Can games be high art?

Can games be high art?

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i guess so, but I don't like the push from this sudden influx of hipster journalist types who feel that games -have- to be art. Like fuckin Extra Credits. Everything has to be an "exploration" of the "human experience" as an "interactive narrative experience" and all of the games that do that are pretentious and shit with either no gameplay or tidbits of actual gameplay, awkwardly forced in with no respect for the tone.

Games about shooting aliens and slaying dragons are fine as they are.

They can maybe be high art if you want them to be, but they aren't nearly as good at it as books or film or whatever, and that's fine.

We need more half life 2's and ocarina of times and Deus Exs, rather than Gone Homes and Cancer Dragons. They're what videogames are good for.

If we had any reason to believe you were sincere, I would answer. But I know you're not.

Games can seem like art, but only when you're high.

Ebert was right.

Yes.
They can be but most aren't.

>cancer ridden dying babies is art
Exploitative to say the least.

Yes but only if they don't have gameplay and were developed by a rainbow haired hipster-twink-turbo-faggot.

what a piece of shit game
>OH OUR SON HAS CANCER
>IT'S SO HARD ON US
>JUST LOOK AT OUR HEROIC EFFORTS OF DEALING WITH OUR CHILD DYING
meanwhile after their game with no gameplay or puzzle solving to speak of sells less than 15k
>WAAAH NOBODY BOUGHT OUR BAD EGO-FUELING VIDEO GAME
>IT'S ALL THE LET'S PLAYERS FAULTS

cancerous devs with a cancerous game. gone home is fucking better than this, simply by the virtue that it isn't an autobiographical ego-feeding.

Is that edgy? Here I'll one up it. No one gives a fuck about your stupid son and his stupid fight with his disease. He's a dead fucking kid. He'll never amount to anything and you were completely powerless to stop it. You can either stop moping and try again or fucking kill yourselves.

Just don't shove your shitty exploitation ego-stroking "cinematic experience" into the market.

>Brigador, an actual good indie game with actual gameplay and effort put into it, a game that isn't an hour long cringefest of moping sold half as many copies as this steaming pile of shit
Yes I'm fucking mad. I hope the developer and his wife also both develop cancer. No I take that back, I don't want them to make a shitty followup about their own battles with cancer because I do not give a rat's ass about this knuckle dragging whiny bitch and his shitty ideas for video games.

Just fuck off. You give art games a bad name with """gems""" like this.

/autistic edgelord rant

Wasn't there heavy religious overtones too?
I didn't play it but I also don't see the point bothering to.
I've heard the crying baby and that about sums up the game.

No, a GAME can never be art because it exists for a purpose other than itself. Namely, video games exist to be fun or otherwise enjoyable. If the mechanics of a game are "fun" then it's not art.

However, "interactive digital art" can be a thing. As long as it's not also fun. See: Gone Home.

You literally just hold down the left mouse button to walk forward.

That's the fucking gameplay. And I don't mean like Heavy Rain's "Press R2 to walk". You don't control your fucking direction. You just hold down the left mouse button.

YOU COULD HAVE MADE A 3D ANIMATION.

BUT NO. THAT WASN'T ENOUGH FOR YOU. YOU HAD TO MAKE THIS PIECE OF SHIT. THIS WASTE OF EFFORT.

Nothing on this earth has any right to make me this upset. We need regulations in the industry to keep horseshit like this from getting made. The very existence of this maggot infested turd is the worst kind of insult.

I say this as a faggot who was making a gameplay-lite adventure game. At least I had the fucking decency to actually include a challenge in my game rather than "hold down this button to win"

I'd rather every fucking video game for the next 5 years be a Revolution 60 clone than to see another log of shit like this surface.

The only reason why it didn't get blasted is because the sensitive nature of it. Fuck that, the developer is a raging shitter and he needs to never make another game ever fucking again.

