I think the crux of that lies in the fact that "art" is static, and regardless of its myriad personal interpretations by patrons, is the product of a focused artistic intent that cannot be altered by external forces. Van Gogh's "Starry Night" or Scorsese's Taxi Driver are singular products that cannot be augmented by patronage and still retain their intent.
I don't agree that art needs to be static. Take a look at the compositions of John Cage based on chance. One piece calls for 1-8 performers using randomly tuned radios. His 4'33'' relies entirely on incidental sounds from the audience.
If you want less avant garde examples, take a look at any opera or drama. The experience will be different on any given night: cast members will get sick, sets will change, the soprano will miss a high note, the quality of the sound will change based on temperature. All of these things are integral to the experience of seeing a live performance and it will never be exactly the same twice.
You know games like GTA4 definitely are closer to being good art then many others. I mean, the series since around GTA3 has had it's world constructed as a satire of many American perceptions of their country.
Sure, you can sit back and shoot people all day - but that would be akin to me dismissing Picasso as an artist who can't draw, or indeed - walking up to a painting and closing my eyes. The existence of interactive art that is not based on video games paints the argument as obviously wrong - and as far as I know the current trend in art criticism (literary specifically) is not to assume the art exists in a vacuum but rather that the audience are an integral component of it being art.
At the very least it has to exist, stated, implied, or otherwise. You might counter that those socks' intent is nothing more than being sold, and you might be right, but I would argue against that being a definition of art.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
At the very least it has to exist, stated, implied, or otherwise. You might counter that those socks' intent is nothing more than being sold, and you might be right, but I would argue against that being a definition of art.
And for those socks intent does exist. So now even by your own warped definition those socks are works of art.
It also cannot exist without it's audience. Why should we disregard the involvement of the audience?
Oh, I don't. I just don't think it's entirely up to patronage to qualify something as being art. If a patron qualifies something without auteuristic intent as art, at that point the patron becomes the artist.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
It also cannot exist without it's audience. Why should we disregard the involvement of the audience?
Oh, I don't. I just don't think it's entirely up to patronage to qualify something as being art. If a patron qualifies something without auteuristic intent as art, at that point the patron becomes the artist.
Art is not art because someone tells me it is. It's art because of how I perceive it.
You know games like GTA4 definitely are closer to being good art then many others. I mean, the series since around GTA3 has had it's world constructed as a satire of many American perceptions of their country.
Sure, you can sit back and shoot people all day - but that would be akin to me dismissing Picasso as an artist who can't draw, or indeed - walking up to a painting and closing my eyes. The existence of interactive art that is not based on video games paints the argument as obviously wrong - and as far as I know the current trend in art criticism (literary specifically) is not to assume the art exists in a vacuum but rather that the audience are an integral component of it being art.
TL;DR: like any other piece of art, you have to think about a video game to appreciate it.
Of course, you could counter that that makes 2012 great art, as it gets more hilarious the more you think about it.
So if someone crafts a piece for a commercial reason, it stops being art?
Is all music not art when sold, then? Are you telling me to pirate music?
I don't know, I guess I don't really care about intent all that much. It's usually interesting to discover the intent of a piece, but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of it in many cases. That, and I don't think it's really all that different from the interesting aspects of interacting cause and effect required to produce any item.
That's not what I'm saying. No one has to you inform you of a product's artistic intent, it just has to have it.
It's art because of how I perceive it.
If that's true, then everything is art, and the term becomes meaningless. Or, if it's your specific context that makes something art to you, then you are now the artist and no longer the patron.
That was basically Warhol's whole point.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
So if someone crafts a piece for a commercial reason, it stops being art?
Is all music not art when sold, then? Are you telling me to pirate music?
Again, it's intent. If a product is made only to be sold, if there's no metaphysical or allegorical intent or context involved, then I would not consider it art.
