Can Video Games Really Be Serious Art?
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ก.ย. 2024
- Are Video Games the Next Great Art Form?
Relationship between video games and the broader definition of art, presenting the idea that games have transcended their origins as simple entertainment. It highlights how certain games like Pathologic, Braid, Psychonauts, and What Remains of Edith Finch use unique mechanics and deep narratives to evoke emotional and philosophical responses. These games are discussed as serious forms of art, with each delving into human themes such as existential fear, time, regret, mental health, trauma and mortality. Comparisons between video games and other artistic mediums like literature and painting, suggesting that games can provoke thought, inspire reflection, and even rival classical works in their emotional and intellectual depth.
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Video games are unique in that you control the main character. The player himself is responsible for his actions - be it moral choice, character customization, creation of the game world, game mechanics - the list of concepts can be continued endlessly.
Write down which games impress you and which ones were able to influence you!
To me the discussion is like paddling in a kiddie pool disguised as some philosophical discourse. The conversation of "what art is" or "what defines art" is the most useless, arbitrary, pseudo intellectual topic anyone could talk about. Art is a made up thing, nothing defines it. Anything can be art. The discussion stops there. The instructions for a washing machine are art, the artistic quantity may be small but it is there. The conversation is just useless. People don't potter about all day having stupid discussions if books or films are art, because that's a waste of time. People are so eager to stagnate in this race to "prove" that games are art when there's no need. The only people denouncing them are people who see art as a superiority game, they don't actually care about art but rather the appearance of being a cultured individual. They aren't worth acknowledging, yet they and they alone fuel this silly conversation.
The only piece of discourse I've seen regarding the definitions of art I like comes from Gombrich, "There is no such thing as art, only Artists."
Art can be defined by each individual person. This only becomes a problem when someone tries to impose their own ideas of art onto others. I don't care if someone doesn't consider games to be art according to their own definitions, but I do care when they delude themselves into thinking this is a universal truth. So I could disagree with some of your ideas that art must be tied to some narrative or inherent meaning, because I believe that emotions and experiences detached from that still have artistic validity, so something like Super Mario World is still a piece of art with great depth because it incurs emotions and feelings and experiences from its gameplay and mechanics which are pretty much entirely detached from any story or theme. (and this isn't even going into the artistic validity of the craftmanship of games themselves. In an action game, the level design, enemy design, player capabilities, and so, so much more have to be finely tuned and carefully crafted. That's art right there, in my mind at least.) but that doesn't mean that my definition is more true than yours, because art is an arbitrary, made up idea that changes from person to person.
I really enjoyed your comment, thank you for sharing your thoughts!