Are Video Games art?

[aero]

Many of the different arts are put together in some games: writing, music, graphic design, etc. So why shouldn't games be considered an art if they are used to convey some meaning, message, or idea? Isn't that one of the essential ideas of art?

Unless you see art how Roger Ebert does, I don't see why video games shouldn't be considered art.

[Firespike33]

The creation of a game that's fun is an art; game design alone is very deep and complex, even if you ignore all the other elements like music, graphics and story. The other elements of games count as "art" as well, of course.

[Danny]

All Video Games are pieces of art. The amount of dedicated work put into making one (coding, graphic design, story writing, character progression, etc.) is enough to consider it art, regardless of how stupid the game may be. Art should be something that someone puts a lot of time and heart into making, and that should be the justified definition of the word.

[Julia Pseudo]

Video games are definitely a form of art, especially ones that truly have a huge amount of work and resources put into them and making them awesome. I feel like the only reason they're not considered art widely is because new media are evil.

[Murphmario]

All games are art (except for very bad ones like the Cd-I games.)

[Enjl]

All games are art (except for very bad ones like the Cd-I games.)

So you're saying a stickman on a sheet of paper has nothing to do with art.

[Shadow Yoshi]

I didn't read all of Ebert's article, but this is something I noticed:

One obvious difference between art and games is that you can win a game. It has rules, points, objectives, and an outcome. Santiago might cite a immersive game without points or rules, but I would say then it ceases to be a game and becomes a representation of a story, a novel, a play, dance, a film. Those are things you cannot win; you can only experience them.

I was about to say "maybe video games are just games that contain art", but then I thought of how game concepts (not the plotline, but how you play) could be considered artistic.

[Danny]

World of Warcraft has some pretty awesome concept art. Here's an excerpt.

[Tango]

Art is Culture, right? My history teacher says that ALL that made by the human is Culture, and she included that Video Games are a type of art, because have various ways of media. Video Game=Culture

Roger Ebert, you know nothing, innocent.

[DarkMatt]

I'll cut this topic this way:

Ebert is a fucking moron and you should stop caring about him. There, done.

Some video games exist just to be video games, sure; back then, that was all they could do; no fancy pants graphics or sounds. Today, however, there are a good amount of video games that put just as much heart into making a game pretty than they do in just making the game. Furthermore, art is by definition the expression of human imagination and creativity. Now that's very broad and doesn't take into account one's experience with art, but what I'm trying to say is you can't just kick a game of flashy images into the "not to be compared to real art" box just because there's more to do than look at it/the point is to play it not see it/it's not presented in a way you're used to/all these things. Hell, let's plays are living proof people can just want to look at the game and appreciate it from a distance.

Sure, first and foremost it's a game, but games nowadays do present themselves as aesthetically pleasing. Even tabletop games go the distance to paint a setting the human mind can consume. I've yet to see anyone actually support this loon, but, that might be because I have definitely declared him "full of shit". I'm not going to want to find another person and do the same thing again, because it gets tiring after a while.