Usually, when such a question is asked, they want to prove to the bullies that games are an art, they tear their shirt and pants, in negligee they look for confirmation from Wikipedia or in the books of great thinkers. And no one thinks what is the point of these games and what does it all lead to?. The purpose of this article is to look at this issue from a different perspective.
Art as a term has many uses, all of which mean different things and are used differently in real life. For example, for classical art criticism, art is a term for painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts. Everything that is studied by art criticism, and if you didn’t know, art criticism does not study cinema, photography and even literature, where should games go?. And players, as people less familiar with the term, use art as the maximum praise for a product that they really liked or, as in the case of journalists and bloggers, which they cannot and do not want to explain. Such a “new” use of a term is, of course, normal for society; terms that fall into widespread use are always used inappropriately and lose their original meaning, which does not lead to anything positive. But this is so, examples for the introduction to expose the emphasis of the article. My name is Alexander, I am the founder of Pattern Player and a game developer, and the article is a transcript of this video. See you at the end of the article.
Are games art??
We’ll highlight three different forms of art and see how games work with each of them.
First image – this is art as a separate media. Video games are media, cinema is media, literature is media and is art as media, that is, a certain, unique form with its own structure, tools, rules of work, ideology, goals. Media art is a media of thought and it does not have its own material form, so it uses the form and tools of other media. For example, video game uniforms and tools. This process is reminiscent of “Men in Black”, if you put a cockroach inside a person, he will have the goals of a cockroach, the needs of a cockroach, in general he will become a cockroach, but in the shell of a person. And if you put art inside the game, the game becomes: in this case, an interactive performance,
and in this https://noaccount-casinos.co.uk/crypto-casino-no-kyc/ case an interactive installation.
That is, interaction with the game follows the logic of a performance or a museum installation, naturally, the aesthetics of the game slightly changes consumption, but at its center these are already established trends in contemporary art, which have simply gone digital. In general, as is clear from the above, such a game loses its identity and is no longer a game. This process is inevitable both when creating interactive art from scratch and when interpreting classic video games. For example, Mario, as a prominent representative of the classic game, will suffer the same fate when meeting with the media of art. Only it’s not Mario himself that will change, but judgments about him, which will go into the field of philosophy or all sorts of fun things, under the guise of interesting ideas for exhibitions, for example, exhibiting the game code as a painting. A game is a priori not art in this definition, just as a game is not cinema or sculpture. After all, art in this case is another media, the structure and ideas of which contradict the ideas and goals of video games. As a conclusion, this definition of art is not applicable to video games, but exists in parallel and does not affect them in any way, that is, it does not explore and is not interested in them as video games.
Second image – this is art as creativity. That is, any video game is art a priori, since it is a creative activity. Any. This definition of art is not used, and no one is interested, since people want to oppress everything that they do not like. And this is where the third definition of art comes to their aid.
Third image – this is art as a philosophical term that comprehends creative activity, its foundations, meanings and goals. Absolutely all interpretations made in this vein will lead to disagreement, the separation of art and non-art, the elitization of certain games and the humiliation of others. In general, they will split the video game media and, along with it, society into warring parts, which interferes with the development of the video games themselves and is contrary to human development and the culturalization of society. This wonderful option is used in video game media. He adds to the question “which is better: ps or xbox” another holivar, which is presented in the first episode of interactive criticism in STEAM, if you haven’t played it – the link is in the afterword. Art in this version is designed to determine which game is useful for man and society, and which game leads him to degradation. The question “are games art” in this context is not possible; it transforms into another question – “which games are art”. That is, art is not interested in games as such, it simply “takes away in its van the game that catches its fancy”.
What does the adoption of this term by games lead to: disrespect for games and their interests; to confirmation that games are entertainment for children and cattle, and art is games with a “certain skull shape and appearance”.
So what can I sum it up: go to hell with your art!
Afterword
This article/video declares the first fundamental principle of criticism. We affirm the importance and self-sufficiency of media. Video games, like any other media, are higher than art, more important than art (as a philosophical term), and before we start talking about video games, we need to abandon everything that interferes with the self-determination of media, with video games understanding themselves. Art as a philosophical term is not a term of love for media or created to understand media, first of all it is part of a social utopia, something with which creativity should help build an ideal person. This vector gives rise to the erroneous opinion that the work is important due to its morality and the seriousness of the ideas conveyed. Forgetting, ignoring, or simply not realizing that the main and most serious value of a work is an understanding of its structure, not game design, not code, but how a ready-made “organism” works. This is what real criticism does.
Text author: Alexander Polutov – video game developer and theorist, participant of the leading international festivals of independent video games IndieCade Europe 2016, 13th International Mobile Gaming Awards Global, judge of IMGA Global.