Yes. Next question

keenmaster486 wrote on Today, 04:34:

Yes. Next question

Done in one.

It takes time for a new entertainment medium to be considered "art". It was the same with cinema in the early days.

Theater was prestigious. Film wasn't. Serious actors didn't do cinema work. It was beneath them, and would ruin their reputations. Or if you couldn't make it on the stage you made films instead.

It took about 20 years for films to go from a sideshow attraction to "serious" entertainment.

Yes, they are.

Play something like The Last of Us, or more recently, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 and see for yourself. Both games have high quality storytelling, and are on pair with some cinema classics, at least in my view.

Yes, like all forms of entertainment it can be considered art - it sits alongside tv and films as a visual art and has a bonus of being interactive giving another medium of "doing art" 😀

This is a classic troll from Roger Ebert. No one ever actually reads what he wrote and instead just gives some baseline response, which cracks me up even more.

His basic point is that games can contain art or can become art, but a game and art are by definition different things. No one is arguing that chess should be considered art (that I know of...). A game exists to be played.

It's an interesting perspective. Ultimately this whole issue is a matter of definition, and people may disagree with his definition.

But the real kicker is what he says at the end: Why do gamers get so upset about this? Are they seeking validation because the general public has a negative image of games? That question to me is more interesting than the original.

I don't seek art from the games I play. I seek enjoyment.

I think it really depends on how you define "art".

For some it means "pleasing to look at", and in this case many video games do count IMHO - (and some people in certain professions might find simple lines - straight or squiggly - pleasing...)

For me, "art" is pretty much any expression of creativity - not just a pleasing painting or drawing ... It includes things like: a nice mechanical design, a good/functional computer program ... and in this case video games definitely apply.

So, to me video games register on both definitions - but "art" is so subjective I'm sure there are many who would disagree with me.

They're something made by people through their own creativity, whether it's being creative in algorithm design or in the graphical design, or the story design, or ex cetera. So they're art.
I'm probably a little extreme on the view (and maybe biased too), since I see even just programming as a form of creativity and of expressing yourself where most probably don't, but I very much think video games are art.

To partly play devil's advocate, from the perspective of an art critic, there is some incentive to seek a more refined definition of art beyond just pleasing to look at or anything made by people through their own creativity (which are fine definitions for most people).

By establishing a higher criteria for what is considered art, we can focus attention more easily on it. I could creatively splash mud all over the sidewalk in front of my house, but that doesn't mean it deserves the same critical attention as truly profound works of art. But of course some people are very against that idea and do want art to essentially be anything. I think Ebert was just conservative in that regard.

There are the creative arts and the visual arts.

"Videogames" is so broad and encompasses so many areas of endeavor as to almost defy description.

However, games are firmly more in the creative arts (as is writing) than in the visual arts. Comparing a 1980 video arcade game to a 2025 game is meaningless. The 1980 game is "art". So is its arcade cabinet, the images on the cabinet, the brochures and literature on the game, as well as the creative analogue circuit design of the people who made the the circuit boards in the cabinet and the actual 8-bit code in the game's ROMs.

The 2025 game? Yes, it's "art" but it is the art of perhaps 500 - 1000 people instead of only one person in the 1980 game (or perhaps, a dozen on the entire creative team). So, mass art verses individual art.

Even more absurdly, "art" can be interpreted as meaning everything within the pantheon of human creativity.