@BryanH: Even at 5 years old, WoW still has some of the most impressive artwork in any game on any platform *period*. Blizzard are true masters of their craft, of efficiency and of gorgeous hand painted artwork. Very few developers can boast even HALF of the artistic achievement that Blizzard's artists do.
For me, WoW is one of the absolute best-looking games on the market. It doesn't have next-gen shader technology, HDR lighting, or super high res textures. What it does have is absolutely fucking incredible art design.
Taking the boat into Howling Fjord for the first time after WotLK came out was one of the most visually beautiful moments I've ever seen in a game.
It's like, something like Crysis is a really great looking game. Amazing lighting and textures and all of that, but that's really where it stops. I'll sit there for a few minutes and think to myself "Wow, this is really realistic", but that's really just being impressed by the technology, it doesn't make the game world any more interesting to me.
WoW just has such a unique, diverse aesthetic that you can't help but want to explore every inch of that world. It's a real testament to the importance of art design when a game like (Strictly speaking) graphical dinosaur like WoW does far more for me visually than all the fancy Crytek lighting in the world ever could.
That was a good read, and a surprisingly fair article. Still, I must disagree with his calling video games Violence Pornography, and especially with his exception of Miyamoto.
I don't see how jumping on top of and crushing to death an innocent crab is any better than shooting somebody. Miyamoto's games are just as violent as any, but simply portrayed much more innocently.
Another thing I must say: Despite my frustration towards people who know so little about games, I like the way it is now. I like the inclusiveness of the games media, and I love the culture.
Deep down, I don't ever want hardcore gaming to become as mainstream as novel or film.
@lllusionx: Hmkay, let's not call it the end so soon, shall we?
By that definition, paintings, sculptures, theater and books are worse than video games? Since you just look at them and don't interact with them. Is the upcoming Dante's Inferno 'better' than Dante's Commedia del Arte? Is Macbeth worse than GTA?
The trick to all art is that one form of art does engage you in some ways other forms of art can't. Compare poetry and literature. One has verse, rythm and gives a snapshot of an emotion. Literature has more scope, allowing the author a bigger palette to work with: plot, character building, development etc.
Of course, both can switch places and in that way innovate.
Video games can do that, but, in order to be better, can't encompass all of the arts, without comprimising some aspects and enforcing others. MGS can emulate movies, but it takes away the interaction. Mario can invoke the speed and rythm of music through it's platforming, but is a bit thin plotwise.
Two things hamper video games at the moment:
One, they still have the steepest learning curve of all media, both to make and to participate in. Making a game is harder than, for instance, making a movie. Instead of relying on real world physics or physicality, you have to make it yourself. Playing games requires a intuitive grasp of the controller layout and conventions, moreso than watching a painting. While other art forms have made it easier to get into over the ages, gaming has raised the bar.
Two, any authorial power the creator has is reliant on the participant. Imagine showing the Mona Lisa to someone and that person decides to paint in a moustache.
That's basically the same as what happens in some video games.
But, in the end, I'd have to agree with Mr. Lanchester: video games are becoming less art media, but more like art tools. They're more like portals to worlds in which you create your own art.
"Games are not, in general, better than films," Lanchester writes. "But they are often better than huge-budget Hollywood films." They're not terribly better than television programming either, he says."
Whenever someone tries to make an statement validating art in terms of quality, I immediately become suspicious. I truthfully do not think it is a question of what is "better" in terms of what medium can do more. If you want to follow that logic, then the "Sistine Chapel" is a far inferior work than "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" because the pictures in "Pluto Nash" move and talk and the Sistine Chapel's pictures do not.
Each Medium offers a sensory experience that isn't superior or inferior to another: its just different.
@Richard Winterton: I think you misread that sentiment. Lanchester isn't comparing mediums relative to what they can do; he's comparing the content and presentation shown to the audience. Games are not terribly better than either TV programming or films because there have been precious few examples that try and reach beyond--to borrow his phrasing--pornography, while we can name a great number of films (to keep within his article) that tackle much weightier subjects.
The way I read it, he's essentially saying that games are often better than films like, say, Die Hard 4 in regards to mindless entertainment value; however, there has arguably been no game that can provoke the same sort of thought as a Bergman film.
Allow me to elaborate on my previous thought: while I believe that a game with a narrative as thought-provoking as the aforementioned titles is quite possible (with, IMHO, Planescape coming so close to grasping that golden ring), this is also a relatively trivial matter; after all, such a task only requires a good (okay, GREAT) writer. But I'm hesitant to believe that a game could achieve a Dosteovskyian-scope through the frameworks that make a game a game--most crucially, interaction and the mechanic of play.
