Is video game an art?

[ezrider]

Ted Rueter, Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana has obviously never played Pokemon,Krusty's super fun house or PuzzleBobble or any sports games, driving games -........ its clear that everyone in the US and the rest of the world will only play violent R rated games
like RTW etc

[Keba]

Ted Rueter, Assistant Professor of Political Science at DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana has obviously never played Pokemon,Krusty's super fun house or PuzzleBobble or any sports games, driving games -........ its clear that everyone in the US and the rest of the world will only play violent R rated games
like RTW etc

Eh, the TW series isn't all that violent.

Remember the old quote, a single death is a tragedy, a thousand, a statistic.

And we deal in thousands in TW, so I doubt that falls into the category of games training our children to go on murderous rampages. Training them to be dictators, maybe, but not people who will go out and randomly shoot around.

[Moros]

And we deal in thousands in TW, so I doubt that falls into the category of games training our children to go on murderous rampages. Training them to be dictators, maybe, but not people who will go out and randomly shoot around.

Thank god we're only training dictators!


Games can be art but only few are. Because games are mostly made for lucrative causes. It's like pop music, do you consider Britney Spears as art? Well except for her body (), I don't! But if we have a look at Beethoven...someone who didn't compose only because of money. Yes I consider Beethoven as art, don't you. (Tough I'm not sure if is sexy, tough... ) Anyway, games mostly aren't art because of the commercial stuff. Take a look at totalwar. It has become more popular over the years, bigger budget. But I'd consider Shogun or medievel more of an art form then Rome.

[The_Mark]

Definately art, with it different genres et all. Too bad only few rise above kitsch status, and what we need is development of this medium to something resembling modernism, and, eventually postmodernism. We do have the cave paintings. Romance and realism phases might be the more prevalent forms at this point, with a couple odd balls representing modernism in between, amidst the kitsch.

Because games are mostly made for lucrative causes. It's like pop music, do you consider Britney Spears as art? Well except for her body (), I don't!

Kitsch.

I mean, essentially, a video game is a game - like chess or football. But those earlier games seem to lack much aesthetic qualities and would not be considered an art, except when speaking figuratively. Is Counterstrike art? It's hard to see it. The same, I have to say, would be true of Total War (STW had some nice flourishes, but not enough.)

But some games have other qualities - story telling and dialogue, that are clearly literary; others to do with sound and vision that are purely cinematic. Consider a game like Planescape Torment or System Shock 2, it is hard to deny that they are art forms that rival 95% of what we see on a TV screen or can pick up off a bookshelf. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic arguably had a better plot than any of Lucas's films. Yes, there's a game in them, but some of the literary or cinematic aspects are significant enough in themselves for them to also be regarded as art.

So I would say video games are more games than art forms (well, )but some do have significant artistic value.

How would hypertextual literature classify then?

[caravel]

When I look at some modern art, such as the unmade bed and the immersed animal carcasses, or the more common splurged of paint thrown at a bit of paper, then there is no compeition. If that crap is art, xTW is a masterpiece...

I think some games are an art form in there own rights, but don't forget that all games contain art, which artists spend time creating.

[The_Mark]

Educate yourself, good man. It might be (even literally) crap, but it's art.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modernism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism
Once you know what modernists are trying to do you can actually understand them. Once you do, you will see them in a whole new light. Though, for the record, I still steer clear of those carcasses.


As a sidenote, modern and postmodern art require a good bit of viewer engagement, and what medium is as engaging as video games? And once we get more uni graduates creating games we will see much, much more interesting games. Amidst the kitsch, of course.