if the challenge of the interactivity takes priority over the unfolding of the content, i do not think it can be art. this is why i don't think braid is art. it had a sweet kind of context with some decent university lit-journal style writing, a nice score and appropriate stylistic visuals that might have added up to 'art' in another world. but frankly that stuff ended up irrelevant because the game was about beating puzzles. hard puzzles. so it didn't really want to tell us anything any more than it wanted to challenge our logic skills. that's a game.
You don't think that Braid, as a criticism of the side-scrolling platformer genre and it's motifs wasn't art?
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BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
not really, because they're not moral choices, they're gameplay choices
by attaching in-game rewards to choosing specific options they make it a strategic choice rather than a moral one
But then we're getting into a question of what constitutes morality.
Would choosing to save a child because to do so makes you feel better somehow be a strategic choice rather than one of morals?
Well in Bioshock the rewards for saving children are pretty much equal to harvesting children... I think if it put you at a strategic disadvantage to save the children it would have been more of a moral choice.
if the challenge of the interactivity takes priority over the unfolding of the content, i do not think it can be art. this is why i don't think braid is art. it had a sweet kind of context with some decent university lit-journal style writing, a nice score and appropriate stylistic visuals that might have added up to 'art' in another world. but frankly that stuff ended up irrelevant because the game was about beating puzzles. hard puzzles. so it didn't really want to tell us anything any more than it wanted to challenge our logic skills. that's a game.
You don't think that Braid, as a criticism of the side-scrolling platformer genre and it's motifs wasn't art?
no, i don't. i don't think parodying mario by putting green pipes in and uglified goombas is art in itself. again, if the gameplay was there solely to subvert your expectations of a platformer, sure, it might be art. but it was there vaguely to subvert your expectations of a platformer but mostly to make you pull your hair out trying to figure out where you need to go at what time and how to manipulate the mechanics into letting you win a sparkly token
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
if the challenge of the interactivity takes priority over the unfolding of the content, i do not think it can be art. this is why i don't think braid is art. it had a sweet kind of context with some decent university lit-journal style writing, a nice score and appropriate stylistic visuals that might have added up to 'art' in another world. but frankly that stuff ended up irrelevant because the game was about beating puzzles. hard puzzles. so it didn't really want to tell us anything any more than it wanted to challenge our logic skills. that's a game.
flower is a bit more interesting because the challenge doesn't feel like it gets in the way of the idea behind it. there are moments in there where the challenge blends in with the thematic overtones gloriously and you understand that this control you have exists only to heighten your experience of what the creators were trying to convey. the individual tasks are specifically crafted to the demands of the greater purpose, and to me when that happens with every element you get an art. i think flower is bloody close.
this brings up the idea that maybe a game can only be art if it's not hard? easy games only can be art? hmmm. this is a troubling notion
but everyday shooter is art i believe and it's freaking hard. hard enough that i've only seen four or five levels. maybe it's that the artistic purpose of it - the big idea of it - is expressed in the first stage, or in the second stage, or in the third stage wholly.
i'll have to think about this
Thankyou for writing down my opinions Jezz cause I have work to do.
Although for reference I would probably have referenced fl0w rather than flower but whatevs.
no, i don't. i don't think parodying mario by putting green pipes in and uglified goombas is art in itself. again, if the gameplay was there solely to subvert your expectations of a platformer, sure, it might be art. but it was there vaguely to subvert your expectations of a platformer but mostly to make you pull your hair out trying to figure out where you need to go at what time and how to manipulate the mechanics into letting you win a sparkly token
You really just don't get this, do you?
The whole idea of the game was to break the traditional platformer mold. You had to "cheat" and "glitch" the game in order to progress in it, as opposed to the traditional motif where those things are generally frowned upon.
The whole point of the game was two-fold. One, the concept of a traditional platformer is, though antiquated, still alive and well (regardless of the insurgence of 3d video games); reversing/manipulating time within the game space is an echo of the game itself being a reversal of time in terms of gaming as a whole. Two, that the idea that multiple narratives can exist in simultaneity with one another inside of the same game space and it is merely the perspective which we are provided which gives this narrative it's context. That was why the last level was so fucking incredible.
Furthermore, you two are ignoring the very salient points which LD made earlier in the thread.
The "Art" of a game need not be contained within the narrative framework. That's what is so brilliant about the medium. A challenge can be artistically rendered. Art is not a visual medium; fuck, it's not a MEDIUM at all, it is a description of the medium.
It seems like a lot of the arguments against art in this thread give a strange deference to the experience of the audience over the artist.
