Look, if you're trying to say that some so-called "art games" are boring as fuck, sure, I'm right on board with that. I find the very idea of Dear Esther dumb, the only thing I actually like about it is that someone tried an experiment and we all got to see where it went.

But saying video games don't constitute art is silly. Shakespeare is art and in its time was lowbrow theater for the masses (think Michael Bay's Transformers, no, I'm really not shitting you, though even the worst Shakespeare plays seem more clever than Bay). I guarantee all those ancient penis vases from Greece were not all masterpieces adorning the aristocracy's homes.

So you might think I'm saying that "shitty stuff + time = art", but I'm not, what really makes art is culture + perspective. Just because Shepard Fairey runs 5000 prints of his art and sells them doesn't make them suddenly "not art". Mass production doesn't make something art or not, though it might retain a correlation with its cleverness or lack thereof.
Wouldn't that make that chess set a fine sculpture (the answer is "yes", btw).

I think you're conflating the chess set with the actual act of playing the game, which are two different things.

In the realm of video games there's a difference between the art and the experience of said art. Good art generally will produce better experiences for more people (generalization alert). The act of playing a video game is just you interacting or experiencing the art. The art is the video game itself, and since it's art that's meant to be interacted with more directly, its ability to produce an interesting experience is also one of its artistic merits.

Actually, I'm not into 'art games existing for being artsy' idea myself, but Dear Esther is fun. It doesn't sound that way, sure, but it combines exploration and narrative in really clever manner.

And I knew I was kicking a hornets' nest with this one. I realize a lot of people loved Dear Esther and thought it was brilliant. I don't intend my statement about it to be taken as anything but my personal reaction/opinion. I realize I'm in the minority on this one.

Ooooh I misinterpreted your post and thought you didn't try it. Sorry about that then, carry on.

It's certainly more than that. I've experienced countless instances of games compromising certain intended effects for the sake of being... gamey, as well as instances of games being compromised as games for the sake of achieving a certain effect.

Also, I've played and enjoyed a lot of games, but none have emotionally and intellectually stimulated me in the same way that many movies have. For example, and somewhat embarrassingly, I've watched quite a lot of movies that have the power to make me cry, but I haven't played a single game that came even close to evoking such a reaction.

Another example, I've seen Lars von Trier's Melancholia last year, and it absolutely floored me. It told me so much about, among other things, the absolutely overpowering feeling of loneliness and hopelesness that's caused by the disease called depression, and I've encountered nothing in games that felt just as evocative and powerful. Now I'm sure a lot of people find Melancholia trite, but well, I don't. I just know that games don't touch me in the same way as movies, or books, or music. And the explanation I've given for that is the only one I have.

Wow, this thread grew legs (haven't read it all ... so this has probably all been said before).

Here's my tuppence worth anyway.

My personal definition of art: Art is that which is created my one person to stimulate the senses, imagination and/or intellect of another.

The use of singular terms in the above is for brevity.

You can't actually place fixed boundaries around what art is or is not. So the argument is moot. Games cannot be included or excluded from the set of things which are defined by the term "art" because you cannot define that set.

Okay, I think I've found my problem with your argument, and it's the idea of "games being compromised as games for the sake of achieving a certain effect." What does that mean to you exactly? Because it doesn't mean anything to me. I literally just played a beautiful game called Journey that might fall under your definition of this, and I don't view it as a problem at all. Does it matter that I couldn't die, that there was no score, that there were no words? I know I'm putting words in your mouth here, I just don't know what you mean and want to make my standpoint clear on these types of issues.

As far as intellectual stimulation goes, there are plenty of games that do that. You mean stimulating in a way that you find artistically appealing? Are we saying that a certain kind of mind-expansion is better than another? Because a strategy game, for instance, is a mental workout. But I agree with you if you want to say Melancholia is too.

I don't think triteness is the issue with that movie; it has problems, but ultimately I can't think of a better representation of depression. I do think von Trier is an asshole that just liked destroying the world on film though, his films have a hateful tone buried in them from what I've seen.

