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ITB750 Point Of View Assignment
N4459148 – Mark Allen

Games As Art

Introduction

This assignment seeks to examine the question of whether computer games can be considered to be art. To answer this question, I will be examining questions that video games raise as a new art form.

As our society moves more into an interactive world where people are given the opportunity, and in most cases, expect to be a participatory element in the world around them, why can’t the art that they observe become more interactive too?

Companies are opening up the market places for two conversations with consumers about products they bring to market, Interactive media and consumer generated content, like the movie Snakes on a Plane, where the public helped write the screenplay, Web 2.0, and the wider community’s pressure on Apple to create a product called the iPhone prove that people can interact with, and have influence over, the world around them more than ever.
Therefore, as people become active participants in the world around them and contributors to these experiences, it stands that art should be one area where this applies also.

Although there are many different aspects of video game art such as machinima, digital art work, and Game Art (manipulating computer games to produce art), we will be centring on commercial computer games as the focus for this assignment.

Point of View

When we look at definitions of art, we find explanations such as “the products of human creativity, and the creation of beautiful or significant things” (wordnet, 2008). These are loose definitions that can be applied to art and games at will. However, to answer this question fully, we must look more in depth at what is art.
Art and artistic endeavour cover a range of styles and genres such as visual (painting, drawing etc), literature, sculpture, musical, performance, film, technological. This last item “technological” is a new addition to the list of genres. It refers to the art that makes use of electronic media and technology used to create pieces of art.

Computer games have opened up new possibilities and dimensions for artists to work with and in. it is completely different from any other medium used to create art, and therefore we can’t look at any of the traditional definitions of art to try to define it. As Gee (2006, p. 58) argues that games’ distinct artistic status require us to develop unique interpretative frameworks. Videogames are a new art form. That is one reason why now is the right time for game studies. The importance of this claim is this: As a new art form, one largely immune to traditional tools developed for the analysis of literature and film, videogames will challenge us to develop new analytical tools and will become a new type of “equipment for living”.

Jenkins (2005, p. 313), who convincingly argued that games represent a new lively art, one as appropriate for the digital age as those earlier media were for the machine age. They open up new aesthetic experiences and transform the computer screen into a realm of experimentation and innovation that is broadly accessible. And games have been embraced by a public that has otherwise been unimpressed by much of what passes for digital art.

However, the wider art community is hesitant to accept computer games as art because while it is often interactive, participatory, and dynamic “real art” considered to be passive, exclusionary, and static/fixed.
In answer to this, Tolstoy (1996, p. 126), states that art is every work of art causes the receiver to enter into a certain kind of relationship both with him who produced, or is producing, the art, and with all those who, simultaneously, previously, or subsequently, receive the same artistic impression”.

Although I am arguing that the games themselves as a whole (the immersion, game environment and game play) are the art form, there have been games in the past that have focused more heavily on art direction. These games have brought a more artistic feel to the users’ experience.

It is essential to understand that games are a massive industry and the primary drive of commercial computer game manufacture is for the pursuit of profit through the entertainment and enjoyment of consumers. We therefore have to acknowledge the fact that the majority of games are produced with no consideration of it’s standing in the artistic community. However, this is also true of a company that produces an arbitrary product such as a urinal, despite the fact that this very urinal was made famous as an important cultural art icon by artist Duchamp through the Dadaism movement.

There was much opposition when this movement was first formed and it was dismissed in the early days as not being art, much like the current predicament facing video games as art. It is therefore important to note that computer games don’t fit into any of the established art genres much the same way that Dadaism didn’t and needed to define its own genre.

Adding to this, Clarke and Mitchell (2007, p. 217) state that video games as an art form is a constantly evolving and mutating field meaning that the work is very diverse and cannot be easily defined in terms of its themes, technology, or techniques.

Conclusion

We have argued through our findings that computer games fit into the definition of art, being a product of human creativity. However, while computer games are loosely grouped into the ‘technological’ category of art genres, they have opened up a vast and broad reaching genre of their very own that has spawned new styles such as machinima, digital images, and Games Art.

We therefore find ourselves at the beginning of a new genre in the art word where eager artists have a new medium to explore and experiment with. Being a totally new medium, we find ourselves struggling to define and describe it using conventional tools and techniques used to define other genres such as film, performance or literature.

It is important for us to take notice of history and not dismiss this new art form as it is in its early stages, remembering that much of what is considered art today was not classed as art at the time of its production.

References

Clarke, A. & Mitchell, G. (2007)
“Videogames and art”. UK: Intellect Books

Gee, J. P. (2006), “Why Game Studies Now? Video Games: A New Art Form”,
Games & Culture, vol. 1, pp. 58-61. Wisconsin: Sage Publications.

Jenkins, H. (2005) “Games, the New Lively Art”. In Hartley, J. (Ed). Creative
Industries. (pp. 312-27). London: Blackwell Publishing.

Tolstoy, L. (1996), “What is art?” (New Ed edition).
(pp. 126). Australia: Penguin Classics

Definition: art (2008). Retrieved March 26, 2008 from
wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn