What about certain games is NOT art? What is?

yeah i meant 3D xp

"my only argument is that there is a different way of being good art that has nothing to do with narrative and is totally suited to the characteristics of video games."

every artistic overture I've seen so far in games is dedicated to subverting those characteristics. which ones don't?
For example, I think where something like the wii took a step forward is allowing users to create their own avatars to work across games (in other words surrendering artistic duties to the player), but I can't imagine a game as artistically-minded as metal gear would be gracious enough to let you play as your mii instead of solid snake.

i think most "artistic overtures" are definitely misguided, because this is a young medium and an insecure one and one practiced by people who maybe do not realize that their talent for design and mechanics is what they should be looking to, instead of the trappings of the other media adults have learned to discuss solemnly. but when game designers aren't acting like social climbers and getting in their own way, they can do all kinds of stuff. gonna be totally gross here and quote myself, but here's a description of some art i like in a game, made by a guy to whom i guarantee you the word "art" did not occur:

It’s a testament to Miyamoto’s imagination that SM64’s characters, which do not inhabit anything like a coherent universe and exist only in their relationship to Mario—which aren’t characters at all, really, but collections of hindrances**—nevertheless have personality. The ghosts who shrink and vanish when Mario faces them but swell with malevolent glee when he looks away are first and foremost a problem, a dynamic to master: the player has to exploit their shyness to keep them away, and make sure he doesn’t turn his back for long. There’s nothing excessive or ornamental in the mechanic. But it’s fundamentally human, and when it’s introduced the player doesn’t think of it as a dry piece of design but understands it immediately, subconsciously: Oh, I see. They're shy.

that footnote (lol david foster wallace stanning) goes to:

** (See also the Bob-ombs, Platonic bombs with metal feet, rotating wind-up keys and blinking anime eyes, who putter in pointless circles until Mario approaches, whereupon their fuse ignites and they barrel after him in kamikaze desperation.)

like, i guess we could make up a New Word to describe a person who makes up stuff like that, who invents elegant intersections of abstract mechanical problems and human emotion and then renders those intersections with absolute clarity in about two seconds, but we could also just call him an artist.

or we could just call him a 'designer'

http://www.givememyremote.com/remote/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/time_gunn.jpg

i think miyamoto has been subject to the dread New Yorker Appreciation

not that you're wrong!

hahaha, he totally has! not his fault though.

besides, as that excerpt probably shows, i'd be unspeakably happy writing about miyamoto for the new yorker.

i didn't read it, but the caption to the art was something auteurist. he has near total control over the mario brand, or something?

i didn't read it either because it was too upsetting that someone else got to do it.

this is what i always like to point to when discussing miyamoto's genius:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-gP7sSR458

the miyamoto article in the new yorker wasnt really that good or interesting, it was written by a 'video game skeptic' & was mostly biographical detail & some investigation of 'how he thinks' but no real critical appraisal of his work.

much respect to miyamoto, but character design is window dressing over the game.
for example, dream factory and super mario 2 USA are essentially the same game.

what makes miyamoto a great designer to me is he keeps his art impulses in check,
and his process is much more discovery than creation. A dude who optimizes for fun
is performing engineering rather than artistry, like a bicycle repairman who can
squeeze and tweak the sweetest ride from your bike.

well, we're not just talking about the way the characters look; we're talking about how they behave, how they present themselves to the player, how their "personalities" are connected to the mechanics of the game, how their behavior elucidates those mechanics, the coy way they show the player what he ought to do without outright telling him.

aren't these called affordances in the UI world? there's an art to it, but it's definitely a discipline of design rather than art, and it is also an aspect that is conceptually divorced from the game. For example, the wii controller (which Miyamoto also likely shepherded) affects all these things as well, and in much the same way. Actually the more I think about it, Miyamoto's games themselves are not nearly as satisfying as the level of polish he brings to the mechanics.

miyamoto's games are about mechanics. that is practically his entire medium. it's one of the reasons people make such a big deal of him: he's an unusually pure game designer.

anyway, we've hit the inevitable wall again: i don't think it's of any use to distinguish between "design" and "art". we can however talk about what games we love and why.

