I feel like when people talk about games as art they actually mean "it was pretty/I bought in to the story” and not that games as a concept from aesthetics to code to controls are an artistic endeavor
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You're not wrong but I feel like it's something that will continue to evolve as time goes on and as more people come to appreciate what goes into making games possible. It's like music: everyone can appreciate it, but if you're a musician or in the know you pick up on things maybe others might not.
Yep, definitely agree. A lot of games also like to lean on movie-like strategies for storytelling instead of embracing the medium and telling the story more through the game itself.
I say this as someone who loves cinematic shit in games lol
I think games are art from the bottom to the top. Simply the creativity, determination, and commitment required to make happen is artistic! Games are dreams, they are thoughts and wishes given form. Any piece of that process can't be anything but art!
For me, at this point in my life, I tend to play more story-driven games and less action-based ones. So if a game has immersive graphics and a gripping storyline, that's art, and I appreciate the process and the effort put forth to create that, even if I don't understand coding at all.
When people analyze games as they would any other work of art, they’re making a claim in the “games as art” discourse, but they don’t often frame it as such.
Really I feel like the explicit “games as art” conversation is rarely productive
I think I agree, I suppose since games are made of many arts, that's why people fracture it so often and decided that part is where the art lies instead of treating it as art itself.
Oh man, I think of this all the time. The way developers had limited resources on their systems and had to know all the ins and outs. Sonic 1 on Genesis is pure coding art. I want to learn development for 8 and 16 bit systems for this reason.
Truly think games (as art) are done dirty in popular discourse because of the kinda outmoded way they are generally reviewed and talked about, like games have so many different parts that can *work together* in surprising ways
maybe a simple way to distill it is; gameplay is also a part of the art
For sure. Cruelty Squad works so well because every part of it as an assault on your senses and twists what you'd expect out of a game of this genre. It extends past the visuals and sound into the mechanics, even the simple act of reloading is bizarre and strange.
gameplay isn't just like a factor of the medium that has to be addressed, but its crucial to storytelling and the way we touch a thing changes how we feel about it, there's so much going on
Yeah like, to use easy examples everyone knows games like Undertale, shadow of the Colossus, OFF... none of those experiences would work if they weren't games as they are married to BEING games with mechanics and expectations, ya know?
personally I watch every documentary/video I can find about making games but realistically most people don't care and that's ok. It's easier to see games as art when you compare them to things traditionally seen as art like movies, paintings, architecture, etc. bc the surface is whats most appealing
I don't think that's inherently a bad thing either tbh, a fraction of people calling games art for the surface level reasons will become interested and look deeper one day and go down that hole too and I think that's cool !
I don't think it's bad per se, I just wish people would dig a little deeper or rather I wish game discussion was at least on par with how people discuss movies or visual art.
it's so close to the bone, raw hitbox-on-hitbox interactions, a very pure expression of the medium, and also you can absolutely slam dudes as the world's buffest mayor
I mean, now we're getting into "how do we define art" which is not a discussion with any good answers and a lot of arguments. I'm willing to agree good coding and design can be an art, but it's one not many people are going to be able to appreciate.
Tbh this is the first time I had thought to include the controls themselves in what I consider to be the "art" of a game. Though now I think of it Bioshock taking control away from you in the Andrew Ryan scene or defeating Psycho Mantis by switching controller ports are definitely artistic af
There is definitely a separation between the "gamers" that just consider aesthetics/story to be art, and those that look at the whole package as art. I'm more in the latter group personally.
This is why I love Noah Caldwell-Gervais. He engages with a work so beautifully, and you can feel him grabbling with it to really allow the authors to say their peice.
Yeah, I get what you mean. With a painting, someone might also discuss the tools as part of the artistic process. And the method by which someone uses them as part of the artistry.
With games as art, yeah, that's entirely divorced from the discussion.
It makes me think of how in old Atari and what led to the third parties spinning off, game development was regarded as more an industrial process. You're no more valuable to the creation of games than the people who assemble the carts etc.
I've heard programmers alk about finding beauty in the code, how they'd not see the code after a while but the result and the creation, of something happening and being brought to life. That is art too, absolutely.