The function of music isn't to be sold, but it does happen. It's not a mutually exclusive arrangement. Picassos and Van Goghs are sold frequently.
That's not what I'm saying. No one has to you inform you of a product's artistic intent, it just has to have it.
It's art because of how I perceive it.
If that's true, then everything is art, and the term becomes meaningless. Or, if it's your specific context that makes something art to you, then you are now the artist and no longer the patron.
That was basically Warhol's whole point.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
Which term? Art?
Eh, I don't know that we will. Moniker seems to be dead set on everything being art, which just appears to be obstructionism for its own sake. If his argument is that "all things created by humans are art," and mine is "all things created with the intent to be art, are art," we're basically arguing the same thing but at different angles.
However, since I assume we're talking about video games being the intentional type of concerted artistic effort, I don't really have any more inclination to discuss the artistic value of socks.
That's not what I'm saying. No one has to you inform you of a product's artistic intent, it just has to have it.
It's art because of how I perceive it.
If that's true, then everything is art, and the term becomes meaningless. Or, if it's your specific context that makes something art to you, then you are now the artist and no longer the patron.
That was basically Warhol's whole point.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
That's not what I'm saying. No one has to you inform you of a product's artistic intent, it just has to have it.
It's art because of how I perceive it.
If that's true, then everything is art, and the term becomes meaningless. Or, if it's your specific context that makes something art to you, then you are now the artist and no longer the patron.
That was basically Warhol's whole point.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
This is a question I have thought about off and on for some time now and I have yet to come up with an answer. While I would like to join into the argument of "what is art?" I don't have the rest of eternity try and answer a question that is unanswerable.
Here are my main issues with the games as art discussion
1. Criticism. One common element to all things considered art is the creation of academic criticism surrounding whatever that art object is. Now I'm not arguing that for item X to be art there must be a peer reviewed paper about it, but for any generally accepted art a field of critical discussion beyond "SUPER GREAT. A+. TEN OUT OF TEN" has grown for the purpose of interpreting the meaning, artistry, emotive response, etc of that piece of art. I do not see this around video games. Again, I am not saying that a thing is not art without some guy in a university publishing a paper about the Marxist interpretation of whatever that thing may be, but rather that criticism is a consequence of whatever makes art, art. At the same time I suggest this it is important to realize that video games as an entity as a whole have existed for an incredibly short period of time and if games are art, games that could qualify as such have been in existence for an even shorter period (I highly doubt anyone would seriously classify Space War, Pong, Asteroids, or Adventure! as art). As such, I may be too eager for video game criticism to appear.
2. As a Matter of Interpretation. An exceedingly vast majority of games are completely devoid of interpretation on any level. Even if a form of academic criticism were to form around games, what would there be to examine? Could my perception and interaction with Civilization 4 be altered if I were to try and consider the game from a Marxist or Femminist perspective? Will an analysis of the manner in which the great leaders are animated provide me with a better understanding of anything whatsoever? The major issue is that games are confined by rules and objectives. Even the most open world games can be won or lost to some extent, and degree to which game worlds can be "open" is something that I believe is highly debatable. There is no way for me to "win" reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My experience in reading it is going to be wholly different from anyone else's despite the fact that you and I are reading the same text. In the same way, my reactions to whatever goes on during a play through of Modern Warfare 2 will also be different than anyone else's (though we'll all be somewhat confused by the nonsense plot). However, if the goal of the game is to be "won" in some extent, my interaction with the medium is going to be forced down a narrow pathway. Yes, in a level the designer gives you the option to go left through some part of the level or right through some part of the level. At the end of things the same end is reached.
