6:35 PM on 06.14.2007
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Dyson
Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome back once again the lovely thing we call RetroforceGO! The only podcast on Destructoid that gives you reviews of the weekly DLC, in an effort help you determine between the garbage and the gold. But wait, there's more! Aside from helping you to decide not to buy such gems as Milon’s Secret Castle, we also like wax poetic on all things retro (mostly because we’re old).
This week's topic is one that I'm sure that a lot of you can get behind, so join us as we debate: Are games art?
Here are some highlights in no particular order:
- Hey! Is that a snazzy new logo?
- Colette + intro = singing
- Hollywood and video games are not the same
- Rev feels strongily (yes, strongily) about Ico
- We forget to answer listener questions :(
- It all comes down to Okami
Sounds like it'll be more fun than a barrel of drunken monkeys, high on crack! To find out for yourself just click here.
[Stop asking about RSS, please. Our Robot teams are working on it as we speak!]
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Destructoid is an open discussion community. You don't need to "audition" to post a comment - just speak your mind. We respect differing opinions on the site, so have at it. Be smart, funny, insightful, clueless, or cute -- but back it up with substance. Keep your cool, keep it fun. We only ask that you act respectfully and above all: don't be a troll and ruin it for everyone else. Don't bring down gamers or we'll, you know, gently shoot you in the face and stuff you into a flaming mailbox. Each comment is your opportuntity to make this community awesomer. Is that even a word?
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Contest:
Also, OMG Russia has the bomb! :(
I need to get in a accident and become bed ridden. Then I will actually have the time to play through it.
If you want my long-winded thoughts on the matter, here's my blog postwhich will probably put you to sleep...
Blog
...Is there any way to edit a post here on D-Toid?!?!?
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.
As for the notion that the interactivity of games negates their potential as art, I say that our interactivity is less important in that sense of changing the experience of a game put for by it's creators. Our involvement will not change a game so completely. We're not picking up a game like a blob of clay and completely changing it, for example. We remain within the borders and confines of the experience the designers intend with invisible walls, locked doors and physical limitations upon your playable character (glitches and whatnot aside), and ultimately do and see what they intend us to see and do. Unless you don't finish a game completely which would be like not finishing a movie. (Of course, it takes that much more time to completely finish some games to the point where you know you've seen all there is to see.)
The same can be said about paintings and books and movies, because you certainly can't go beyond the frames, screens and edges of pages to have more content in those cases either.
Anyway, I say not all paintings are art (think advertising), not all movies are art, not all books and not all plays are art. But they can be, and so can games.
Holy crap, I wrote a lot more than I thought I would. I hope someone sees this.
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.
To echo a piece of what Topher said, well put Amethystine (what's with the hard names? Whatever happened to Bob or Sue?). Anyway, the whole problem I had with calling video games art is because, if you'll remember the show, Colette specifically called out Halo as not being art.
Now, I feel that any painting, no matter what, is art. Whether or not it is good art is up to the critics and the beholders, but, the painting will always be art.
So to be able to call out a particular painting and say "That's not art," doesn't seem reasonable to me. Painting is, as I hope you would agree, an art form, and the product of it is art.
Video games are a medium of entertainment, and while they may contain various products from different art forms (music, design, painting), they themselves are not an art form in their own right. Because if they were, then every game ever made would be a product of the video game art form and therefore -- art.
So a person shouldn't be able to say that Ico is art while Halo isn't. Both games, along with every other one ever made, even pong, must be considered art just to be able to call one game art.
That was basically where I was coming from, so I hope that that helps you in some way.
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.
Noooo, you ruined Phantasy Star 2 for me )= And i think i still have Quest 64 =P.
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.
As for Halo's popularity, I have heard the theory that it's the younger gaming generation's 'Star Wars' or Star Trek. The idea was that all the sorts of people who would have been completely compelled by Star Wars and Star Trek in the 70s and 80s, as they are the geeky sort that would love them and do enjoy the last bits of those franchises they see as they've been on their way out.. but weren't born in the right timeframe. That group of young people were completely swept off their feet by this new Sci-Fi franchise. The fact that it's a video game instead of films or TV shows only helps it feel like it belongs to this new generation that has grown up alongside VG consoles.
At least, that would explain it's initial acceptance and popularity, pre-release of the first game, when only the 'cool Mac kids' knew about it. Once a game like that takes off enough with enough people (and is the only game in town on a new console), it leeches into the mainstream and is suddenly overrun with everyone else trying it out, and with it's simple explosive fun, it drew in all the jocks and morons in time for the second's online launch. Now it's just a runaway train über-franchise.
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...
That being said, I'm not particularly hung up on wether or not a game is defined as art, so much as the importance of art direction in a game. I would much rather play a game that has an interesting, stylized aesthetic, such as Okami, Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, or anything of that ilk, than i would something like Halo, which i find to be visually completely uninteresting. Granted, i didn't find the story interesting either, but that's a whole other story. The fact that the aforementioned games have really compelling art direction actually makes me feel like i'm playing something new and exciting, as opposed to another cookie cutter shooter, or something like that.
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.
Art is a (product of) human activity, made with the intention of stimulating the human senses as well as the human mind and/or spirit; thus art is an action, an object, or a collection of actions and objects created with the intention of transmitting emotions and/or ideas. Beyond this description, there is no general agreed-upon definition of art, since defining the boundaries of "art" is subjective, but the impetus for art is often called human creativity.
An artwork is normally assessed in quality by the amount of stimulation it brings about. The impact it has on people, the number of people that can relate to it, the degree of their appreciation, and the effect or influence it has or has had in the past, all accumulate to the "degree of art." Most artworks that are widely considered to be "masterpieces" possess these attributes.
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.
So based on the previous concepts, we can conclude that videogames can be art to various degrees, so games like Okami are intended to be primarily a work of art and secondarily entertainment while other games are primarily entertainment and have artistic merits, since they convey emotions and come from human creativity.
And I find quite perplexing that someone could consider books as not being art @@