Video Games and Art (Video Games AS Art) (and so on)

For one weird, horrible moment there I thought Yars' Revenge read Custer's Revenge.

okay that would be amazing

hahaha oh god that would be an amazing choice

xposts!

the world's most unsurprising xpost

was coming to post that link in lolz thread

http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2012/nov/30/moma-video-games-art

I haven't read this yet but I suspect dude's picture is going to tell me everything I need to know about the article:

http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/2/26/1235669002764/Badge-Jonathan-Jones-on-A-001.jpg

JONATHANJONES
SHART
BLOG

I read about three sentences of dude's column before the urge to punch my computer became overwhelming and I had to stop

good choice w/ dwarf fortress!

The worlds created by electronic games are more like playgrounds where experience is created by the interaction between a player and a programme.

nabokov to thread

ya seems like a sound enough defn of art to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD_(video_game)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnNgv1qDLGM

So often when someone wants to challenge the idea of what a game is, the solution is: meandering around in some landscape, no points or score or levels. Virtual reality, Second Life, Proteus ... it's a very TED conference mode of game abstraction. But to me the real essence of video gaming is in rule sets, and the nuances of gameplay. The absence of rules in a game can be an choice in an art game, but if you can't abstract the idea of game rules beyond eliminating them altogether I don't really feel like you're qualified to think about games as art.

i don't disagree with that. journey does a good job of it i think.

Agreed.

otm. As with most art, it isn't the song, it's the singer.

what do you guys think of demo scene stuff? those dudes seem to have gotten lost in the conversation.

I think of that stuff as programming art.

like their code is really clean? a lot of those dudes went on to games and gaming hardware.

Not just that it's clean, but it's creative. They're like Joey Pants in The Matrix, to use the most hackneyed example possible.

But also it's very much in the tradition of abstract animation, going back to Oskar Fischinger or whatev

i feel the same way, they're sort of related to this, but essentially little pieces or code sculptures

what's the barrier to accepting them as the standard bearers for video game art rather than footnotes? as for influences, i really see them being more aligned with graffiti than avant animation.

what's the barrier to accepting them as the standard bearers for video game art rather than footnotes?

They can be, and maybe they are. But these demoscene videos aren't games, in the same way that cutscenes aren't games. In the same way that the matte painting isn't a game, but if you put it in the background and let Mario run across it then it's part of a game's art assets. And it offers programmers the sort of challenges that make them great candidates to work in the game industry, as you said.

as for influences, i really see them being more aligned with graffiti than avant animation.

why?

re: graffiti, they're grouped in crews, it's full of boasting and shoutouts, associated with vaguely illegal activity, etc... The effects are deployed and received, and when you read reactions from their peers to their execution, it's a lot like someone landing a particularly difficult skateboard trick.
i agree they aren't games in the traditional sense, but they are certainly not videos -- they are intended to be "played" on what you could call a specific set of instruments, and it's up to the audience to meet those demands, in the same way it's up to a game player to gather some arbitrary set of achievements to advance the game.

So are the demoscenes different every time, based on some sort of user input?

re: graffiti, they're grouped in crews, it's full of boasting and shoutouts, associated with vaguely illegal activity, etc...

You could say the same thing about abstract expressionism. Also there are plenty of graffiti artists who don't fit that description.

"So are the demoscenes different every time, based on some sort of user input?"
kind of. they depend on what kind of hardware you put together etc... what modes you choose.

that would be an interesting game, pick which name is the abstract expressionist, graffiti crew, or demo group.

they depend on what kind of hardware you put together etc... what modes you choose.

Like a synthesizer?

some demos were optimized for gravis sound board if that's what you mean. there's very much a performative aspect to it, since what's impressive about them is the ability to do so much with so little. to flatten them to videos destroys the ritual.

some demos were optimized for gravis sound board if that's what you mean.

What I mean is: the visuals are different depending on how you adjust the knobs or levers or etc., whether they're tangible or virtual. A live performance.

some demos did, though the kind of explicit visual control you're looking for was pretty rare. one simple way to vary the graphics in a more oblique way would be to use your keystrokes as a seed number for whatever procedural graphic routines might run.

Found object art, too. Duchamp signing a toilet, cracking groups signing a pirated game.

but was duchamp l33t?

He DDOS'd the Mona Lisa

So often when someone wants to challenge the idea of what a game is, the solution is: meandering around in some landscape, no points or score or levels. Virtual reality, Second Life, Proteus ... it's a very TED conference mode of game abstraction. But to me the real essence of video gaming is in rule sets, and the nuances of gameplay.

i agree that it isn't v inventive. in general i don't think 'simulations' of any kind are; i think what's distinctive & interesting/exciting about computer games is the ability to interact w/ an enormously complicated system, tracking all those variables, almost infinite permutations, being able to play around w/ that stuff. dwarf fortress is the best example i can think of a game that impresses me in that sense, it feels pure to me.

video games aren't art.

that's not a knock. they just belong to a different category. i don't think they even engage the same parts of your brain as art, at all.

I agree w you if we're going to say art stopped in the 50's, but if you look at performance art, conceptual art, Fluxus, sensationalism, post-modern art, video art, environmental art, appropriation, etc. etc. everything that has happened since abstract expressionism and before that even then it almost seems like more of a disservice towards art to say that video games are one thing that it can never be.

Though I think I understand where you are coming from. Playing a game at the top of your skill - usually a game you have played many times before, in your past - is very much like throwing a pitch in baseball, or bowling a strike. It engages that part of the brain where you are in THE ZONE, where you sense things before your brain should physically detect them, where you and the game are one. Not much art that you find in galleries (if any?) does this. Then again you can probably find people that say baseball is art.

The problem with video games is that they are so much more complex then classical Fine Art and even conceptual PoMo Art. Here are some of the dimensions you could possibly discuss with just about any given game, just coming up with these off the top of my head:

- in-game character & environmental depiction/animation techniques
- title & ending screens/cutscenes/attract modes
- gamer control & interaction/instances of 'Friction' as Tim Rogers likes to say
- appropriation/recontextualization/references to other art forms
- programming prowess/console pushing/code efficiency
- box art/promotional ads/tv commercials
- international approaches towards censorship
- public reception/historical context
- legacy/add-ons/mods/hacks

-glitches

-foley/sound effects/music composition

there's artistic STUFF in video games, but that doesn't make them an art form

i mean, there's nice wallpaper in a train compartment, that doesnt make rail travel an art

i don't say that to denigrate video games or shut them out of a pantheon, i just think that art is not the right way to think about them, and that doing so actually precludes interesting investigation of what they actually are

How many decades do you think it'll take not for games to be considered art, but for us to have evolved language and understanding to actually describe what games do?

s1ocks, all those are arguments that were levied at film for the first thirty or so years too

Is Scrabble art? Pinochle? Charades? The Super Bowl?

scrabble is an inert rule set that allows for puzzle play. Pinochle is the same but less puzzle play and more probability wagers. Charades, if done right, can be artistic as it incorporates acting/dance/mime. Athletic displays (done well) are always artistic; it's one of the main reasons i watch sports.

or more to the point, some games come closer to art than others depending on the skill, intent and execution of both the gamer and the gamemaker.

Hideo Kojima argues iirc that video games can never be inherently artistic because of the necessity of functionality and playability.

Dude has obviously never mixed a record, served a meal, framed a painting, produced a work of theatre, etc.