3. The Omniartistic Nature of Games. I have just invented this "omniartisitic" nonsense as I cannot think of a better existant word to describe the fact that modern games can be a combination of just about every other art form in existence ever in a singular experience. However, I agree with the previous comments that simply because there are artful things in games that it does not demand that games as a whole be considered an art form. When discussing this subject there is a cannon of games that repeatedly come up as candidates for the title of "art game." Among these are Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Okami, and whichever game you prefer from the Metal Gear Solid series. We can point to specific things in these games and point out elements that give us a feeling that our interaction with them is art. However, is that feeling caused by the sum of every artistic element in the game or can some be isolated and produce the same effect without the game? Is the game what results in artistic expression or is it simply a matter of other art forms layered atop each other with the added feature that through an input device, sometimes we can move a camera around?
I love games and I would like to say that they are art, but it isn't something that is exactly clear to me at the moment. I think one thing that would be insightful to this question would be to examine how other modern art forms came to be accepted as such. Film is the best candidate for this study that I can think of off the top of my head.
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
I'm sure Moniker would remind you that all quantities are heaps.
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
I'm sure Moniker would remind you that all quantities are heaps.
And no grains of sand are just heaps of size zero, of course.
It's always possible, in philosophy, to find one insistent person who will defy your simplest thought experiment, but I think we can fairly say that most people do not think as C programmers do...
Also wait is concept art art? Why does it stop being art when it's actually in a game? Is it because the art gets shaved off when they put it into a DVD?
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
I'm sure Moniker would remind you that all quantities are heaps.
And no grains of sand are just heaps of size zero, of course.
It's always possible, in philosophy, to find one insistent person who will defy your simplest thought experiment, but I think we can fairly say that most people do not think as C programmers do...
The frustrating part of that is that is doesn't address the argument, it just rephrases the argument, and then the rephrasing party sits back in their chair and puffs at their burlwood briar like they're the cleverest bastard in all of Victoria's Britain.
Terms do need definition for adequate discourse to occur, but defining them in such looseness to the point of non-definition is ridiculous and pointless.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
I would say not really. It can be very artful, and created by an artist, but its intent isn't personal or metaphysical, it's commercial. It can (and usually is) rejected by higher-ups on basis of its merit. It's created at the demand of external forces for the expressed purpose of being profitable.
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
I'm sure Moniker would remind you that all quantities are heaps.
And no grains of sand are just heaps of size zero, of course.
It's always possible, in philosophy, to find one insistent person who will defy your simplest thought experiment, but I think we can fairly say that most people do not think as C programmers do...
The frustrating part of that is that is doesn't address the argument, it just rephrases the argument, and then the rephrasing party sits back in their chair and puffs at their burlwood briar like they're the cleverest bastard in all of Victoria's Britain.
Terms do need definition for adequate discourse to occur, but defining them in such looseness to the point of non-definition is ridiculous and pointless.
Well, the whole point is that terms don't need to have agreed-upon definitions for discourse to occur: that even in the absence of a rigorous explicit definition with widespread agreement, we can still talk about some concept by discussing its properties that we vaguely suspect do have widespread agreement. Sometimes we can make those properties explicit instead, without asserting that this list of properties exhaustively identifies all the properties of said concept. Take the SEP's approach:
Any definition of art has to square with the following uncontroversial facts: (i) entities (artifacts or performances) intentionally endowed by their makers with a significant degree of aesthetic interest, often surpassing that of most everyday objects, exist in virtually every known human culture; (ii) such entities, and traditions devoted to them, might exist in other possible worlds; (iii) such entities sometimes have non-aesthetic — ceremonial or religious or propagandistic — functions, and sometimes do not; (iv) traditionally, artworks are intentionally endowed by their makers with properties, usually perceptual, having a significant degree of aesthetic interest, often surpassing that of most everyday objects; (v) art, so understood, has a complicated history: new genres and art-forms develop, standards of taste evolve, understandings of aesthetic properties and aesthetic experience change; (vi) there are institutions in some but not all cultures which involve a focus on artifacts and performances having a high degree of aesthetic interest and lacking any practical, ceremonial, or religious use; (vii) such institutions sometimes classify entities apparently lacking aesthetic interest with entities having a high degree of aesthetic interest.
