cell or Halo, while not without their own artistic merit, exist more for the purpose of entertainment.

It all comes down to whether or not the creators of the game and the people playing the game consider it to be art. As far as I'm concerned, those are the only opinions that matter. If it's art to you, it's art. Fuck Roger Ebert.

@Justice- Thank you, sir.

I wish I was in that debate, I'm being frustrated listening to some of the arguments here.

Videogames can be art, very easily. If you think art is just pictures, that's incredibly closed thinking. Art in all its forms is a huge, wide and varied concept. Personal, too.

To say a game isn't art is base ignorance, really. You're having a closed off mindset of what art is - "Oh art is paintings/books/music". To have such a closed mind about what makes art what it is is to go against the very nature of ... art.

Rev FTW!

To Dyson:

First of all: Hard names FTW!

And secondly, I see where you're coming from, but I don't think you can use blanket statements in these sorts of discussions. I tried to mention it a little bit, but my thoughts on not all paintings (or should I say illustrations) being art were such that if someone were to paint/draw/create a visual piece of some sort to advertise or simply some other non-meaningful purpose, it wouldn't really be art, since it wasn't meant that way and pretty much everyone would be able to agree that it wasn't (except for some crazies or something) art.

As for Halo (which I have to admit, I really do like. For the story and overall aesthetic, not just the asshole filled multiplayer stuff), I wanted to mention in my first posts that I consider it an action movie of the game world.

I think what we can all agree on is that dyson's definition of the word "art" is somewhat different from most of the rest of us. As language(or interpretation thereof) is subjective, it didn't really make him wrong, just something of an aberration. That said, if I was involved in the debate, I have a feeling I could have said things to him that may be deemed somewhat offensive in my frustration at being unable to explain that.

Great podcast though. I always wondered why people didn't consider games as art, now I know it's because they haven't had a bunch of people telling them so for half an hour. I also enjoyed rev's participation. Even if he is way totally wrong about twilight princess...

A waste of an episode. Who gives a fuck if games are art? When was the last time any of you went to an art gallery just to look at a bunch of dead guys' paintings and sculptures? Play the damn games and enjoy them, or do you enjoy them less because some asshole says they technically do not fall under the definition of 'art', whatever the hell that is. Either play or don't play, video games aren't going to be recognized for anything outside of the video game community anyway.

Had to split mine, too.

As for the "urinal in the hallway" argument, it's actually a very famous piece, and was one of the forerunners of the "Readymade" movement, which was designed to reflect artistic sensibilities in everyday objects. Which, i actually believe lends itself very well to videogames. To paraphrase amethystine, "can games BE art?" Yes, i believe so. Actually, i think *anything* can, but videogames, as an interactive medium, have even more potential. Its just a shame to see it squandered so often.

Second part

Something is not generally considered "art" when it stimulates only the senses, or only the mind, or when it has a different primary purpose than doing so. However, some contemporary art challenges this idea.

As such, something can be deemed art in totality, or as an element of some object. For example, a painting may be a pure art, while a chair, though designed to be sat in, may include artistic elements. Art that has less functional value or intention may be referred to as fine art, while objects of artistic merit which serve a functional purpose may be referred to as craft. Paradoxically, an object may be characterized by the intentions (or lack thereof) of its creator, regardless of its apparent purpose; a cup (which ostensibly can be used as a container) may be considered art if intended solely as an ornament, while a painting may be deemed craft if mass-produced.