Are computer games art?
The millions of gamers and game designers out there will most likely tell you yes. Artistic principles comprise at least a part of some of the professions in video game design, a list of which can be found on this video game design schools website. Concept artists, graphic designers and script writers utilize artistic skill sets. But what about the video game product, is it a true artistic medium or simply a means of entertainment?
For one thing they operate on a different aesthetic principle and the idea of durability cannot be comparable say, to a Bernini bronze statue. But they can satisfy the artistic need of creating a rich immersive principle; there is an urban motif with many different things occurring simultaneously that have only an abstract connection to each other.There is a sensation of visual chaos; a tension of sequence and sensation producing an effect of the simultaneous meaning that the images are not organized and arranged in conventional fashion. It is art in the sense that these are often complex and multiple micro-worlds that entice us to explore further. Like a Hieronymus Bosch triptych such as Garden of Earthly Delights, there is a surreal dimension with multiple points of entry.
Ernest W. Adams: “So why aren’t most games art? One possibility that springs to mind is that interactivity precludes art; that art is a form of communication between the artist and the viewer, and if the viewer starts to interfere, the message is lost. It’s certainly true that interactivity interferes with narrative: narrative is about the control of the author, while interactivity is about the freedom of the player….
However, I don’t believe that interactivity does necessarily preclude art. Chris Crawford, in his book The Art of Computer Game Design, wrote, “Real art through computer games is achievable, but it will never be achieved so long as we have no path to understanding. We need to establish our principles of aesthetics, a framework for criticism, and a model for development.” I disagree with him about a model for development – I think how you create a work of art is irrelevant – but he’s right on the money about the other things.” Read More: http://www.designersnotebook.com/Lectures/ArtForm/artform.htm
ADDENDUM:
—Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro has once again lavished praise on the medium of games.
“Videogames are the comic books of our time,” he said following a book reading in Portland attended by ShackNews. “They are an art form and anyone saying differently is a little out of touch because they are a narrative art form. “It’s a medium that gains no respect among the intellegensia,” he added. “They say ‘oh, videogames.’ And most people that complain about videogames have never f***ing played them.” Read More: http://www.computerandvideogames.com/268348/news/games-are-an-art-form-guillermo-del-toro/
http://www.billogs.net/how-to-evaluate-computer-video-games-as-art/
John Lanchester:This sense of agency is the cultural and aesthetic USP of video games. The medium doesn’t have, and probably never will have, a sense of character to match other forms of narrative; however much it develops, it can’t match the inwardness of the novel or the sweep of film. But it does have two great strengths. The first is visual: the best games are already beautiful, and I can see no reason why the look of video games won’t match or surpass that of cinema. The second is to do with this sense of agency, that the game offers a world in which the player is free to act and to choose. It is this which gives the best games their immense involvingness. You are in the game in a way that is curiously similar to the way you are in a novel you are reading – a way that is subtly unlike the sense of absorption in a spectacle which overtakes the viewer in cinema. The interiority of the novel isn’t there, but the sense of having passed into an imagined world is. Read More: http://www.lrb.co.uk/v31/n01/john-lanchester/is-it-art a