My general definition of art is if you really have to ask, then the answer is yes. But then, I think mediocre art, terrible art, commercial art, and crafts are all still art.
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
I can't really speak for Jezz. But I will conceed that it possibly could be. But at least the way I played it, I ended up concentrated so much on actually solving the puzzles (cause some were pretty hard!) that the themes and commentary in the game pretty much fell by the wayside.
not really, because they're not moral choices, they're gameplay choices
by attaching in-game rewards to choosing specific options they make it a strategic choice rather than a moral one
But then we're getting into a question of what constitutes morality.
Would choosing to save a child because to do so makes you feel better somehow be a strategic choice rather than one of morals?
yeah, well specifically this is coming from aristotlean virtue ethics, so it's assuming a virtuous player who is cognizant of their own morals and their own moral decisions' consequences
if the challenge of the interactivity takes priority over the unfolding of the content, i do not think it can be art. this is why i don't think braid is art. it had a sweet kind of context with some decent university lit-journal style writing, a nice score and appropriate stylistic visuals that might have added up to 'art' in another world. but frankly that stuff ended up irrelevant because the game was about beating puzzles. hard puzzles. so it didn't really want to tell us anything any more than it wanted to challenge our logic skills. that's a game.
You don't think that Braid, as a criticism of the side-scrolling platformer genre and it's motifs wasn't art?
no, i don't. i don't think parodying mario by putting green pipes in and uglified goombas is art in itself. again, if the gameplay was there solely to subvert your expectations of a platformer, sure, it might be art. but it was there vaguely to subvert your expectations of a platformer but mostly to make you pull your hair out trying to figure out where you need to go at what time and how to manipulate the mechanics into letting you win a sparkly token
The difficulty of the puzzles is supposed to tie into the themes and rough story about Tim's life becoming increasingly more of a wreck the more he fucks with time travel. The first level is about how he's learned how to time-travel to fix all his problems, and accordingly level one is structured like a classic platformer that completely breaks because of the time-traveling mechanic. What would normally be a reasonably difficult level is reduced to a casual stroll through a pretty landscape.
From there the puzzles get more and more convoluted and it's reflects/is reflected in the writing, where Tim's story becomes increasingly more difficult to follow and his mental state clearly deteriorates until, in the epilogue, the books are describing a raving lunatic.
I agree with Ebert in that I'm not sure why we care.
We collectively
Whether or not it am in fact art does not concern me.
the problem is you're telling a whole lot of artists that because what they work on is a commercial product usually marketed towards kids and adolescents, that the medium they choose to work in can never hold any meaning deeper than that
which is bullshit
What?
I said no such thing!
I remain above it all as a video-games-as-art agnostic.
I can't really speak for Jezz. But I will conceed that it possibly could be. But at least the way I played it, I ended up concentrated so much on actually solving the puzzles (cause some were pretty hard!) that the themes and commentary in the game pretty much fell by the wayside.
Some folks look at impressionist paintings and only see obvious brush strokes and unrealistic color choices.
It's been a while since I've heard Ebert say anything about video games. I guess he must have just done it again lately?
If I remember right he said they couldn't be art because interactivity and art were mutually exclusive, that giving the audience some choice in how the narrative plays out makes it impossible to convey a message.
Which seems pretty obviously wrong to me. You don't even have to use a video game as a counterexample.
no, i don't. i don't think parodying mario by putting green pipes in and uglified goombas is art in itself. again, if the gameplay was there solely to subvert your expectations of a platformer, sure, it might be art. but it was there vaguely to subvert your expectations of a platformer but mostly to make you pull your hair out trying to figure out where you need to go at what time and how to manipulate the mechanics into letting you win a sparkly token
You really just don't get this, do you?
The whole idea of the game was to break the traditional platformer mold. You had to "cheat" and "glitch" the game in order to progress in it, as opposed to the traditional motif where those things are generally frowned upon.
The whole point of the game was two-fold. One, the concept of a traditional platformer is, though antiquated, still alive and well (regardless of the insurgence of 3d video games); reversing/manipulating time within the game space is an echo of the game itself being a reversal of time in terms of gaming as a whole. Two, that the idea that multiple narratives can exist in simultaneity with one another inside of the same game space and it is merely the perspective which we are provided which gives this narrative it's context. That was why the last level was so fucking incredible.
firstly, i never got to the last level and i never will
secondly, the thing had super mixed messages. i soon realised that it was nowhere near the 'art' it was trying to be. it could have said something about platformers. it could have said something about time and memories in the context of a relationship. instead it tried to do both, in a desperate attempt to embolden the neat gameplay it had found. but at the end of the day none of those added up to improve the gameplay, nor did the gameplay improve what it was trying to say. they got in the way of each other. there was a tenuous thematic thread between them and the creator stretched it until it broke.
As much as I love Braid though I will admit that the writing could be a little better. I just choose to look past the kinda lame packaging of the ideas.
It's been a while since I've heard Ebert say anything about video games. I guess he must have just done it again lately?
If I remember right he said they couldn't be art because interactivity and art were mutually exclusive, that giving the audience some choice in how the narrative plays out makes it impossible to convey a message.
Which seems pretty obviously wrong to me. You don't even have to use a video game as a counterexample.
But yet so many people cite bioshock when it's a game that deliberately takes the interactivity away from you!
Not really arguing but just making an example.
Saying you can't have interactivity is silly. There is plenty of art that is designed to be touched for example, or others where people are encouraged to join in and add a piece of themselves to it.
I agree with Ebert in that I'm not sure why we care.
We collectively
Whether or not it am in fact art does not concern me.
the problem is you're telling a whole lot of artists that because what they work on is a commercial product usually marketed towards kids and adolescents, that the medium they choose to work in can never hold any meaning deeper than that
which is bullshit
What?
I said no such thing!
I remain above it all as a video-games-as-art agnostic.
firstly, i never got to the last level and i never will
secondly, the thing had super mixed messages. i soon realised that it was nowhere near the 'art' it was trying to be. it could have said something about platformers. it could have said something about time and memories in the context of a relationship. instead it tried to do both, in a desperate attempt to embolden the neat gameplay it had found. but at the end of the day none of those added up to improve the gameplay, nor did the gameplay improve what it was trying to say. they got in the way of each other. there was a tenuous thematic thread between them and the creator stretched it until it broke.
You're putting pussy on a pedestal. Art pussy. You have described thorough mechanisms for artistic intent in the work, but having failed your appreciation as an audience, you are saying the work is not art at all. Not that it's bad art or unsuccessful art. Not art at all. That's ridiculous. Art isn't special. It is an abstraction most human brains engage in. Quality is a measure of art, not a limiter.
firstly, i never got to the last level and i never will
secondly, the thing had super mixed messages. i soon realised that it was nowhere near the 'art' it was trying to be. it could have said something about platformers. it could have said something about time and memories in the context of a relationship. instead it tried to do both, in a desperate attempt to embolden the neat gameplay it had found. but at the end of the day none of those added up to improve the gameplay, nor did the gameplay improve what it was trying to say. they got in the way of each other. there was a tenuous thematic thread between them and the creator stretched it until it broke.
So you didn't get it, check.
Speed Racer explained it much better than I could already.
You're putting pussy on a pedestal. Art pussy. You have described thorough mechanisms for artistic intent in the work, but having failed your appreciation as an audience, you are saying the work is not art at all. Not that it's bad art or unsuccessful art. Not art at all. That's ridiculous. Art isn't special. It is an abstraction most human brains engage in. Quality is a measure of art, not a limiter.
Even worse, he is criticizing the incompleteness of how a narrative arc was implemented without even bothering to see how it concludes.
Everything is art. Except this. This is just a post.
A bitter commentary on the vast emptyness of post modernistic eco-flamboyancy contrasted by the fullness of the verbosity in the upper echelons of the wording
BRILLIANT!
King Riptor on
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
You're putting pussy on a pedestal. Art pussy. You have described thorough mechanisms for artistic intent in the work, but having failed your appreciation as an audience, you are saying the work is not art at all. Not that it's bad art or unsuccessful art. Not art at all. That's ridiculous. Art isn't special. It is an abstraction most human brains engage in. Quality is a measure of art, not a limiter.
Even worse, he is criticizing the incompleteness of how a narrative arc was implemented without even bothering to see how it concludes.
It's a valid enough complaint I mean it might be a world changing narrative but if you can't hold your audiences attention for long enough for them to appreciate it then it's kind of a waste.
But then that's more of a good art/bad art debate rather than a is it art is it not art debate.
It's a valid enough complaint I mean it might be a world changing narrative but if you can't hold your audiences attention for long enough for them to appreciate it then it's kind of a waste.
But then that's more of a good art/bad art debate rather than a is it art is it not art debate.
It may be a valid complaint (I would take issue with his criticisms; as rebutted very effectively by Speed Racer above), but, as you say, has absolutely nothing to do with it's status as an item of artistic merit.
