Can a video game be considered art? I personally have always considered video games to be an art form. However that was the old me. A few months ago I would have express how artistic video games and video game designers are. But after reading these articles, reading the comments left on my game history essay, and a lot of soul searching all I can say is "I do not know, maybe it could be".
I have a been a fan of video games for the majority of my life, but I have been an art fan all of my life and can honestly say that art is much more important to me than video games. What I always looked at as being the artistic aspect of video games is what made me start to play them. I do still believe that there is something artistic about video games, I no longer consider it to be an art form though. After this class I am starting to view video games a little bit more as a means of entertainment and less of an art form. Actually this change in my opinion of video games scare me.
I have lost a great bit of my passion for video games. John Lanchester made a very good comparison between video games and other things that are considered to be art. Lanchester points out how things like movies and music, which are considered art, are a known medium. He also touch on how that outside of the few people who play video games, games do not exist until some kid who happens to play games go out and kill somebody. Daniel Radosh made a good reference in his article that made me believe that maybe my life is not over in his article "The Play's the Thing" when he touch on the fact Film was not art during the first 35 years of its debut. Hopefully Radosh prediction that maybe one day video games will actually be perceived as art is true. It may seem a little weird but by me being an art major this is a big deal for me. Video games loosing their standing as an art form, in my opinion, means that they have fallen to the category of things that I do not waste my time doing unless I have to.
After some hard thinking, I realized that the thing about video games I love the most is not the game play. It is the characters and the other visual aspects of the video game, as well as the story line. The reason I love Square Enix is not because their games are fun but because their games, most of them not all, are pretty. Like I said in the beginning I feel there is at least something about video games that can make them art, the story and visual design, so my love for games is not gone just severely dimmed. I no longer consider video games as something I want to do as a career I am currently at the point where video games are my means for having fun. This angers me, all of that computer science for nothing I shall go and cry now.
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That sure is a whole lot of soul searching. I do have to admit that I am one to judge a game by it's visual design first, then play it and then judge the story on it. I still can't say though that a video game can't be art though. Even if you are just basing it off of the graphical design of a game, its still art. Hell, squiggles and dots on a paper is considered to be art, why not the awesome graphics of Star Ocean, or Eternal Sonata!
ReplyDeleteNO don't cry..... So yeah its a scary thing to think about when you get down to it. It seems like something that was stable in our life is now well, not. I also thought that the article you mentioned was interesting because it reminded me that videogames really aren't that old. So to society they're still just some pointless means of entertainment for younger generations.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very interesting turn of opinion. Yes, video games may not be as sophisticated as other art pieces today but keep in mind that compared to other mediums, video games is still in its fetal stage. I believe that art isn't just a story, visuals, or development. It is a creative expression that makes an individual see or think about things differently, and a lot of this takes place in the Final Fantasy series especially.
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