Good points. I did commit this sin to ignore the most important characteristic of a video game, apart from my last example (Galatea).

Looking at the gameplay, I think that Super Mario Bros, Tetris, Lemmings, Zelda, Populous, and a lot of others (Pac-Man, Digger, Lode-Runner, Space Invaders, Breakout, Colossal Cave...) would qualify. Not to say that the descendants aren't (R-Type, Dungeon Master, etc.), but to say that looking at theses, even without the music and graphics, have a unique gameplay, and offer something beyond a competitive experience.

Theses are existing only thanks to the video game medium - they are dependent of it - and not only challenges your reflexes and your mind, but pushes you to accept their context, where you can only express yourself in their terms.

It's escapism, it's a suspension of disbelief, and it's a step, each time, into another world governed by the rules defined by their authors.

What is the artistic game experience ? Not all games offer a good experience. Bad controls, lazy gameplay, mediocre artwork, can make you stop and breaks this connection. But when it works, a great game can keep you in it's world for a while, and can make you to accept and follow it's rules. The genre isn't important, the Witcher, Portal, Radiant Silvergun qualifies, or not, depending of the player.

Not to say that your experience is any less valid than anyone else's but I was tremendously moved after playing through Omaha Beach in MOHAA, and the first few missions of CoD 1 (in much the same way that I was moved when watching some of my favorite war movies, like Patton and Letters from Iwo Jima). I had to step away from the mouse and keyboard for a little while and really think about what those people went through and what they experienced, especially since at the time I played it I would have been about the same age as the most of the people who'd actually fought there.

Braid and Eufloria are games meant to be an experience as opposed to something to be experienced, though that might sound like the same thing.

People play Gears of War to follow a narrative (however rockheaded), to get a sense of accomplishment, and a thrill.

A piece of art as another person stated is intended to make one think about something, to convey a message. This message can be implied, overt, or not even intended by the creator, but it must be there. This is why a random paint splotch made at random is not art. There is no message, unless this tells you something about the creator, which is doubtful.

Braid is an experience, it is meant to change how you perceive of reality, and of the concept of the videogame and of life goals in general.

If you don't get it already, I am not going to convince you, I am no art professor.

As background: I am involved in a lot of visual art projects (and also write for a visual art focused journal).

A] There's loads of use of game-like programing in contemporary digital art that DOES make it to galleries and museums. They are not games in the traditional way, but look and feel quite similar. Rather than having games as art you very much DO have art that explores the technology out there. They are not sold anywhere, but you can find the one or the other online.

B] Art and being free ... hm. Despite what some seem to think, here, artists - [and with that I mean people that at least do it part-time to full time] always had to work to commission at least part, often most of the time. Whether it is Beethoven or Van Gogh, Michelangelo or Ai Weiwei. It's impossible to finance serious art projects, unless you are rich, completely on your own. It really is a full time job that involves a lot more research, conceptual thinking and preparation then just going out and doing - but that also requires learning quite a bit of craft and having artistic talent. Comissions used to come from rich patrons, but now, mostly, come from cultural organisations and usually ask artists to work around a specific theme. The idea that you just simply do your own thing is seldom the case. How the process work depends - generally artists either pitch ideas to a variety of organisations and hope someone is interested, cultural organisations ask for submissions of pitches or contact specific artists they are aware of having worked on similar themes before. Even with well-known artists what they do has to fit into what the cultural organisations is doing.

So creating art - at least on the professional level - is not just about recording your own feelings, thoughts, emotions on whatever subject you just fancy. You've always have had to "follow" the market to some degree. [Rules are a bit different for those artists that break through into the collectors market - where what they do is less important than who it is by.]

Well, I should probably give a few examples to make myself clear:

The beginning of Metro 2033 is a mess in my eyes, a sequnece of different scenes in which you are at one moment in full control of your character, then there's a film sequence, then your character gets moved for you, then there's another film, then there's a fight in which you will go down, no matter what you do, then you're in control of your character again, then there's a fight which you have to survive, then a bit of walking around, another fight in which you're supposed to go down... I found it confusing and extremely annoying. I'm aware that all this is supposed to introduce a certain mood, and to set up the gameworld and the story, but to me, it spectacularly failed at that as well as on a gameplay level.