95% of videogames are "goal orientated" and that does seem kind of opposite to what art is. In this position it's kind of like sports, win, finish the level, whatever.
videogame mechanics are goal-oriented in the same way turning the pages of a book is goal-oriented
it's just what you do to see the content
I think we passed the point where the majority of games were genuinely about beating your high score or whatever a decade ago, though obviously multiplayer and the like is almost always a different beast entirely
That's a pretty simplistic way of viewing it. Does this mean driving to the art gallery is also part of the experience?
driving to the gallery is only interacting with a piece of art in the barest, most abstract way possible
whereas the linear, sequential form of a book and the goal-orientation of game mechanics are both limitations which shape the way we both experience and create that art
Everything is art. Except this. This is just a post.
A bitter commentary on the vast emptyness of post modernistic eco-flamboyancy contrasted by the fullness of the verbosity in the upper echelons of the wording
BRILLIANT!
What have I done?!
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Blake TDo you have enemies then?Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.Registered Userregular
edited April 2010
Can I ask the opposite question?
What isn't art?
Because at the end of the day everyone can argue that something is art and more often that not it is more, what worth does it have as art?
Is there anything that can clearly classified as not art?
Because at the end of the day everyone can argue that something is art and more often that not it is more, what worth does it have as art?
Is there anything that can clearly classified as not art?
I'd define art as anything created via creative expression.
Which means that not everything is art, but pretty much everything could be art.
Like a house. Someone might build a house for strictly utilitarian purposes, but alternatively, someone might try and make something aesthetically pleasing in addition to being useful.
You're putting pussy on a pedestal. Art pussy. You have described thorough mechanisms for artistic intent in the work, but having failed your appreciation as an audience, you are saying the work is not art at all. Not that it's bad art or unsuccessful art. Not art at all. That's ridiculous. Art isn't special. It is an abstraction most human brains engage in. Quality is a measure of art, not a limiter.
Even worse, he is criticizing the incompleteness of how a narrative arc was implemented without even bothering to see how it concludes.
you took my second, concessionary point about how the things it's trying to say are said poorly and turned that into my primary argument. it's not. my primary argument is that whatever it's saying is put aside and made virtually redundant by focusing the viewer/reader/audience's experience on repeatedly solving mechanical puzzles. the puzzles themselves are really traditional video-game puzzles, not subversionist at all. it's like echochrome. there's a new bent, sure, but all games need new bents to make them new games
i could probably concede that braid is bad art, if that would make you feel better. but i really think creating art is about having all elements work into a gestalt, and i don't see how that happens with braid. it's a quirky puzzle game and as a puzzle game it would have been more pointed and satisfying if all those counterproductive layers of framing context were shed
not no more to add, nothing left to take away etc. etc.
here's one last way that i'd articulate it: braid is not art because it was (increasingly) apparent that it was an idea built up around a neat puzzle game, rather than a game that was necessary to best express an idea.
that was how i felt about it anyway. i'll go away now. i am at work.
Posts
Would choosing to save a child because to do so makes you feel better somehow be a strategic choice rather than one of morals?
Well in Bioshock the rewards for saving children are pretty much equal to harvesting children... I think if it put you at a strategic disadvantage to save the children it would have been more of a moral choice.
no, i don't. i don't think parodying mario by putting green pipes in and uglified goombas is art in itself. again, if the gameplay was there solely to subvert your expectations of a platformer, sure, it might be art. but it was there vaguely to subvert your expectations of a platformer but mostly to make you pull your hair out trying to figure out where you need to go at what time and how to manipulate the mechanics into letting you win a sparkly token
Although for reference I would probably have referenced fl0w rather than flower but whatevs.
Satans..... hints.....
The whole idea of the game was to break the traditional platformer mold. You had to "cheat" and "glitch" the game in order to progress in it, as opposed to the traditional motif where those things are generally frowned upon.
The whole point of the game was two-fold. One, the concept of a traditional platformer is, though antiquated, still alive and well (regardless of the insurgence of 3d video games); reversing/manipulating time within the game space is an echo of the game itself being a reversal of time in terms of gaming as a whole. Two, that the idea that multiple narratives can exist in simultaneity with one another inside of the same game space and it is merely the perspective which we are provided which gives this narrative it's context. That was why the last level was so fucking incredible.
The "Art" of a game need not be contained within the narrative framework. That's what is so brilliant about the medium. A challenge can be artistically rendered. Art is not a visual medium; fuck, it's not a MEDIUM at all, it is a description of the medium.
To quote:
My general definition of art is if you really have to ask, then the answer is yes. But then, I think mediocre art, terrible art, commercial art, and crafts are all still art.
