Do you consider video games as art?

[Diogo Ribeiro]

i didn't read through the thread.

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I did. Imagine my surprise feeling more ignorant than people believe me to be!

[metadigital]

Awww. I was hoping for a sizzlingly startling scrutinisation of a sufficiently amorphous subject from the always opinionated Portugese Pedagogue ...

[LadyCrimson]

Anything creative or requiring creative thought, in all subject areas, including games, is in my opinion artistic in nature. Creativity/invention = art.

 

I don't think a painting/statue is any more artistic than someone coming up with the idea for the toothbrush/wheel, just because one is deemed "useful/practical" and the other is not. If one wants to try to differentiate between emotional art ("art") and the functional art ("invention"), cool, but y'know....I'm rather attached to the toothbrush and get pretty emotionally unhappy without it. :D

[DGwar]

just let me say this:

 

iamgine non-artistic people making games....

[LadyCrimson]

just let me say this:

 

iamgine non-artistic people making games....

It'd still be art. Just not good art.

[metadigital]

"Good art" ... hmmm what about Schlock? Plan IX from Outer Space, for example, is so bad it's good.

[LadyCrimson]

Schlock is an artistic category all it's own. A very....special.....category. :D

[alanschu]

Why just good programming?

 

Is bad design no longer art?  Is bad writing no longer art?

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It's something tha only a coder would most likely understand. There can be certain parts of code in a game for example that are so clever, and work so beautifully that it can be appriciated as being art, because it's been constructed with such skill, and such imagination.

 

Yet the end user usually doesn't see this, and better still, the end user can't even tell that he's probably being tricked! As for that efficiant memory management algorithm, that works like magic, well nobody even notices.

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I am a coder. Even still, this wouldn't explain why only good programming is considered. Especially if your programming is visible to the user, such as GUI programming. Yes much of it is hidden, but if you're going to include programming, then I'd wonder why only "good" programming would be considered.

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Awww. I was hoping for a sizzlingly startling scrutinisation of a sufficiently amorphous subject from the always opinionated Portugese Pedagogue ...

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It's just that I don't find myself as eloquent and as well versed in the subject matter, and any such attempt to become either would provide, in the face of the superior argumentation brought up, too little and too late.

 

Besides, I've always thought of myself as a demagogue rather than a pedagogue

[metadigital]

Well said. ^_^

 

Rampant demagoguery ..!

[shadeofblue]

I also agree that Metropolis is an amazing film.  That was in my original point.  We have our exceptions currently, our Nosferatu's and Metropolis, but for the majority of out titles, we get "Electrocution of an Elephant" and "Women Undressing" over and over again.  Maybe in fifty years we'll get our Wild Bunch and our Nights of Cabiria.

 

Sorry to pick nits, but I'm not sure that's really a good analogy. You're setting films made in the 20s against films made before 1905. Film aesthetics and film narrative had gone through a fair amount of change by the time Nosferatu, and later, Metropolis were made. The film industry, and audience expectations, had changed quite a bit as well.

 

It's kind of like saying Shadow of the Colossus and Halo 2 were created in the same environment, and consumed by the same audiences, as Pong. More or less.

 

No offense meant. Your point is still clear.