Yeah, I was watching a video recently that was like 'Silent Hill 2 is one of the biggest arguments for video games as art' and it kind of just made me really internalize what a myopic view people have not just of video games, but of the concept of art as a whole.
Games can contain art but that isn't what makes them art but how it affects what you feel. How it makes you feel is as much a part of the controls and the key frames. Flappy Bird, for as simple as it is is art because it alters you. It may be filling you with frustration 😜 but it is still effecting.
Exactly! The entire cohesive process makes the experience which is the art just in the same way the godfather would be lacking without it's soundtrack.
Fair enough. But i also believe it all comes down to whatever we like most in the Game.
But i will agree that the WHOLE process of making games is Art. Just like making food, doing handiwork, and so on. Even some sports can be their own kinda artform.
if anything, the best way to describe gaming as an art form is that it's made up of several art forms that bear one larger fruit of labor. each facet takes similar amounts of passion and artistic vision to come together nicely, and it really shows in the end product.
I think of code as intrinsically creative. It's an activity that demands understanding not just the technical side of the problem, but the psychology of the people who use it, either as fellow developers or users. Good code is a love letter to your future self.
I didn't start to fully grasp how much really goes into games til I started working on learning how to make em myself. It definitely made other games I play more appreciated.
Like, I knew how much work went in, but never really the depth of it.
I think the main reason is that for the control, the code and the rest of the devs work, the better it is, the less you think about. If you play a game and not once think about your control, the AI or the code then the devs did a flawless work
I mean the art form is so new we don't even have terminology to talk about most things. Concepts like ludonarrative dissonance, conveyance and conditioned play have only appeared after the 2010s.
Very correct I hate how "games as art" just meant story or art-style and normie have a hard time engaging with the idea that the INTERACTIVE elements, down to mechanics and control-layouts and camera controls interactive systems and all of that are art too! They can be analyzed and give emotions!!
It's actually so aggravating because a lot of the critical hype around tlou was to the effect of "it really makes you forget that it's a videogame which is why it's the only good videogame in history"
Reminds me of reception to yume nikki, a lot of people say that game is just a boring walking simulator/3spooky5me instead of it being an interpretive and artistic look into someone's dreams, there are even things still being discovered and YN was released in like 2008
a better example might be imscared, yes, it's a meta horror game, but if you were there when that indie game came out ,you know it blew up the way it did because meta horror in indies was not all that common at the time, it was honestly seen as something jarring, Imscared hit very different in 2012
I feel like when people talk about books as art they actually mean writhad great imagery/I bought in to the story” and not that books as a concept from writing style to typing on a keyboard to how you read it are an artistic endeavor.
so fucking real. it always ticks me off when people say "video games are art" then turn around and say they can't stand how an old or "weird" game looks/controls. shit's part of the experience!!!
i think this is true of most mediums to a degree, but games definitely more than others. you have to have an appreciation or curiosity abt how it’s made to to even really stop and think about certain aspects of things and most people just don’t.
Yeah, but like even surface level movie analysis and TVtropes stuff is light-years past the basic "if game look like movie = art" equation games get. It bugs me
agreed! but trying to talk about game dev as art with someone that can’t wrap their mind around it feels veeery similar to trying to talk to someone who cannot wrap their mind around film beyond narrative/looked nice. there’s just many, many more of them.
Actually it's always the opposite for me. Gameplay is the core of a game but some small part of my pea sized brain loves the tiny details and hud scratches my brain in all the right places
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I say this as someone who loves cinematic shit in games lol
Really I feel like the explicit “games as art” conversation is rarely productive
maybe a simple way to distill it is; gameplay is also a part of the art
Is the product or the process the art?
It's a shit take.
With games as art, yeah, that's entirely divorced from the discussion.
No hate to those games but if a game is only art when it's just a movie then like...???
Sure math and engineering have real uses, but people study these things out of passion!
YOU GET ME
But i will agree that the WHOLE process of making games is Art. Just like making food, doing handiwork, and so on. Even some sports can be their own kinda artform.
Really.. Anything can be.
Like, I knew how much work went in, but never really the depth of it.
Or something idk