So I wrote this short little thing on Games as Art (Late to the Party)

[Kim]

I'm just gonna say that playing a game to see the 'plot' come to fruition is probably the worst reason to buy or play a game. If you want to experience a good story, why not watch a movie or read a book, almost all of which have better and more concise plots and stories than videogames, and none of which require you to perform tasks in order to experience the stories?

Augh...

Just.... aaaaaaauuuuuuuuggggggggggghhhhhhhhhh...

1. The involvement of the player allows for a story experience that would be impossible to get in any other artistic medium.

2. Games can make you feel things that other artistic mediums can not.

3. Because video games allow the player to experience longer, more complex stories than would be available in other forms of entertainment, without it being restricted to mere prose. It ultimately works because games are not designed to be experience in one sitting, and the combination of gameplay and story can, when well paced, deliver both an enjoyable story experience and an enjoyable gameplay experience, without either being sacrificed for the other.

4. Because a story where the person experiencing it has some impact on how events unfold, especially when well executed, will mean more to that person.

5. Because you get a different variety of stories than you would in other forms of entertainment.

6. Because any number of things that it didn't occur to me to add into this post.

EDIT: AAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

[Lumenskir]

I'm gonna say that I agree with everything you say NonCon, but the point still stands that a vast majority (all but one or two or maybe a handful I haven't personally played) don't realize those points. Instead, the stories are doled out piecemeal in between level grinding (or just levels) instead of intrinsically becoming the actual story itself. So when you say that you're playing a modern game for the 'story', you're really just playing for the cutscenes that show a bunch of characters talking/doing stuff you the player can't do, until you resume control and do puzzles and gameplay to reach the next piece of story being doled out in a subpar movie or block of poorly written text.

I personally think that videogames are suffering from the scourge of storytelling. Designers are so worried about the players having any amount of confusion over what they're motivation is that they make 'stories' and scenarios that leave absolutely no doubt for the player. You'll always know that you have to do (because games are rule and outcome based, and we as players need to know what outcome we should be aiming for) to the point that any subtle signpost tends to get blown up into a giant set of railroads. Forget 'show, don't tell' when you're dealing with people who believe their audience only wants 'tell tell tell'.

That's why things like SotC and Another World are such wonders, things approaching high art. There's only enough tell to point you towards the right path. The majority of the story in SotC is you the player finding the monsters, killing them, and witnessing the horrific aftermath, with minimal authorial voice informing you that you should be ashamed or terrified of what you're doing. It actually has a theme it's exploring through its medium, and it's only realized by the player actually playing the game, rather than the designer telling you through an NPC (*cough* Bioshock *cough*). Another World is similar, but vastly beyond, since it has much fewer places where the character loses control.

[Kim]

SMT Strange Journey put me into difficult moral dilemmas and ultimately made me feel guilty about the alignment I sided with, in spite of the fact that I was siding with what I thought was good.

Prince of Persia 2008, a game I personally hated, managed to make me feel a sense of loss about a character with gameplay rather than a cutscene.

Contact managed to turn my normal treatment of video game characters against me in its last moments.

Both Persona 4, Mass Effect 2, and Dragon Age: Origins left how well most of the characters in the game were fleshed out up to me, and encouraged me to get to know them all through the gameplay.

The Mother trilogy used its reliance on fairly standard jRPG mechanics to turn them on their head and make the endings of all three games more fulfilling and emotionally powerful by doing so.

Bioshock gave you complete control over your actions for almost the entirety of the story, and that made the scene where you had no control over your actions more powerful.

Etc.

These are all things I have never seen outside of video games. I've never seen an equivalent outside of video games. I could come up with plenty more examples. To say that video games can never be art is ridiculous. To say they aren't art right now is ignoring so many brilliant things only possible in an interactive medium.

[Magus]

Meh, we're arguing about nothing, really. Lumenskir only considers really good attempts at art to be art, whereas I say they're all art but some are bad and some are good, whatever. Same difference, if you use the term "high art" or "art" and they seem interchangeable between different people. We all agree games are an artform and can be art, even if we disagree on which have reached it, or if any.

At least we agree on Shadow of the Colossus, and I've heard great things about Another World, too, that's the cel-shaded one for the SNES right? Out of this World, it's called in the U.S., related to the game Flashback. Mother 3 is art, too, and I'll throw in Max Payne 2, let's call it day.

By the way, yes, we are totally hilarious! This is obvious.

[Jagos]

Maybe we're looking at it wrong...

What games, are the best in the form of art?

For convenience, I'll list a few:

Metal Gear Solid - Pacing, story...

Earthbound series - Though it never quite looked the best, it told a great story in all 3 games.

Chrono Trigger - Stated above, great art, story...

Ico - For sheer art in to the nth degree...

Flower - stated above, and shot down:

"Flower". A run-down city apartment has a single flower on the sill, which leads the player into a natural landscape. The game is "about trying to find a balance between elements of urban and the natural." Nothing she shows from this game seemed of more than decorative interest on the level of a greeting card. Is the game scored? She doesn't say. Do you win if you're the first to find the balance between the urban and the natural? Can you control the flower? Does the game know what the ideal balance is?

Braid - This was actually shot down by Ebert:

This is a game "that explores our own relationship with our past...you encounter enemies and collect puzzle pieces, but there's one key difference...you can't die." You can go back in time and correct your mistakes. In chess, this is known as taking back a move, and negates the whole discipline of the game. Nor am I persuaded that I can learn about my own past by taking back my mistakes in a video game. She also admires a story told between the games levels, which exhibits prose on the level of a wordy fortune cookie.

What I'm trying to figure out is what would make the games high art? Would it be the graphics or the gameplay?

[Kim]

Fragile Dreams is art. It's pretty, and uses a post-apocalyptic world to tell a tale about finding someone, and also some stuff about communication. Very good on an emotional level, and the little short stories in there are fantastic.

What I'm trying to figure out is what would make the games high art? Would it be the graphics or the gameplay?

I think things can be art for different reasons. I wouldn't say there's one general reason something is art.