>Can games be high art?
Considering that what ever is considered art (or "high art") is a matter of cultural customs and conventions, and considering that our current cultural standards and customs don't impose strict formal restraints on which media can be considered art and which cannot: sure.

I doubt that making a kitsch barely-interactive emotional blackmail like Cancer/Dragon is a good way to go around achieving that, especially since outside of the subject matter, the game does nothing or particular mastery or meanigfulness. With all due respect to that kid's parents, the whole thing felt cheap and pretentious, trying to bank on people feeling sorry for them rather than saying anything of actual weight, and even less trying to do so in a way that actually compliments the medium.

When it comes to games and art, Icepick Lodge has always been the best place to look for inspiration. Those fuckers actually put honest effort and thoughts into their games.

Just like said, it's exploitative.

Can't criticize it out of sensitivity for the creators but praising it will just perpetuate "press/hold button to win" artsy games.

When I am high anything can be art.

Video games are GAMES not art

Do you retards also think soccer is art too?

Is Brigador good?
I think it looks cool.

Anything can be art.

That being said, most 'art' is made by 'artists', so it's subjective.

Soccer is a sport. We are talking about videogames. Not the same thing.
Also, things like dancing or gymnastics are often considered forms of art as well as competetive sport disciplines, so that argument really does not work on any actual level.

good bait

Ok lets talk about other games, how about Monopoly. Is that art now?

i thought the same thing. shit he even sold the making of documentary on steam.

"i want to share my story of my dead son but you better pay first i gotta eat"

Of course. But aping other forms of art instead of embracing gameplay as the central art form is definitely not the way to do it.

What games do these days with cutscenes is very similar to text crawls and narrators in cinema. That shit is going to be progressively discredited as the art form matures.

I'm not familiar with any competitive sports that are considered art by the players, the reporters, and the fans of the sports. But feel free to make things up.

>Make game about your son that's dying of cancer.
>Get pissed when it doesn't sell and claim LP'ers stole your game moneys.

This shit was just sleazy as fuck.

I don't want video games to be high art, high art comes with too much baggage.
Lowbrow shit is where it's at, with lowbrow stuff you can explore whatever the fuck you want, do whatever the fuck you want, SAY whatever the fuck you want,
I'm a goddamn moron who likes cartoons and comic books, and when those try to be "high art" they typically turn into shit.
And as evidenced by the wealth of crappy walking simulators and anything described with "Really makes you think" video games that try to be "high art" are shit, too.

>Is that art now?
No.
But Chess and Go are considered art in many cultures, and by many people even in our one.

And those are still board games, again a fairly different notion from videogames, which are not actually inherently a competetive activities, unlike things like Monopoly.

Already actually provided examples: dancing, gymnastics, figure skating.
Also: see above. Videgames are actually not inherently competetive. So the whole sports = games analogy is fundamentally wrong to begin with.

Whats the part about games you think is incompatible with art?

It would be a world of difference if he took the earnings and put them towards cancer research or treatment maybe he did but I'm too lazy to look it up but yeah, exploitative really is the word for it.

I hope this fucking post is supposed to be ironic and that you are not actually seriously believing this shit. Because if you do, that is just fucking sad.

The most two common mistakes people make are:
1. confusing the words "game" and "sport"
and
2. confusing the word "art" and the concept of high art.

A game can be a sport or a piece of art. A piece of art may or may not be a piece of high art. ANd there is no barrier to entry to being a piece of art at all.

Games have rules and objectives, art has no meaning other than itself

>A game can be a sport
Yes
>piece of art
Nope

>Play Pathologic
>Within the first 20 minutes there's a Majora's Mask reference
And that's how I knew it was going to be one of the greatest "art" games I've ever played, and I was right.

>dancing, gymnastics, figure skating.
Figure skating and gymnastics are sports which don't get called art, at least as far as I can tell. Dancing, whether it's called art or not (kind of depends on the dancing, as far as I can tell) is never called a sport. So those examples are bullshit until you prove otherwise.

