Are games art? This is a seriously loaded question and there are a ridiculous number of ways to approach the topic.
For example:
- What defines art?
- Can we even define art?
- How can we exhibition games in a gallery?
- Does art have to be passive?
- Where is the art in games?
- Are non digital games art?
- What defines a game?
- Can both games and the playing of games be art?
- If games are art what does that say for sport?
- does the “slippery slope” argument hold any water?
And that’s all of the top of my head. Now, according to Gaut’s conditions for Cluster Art, games (especially digital games) pass with flying colours yet digital games are not widely considered art. why?
Is it that games are financed by sales driven companies? Is it the endless supply of low brow shovelware? Is it because the loudest members of the digital games audience are petty children? Is it because half the digital games industry don’t want it to be? Is it because that blowhard Ebert says so?
It’s all of these reasons and more! Hilary Goldstein of VentureBeat writes that games do not need to be art because art is high-society snooty nonsense and games are fun and for everyone and we don’t need to it to justify it to anyone thankyouverymuch. Goldstein seems to have gotten the completely wrong impression of art, that it only exists as pointless pretensious posturing, pandering to pompous and pretentious people. Art is so much more than that, artistic products are art whether they need to be or not. Art is what elicits emotion and thought for no reason other than to get people to feel and think. Art is pure distilled emotion, thought and beauty. Games have made me think and feel in totally new ways. Games are art, whether they need to be or not.
Player Two 