Ethrin
Junior Member
Loves shooters, but sux at em.
Posts: 99
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Post by Ethrin on Jan 24, 2007 22:15:53 GMT -5
I think a forum friend of mine put it best: Video Games are more craft than art. I liken them to an Ukyo-e woodcut print. There is a team of people involved in the very creation of the print: -The artist who sketches what goes on each of the coloring blocks. -Carvers who tape the sketches to a wood block and carefully chisel the sketches out of the wood itself. -Printers who apply ink to the wood blocks and stamp them.
Video games are the same way, only even more frantic. The artists were subject to marketing trends, pressure to produce and many other problems that can make working in video games hell(yes, I work as a game designer at a small developer. I know these hellacious pressures first hand!)
Much like Van Gough's and Picasso's paintings, Ukyo-e wood prints were not really considered art at the time they were released. Once the western world recognized how much Ukyo-e contributed to the craft of Graphic Design and the impressionism movement, it was elevated to the artistic status it deserves.
Will this same sort of thing happen to video games? Sadly, it's going to take time to tell.
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Post by dartagnan1803 on Jan 26, 2007 15:48:34 GMT -5
^Exalt for the truth. Art doesn't need to be creative to be considered a marvelous work.
Look at Michelangelo's 'David' Depicting holy subjects was always popular back then. So deciding on David wasn't anything original. But it truly is an amazingly great accomplishment. . .to create such a statue.
Art can be a craft as well. Color coordination on a house may not be in the same league as Van Gogh, but that doesn't keep it from being art.
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Ethrin
Junior Member
Loves shooters, but sux at em.
Posts: 99
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Post by Ethrin on Jan 26, 2007 18:00:55 GMT -5
>dartagnan1803 Art takes craft to create and the product of a craftsman can be very artistic. For what's being argued here, "craft" is a very nebulous term. I've used it in several ways that could be confusing.
Another thing I didn't mention in my previous post is the nature in which art is created vs crafts. It's a really big point so I'm feeling really stupid. The commercial nature of crafts(a profession or trade) vs art(commissioned by wealthy patrons.)
Historically craftsman create commercial products, just like a game developer. It's our trade. People can still be creative, but the fact that you've got to make your product sellable put some constraints on you. I could carve some artistic designs into the legs of a chair, but since people will be expecting a chair, I have to make sure the customer can sit on it.
I try and design the most enjoyable experience possible given my limits. Alas, ultimately, my goal is to create a product that sells, not the most amazing and fun game in existance. There was only one "David" made, but unfortunately, that's not a sustainable business model. ^^;;
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Post by YourAverageJoe on Jan 26, 2007 18:06:04 GMT -5
Ethrin, that makes the most sense in this discussion. Just look at Sega's DC years: appearantly a rich fan of Sega bought them up and kept them supported. This gave the developers much more freedom, making many of the gems the DC's known for.
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Post by jameseightbitstar on Jan 31, 2007 0:17:51 GMT -5
Something I was reading earlier today made me think of another reason games would never be taken seriously as an art form. It goes like this: Literary scholars and movie critics tend to know all about their respective mediums, no matter how niche things get. But gamers tend to not know anything.
For example, Wolfenstein and Doom were both considered revolutionary for their 3D engines, yet there were already games well before them that did even better 3D engines. Mario 64 is considered revolutionary for being the first 3D action/adventure game, but again, it was not. Let's not even mention how people are all over Grand Theft Auto because you can kill people, a featue that's been around in games since 1980.
Gamers almost insist on ignorance. For example, if I pointed out that System Shock came before Doom and had a superior 3D engine that allowed for overpasses and rooms above rooms (something Doom did not), people would argue that its "not really the same type of game." Nevermind that game code doesn't recognize genre distinctions and a 3D engine is a 3D engine, people will still use such BS arguements to pretend that the "revolutionary" games really were revolutionary.
The biggest arguement against "games as art" though, is that gaming is all too commercial. Gamers let the industry tell them what features they're supposed to look for in games--I garuntee you that NO RPG fan was looking for a "good storyline" in 1987, and anyone who says they were is either misremembering or lying.
And as mentioned elsewhere, our concept of "classic games" is shallow, meaning nothing more than "games that sold well on initial release." It has nothing to do with quality and everything to do with hype. I know, some of you are saying "Well movies and books are no different--a classic movie is one that sells millions, a classic book is one that sells billions of copies," to which I can prove you wrong with only a few titles: Moby Dick, Sherlock Holmes, and It's a Wonderful Life. None of these things started out popular or had the kind of overnight success the gaming industry practically forces on its products--in fact Moby Dick didn't become popular until FIFTY YEARS after its initial release. Sure, commercial value is involved, but only in gaming does commercial value seem to be the only thing that matters.
By this point, "games as art" is pretty much a laughable concept. Games are art in the same way a bunch of boxes stacked in a corner is.
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Post by dai jou bu on Jan 31, 2007 4:38:38 GMT -5
Well, I do agree with you on the ignorance part, since the general reaction from this provides a pretty good example of it. I also agree that this is mostly a commercial thing and it's going to take a long time before videogames are recognized by the mainstream as art because of the emphasis in the Western markets to push for MORE REALISM, which I wouldn't mind if they did something more creative other than first-person shooters and D&D-based RPGs nowadays. It doesn't help that some of the more creative developers for the PC went under either. However, there are some modern examples of where games do feel like art, although you have to look very hard in order to find them. Senko no Ronde sticks to its theme of circles and lights very well all throughout the entire game. Cave Story was made simply because it can be made. Same thing with Kenta Cho's games. The people who made Nebacular Drop were recognized by Valve and recruited to make a mini-game for their upcoming Half-Life episode. I suppose the biggest example I can come up with right now of something I can truly consider an art is the arcade version of THE iDOLM@STER, wich at first feels like any other tired old dating sim done for the nth time in Japan. However, it's a concept I've been waiting to happen for a long time since it actually tries to make it feel like a real simulation by making it so not only are you competing for the high score on that machine you're playing on, you're actually competing against every single player across the nation as the machines are all networked together. Not only that, but the best players are actually broadcast on the local monitors that show the top idols for that day. The game uses a touchscreen, although the level of interaction between your idol with it seems pretty primitive at the moment, but it's at least a start. Then you can have the option of having your idol send you actual text messages onto your cellphone, which makes sense since you're her producer, and it'd be nice if you can communicate to them without having to sit in front of a game machine, just like in real life, right? When it was ported to the Xbox 360, the graphics and dance choreography received a huge facelift and could be mistaken for an anime at this point. It kind of sucks that the touchscreen and cellphone system didn't survive the transition intact though. But all of this stuff I just mentioned (well, maybe not Portal) a good majority of the mainstream doesn't know about. Like you said earlier, unless more credible sources of videogame information show themselves to the public masses, we're never going to really get out of this rut.
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