And videogames are inherently competitive. If you can't win, it's not a game, simple as that.

When you make things up, what is your strategy? Are you hoping no-one will notice, or are you just trying to annoy people?

Yes. But San Fransisco walking simulator indie games can never be art because that entire clique has misunderstood the fundamental aspect of what makes art, or what makes a game for that matter.

only games like Rez would be like that. games that have a good story like the early SH could get attention in a literary/film scene, not in art.

to be high art-ish, at least it needs a collaboration with other genres artists who are actually active in such a scene and to convince them to join it, and Rez made it. the early wipe out games might have been that kind of game as well.

those pretentious blatant western indies cant be it, except for straight up serious games like Myst. its because it goes too far in a too obvious hipster way and only gets success and a sympathy in a certain particular western audiences at most.

In different time periods people used to say that instrumental music can not be art, that comic theatre can not be art, that choreography can not be art, that drama per musica can be neither theatre nor art, that photography can not be art, that cinematography can not be art etc. etc. etc.

The only answer to all of these claims is: get yourself educated on the subject before you pronounce judgements on what is or isn't a complex cultural phenomenon that you barely know anything about.

Yes, anything can be, art is a meaningless term.

There are many games that you can beat, but it's arguable whether you've "won" or not. For example, in Majora's Mask, every single time you reset back to day 1, that timeline is lost and dead forever. You failed in it. You end up winning if you beat the game, but ultimately there will be far more destroyed timelines than won ones.

It's impossible to beat the game without resetting the timeline atleast once.

>lel everything is art meme xD

See Then kys

Art is quite a meaningful umbrella term. It's just that people charge it with even further meaning for no practical reason and create faux paradoxes and pointless arguments like this.

There is nothing wrong with identifying the notion of art and high art, really. The distinction made sense back when the word "art" overlapped with the word "craft", and there was a need to distinct increasingly common works of craft from works of exceptional value, but since that is no longer the case, craft and art no longer mean the same, there is no other meaning of the word "art" outside of what it has common with "high art".

That is some of the most disjointed bullshit I've ever heard in attempt to make a claim about art and games.

>Figure skating and gymnastics are sports which don't get called art, at least as far as I can tell.
Actually, you can tell wrong.

>Dancing, whether it's called art or not (kind of depends on the dancing, as far as I can tell) is never called a sport.
You are wrong on that as well.

>And videogames are inherently competitive.
This just in: Dwarf Fortress, Tetris and Pong are no longer videogames!
>If you can't win, it's not a game, simple as that.
Define "win" you fucking moron, because I'm pretty sure there is plenty of games that have no explicit win state. There are plenty of games that have barely any win state at all. People don't play games to win, people play games to play them.

>When you make things up, what is your strategy?
Actually, with blatant and poorly-thought through claims like "if you can't win it's not a videogame", which one of us is actually pulling shit out of their asses?

'Beat' and 'win' are synonymous in this context.

Art is an amalgamation of science, philosophy, and beauty. You believe that all art is modernist/post-modernist art, which is incorrect. There are some non-modernist vidya games too, such as Super Metroid or La-mulana.

Everything used by an artist is art by definition.

As I said, you need to understand the difference between "art" and "high art". Art is merely an attempt at artistic expression. If I write you a poem here and now, it's already art. Your problem is that you misunderstand the expression "this isn't art!" used in the sense "this art work is of very low quality".

High art is what the academia considers such. Art is what an artist makes (and an artist is anyone who considers themselves as such). As simple as that. What you're saying is like compounding "music" and "symphonic music" and claiming that everything that is not symphonic is literally not music.

>low art
Yes.
>high art (while still being a "game meant to be played")
No.
>namby pamby interactive pretentious 2deep4u nonsense that you have to shove your head up your asshole and use your urethra as a throat mic to describe as art
Maybe.

You're not being entirely unfair when you call my comment poorly thought out. When I said:

>If you can't win, it's not a game, simple as that.