[...]
There are also two more general constraints on definitions of art. First, given that accepting that something is inexplicable is generally a philosophical last resort, and granting the importance of extensional adequacy, list-like or enumerative definitions are if possible to be avoided. Enumerative definitions, lacking principles that explain why what is on the list is on the list, don't, notoriously, apply to definienda that evolve, and provide no clue to the next or general case (Tarski's definition of truth, for example, is standardly criticized as unenlightening because it rests on a list-like definition of primitive denotation). (Devitt, 2001; Davidson, 2005).) Second, given that most classes outside of mathematics are vague, and that the existence of borderline cases is characteristic of vague classes, definitions that take the class of artworks to have borderline cases are preferable to definitions that don't. (Davies 1991 and 2006, Stecker 2005)
Whether any definition of art does account for these facts and satisfy these constraints, or could account for these facts and satisfy these constraints, are key questions for the philosophy of art.
Halting discourse until we have agreed-upon definitions just means that no discourse occurs instead.
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AtomikaLive fast and get fucked or whateverRegistered Userregular
This is a question I have thought about off and on for some time now and I have yet to come up with an answer. While I would like to join into the argument of "what is art?" I don't have the rest of eternity try and answer a question that is unanswerable.
Here are my main issues with the games as art discussion
1. Criticism. One common element to all things considered art is the creation of academic criticism surrounding whatever that art object is. Now I'm not arguing that for item X to be art there must be a peer reviewed paper about it, but for any generally accepted art a field of critical discussion beyond "SUPER GREAT. A+. TEN OUT OF TEN" has grown for the purpose of interpreting the meaning, artistry, emotive response, etc of that piece of art. I do not see this around video games. Again, I am not saying that a thing is not art without some guy in a university publishing a paper about the Marxist interpretation of whatever that thing may be, but rather that criticism is a consequence of whatever makes art, art. At the same time I suggest this it is important to realize that video games as an entity as a whole have existed for an incredibly short period of time and if games are art, games that could qualify as such have been in existence for an even shorter period (I highly doubt anyone would seriously classify Space War, Pong, Asteroids, or Adventure! as art). As such, I may be too eager for video game criticism to appear.
2. As a Matter of Interpretation. An exceedingly vast majority of games are completely devoid of interpretation on any level. Even if a form of academic criticism were to form around games, what would there be to examine? Could my perception and interaction with Civilization 4 be altered if I were to try and consider the game from a Marxist or Femminist perspective? Will an analysis of the manner in which the great leaders are animated provide me with a better understanding of anything whatsoever? The major issue is that games are confined by rules and objectives. Even the most open world games can be won or lost to some extent, and degree to which game worlds can be "open" is something that I believe is highly debatable. There is no way for me to "win" reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My experience in reading it is going to be wholly different from anyone else's despite the fact that you and I are reading the same text. In the same way, my reactions to whatever goes on during a play through of Modern Warfare 2 will also be different than anyone else's (though we'll all be somewhat confused by the nonsense plot). However, if the goal of the game is to be "won" in some extent, my interaction with the medium is going to be forced down a narrow pathway. Yes, in a level the designer gives you the option to go left through some part of the level or right through some part of the level. At the end of things the same end is reached.
3. The Omniartistic Nature of Games. I have just invented this "omniartisitic" nonsense as I cannot think of a better existant word to describe the fact that modern games can be a combination of just about every other art form in existence ever in a singular experience. However, I agree with the previous comments that simply because there are artful things in games that it does not demand that games as a whole be considered an art form. When discussing this subject there is a cannon of games that repeatedly come up as candidates for the title of "art game." Among these are Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Okami, and whichever game you prefer from the Metal Gear Solid series. We can point to specific things in these games and point out elements that give us a feeling that our interaction with them is art. However, is that feeling caused by the sum of every artistic element in the game or can some be isolated and produce the same effect without the game? Is the game what results in artistic expression or is it simply a matter of other art forms layered atop each other with the added feature that through an input device, sometimes we can move a camera around?
