Topic: Video games can never be art

@Adam How many endings have you seen? I only found three of the seven by myself.

that "game" is hilarious!
if you go into the office undressed: WHERE"S YOUR TIE? YOU'RE FIRED! lol

There is only one ending. The rest are just "steps" as the elevator lady eludes to.

Thanks Adam. That made my day.

That's what I meant, JayArr.

Oh, I finished the game in a few minutes. For whatever reason, it just clicked with me immediately what I was supposed to do. I think having a real desk job in a cubicle prepared me for this, haha.

His most compelling argument, in my opinion at least, is that games have clear objectives. Goals. Ways to win. And that in itself separates itself from the rest of "true" art forms. I don't agree with it, but it's certainly something to think about. When you also consider that games are mass produced and created, usually, with the primary focus of making tons of money.

It's a tricky argument, though. Art is always considered to be such an elitist thing, and that if it's mass produced or created with profit in mind then it can't be art. But look at films--sure, maybe some of them aren't primarily created to make money, but they are (unless they're incredibly indie) mass produced.

A lot of dentist offices contain art, but I probably wouldn't say a dentist office is art simply because it contains art.

Unless you're talking about multi-player games, most of the time "winning" means getting to the end. Getting to the end of a game is not that different from getting to the end of a book or movie.

The only difference is that a game challenges you along the way, but books and movies can be challenging, too. Sure, I could read through any of a million books, but it doesn't mean I'd understand them. And there are always games like Flow that will adjust the difficulty to ensure that anyone who understands the rules and has opposable thumbs can get to the end. No one finishes Flow and says "I won." I'd feel more like I "won" something if I finished Moby Dick.

Roger Ebert has apparently never played a video game, therefore his opinion is worthless. Worst article I have ever read, what a moron. Video games are better art and entertainment to me than most movies and books. Video games are art, just a different form of it.

Yeah that's a terrible counter argument.

The problem with video games as art is they haven't been around long enough. A lot of what turns an artistic medium into an artistic medium is the benefit of hindsight, which is impossible with games- they're all too relevent. The first novel was decried as a "mass popularist POS" (paraphrasing) when compared to poetry or theatre - early films were similarly dismissed. Those pioneer novels (such as Moll Flanders) and early films have since been reevaluated as art works, and what was once simplistic and base has been since redefined as an important form of art.

It'll happen with games. Already I can guess at a few games that, 50 years from now, will be reevaluated as important works in the development of the fledgling artistic medium. It's not happening now because as a rule of thumb the artistic community is slower to adopt new ideas than the Pope.

That's the thing, the art community is not slower, the art community has already embraced it. There is always someone there to lead the pack, and there is right now, we can debate about it, but I think we all agree that in the future they may be considered art. Why do we have to wait?

It would be a contemporary form of art.

I don't know how you can possibly claim that the art community has embraced gaming where there is little to no academic analysis of gaming out there, there are precious few university courses dedicated to the study of games (not programming, but the artistic potential of games), and very few tier-1 academics that would be recognised as gaming authorities.

Playing a game in private is not "embracing" gaming. For games to become a proper artistic medium it needs to be legitimised as such by the academic community. It will happen, but it's not there yet.

I've found four endings in that game. One where you're fired, one where you jump off the building, one where you go with some homeless man to a cemetary, and the one where you give in to your regular soulless life.

Who cares about the academic community, and who made them the authority on art? Academia is so out of touch with the world at large. They have their elite, niche interests, and it in no way reflects what the general public is interested in. Someone can't just set himself up on a throne and claim authority.

Because art is an academic concept, that's why. The difference between "entertainment media" and "art" is simply that the academic world has accepted that there's academic value in xxxx, thereby making it art.

Anyone can accept that something has artistic value. Art does not need a stamp of approval.

You're missing the point. "Art" itself is an academic concept. Without academics we wouldn't have "art" at all. Anyone can accept that something is a good example of whatever genre, but it takes an academic analysis to decide why something is good from an artistic perspective.

Anyone can accept that Shakespeare is important. Being able to explain why Shakespeare is good requires the study of Shakespeare. Shakespeare doesn't need a stamp of approval to be good, either. It just happens that it also has got that stamp of approval.

On the other hand, fashion photography is rarely given the academic stamp of approval. It's certainly "good", though - that's why marketers spend millions of dollars a year commissioning very expensive photoshoots.

So, in this case, the guy hasn't academically studied video games?

People were singing songs and painting on cave walls long before academics was a concept, so no, academia did not invent art. It just laid claim to it and turned its collective nose up at everyone below them.