game girl advance: Games, Art, Why Bother?

Games, Art, Why Bother?

I've been reading a lot of the whole Roger Ebert "games are not art" business for the past few weeks, and I've got to the point where I thought I'd take my two-cents and firmly add them to some sort of piggy bank. So the questions: are games art? My answer: does it matter?

Hear me out.

First of all, the word "art" is beyond over-weighted with philosophy and politics. In this day and age, "art" goes beyond the simple MiriamWebster definition of "the conscious use of skill and creative imagination especially in the production of aesthetic objects." If we used that simple definition, then yes, "games" would easily be art.

But nope. Depending on who you are, and what you stand for, "art" has a number of meanings. For some, it's anything with an authorial vision which is meant to derive some sort of response from an audience - basically Ebert's definition. For others, "art" is the Mona Lisa, but not a portrait of the Virgin Mary made with elephant dung. That's a canonical view - the idea that theorists and PhDs and writers need to agree that something is a masterpiece before it's accepted as "art" for the world.

Both are used as reasons that games aren't art. The latter group uses their argument to say that any game in which people kill hookers or shoot aliens or drop blocks into neat little rows have nothing to do with the lives of the audience. Therefore whatever's being expressed by the piece is not adding anything to societal discourse. Shooting hookers = bad. Bad = not good for society. Not good for society = not art. Simple. The only problem with this view is that it often literalizes what's happening on screen without consideration of things such as irony and, especially in terms of video games, audience participation.

The former group, the Eberts, argue that games aren't art because they don't have one authorial vision. The Godfather plays the same way every time you watch it - it's the way the director intended. Shadow of the Colossus, however, requires participation and minute changes to the story based on the user, therefore there's no true vision. Which again, I kind of disagree with. Not the whole "authorial vision" idea, because that itself is a myth - books, movies, music, no matter how "indie" still relies on a complex matrix of interplay between gender, race, economics, politics, and class, not just a dude in a vacuum saying "I'm going to create art!" Secondly, the idea that a movie watches the same everything you watch it is also flawed. Watch any movie with someone from a completely different background from yourself and you're sure to find very different reactions. In a way, every movie presents a "game" in which your position within the matrix of society gives you a different way to play it.

But I'm getting outside of my argument.

Are games art? I don't really care. To me, "art" is a word that's far too contrived and politicized to have any real exact meaning. Games are games. Movies are movies. Books are books. Once we try to create a ranking system of what medium is worthy of consumption versus what medium is worthless, we create a canon based on our own biases, experiences, and education.

On the flipside, I kind of like that people are arguing over games being art.

What's important isn't if we get old white men saying that "games" are art. What's important is the realization that games affect us as a society. Economically, psychologically, technologically affect us as a society. Games have gender politics. Games have racial issues. Games can cause a Pulitzer-prize winning art critic to debate whether they are "art" or not. Games are a big enough issue that people, pro or con, feel the necessity to talk about them.

Simply, games are entrenched within our society. They are affecting how people deal with one another in significant ways, and are changing the ways that people grow, learn, and interact. For bad or for good - I'm not making that argument here. The more politicians and theorists and critics try to toss video games out of the world's cultural canon, the more they become studied, debated and entrenched.

And as far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing.

Maybe this is just an academic viewpoint, the idea that anything worth studying is valuable. At the same time, I think that we as gamers shouldn't be so much concerned with if games are "art," but why we feel so compelled to defend them as such.

Posted by Mike at April 21, 2006 01:28 PM

I can't really straddle the fence on whether video games are art because I truly want them to be. It is the artistic quality of gaming (along with the constant problem-solving mental stimulation) that makes me feel that gaming is anything but a waste of time.

Perhaps because a good game is such an explosion of art on many levels that it's hard to consider the game itself as art. The problem then is perception; in order to appreciate art, there seems to be an unspoken requirement for a degree of frozen-ness so that the art can be examined.

Let's a take a movie for example, say The Shawshank Redemption. As a movie, there is simply too much going on to ever be able to appreciate every single detail. In fact, there are by necessity lots of details that add little to the enjoyment of the movie. Any object in line of sight can crawl its way onto film, and the director is responsible for de-emphasizing those parts so that you focus on the intended action and dialog. So, is this movie art? On the whole, it's hard to appreciate as art. It's simply too much to take in and critique as art. However, there are scenes where everything is so deliberate that if you capture a series of freeze frames, all of them easily qualify as art.

Take for example the scene where Andy and Red are having a conversation through a book shelf over pie. Now, frozen, our movie has become art. A single clear frame of a movie can be scrutinized and appreciated fully. It can be purchased and framed and discussed to fine detail. Yet, as you watch the movie, that frame comes and goes in an instant. You can't discuss it because it was impossible to absorb so quickly. Quite frankly, you may have been blinking when it passed.

Games are the same way (peeling the soundtrack aside, which is a different form of art). When we say that games are artistic, we are really talking about having a highly stylized design that lends itself to these frozen moments that we can call art. Is Wander's battle versus the condor colossus art? We can sit on the fence about that. Is a freeze frame of him jumping to grab a furry wing patch art? Absolutely! Even a video of that moment could be considered art provided it were short enough to be digestible. Like a movie, a game generally provides too much stimulation of the senses to be fully appreciated as we experience it.

But think, how many times during a classic game have you tried to get that perfect jump pose before the game froze for the "stage clear" fanfare? You were taking the game's potential for art and making actual art, even for only a brief moment.

The potential of a game to do this should be recognized and treated with high regard. I wouldn't put a Mega Man freeze frame next to a Dali painting in a museum, but a Mega Man freeze frame would look more right on my wall than most Dali paintings ever would.

Posted by: T. Holbrook Walker on April 23, 2006 10:07 AM

Jane, Jane, Jane...

The video game industry bent on one thing and one thing only. Making money. The games that are being produced are not art forms. Innovations are replaced by gimmick and sales are driving game developement and content. Very few if any games are made with an artistic statement in mind.

The key word is few. If I was to design a game I would be sure to craft an art form. Stack detail upon detail upon detail and deliver a moral lesson as well. Currently I am devising a a plot along the lines with humanities obsession of control. An obsession so great it leads to the destruction of the human race. A somewhat philosophical idea coupled with a bizarre story affected by a great big time loop. A time loop that leaves the characters with some really big moral choices. Do you forgo the human good to survive or sacrifice your own comforts and safety to save humanity?

Does a son destroy his father knowing that will end his existance in order to save humanity? Oh sure it's easy to say I would save the word. When it comes down to that key moment what will the choice be? Especially when you know you can live your 80-100 years knowing the real evil won't affect you but those after you. The generations to come.

Well anyway all this is really just passing thoughts as my little idea will never come to fruition. In essance it doesn't exist.

Some games are works of art but they are very few and far between.

Posted by: undercoverrabbit on April 25, 2006 09:32 AM