I love games and I would like to say that they are art, but it isn't something that is exactly clear to me at the moment. I think one thing that would be insightful to this question would be to examine how other modern art forms came to be accepted as such. Film is the best candidate for this study that I can think of off the top of my head.
Actually, Civilizations could easily be made into art if it gave you more leniency in trying out your ideas about how societies should be organized. There's nothing quite like working with a testbed for your ideals to get the juices flowing.
Additionally, anything set in WWI could become great political commentary on war, as there's probably nothing quite as terrifying as a bunker war of attrition.
Halting discourse until we have agreed-upon definitions just means that no discourse occurs instead.
That would be fine, except some here are abolishing all definitions.
That's trickier to deal with.
He's saying that art is defined from the consumer side, kind of like how duck tape is more than just tape for ducts because everybody and his mother has found a novel use for it.
Actually, Civilizations could easily be made into art if it gave you more leniency in trying out your ideas about how societies should be organized. There's nothing quite like working with a testbed for your ideals to get the juices flowing.
Additionally, anything set in WWI could become great political commentary on war, as there's probably nothing quite as terrifying as a bunker war of attrition.
So far in this thread, you've given three utterly hypothetical (and, with all due respect, vaguely wrought) scenarios for a situation when a game could be considered art. Yet, there's a thirty+ year history of gaming with thousands of entries in the medium, and not one of them come close to being a legitimate candidate for this argument.
I'm actually open to the possibility of a game being considered "art." I just haven't found one yet that is.
Actually, Civilizations could easily be made into art if it gave you more leniency in trying out your ideas about how societies should be organized. There's nothing quite like working with a testbed for your ideals to get the juices flowing.
Additionally, anything set in WWI could become great political commentary on war, as there's probably nothing quite as terrifying as a bunker war of attrition.
So far in this thread, you've given three utterly hypothetical (and, with all due respect, vaguely wrought) scenarios for a situation when a game could be considered art. Yet, there's a thirty+ year history of gaming with thousands of entries in the medium, and not one of them come close to being a legitimate candidate for this argument.
I'm actually open to the possibility of a game being considered "art." I just haven't found one yet that is.
So it's okay for the consumer to decide if something's art as long as it's you. Got it.
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Which sock?
Entirely up to the viewer and their criticism of it.
But under what definition?
If art is dependent on intent and context, and a products has no stated intent and an utterly malleable context, at what point are they art?
I don't agree that art needs to be static. Take a look at the compositions of John Cage based on chance. One piece calls for 1-8 performers using randomly tuned radios. His 4'33'' relies entirely on incidental sounds from the audience.
If you want less avant garde examples, take a look at any opera or drama. The experience will be different on any given night: cast members will get sick, sets will change, the soprano will miss a high note, the quality of the sound will change based on temperature. All of these things are integral to the experience of seeing a live performance and it will never be exactly the same twice.
Intent has to be stated to exist?
I disagree completely. Art cannot exist in a vacuum.
Sure, you can sit back and shoot people all day - but that would be akin to me dismissing Picasso as an artist who can't draw, or indeed - walking up to a painting and closing my eyes. The existence of interactive art that is not based on video games paints the argument as obviously wrong - and as far as I know the current trend in art criticism (literary specifically) is not to assume the art exists in a vacuum but rather that the audience are an integral component of it being art.
It also cannot exist without it's audience. Why should be disregard the involvement of the audience?
So this isn't art?
At the very least it has to exist, stated, implied, or otherwise. You might counter that those socks' intent is nothing more than being sold, and you might be right, but I would argue against that being a definition of art.
It's certainly artful.
And for those socks intent does exist. So now even by your own warped definition those socks are works of art.
So you concede that it is art?