I was being overly simplistic. What I should have said was:

>If you can't win, or lose, it's not a game, simple as that.

Still pretty simple though.

I recommend people who think "It's art so it's bad xD" memers should watch youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc

As well as delving into documentaries of other Artistic Mediums. Every Frame a Painting makes great documentaries on films.

Some good videogame documentaries:
youtube.com/watch?v=jPqwDGXxLhU
youtube.com/watch?v=VdNhwb7iuI4

Don't videogames excel at being an active medium? Why can't active mediums be high art?

Because a script or a music sheet does not act like a set of rules in any way, right?

except it's literally a term that has lost all of it's old meaning.

The word art comes from the latin and old french word ars, which refers to the work of a skilled craftsman (furnishing, woodworks, carpentry). An artist used to essentially refer to skilled builders, who mainly made stuff as a hobby or built designer furniture and sold it

but like many other terms, we don't speak latin or old french or old english.Words hold inherently no value, and they are all arbitrary, so when the general meaning of a word gets misinterpreted, and enough people agree on its new meaning, then the word takes new meaning. It's that simple

why even bother making it a video game?
they could've made a short animated film, but no, they make a shit "game" that doesn't even have gameplay and sell it.
how much did the game got for? 20 dollars?

In my opinion, anything that is made to create an emotion in the audience can be considered art. Thus they can be high art as well.

If you equate that and "high art" for some reason, we would not have a word left for art per se. Why would you do that? It would only perpetuate miscommunications like the one at the root of this fucking thread.

>High art is what the academia considers such. Art is what an artist makes (and an artist is anyone who considers themselves as such).
Except what determines one to be an "artist" other than the academia-established ideal of what art is? You can't say "art is what artists make" because that leads to a circular definition, as artist is a person that makes art.

>What you're saying is like compounding "music" and "symphonic music" and claiming that everything that is not symphonic is literally not music.
No, because something being "symphonic" is a formal condition (it has to be reproduced by a symphonic orchestra, a musical body defined by pretty clear criteria).
Something being "art" on the other hand is a purely normative judgement with no actual formal parameters. The normative of "art" is established on multiple levels, though academia still plays a prime role in it.

>Still pretty simple though.
Define lose states again, moron. Temporary set-back? Being revived? Is Prey a game if it just immediately revives you with no punishment? Is having a bad score on Pong "losing" since the game continues endlessly, until you simply get bored?
Also how does ANY of this interfere with something being awared with the status of "art" actually?

What's high art

How much did this game cost when it first came out? I can't imagine much since there's not much value to a game that really boils down to "click for an hour and be done with this forever."

>Except what determines one to be an "artist" other than the academia-established ideal of what art is?
Self-identification as such and nothing else whatsoever.

A "professional artist" is someone who is paid money for making art, etc. etc., but there is no barrier to entry to simply being an artist (or for a product to be a piece of art). As I said, "art" doesn't equal "high art". The moment one understands this, miscommunications like this here discussion would cease.

>except it's literally a term that has lost all of it's old meaning.
How did it lose meaning? You just described a process of changing meaning, but not losing it. By the way, it has not really lost the meaning either: the notion of exceptional value is still present in the modern day notion of art, even if the condition of mastery of craft (somewhat) disappeared (or more precisely became just not essential, it's still an optional and common condition).

government-managed art that wastes your tax

>Self-identification as such and nothing else whatsoever.
So, it's absolutely worthless concept with literally no meaning. It just means "I am".

>, but there is no barrier to entry to simply being an artist (or for a product to be a piece of art).
Actually, if you ever worked in art, you'd know how painfully wrong you are.

>As I said, "art" doesn't equal "high art".
WHAT does it mean then? Because it's "not made by artist" since there is nothing that would define artist. Self identification is not an answer, the "identification" part of that claim should actually tell you that you need to identify with SOMETHING. That is the notion of identity: meaning quite literally being one with SOMETHING ELSE (in some manner). So what is the SOMETHING ELSE here?

