Farrell Strawberry

     Video Games as Art?

I recently found an article examining an interesting aspect of the clash between culture and technology which is relevant in today’s entertainment world: The perception of video games as an art form.

This debate has been around for a couple of years; really since the technology available to game developers allowed them to create elaborate and appealing virtual worlds with a highly detailed aesthetic, but a blog article by the popular film critic Roger Ebert entitled “Video Games Can Never Be Art” elevated it into greater public awareness. It is a debate open to much contention; as is any debate surrounding the nature of art. It doesn’t help that the question is a broad one and open to various interpretations: Can video games be sold by art dealers, shown in museums and galleries, and accepted by the art world? Can they tackle difficult issues and sensitively present us with different perspectives? If either of these options were the definition of the question being asked, the answer would be yes, but it’s not as simple as a definition. It’s usual that films are labelled “art”, and the humble moving picture was around quite a while before the media were comparing The Godfather and The Deer Hunter with famous works of the literature written by such authors as Shakespeare and Dickens. Cinema experienced the early growing pains of fast walking silent films, followed by the “talkies”, before it was widely regarded. Comparing the first video game, “Pong”, with recent epics such as Red Dead Redemption or Assassin’s Creed, would be just as irrelevant as mentioning the earliest silent films in the same sentence as modern masterpieces such as “City of God”.

 1972:

 
 2010:

Like art, video games are done for their own sake, and some certainly incorporate artistic elements such as painting, architecture, music, acting and writing. Their creation involves scholarly activities like research, travel, craft and graft. Maybe as they evolve further from the form they have currently reached, there will be more around which people can consider art because of pushing aesthetic and creative boundaries.

Some see the consideration of video games as art a sign of “cultural rot”; others as overdue recognition for the subtleties behind getting millions of people to bash the buttons on a control pad. Maybe “can video games be art” is the wrong question, and the “right” question ponders whether artists can use this medium as a method of creative expression.

Full article found at http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2010/09/can-video-games-be-art.html.