[tumult]

I love video games, and have been playing them my entire life (beyond as far back as my memory goes), and I would not consider the majority of games to be art.

"Is it art or not" is a stupid debate. What is art? You cannot even have this argument, because two opposing viewpoints will not have the same definition of art.

Great essay on this matter: http://johnhenrylambert.com/essays/bad_words.html

Are video games fine art? No. Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely. Almost never, for the sort of game you can buy for a console from the store. Are they art like industrial design, transportation, bridges, etc? Probably not, since the games themselves are usually only software. Is software art? Sometimes, probably. Then are games art like software is art? Could be, but most people think of the game as the entire package itself, not just the code that powers the engine.

Are the in-game assets art? The characters, scenery, etc? Individually, certainly. As a whole? Debatable. Individually, the assets have no purpose other than their form. Collectively, they take the form as fulfilling part of an exchange the consumer (who paid money with the understanding that he or she will receive a minimum amount of stimulation and entertainment) has made with the producer of the game. Few people expect to pay $60, put a disc into their console, and look at pictures of chairs nailed to a wall and read a marker-felted diatribe about the uselessness of progressing fashionable design standards if the functional form does not change over time. If you pay $60 to go through a museum of modern art and don't like it, well, too fucking bad.

Most commercially produced games, just like with most commercially produced movies, the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled.

So by that definition, most Hollywood movies are not art, either. Which I would also agree with.

Entertainment is not exactly the same thing as many of the more formal definitions of art.

[danieldon]

I liked the part where you called it a "stupid debate" and said "You cannot even have this argument" and then wrote a long post doing exactly what you criticized.

Also, "[x] is not art" statements are a tremendous bore.

[tumult]

Stupid debates can be fun

[sueders100]

"the consumer pays money with the expectation that their purchase will be fulfilled."

That's a very broad statement that disqualifies nearly all paid performances as a form of art. Video games are art, or much or what is commonly considered art isn't. Gesamtkunstwerk is a word/concept that describes a whole artwork made up of other pieces of art. It isn't a new concept. It's been around for nearly two centuries. Take a look at theater for instance. No one doubts that it's art, but it is made up of costume design, acting, the score, etc. This whole debate like everything else will finally end when all the older people who don't believe video games are art grow old and die.

[tumult]

I don't consider most theater to be art in that sense. Art in the sense of craft or technique, certainly. But not a kind of derivative of fine art.

[narag]

The definition of Art suffered its crisis a long time ago, with some people proclaiming the end of art. I remember reading books in the eighties by Gino Dorfles or Arnold Hauser (I hope the names are correctly spelled) and about the Bauhaus or Andy Warhol. My humble conclusion was that Art is now defined more as a concepts than as a technique. The concepts are the kind of making spectator think about interesting ideas (the basic questions we all ask) or even the media through which they're transmitted and their relation to the message.

I don't think what you pay for it is the key, nor is the technical excellence (an ad can be technically superior to some classic paintings) but the intention and ability to make us question our nature and society's.

In this sense, video games are not Art, the same way that design isn't. They can be art in other sense that two hundred years ago was associated with art works, but was later dissociated by the industrial, and now digital, revolution.

[ido]

    Are they art like you might find at a modern art museum? Sometimes, but very rarely.

The argument was that games by definition cannot be art.

The counter argument was not that all (or even many) games are art, but that at least one game can be.