so, i take it cartoons aren’t art? how do we define art? i can put a piece of blank paper on a piece of cardboard put a sign for sale on the bottom and call that art. you can paint yourself in silver paint, put on a funky costume and stand still for hours and call it art. but you sit there and play a game for hours on end enjoying the story line, the landscapes, the sunsets and different lands that people have CREATED for you and it’s not art? this isn’t a rollercoaster ride. it’s something that stimulates you visually and mentally…sometimes even physicaly.

art has the tendency to do that doesn’t it?

on a last note. LOVED silent hill the game and loved the movie. as a fan that is. as a frequent movie goer it was lacking. sort of between a b-movie and a great flick. just not quite up there. not to mention the fact that i wasn’t expecting the story to follow the wife’s point of view the whole way threw. sort of sucked like that but hey… i’m sure we’ll get to see a great one in our life times. cross your fingers.

I don’t see how we can conclude that games can only be art if they aren’t actually games. That isn’t to say that a game is an inherently artistic medium, but neither is film. Can’t a game give you choices and still show you a glimpse into the creator’s mind?

It isn’t always about winning or losing. Sometimes in books and movies, winning or losing is a choice of the lesser of two evils. Sometimes winning means you actually lost something. I don’t see why a game that puts you into the main character’s shoes to make those choices yourself somehow loses the ability to make you think about such things. If anything, it would enhance it. You’re no longer passively watching someone else make a tough choice. YOU’RE making the choice, and you get to live with the consequences. Isn’t it possible that such choices will make you think about it long after you power off your computer?

And isn’t it possible that when a game does so, it could be considered a work of art?

Keith

I think it’ll happen once game developers and hot-air-balloon critics alike come to the realization that games a re a COLLABORATIVE medium between the audience and the artist that opens up a whole new dimension in art that we haven’t begun to understand yet. It changes the whole foundation upon which you evaluate art, as the work or presentation itself cannot be viewed in a vacuum. The audience experience is inseparably bound with it, as it should be.

The only other ‘collaborative media’ like this that I can think of are stand-up comedy and improvisational theater.

Anyway, here are my comments: Games as Art?

“Games are amazing. Like really amazingly amazing. And they’re just getting started – thirty years is peanuts for a new medium. Gaming isn’t even an infant yet. It’s an embryo. It’s a zygote. And here we all are, developers and press, academics and businesspeople, players and producers, all here at the very beginning, the inception of something really exciting and really important. How often do you get to be there at the start of an art form? Once every 100 years?”

Are games as simple as point, shoot and score? Perhaps they are for now. Games must evolve to produce the emotional responses people feel when they see film. Unlike film, where you must except the directors outcome, games give you the oppurtunity to mold and effect the outcome, for bettter or worse, according to the mental and emotional make-up of the player. Film just cant do that. That is why, one day, the definition of games as an art form versus film will blur.

Just MHO.