Satans..... hints.....
yeah, well specifically this is coming from aristotlean virtue ethics, so it's assuming a virtuous player who is cognizant of their own morals and their own moral decisions' consequences
The difficulty of the puzzles is supposed to tie into the themes and rough story about Tim's life becoming increasingly more of a wreck the more he fucks with time travel. The first level is about how he's learned how to time-travel to fix all his problems, and accordingly level one is structured like a classic platformer that completely breaks because of the time-traveling mechanic. What would normally be a reasonably difficult level is reduced to a casual stroll through a pretty landscape.
From there the puzzles get more and more convoluted and it's reflects/is reflected in the writing, where Tim's story becomes increasingly more difficult to follow and his mental state clearly deteriorates until, in the epilogue, the books are describing a raving lunatic.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
What?
I said no such thing!
I remain above it all as a video-games-as-art agnostic.
Some folks look at impressionist paintings and only see obvious brush strokes and unrealistic color choices.
If I remember right he said they couldn't be art because interactivity and art were mutually exclusive, that giving the audience some choice in how the narrative plays out makes it impossible to convey a message.
Which seems pretty obviously wrong to me. You don't even have to use a video game as a counterexample.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Just saying that maybe as a piece of art it just isn't for me!
Satans..... hints.....
firstly, i never got to the last level and i never will
secondly, the thing had super mixed messages. i soon realised that it was nowhere near the 'art' it was trying to be. it could have said something about platformers. it could have said something about time and memories in the context of a relationship. instead it tried to do both, in a desperate attempt to embolden the neat gameplay it had found. but at the end of the day none of those added up to improve the gameplay, nor did the gameplay improve what it was trying to say. they got in the way of each other. there was a tenuous thematic thread between them and the creator stretched it until it broke.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
But yet so many people cite bioshock when it's a game that deliberately takes the interactivity away from you!
Not really arguing but just making an example.
Saying you can't have interactivity is silly. There is plenty of art that is designed to be touched for example, or others where people are encouraged to join in and add a piece of themselves to it.
Satans..... hints.....
what meaningful art is however, I make up my mind about on a case by case basis after having explored it
I meant Ebert
come on you know this
You're putting pussy on a pedestal. Art pussy. You have described thorough mechanisms for artistic intent in the work, but having failed your appreciation as an audience, you are saying the work is not art at all. Not that it's bad art or unsuccessful art. Not art at all. That's ridiculous. Art isn't special. It is an abstraction most human brains engage in. Quality is a measure of art, not a limiter.
Speed Racer explained it much better than I could already.
It makes me sad every time I remember that Jeanne-Claude is dead
No... no words. No words to describe it. Poetry! They should've sent a poet. So beautiful. So beautiful... I had no idea.
A bitter commentary on the vast emptyness of post modernistic eco-flamboyancy contrasted by the fullness of the verbosity in the upper echelons of the wording
BRILLIANT!
all that other stuff was icing (tasty icing)
PSN: Robo_Wizard1
It's a valid enough complaint I mean it might be a world changing narrative but if you can't hold your audiences attention for long enough for them to appreciate it then it's kind of a waste.
But then that's more of a good art/bad art debate rather than a is it art is it not art debate.
Satans..... hints.....
Satans..... hints.....
driving to the gallery is only interacting with a piece of art in the barest, most abstract way possible
whereas the linear, sequential form of a book and the goal-orientation of game mechanics are both limitations which shape the way we both experience and create that art
What have I done?!
What isn't art?
Because at the end of the day everyone can argue that something is art and more often that not it is more, what worth does it have as art?
Is there anything that can clearly classified as not art?
Satans..... hints.....
I'd define art as anything created via creative expression.
Which means that not everything is art, but pretty much everything could be art.
Like a house. Someone might build a house for strictly utilitarian purposes, but alternatively, someone might try and make something aesthetically pleasing in addition to being useful.
http://www.audioentropy.com/
you took my second, concessionary point about how the things it's trying to say are said poorly and turned that into my primary argument. it's not. my primary argument is that whatever it's saying is put aside and made virtually redundant by focusing the viewer/reader/audience's experience on repeatedly solving mechanical puzzles. the puzzles themselves are really traditional video-game puzzles, not subversionist at all. it's like echochrome. there's a new bent, sure, but all games need new bents to make them new games
i could probably concede that braid is bad art, if that would make you feel better. but i really think creating art is about having all elements work into a gestalt, and i don't see how that happens with braid. it's a quirky puzzle game and as a puzzle game it would have been more pointed and satisfying if all those counterproductive layers of framing context were shed
not no more to add, nothing left to take away etc. etc.
that was how i felt about it anyway. i'll go away now. i am at work.