I think Team Ico's works have often come tantalizingly close, but they tackle a relatively shallow scope of thought, compared to some other artistic cornerstones.
Did I mention that the Lanchester article is really quite good? It's well worth the time.
In my opinion, a game will only be art to me if it can make me put the controller down, look at it and think about what I'm feeling at the moment.
And as contrived and spewed out the mouth of a hundred raving fanboys that it is, so far only Ico and Shadow of the Colossus have made me do that. At points in those games, I just stopped and looked at it, lost in whatever emotion i was feeling from it.
The problem people have with calling games art, is that they're commercial products with hardly any (visible) examples of something akin to traditional studio art that can be put on display in a museum. Of course, this ignores the modern and post-modern art movements where just about anything can be art.
Some of the most highly praised art, are pieces that were commissioned by someone, (Michelangelo as just one example). Meaning the artist got paid to make the art. Just because few artists actually live off of the sales of the art they create, doesn't mean they don't want to.
I saw a performance art piece at my school with a naked Asian girl walking around inside a plastic bubble poking a TV playing only static. If that was art, then games are art as well.
@Shinta: My college english teacher wanted us to write a paper on art and showed us pictures of some container filled with a guys urine and had a cross on the bottom of it that the guy took a picture of and the government thought it was good enough "art" to give him $100,000. If that is art, then the crappiest of shovelware is art.
I dunno, if Shadow of the Colossus isn't art after almost bringing me to tears at the end of it (something a movie has never done) then I don't know what is.
I'll say that not all games are art, but ones that put you IN the character's body is.
I would add Braid and Persona to that list. I would also say that the Katamari games function at least as well as experimental interactive art as any I've seen around.
Also, on an apples/apples basis, blockbuster games have become far, far, far more artistic than blockbuster films. And fantasy RPGs are a lot more involving than fantasy films since LotR faded into the sunset.
It's way more complicated than comparing Gears of War to Brothers Karamazov and will only get more so as people find ways to tell the story in the context of pleasurable interactivity.
Also, I agree; when you are the main character, you get a window into yourself like any good art will give you.
That was a surprisingly well-balanced piece. It's a valid concern; while I believe that the notion that games are art is a non-issue, it is at this point questionable as to whether they will have the same cultural impact and weight as, say, literature.
Looking over my favorite books, I can't imagine how some of them could be translated into game form. Could a game ask the same questions, explore the same sort of narrative conundrums as Kundera's Immortality? Or Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor? Marquez's Hundred Years? Will we ever have a Brothers Karamazov? It's difficult for me to fathom a game being able to encompass themes as complex as these titles, but I'm sure that there are people who are much brighter and more creative than I diligently working at it this very moment.
I want Roger Ebert to keep his nose out of my medium. He is a man on the outside, looking in, and passing judgment on a medium with which he has no experience. I don't care if he has the worst or best things to say about games, because the fact of the matter is, he doesn't know what's up and what's down with them. I wouldn't ask a music critic to judge a painting, and I wouldn't expect a man who has spent his life critiquing visual storytelling to have any kind of understanding of a a form of art which does not even need to carry a story (read: puzzle games, arcade games, etc.). I just want him to go away. Enjoy his retirement. Go to Hawaii. Just quit judging my games.
06/15/09
06/15/09
06/15/09
For me, WoW is one of the absolute best-looking games on the market. It doesn't have next-gen shader technology, HDR lighting, or super high res textures. What it does have is absolutely fucking incredible art design.
Taking the boat into Howling Fjord for the first time after WotLK came out was one of the most visually beautiful moments I've ever seen in a game.
It's like, something like Crysis is a really great looking game. Amazing lighting and textures and all of that, but that's really where it stops. I'll sit there for a few minutes and think to myself "Wow, this is really realistic", but that's really just being impressed by the technology, it doesn't make the game world any more interesting to me.
WoW just has such a unique, diverse aesthetic that you can't help but want to explore every inch of that world. It's a real testament to the importance of art design when a game like (Strictly speaking) graphical dinosaur like WoW does far more for me visually than all the fancy Crytek lighting in the world ever could.
06/15/09
"It's a real testament to the importance of art design when a (Strictly speaking) graphical dinosaur like WoW..."
06/15/09
06/15/09
A room full of star wars memorabilia
A room full comic books
A room full anime pvc figures
are just as effective.
12/31/08
I don't see how jumping on top of and crushing to death an innocent crab is any better than shooting somebody. Miyamoto's games are just as violent as any, but simply portrayed much more innocently.
Another thing I must say: Despite my frustration towards people who know so little about games, I like the way it is now. I like the inclusiveness of the games media, and I love the culture.
Deep down, I don't ever want hardcore gaming to become as mainstream as novel or film.