This shit again?!
Art is meaningless, as much as any other shit attached to it like "high" or "fine".

What's the point in asking something so subjective and determined by conventions if you're not even gonna provide the definition you're abiding by?

All videogames are inherently competitive. If you can't win, or lose, it's not a game, simple as that.

I'd consider Pong and Prey games. Prey has a win state - completing the game. Pong has a win state - reaching 11 points first.

As for what this has to do with whether something can be considered art, if we go back to the earlier examples of sports and such, it's my observation that nothing competitive is ever considered art by those who are actually involved in the activity (as performers, fans, commentators, reporters, etc).

I'll ask again, are you making things up because you think no-one will notice, or because you are deliberately trying to be annoying?

>Actually, if you ever worked in art, you'd know how painfully wrong you are.
I am academic composer and a teacher of music. I teach theory and composition.

>WHAT does it mean then? Because it's "not made by artist" since there is nothing that would define artist.
Simply considering yourself an artist makes you one, period. Simply making something as an artist makes that activity or product a piece of art. As simple as that. It's only trying to create some additional requirements that artificially complicates the concept.

An artist is a person who creates or does (performs) something with the purpose of conveying emotions. Complexity or simplicity, conformity or originality, depth or shallowness may define whether it's good art, but not whether it's art at all: it's art by its very nature, because it was purposefully created by an artist in order to convey emotion.

Game mechanics/systems are art

Too bad almost anyone in a position as a notable critic is too fucking casual to recognize this

brigador is fucking amazing and I don't regret paying full price for it at all

Art is utilitarian. It provides us with emotional gratification as well as knowledge.

If you believe "Art is subjective," then everyone will lower their standards. If they lower their standards, then this happens. Compare pic related to, say, the 7 wonders of the world.

>All videogames are inherently competitive. If you can't win, or lose, it's not a game, simple as that.
You can say that all literature is inherently plot-driven. If it doesn't have a comflict or character development, it's not literature, "as simple as that". But, first of all, narrative is not nearly that simple (from storytelling to game design to musical composition, you can see that temporal narrative can take very different forms). And second, having rules doesn't not disqualify something as art or make it a sport at all.

op is an indie guy i suppose. they give a shit so much about themselves as "artist"

imo videogame devs should act like craftsmen, not artists or shit like that. at least i prefer craftsman type of style and attitude.

>If you can't win, or lose, it's not a game, simple as that.
You like that phrase a lot, but you clearly don't really know what it means, moron. I've already explained and provided multiple examples where neither win or lose state are clearly defined. In Prey you can't lose. In original Pong, you did not have the 11 upper limit, actually, the game played infinitely. There is no win state in Tetris either.

>it's my observation that nothing competitive is ever considered art by those who are actually involved in the activity
First of all, your observation is wrong, second of all: GAMES ARE CONSIDERED ART BY COUNTLESS CRITICS, GAMERS, AND GAME CREATORS, so this entire line of thinking is completely pants-on-head fucking retarded.

It's like saying "books are intended to convey informations, and as far as I look, people who write non-fiction and electronic manuals don't consider them art, so how could other books be art?

Video games contain art inside of them but are not themselves art. Music, graphics, story, it's all there as an accessory to the important aspect, which is gameplay.

The greatest of craftsmen were the greatest of artists you fucking retard.

>Gameplay is not art because I said so
epic bro

You can't even understand High art
Why use those words you don't know, you fucking pleb

>I teach theory and composition.
Jesus fucking Christ I pray to all gods you are actually just lying and that nobody gave that position to someone as painfully poorly educated as you are.

>Simply making something as an artist makes that activity or product a piece of art.
CIRCULAR REASONING YOU FUCKING IDIOT.