Then there's the fight against Kai Leng in Mass Effect 3, during which a sudden earthquake takes Shephard out. Again, I understand the intent - the scene's supposed to motivate the player to try and get revenge on Leng, add a bit of character development for Shepard, set up that special moment where all hope seems lost, and so on and on...
But again, I just found it annoying. That kind of thing works in a movie, but in a game, taking the player out in that fashion, in a fight against her nemesis, just seems like an incredibly cheap shot.

Finally, the Omaha Beach scene that rampancy mentioned. It's great that it worked so well for that poster, but my experience was that at first I was mightily impressed, but once I had died once or twice and figuered out that there's this kind of save, invisible corridor which I was supposed to navigate, well, the scene kind of fell apart as both an impressive battlefield scenario, and a piece of gameplay.

I guess you could argue that these problems are the result of developers not knowing the strenghts and limits of their medium, rather than any intrinsic flaws of the medium itself, but even the games by the studio that I consider to be the most savvy in that regard, Valve, often feel to me like they're papering over the cracks. But again, I'm sure the scenes I described worked just fine for many people, so... yeah.

Also, I'd like to mention the reasons for why I like to play games, in case this thread makes it seem like I don't.

- Mostly, I enjoy the challenge of a good action or strategy title.
- One thing games excel in, is exploration. Of course there are the Elder Scrolls game, but also something like Heroes of Might & Magic, or even Civilization – I find this element of games fascinating, and I feel like it takes my mind off of things.
- Well, games are the greatest construction kits in the world. Be it building structures in Minecraft, characters in RPGs, civilizations in... Civilization, squads in a football manager, settlements, economic networks... it's all super fun, the joy of creation.

Hah. Definitely, von Trier's movies, as well as many reports about the way he treats his (female) stars, paint him as a hate-filled and twisted character. But I guess that's part of what makes his work so powerful.

Edit:

Something I'd like to add, which doesn't necessarily concern the discussion directly, but which I think is very interesting nonetheless.

There's this old discussion, if it's even possible to make an anti-war movie. Some people believe that every film that depicts war can't help but glorify it in a way, by portraing it as horrifying, gripping, even exciting. Sometimes even the people responsible for a film disagree about their own work, for example the director and writer of Apocalypse Now have different opinions on whether it is pro- or anti-war (For what it's worth, I consider it to be pro-war). Personally, I tend to think it's possible to make a true anti-war movie, as long as it's light on the actual war imagery - there's an old German movie called Die Brücke (The Bridge), which comes very close.

As for games, I think it's much harder still to make a genuine anti-war statement. There's the whole distancing issue of the player being able to save and reload, for example, and of course adding obstacles to overcome adds tension and excitement. I certainly consider every war-game I've played to be strongly pro-war, including Allied Assault and the first Call of Duty (the only one I've played).

But that might actually be an argument for games as art - their ability to make a statement about such a subject.

That was sort of the point that came across to me as I was playing it; if I didn't duck the right way, or take cover in the right place, or if I got chewed up by an MG-88 nest as I'd gotten out of the landing craft, I could just do a quickload. In war, you don't have that sort of luxury. If I'd actually been there, would I have had the foresight to know where/when to be to avoid getting killed by any number of things? Likely not.

Then again, later levels like Snipertown just totally broke my immersion altogether, because it felt less like "real life" and more like a crude game of Simon; memorize where the Nazi snipers are, get killed, reload, lather, rinse, repeat. Skill, or not even luck mattered...it was the developers (or rather, the level designer) I was fighting, not the Nazis.

For me, Das Boot and All Quiet on the Western Front (I'd seen the 1979 TV film, not the original 1930 movie) are about as anti-war as you can get; in fact, IMHO, they're two of the most insightful, honest and moving cinematic statements about war that I've ever seen (and it's no coincidence that they're German in origin).

Empire of the Sun is also a great movie about war too (hard to believe that that's actually Christian Bale as that young boy).