Oh, I don't. I just don't think it's entirely up to patronage to qualify something as being art. If a patron qualifies something without auteuristic intent as art, at that point the patron becomes the artist.
That's entirely dependent on the artist's intent and context.
It was created by a human, therefore it is imbued with some form of intent. It also exists in reality therefore it has some form of context.
So we are agreed. 1 art down, ∞ to go.
Art is not art because someone tells me it is. It's art because of how I perceive it.
TL;DR: like any other piece of art, you have to think about a video game to appreciate it.
Of course, you could counter that that makes 2012 great art, as it gets more hilarious the more you think about it.
Is all music not art when sold, then? Are you telling me to pirate music?
I don't know, I guess I don't really care about intent all that much. It's usually interesting to discover the intent of a piece, but it doesn't affect my enjoyment of it in many cases. That, and I don't think it's really all that different from the interesting aspects of interacting cause and effect required to produce any item.
That's not what I'm saying. No one has to you inform you of a product's artistic intent, it just has to have it.
If that's true, then everything is art, and the term becomes meaningless. Or, if it's your specific context that makes something art to you, then you are now the artist and no longer the patron.
That was basically Warhol's whole point.
Again, it's intent. If a product is made only to be sold, if there's no metaphysical or allegorical intent or context involved, then I would not consider it art.
The function of music isn't to be sold, but it does happen. It's not a mutually exclusive arrangement. Picassos and Van Goghs are sold frequently.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
Which term? Art?
Eh, I don't know that we will. Moniker seems to be dead set on everything being art, which just appears to be obstructionism for its own sake. If his argument is that "all things created by humans are art," and mine is "all things created with the intent to be art, are art," we're basically arguing the same thing but at different angles.
However, since I assume we're talking about video games being the intentional type of concerted artistic effort, I don't really have any more inclination to discuss the artistic value of socks.
The fact that we haven't been able to agree on a working definition makes the term meaningless.
Essentially contested concept?
The term is still meaningful if we can broadly agree on some things which are art and some things which are not, even if we don't have a definition that draws a clear line on other things in between. There's no line at which a given number of grains of sand becomes a heap of sand, but that doesn't mean that "heap" is a meaningless term.
Here are my main issues with the games as art discussion
1. Criticism. One common element to all things considered art is the creation of academic criticism surrounding whatever that art object is. Now I'm not arguing that for item X to be art there must be a peer reviewed paper about it, but for any generally accepted art a field of critical discussion beyond "SUPER GREAT. A+. TEN OUT OF TEN" has grown for the purpose of interpreting the meaning, artistry, emotive response, etc of that piece of art. I do not see this around video games. Again, I am not saying that a thing is not art without some guy in a university publishing a paper about the Marxist interpretation of whatever that thing may be, but rather that criticism is a consequence of whatever makes art, art. At the same time I suggest this it is important to realize that video games as an entity as a whole have existed for an incredibly short period of time and if games are art, games that could qualify as such have been in existence for an even shorter period (I highly doubt anyone would seriously classify Space War, Pong, Asteroids, or Adventure! as art). As such, I may be too eager for video game criticism to appear.
2. As a Matter of Interpretation. An exceedingly vast majority of games are completely devoid of interpretation on any level. Even if a form of academic criticism were to form around games, what would there be to examine? Could my perception and interaction with Civilization 4 be altered if I were to try and consider the game from a Marxist or Femminist perspective? Will an analysis of the manner in which the great leaders are animated provide me with a better understanding of anything whatsoever? The major issue is that games are confined by rules and objectives. Even the most open world games can be won or lost to some extent, and degree to which game worlds can be "open" is something that I believe is highly debatable. There is no way for me to "win" reading Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. My experience in reading it is going to be wholly different from anyone else's despite the fact that you and I are reading the same text. In the same way, my reactions to whatever goes on during a play through of Modern Warfare 2 will also be different than anyone else's (though we'll all be somewhat confused by the nonsense plot). However, if the goal of the game is to be "won" in some extent, my interaction with the medium is going to be forced down a narrow pathway. Yes, in a level the designer gives you the option to go left through some part of the level or right through some part of the level. At the end of things the same end is reached.