>It's only trying to create some additional requirements that artificially complicates the concept.
No, IT'S LITERALLY DEFINING THE MEANING OF THE WORD. Because what you presented so far had LITERALLY NO MEANING. YOU HAVE NOT ACTUALLY PROVIDED ANY MEANINGFUL EXPLANATION OF WHAT IS ART. Now you are adding:

>An artist is a person who creates or does (performs) something with the purpose of conveying emotions.
First of all, now you are saying something actually directly contradicting your previous claims.
This bullshit definition IS actually adding a new, artificial and bullshit condition which again actually dramatically conflicts with the praxis of the term.
And who the FUCK do you think came up with this retarded new additional condition of art being "something with the purpose of conveying emotions" in the first place?
Where the FUCK do you think such condition comes from?

From some clueless dipshit with academic title, that is where it comes from. It's just another normative, another arbitrary condition proposed by some intellectual, then popularized among public, and eventually adopted by the artist community itself. There is absolutely no difference between this bullshit condition, and any other bullshit or reasonable conditions proposed by the academia and the discourse surrounding arts.

That'll change with time as the art form matures.

All art forms have gone through these stages: forst, shitters claim it's not art (even if they like it). Then other shitters say, no it's art, and try to convert it into one of the older forms of art to prove their misguided point. Finally, an actual artist would take up the new art form and start actually using it.

For example, while the first two kinds of retards argue about whether Uncharted is true art or not, Matt Bozon and Hidetaka Miyazaki and Hideki Kamiya just go and employ the new art form and move it forward through deed and not talk.

>Jesus fucking Christ I pray to all gods you are actually just lying and that nobody gave that position to someone as painfully poorly educated as you are.
Your nightmare is real. I didn't read the rest of your post for obvious reasons.

you dont have an idea of whats the art "scene".

if they joined in an "art scene" you would be right. but at the same time those joining a "scene" and relying on its circumstances and media cant be a craftsman. those are just self proclaimed posers or idols made up by media.

>Your nightmare is real.
That is sad. Explains a lot about the poor state of modern education, though.

>I didn't read the rest of your post for obvious reasons.
Because you are a coward who cops out of a discussion but cannot do so in a way that would not attempt to cover his ass? Yeah. Understandable.

It's fucking terrifying that this needs to be explained to someone who is actually allowed to teach, but next time you don't want to continue in a discussion, either because you are running out of arguments, or for any other reason, just do so quietly: nothing makes you look more pathetic than this shit. You are literally drawing attention to the fact that you avoid addressing other persons counterarguments for no reason.

If you weren't such a cunt, you'd notice the heart of my argument is actual inconsistency in what you said. You literally just added one more condition on definition of art that DIRECTLY CONTRADICTS your previous statements. If you have even a little dignity left, you might want to realize that and perhaps re-think your position.
And if you are incapable of that, you really, LITERALLY have no business in an academic discipline, and my worries were entirely and perfectly justified. Just saying.

No, just go educate yourself. Your understanding of what art is is that of a layman.

I loved Pathologic but never played any Zelda game, what's the reference?
Was it in original version or HD version? Original version had shitty translation so I wouldn't be suprised if the team translating it would add their own stuff at one point.

Says the person who can't string together a coherent and consistent argument to save his life?

Look you moron, you should at least make sure you are not contradicting yourself in your most BASIC claims before you start lecturing others about anything.

You, my dear fucking moron, just contradicted yourself AND provided one of the dumbest, most shallow laymen "pseudo-definition" of art under Sun, the sort of sophomoric bullshit high school kids say when they want to sound profound. You really have NO FUCKING BUSINESS telling others to educate themselves.

Yes, but only when they are their own version of high art, rather than pale imitations of high art already seen in other mediums. That latter is what seems to be typically praised by critics as "high art" games.

You ever see an ass that makes you cry a little?

>Can games be art?
Yes, literally all games are art.

>Can games be high art?
Potentially, but I don't think they ever will be or should be. Something's classification as "high" art is based purely on the general public opinion of its value, and very few people think games should be considered that important.

This thread is art

more like this thread is.... fart

Screencap it and put it up on eBay