12/31/08
12/31/08
12/31/08
By that definition, paintings, sculptures, theater and books are worse than video games? Since you just look at them and don't interact with them. Is the upcoming Dante's Inferno 'better' than Dante's Commedia del Arte? Is Macbeth worse than GTA?
The trick to all art is that one form of art does engage you in some ways other forms of art can't. Compare poetry and literature. One has verse, rythm and gives a snapshot of an emotion. Literature has more scope, allowing the author a bigger palette to work with: plot, character building, development etc.
Of course, both can switch places and in that way innovate.
Video games can do that, but, in order to be better, can't encompass all of the arts, without comprimising some aspects and enforcing others. MGS can emulate movies, but it takes away the interaction. Mario can invoke the speed and rythm of music through it's platforming, but is a bit thin plotwise.
Two things hamper video games at the moment:
One, they still have the steepest learning curve of all media, both to make and to participate in. Making a game is harder than, for instance, making a movie. Instead of relying on real world physics or physicality, you have to make it yourself. Playing games requires a intuitive grasp of the controller layout and conventions, moreso than watching a painting. While other art forms have made it easier to get into over the ages, gaming has raised the bar.
Two, any authorial power the creator has is reliant on the participant. Imagine showing the Mona Lisa to someone and that person decides to paint in a moustache.
That's basically the same as what happens in some video games.
But, in the end, I'd have to agree with Mr. Lanchester: video games are becoming less art media, but more like art tools. They're more like portals to worlds in which you create your own art.
TL;DR, maybe?
12/30/08
12/30/08
There are art houses if I need art. If I want to have fun, there are video games. Don't make my video games NOT FUN by making them art. That is all.
12/30/08
12/30/08
Whenever someone tries to make an statement validating art in terms of quality, I immediately become suspicious. I truthfully do not think it is a question of what is "better" in terms of what medium can do more. If you want to follow that logic, then the "Sistine Chapel" is a far inferior work than "The Adventures of Pluto Nash" because the pictures in "Pluto Nash" move and talk and the Sistine Chapel's pictures do not.
Each Medium offers a sensory experience that isn't superior or inferior to another: its just different.
12/30/08
The way I read it, he's essentially saying that games are often better than films like, say, Die Hard 4 in regards to mindless entertainment value; however, there has arguably been no game that can provoke the same sort of thought as a Bergman film.
12/30/08
I think Team Ico's works have often come tantalizingly close, but they tackle a relatively shallow scope of thought, compared to some other artistic cornerstones.
Did I mention that the Lanchester article is really quite good? It's well worth the time.
12/30/08
In my opinion, a game will only be art to me if it can make me put the controller down, look at it and think about what I'm feeling at the moment.
And as contrived and spewed out the mouth of a hundred raving fanboys that it is, so far only Ico and Shadow of the Colossus have made me do that. At points in those games, I just stopped and looked at it, lost in whatever emotion i was feeling from it.
It doesn't have to be popular to be art.
12/31/08
12/30/08
12/31/08
Some of the most highly praised art, are pieces that were commissioned by someone, (Michelangelo as just one example). Meaning the artist got paid to make the art. Just because few artists actually live off of the sales of the art they create, doesn't mean they don't want to.
12/30/08
12/30/08
12/31/08
12/30/08
I dunno, if Shadow of the Colossus isn't art after almost bringing me to tears at the end of it (something a movie has never done) then I don't know what is.
I'll say that not all games are art, but ones that put you IN the character's body is.
12/30/08
sorry.
I would add Braid and Persona to that list. I would also say that the Katamari games function at least as well as experimental interactive art as any I've seen around.
Also, on an apples/apples basis, blockbuster games have become far, far, far more artistic than blockbuster films. And fantasy RPGs are a lot more involving than fantasy films since LotR faded into the sunset.
It's way more complicated than comparing Gears of War to Brothers Karamazov and will only get more so as people find ways to tell the story in the context of pleasurable interactivity.
Also, I agree; when you are the main character, you get a window into yourself like any good art will give you.
12/30/08
Looking over my favorite books, I can't imagine how some of them could be translated into game form. Could a game ask the same questions, explore the same sort of narrative conundrums as Kundera's Immortality? Or Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor? Marquez's Hundred Years? Will we ever have a Brothers Karamazov? It's difficult for me to fathom a game being able to encompass themes as complex as these titles, but I'm sure that there are people who are much brighter and more creative than I diligently working at it this very moment.
12/30/08
12/30/08
12/30/08
Wait...I'm seeing sixteen ass flaunting Master Cheif's running around on matchmaking...
Ugh...pass. Violence will do.
12/31/08
12/13/08