"affordances" is a really good word though--i might think affordances are the primary medium, the paint, of artists who make games.

damn, this thread is really scary to open. gonna have to set aside time to read the whole thing.
But sight unseen and undoubtedly repeating others: Games are art insofar as they are the product of creative people working on music, sound, visuals, rules of play, design, etc. They are commerce too, but they don't have to be. They HAVE to be art though, almost by definition.

miyamoto's games are about mechanics

I remember reading an interview, I think, where Miyamoto was like (and I paraphrase) "We came up with a demo version of SM64, which was literally just the mechanics of how Mario moved and jumped. And controlling Mario was so satisfying an experience in and of itself that I was content to leave that as the "game". But others at Nintendo persuaded me that we actually needed levels and stuff."

Probably tongue-in-cheek, but interesting nevertheless and kind of backs up what you are saying regarding his interest in mechanics.

are games fart

"i don't think it's of any use to distinguish between "design" and "art". we can however talk about what games we love and why."

broadly speaking, the fundamental difference between design and art is that designers will use affordances to make the game-playing experience a joy, artists will use affordances to mess with you, and depending on your tolerance for being messed with, that's going to affect the kind of games you love and why.

"i might think affordances are the primary medium, the paint, of artists who make games."
the problem with this idea is that the affordances are tied into the interface elements, not necessarily the game itself. going back to the chess example, you can play chess in multiple modalities (using live people, a marble chess set, on an ipad, in your head), each with its own sets of affordances, but the game itself remains constant.

When you say miyamoto is all about mechanics, then does it make sense to speak of him as primarily a game designer rather than an interface designer? He'd be the guy making sure the chess pieces have a good weight, that they slide across the board at just the right speed, and spending maybe less time figuring out the implications of adding an en passant rule.

"i might think affordances are the primary medium, the paint, of artists who make games."
the problem with this idea is that the affordances are tied into the interface elements, not necessarily the game itself. going back to the chess example, you can play chess in multiple modalities (using live people, a marble chess set, on an ipad, in your head), each with its own sets of affordances, but the game itself remains constant.

this is a new word that you just taught me so i defer to you, but wiki sez: "An affordance is a quality of an object, or an environment, that allows an individual to perform an action." so while all those interface things you list are indeed affordances, isn't it also an affordance that a knight moves in an L and can jump over pieces? that the knight has a quality which allows a chess player to perform L-shaped jump moves with it? and this quality is granted to the knight by the game designer (in chess obviously kind of a diffuse concept as we've already been over). if i'm misusing the word then just forget it, but either way, that's part of what i mean by design, and i think it's artistic.

miyamoto does make sure the pieces have a good weight and slide across the board right, but he also designs the en passant rule: he designs how the things in the game interact with each other. like, here's a "rule" of super mario 64: if you jump against a wall and press A at the instant of contact, you fly off the wall at a 65-ish-degree angle. this is simultaneously a visual/auditory/tactile experience, a "move" in various puzzles, and one of many means by which the player can improvise interaction with the world. the en passant rule is all of these things except the first one; that's the province of people who design pieces and boards. one of the ways video games are different from chess (and maybe why people classify them differently?) is that a video game designer designs the game and the board. miyamoto's good at both--i remember reading someone somewhere enthusing just about the way mario's jump feels, about how unnaturally high it is while still having limitations, about the pleasure of the sound it makes, etc..

anyway. again, i think the best way to talk about this stuff is to talk about what works or doesn't work in specific games, and why.

(should be noted here that i'm using "miyamoto" as synecdoche for "miyamoto's team", if necessary; i don't actually know the credits on any of the games i'm talking about)

'Miyamoto was like (and I paraphrase) "We came up with a demo version of SM64, which was literally just the mechanics of how Mario moved and jumped. And controlling Mario was so satisfying an experience in and of itself that I was content to leave that as the "game". But others at Nintendo persuaded me that we actually needed levels and stuff."'

I think I'm with Miyamoto on this one, but this makes his work great neither as art nor game, but rather more like a well-crafted instrument, like a knife that's a pleasure to wave around even if you have nothing to cut. But maybe he's uniquely good at this? Every other game seems quite clumsy by comparison, or requires a ridiculous learning curve before you can appreciate its mechanics. (the button combinations on fighting games never made much intuitive sense, but obviously there are dudes who can become jedis at it)

Every other game? c'mon.

If you look at sonic, which has about the simplest interface possible (1 button), there's still a certain rigidness to the controls that make it less joyous than mario.

Every other game? c'mon!

oddworld was pretty cool

so was boy and his blob

the first serious sam was kind of art right because it made me all lollllllllll at the concept of fps

just the name 'croateam' brings a smile.