Video games: a seminal art form?

[ianoid]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4038606/

This piece makes some good points. My favorite being that video games are an unexplored art form as yet, and that the future of video games is more emotional investment in the experience. There's more to the future of games than that, but I wholeheartedly agree. Your thoughts?

[Jorpho]

Hmm. I would suggest people beware the Ico spoiler.

I recently finished reading The Salmon of Doubt. It's a thought-provoking book in many ways, and Douglas Adams even briefly goes into the nature of art and video games. Says he,

"I think the idea of art kills creativity. That was one of the reasons I really wanted to go and do a CD-ROM: because nobody will take it seriously, and therefore you can sneak under the fence with lots of good stuff. . . I think you get most of the most interesting work done in fields where people don't think they're doing art, but are merely practicing a craft, and working as good craftsmen."

[Dr. Morbis]

I guess future gamers will never get to experience the joy of 'twitch-gaming'. Why do games have to be so much like movies? Just you wait and see, Final Fantasy 18 will be a 46 hour cut scene with a few intermitant battles interspersed every couple of hours. Blech...

[GamecubeFreek]

I have considered games to be an artform for a few years now. I would say that the most artistic games are more of an art than the most artistic movie....dont know why I said it, but I'm sticking with it.

[§ Gideon §]

Video games: a seminal art form?
seminal - [adj] pertaining to or containing or consisting of semen; "seminal fluid"

hahaha! Maybe some (http://planetgamecube.com/reviews.cfm?action=profile&id=163) of them (http://planetgamecube.com/reviews.cfm?action=profile&id=276) are!

[ianoid]

I guess future gamers will never get to experience the joy of 'twitch-gaming'. Why do games have to be so much like movies? Just you wait and see, Final Fantasy 18 will be a 46 hour cut scene with a few intermitant battles interspersed every couple of hours. Blech...

Well that's a bit negative.

It's certainly not a harbinger of doom to any type of gaming, rather the idea that all genres could be taken to a new level. Emotion does not imply FFXXXIII or slow adventures or turn based games. Perhaps what is to come is something we couldn't anticipate (lest you are a seer.) Perhaps it will be all the twitch and 10 times the story.

From the dawn of huge cut scenes, people have poopooed the long cutscene. Nobody wants to watch a movie, when they sat down to play a game. It was merely a metaphor.


From dictionary.com also:
Seminal
adj.
Of, relating to, or having the power to originate; creative.
Highly influential in an original way; constituting or providing a basis for further development: a seminal idea in the creation of a new theory.

For some reason, I feel like I'm catering to high schoolers in both of these responses. No offense if you both are 42.

[bargora]

It's interesting that you often see video games compared to movies, especially when discussing stages of artistic development. The article specifically noted that video games are in a "pre-Citizen Kane" era and pointed to "Birth of a Nation" moments. I understand that the analogy is a useful shorthand, but I wonder how far it really should be taken. In particular, was film as large of a business at the developmental stage that video games now occupy? Was there the pressure on filmmakers then that we now see for the video game developers to turn out the "blockbusters"?

Maybe there was. I ask because I don't know. I imagine that film has been produced for commercial gain since very early on in its development. How have artistic films (i.e., those not seen by the studios to be likely blockbusters) historically found backing, and are such methods possibly transferable to the production of video games?

I do think that incorporating greater emotional involvement on the part of the player/audience will advance the claim of video games to the status of "legitimate" "art" in the public mind, moving it away from the too-often held perception of video games as merely low entertainment for children and teens. Advances in AI will almost certainly be required. But then, many advances have already been made since the days of Pac-Man. As long as we don't see something like the "Comics Code" (an analogy made much less often) I am optimistic that "interactive entertainment" will eventually mature as an artistic medium.

[SoulBlazer]

Well, Xenosaga did quite well (and I love the game) because of (or despite of) the fact you watch the game almost as much as you play it. :D How would you explain that?

Not EVERY game has cutscenes in it, after all.

And I think video games ARE a art form -- have been since they started. Art can be almost anything, really. You have people with ideas and a vision in their minds, they work on it with others, and out comes a final product that pleases people. Yeah, sounds like art to me. ;)

[Arcade Antics]

And I think video games ARE a art form -- have been since they started. Art can be almost anything, really. You have people with ideas and a vision in their minds, they work on it with others, and out comes a final product that pleases people. Yeah, sounds like art to me. ;)

1000% agreed.

Games have always been art. Even beyond the actual games and graphics and everything that makes up the game. Check out those coin-op cabinets: you've got stuff like Wacko (purposely skewed cabinet), Tapper (brass railing, beer taps, coasters for your beverages), Millipede, Crystal Castles (beautifully illustrated), etc., (just to name a few).... If that isn't art, I dunno what is. All the artwork on instruction manuals of games over the years, old catalogues, flyers, posters, packaging, presentation. It's ART, baby. :)

[Kevin Listwan]

While video games are an art form, what isn't. The community creating games has not impressed me with their creativity.

I mean how many games have really shaken the foundation of your thinking or your feelings or just plan moved you. Compare some of the worlds great movies, music albums, books, and paintings to the so called great games and how do they stack up.

Pretty poorly.


Yet I am waiting for video games to come into their own, it is only a matter of time.