3. The Omniartistic Nature of Games. I have just invented this "omniartisitic" nonsense as I cannot think of a better existant word to describe the fact that modern games can be a combination of just about every other art form in existence ever in a singular experience. However, I agree with the previous comments that simply because there are artful things in games that it does not demand that games as a whole be considered an art form. When discussing this subject there is a cannon of games that repeatedly come up as candidates for the title of "art game." Among these are Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, Okami, and whichever game you prefer from the Metal Gear Solid series. We can point to specific things in these games and point out elements that give us a feeling that our interaction with them is art. However, is that feeling caused by the sum of every artistic element in the game or can some be isolated and produce the same effect without the game? Is the game what results in artistic expression or is it simply a matter of other art forms layered atop each other with the added feature that through an input device, sometimes we can move a camera around?
I love games and I would like to say that they are art, but it isn't something that is exactly clear to me at the moment. I think one thing that would be insightful to this question would be to examine how other modern art forms came to be accepted as such. Film is the best candidate for this study that I can think of off the top of my head.
My Little Game Blog - http://profundospielen.blogspot.com/
I'm sure Moniker would remind you that all quantities are heaps.
And no grains of sand are just heaps of size zero, of course.
It's always possible, in philosophy, to find one insistent person who will defy your simplest thought experiment, but I think we can fairly say that most people do not think as C programmers do...
The frustrating part of that is that is doesn't address the argument, it just rephrases the argument, and then the rephrasing party sits back in their chair and puffs at their burlwood briar like they're the cleverest bastard in all of Victoria's Britain.
Terms do need definition for adequate discourse to occur, but defining them in such looseness to the point of non-definition is ridiculous and pointless.
I would say not really. It can be very artful, and created by an artist, but its intent isn't personal or metaphysical, it's commercial. It can (and usually is) rejected by higher-ups on basis of its merit. It's created at the demand of external forces for the expressed purpose of being profitable.
Well, the whole point is that terms don't need to have agreed-upon definitions for discourse to occur: that even in the absence of a rigorous explicit definition with widespread agreement, we can still talk about some concept by discussing its properties that we vaguely suspect do have widespread agreement. Sometimes we can make those properties explicit instead, without asserting that this list of properties exhaustively identifies all the properties of said concept. Take the SEP's approach:
Halting discourse until we have agreed-upon definitions just means that no discourse occurs instead.
That would be fine, except some here are abolishing all definitions.
That's trickier to deal with.
Actually, Civilizations could easily be made into art if it gave you more leniency in trying out your ideas about how societies should be organized. There's nothing quite like working with a testbed for your ideals to get the juices flowing.
Additionally, anything set in WWI could become great political commentary on war, as there's probably nothing quite as terrifying as a bunker war of attrition.
He's saying that art is defined from the consumer side, kind of like how duck tape is more than just tape for ducts because everybody and his mother has found a novel use for it.
So far in this thread, you've given three utterly hypothetical (and, with all due respect, vaguely wrought) scenarios for a situation when a game could be considered art. Yet, there's a thirty+ year history of gaming with thousands of entries in the medium, and not one of them come close to being a legitimate candidate for this argument.
I'm actually open to the possibility of a game being considered "art." I just haven't found one yet that is.
So it's okay for the consumer to decide if something's art as long as it's you. Got it.
The ability to discern is wholly separate from an attempt to project. A consumer can react to art, but only an artist can impart intent.
More's the point, however, is that I've seen no candidates from either side of the creation/consumption divide.
I mentioned a text-based one earlier, but I can't for the life of me think of what it was called.
There's also games meant to toy with our perceptions, such as this and this. The latter is also a superb example of storytelling.