Artistic Merit of Video Gaming

[KentaRawr!]

So, I watched This (http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=e80_1305997846) today, about alleged government funding of video games, as according to Fox News. Towards the middle, the subject of Video Games being a valid art form are brought up.

Do you feel that video games are a valid form of art?

Edit: Please refrain from calling two out of the three people in that video idiots.

[Jessweeee♪]

Sure they are. Make a film interactive and you have yourself a video game.

[Laddy]

Yes they are. Unfortunately, they aren't often evaluated as such.

[Pike]

Art is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but as far as I'm concerned enough creativity goes into video games in the form of visual design, scriptwriting, cinematography, music, and a million other things to crown them as a sort of complex piece of mixed-media art.

But then, as I'm fond of saying, I'm that person who will call a wooden chair art if looks nice.

[VeloZer0]

I don't know how it is possible for anything to not be a valid venue for art.

[Bunny]

No. Video games are not art.

Art is this:

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/pollock/pollock.number-8.jpg

Fuck Jackson Pollock.

[nik0tine]

Of course video games can be art but just because a medium can be artistic does not necessarily mean everything in it is. Grocery store novels, for example, hardly qualify. Neither does the romantic comedy or Justin Bieber. Likewise, the vast majority of commercial games are undeserving of the term. There may not be an objective criteria to determine what is art, but there are certainly ways to tell when something isn't art and one of the most obvious is when the 'artist' is a money grubbing whore. It is absolutely impossible to create something artistic if your philosophy is pandering to as many people as possible so you can stuff your wallet and that philosophy is the seed of almost every video game ever made.

But not every game is founded on greedy principles. An example: Minecraft. Notch did not initially create Minecraft with the goal of making money. I don't think he even expected to make any money at all. He definitely did not spend disgusting amounts of capital on pretty visuals to impress hoards of dumb people. He wasn't concerned with what others thought and instead focused on making something that he thought was awesome and lo and behold, he made something awesome. He gave himself room to be creative rather than putting a new face on prefabricated drivel. And creativity is the hallmark of any artistic endeavor. It is a rare thing for a commercial product of any sort to be so rooted in creativity like Minecraft is.

[Fynn]

It is hard to pinpoint, actually. I tend to have post-modern views regarding art, so I believe everything has its place in the artistic world. The 20th century has slightly altered the perception of art, in that it does not require any craft or talent of sorts, and it doesn't have to look pretty - what makes an artist is a different mindset, one that wants to go against certain conventions and perceives the world differently. One that makes us see hidden depths in a urinal, for example.
Hmm... Well, some video game music and graphics tend to be more artistic than others (like Yoshitaka Amano with his loose, airy designs or Masashi Hamauzu with his modern harmonies and forms, often even bordering on aleatorism, though it's first and foremost impressionist), so it certainly qualifies as the "art is a craft", especially considering all the programers working on it. But do they fulfill modern art standards? I have yet to play a video game really touch something deeper. And yet, some schools of art deny it any deeper meaning, they thing it should be meaningless...
All in all, I think the very idea of "art" is vague enough for video games to qualify... maybe?

Oh yeah, nik0tine? Bach and Mozart, among many other composers, composed a large part of their music purely for money. That doesn't make them worse artists, now does it.

[nik0tine]

Oh yeah, nik0tine? Bach and Mozart, among many other composers, composed a large part of their music purely for money. That doesn't make them worse artists, now does it.They'd have composed no matter what, though. If all they cared about was money they would have done something easier. Money may have been a strong motivator behind any individual work but it was certainly not the prime motivator in their decision to be composers. I think Bach's secular music especially reaffirms my point as he composed just as much for God as he did for his patrons.

[Fynn]

Oh yeah, nik0tine? Bach and Mozart, among many other composers, composed a large part of their music purely for money. That doesn't make them worse artists, now does it.They'd have composed no matter what, though. If all they cared about was money they would have done something easier. Money may have been a strong motivator behind any individual work but it was certainly not the prime motivator in their decision to be composers. I think Bach's secular music especially reaffirms my point as he composed just as much for God as he did for his patrons.

Of course. My point, though, is that art done for money can still be art. Considering anything can be art, depending on how you look at it, even games made solely for money are art. Examples may include some cash cow franchises like Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, and FF, where new installments are undoubtedly made for money, but many people working on said games are attached to them and input their whole imagination into them, thus still making something unique.

[Dreddz]

This debate pisses me off as no one is ever clear as to what qualifies as art. Therefore I'll just go by the wikipedia definition that art is simply something that influences our senses, emotions and intellect. I suppose games fall into that category. Then again, I suppose ANYTHING can fall into that category. That just loops back round to my original view that the whole "games as art" thing is just stupid.