After taking part in the discussion I ended up understanding the problem far better, even if I didn't find an answer.

It's the kind of thing that people will be head over heels to try and answer, for whatever sociological reason, even though they have not examined the weight the answer will have at all. It's like passing judgement on someone without examining what the result of the judgement will be.

I'm not any different, however regrettable that may be to me. It's just that the problem is so neat, so philosofical, that one naturally assumes a distanced and abstract perspective.

But the thing is, if games were publicly recognized as art, certain things would be different:

- Game developers would get grants like other artists, and thusly games would not have to be either freeware or commercial software, but could be sponsorware

- Game developers would be titulated artists, or at least, certain positions in a game development group/company would be considered artists

If games were, on the other hand, publicly recognized as being _not_ art:

- Games would only be developed as hobbies or in commercial enterprises

- Game developers would be considered artisans, crafters of luxury-goods and cheap entertainment.

The status quo is somewhere in between, but it is important to recognize that the second part of the effect - the way people view game developers - does not actually have to do with games or designing games, but is merely a question of social status.
On the other hand, the first part could has a very real impact upon our society.

Thing is, whichever the answer may be, in understanding the concequences of the result of the discussion, one can start to speculate whether the discussion is worthwhile.

Once you reduce the result to a real-world tangible impact rather than an abstract discussion (since art seems somehow inherently important when considered abstractly), the value of the discussion - it's merit for being argued thoroughly - seems, to me at least, to be dwarfed by the value one attributed to it when the questions was first posed.

The discussion is important, yes, it is worthwile, yes, but only if it helps influence the right people in a direction that is beneficial for our culture, and for that reason alone.

A different discussion - how do we incorporate certain classical art-elements in games in an interactive way - that is definately worthwile for hobbyist and professional game developers alike. That is the discussion I had hoped for...

But as it stands, the discussion we had served to enlighten me, and hopefully a few others as well, and in understanding the problem of the discussion, hopefully the other participants got as much of a resolution as I did - that is, I won't be discussing whether games are art or not with anybody anytime soon, since the only difference I could hope to make is to make the others involved think of me as an artist, and that is kindof not a very noble motivation for initiating a discussion.

I wrote a small piece on a falsifiable method I think can be used to far greater success when approaching the question of whether something is art, than the traditional method of deriving definitions as general concepts and reapplying them. It's simply drawing parallels, but since definitions are inherently falsifiable, and the two pieces you draw parallels are typically not, this is much more straight from the source.

I originally posted the comment here:

http://www.jesperjuul.net/ludologist/?p=289#comments

Without further ado:

"
Mads Tejlgaard Olesen Says:

October 30th, 2006 at 05:19
When discussing art I find that a clear-cut definition almost always presents itself immidiately, which is then used to evaluate whatever object the discussion concerns. Since virtually nobody can agree on what art is, it quickly becomes a struggle concerning the definition of art.

I for one hope this will not be how the discussion of computergames this wednesday turns out. It’s not to attack Jonas, Brook or Fabian I’m making this reply, but rather to present what I believe is a more fruitful alternative, so I hope you’re willing to hear me out.

I’ll go so far, that I’ll claim trying to find elements of classic art within games is probably fruitless if we are only willing to look at the surface of art.
The game-ness of games depends upon states that can be logically resolved within a turing-machine. This goes for any rule-based game.
Traditional art is different, since it does not have (easily accessible) game-ness, and it does not have the same kind of mechanical reliance (and thusly it appears vastly different forms)

Here’s the point (please excuse that it is in the shape of an analogy):

You will not recognize a car as a means of transportation upon first sight if all you have ever known to be able to transport people is horses.
In fact, if you are sufficiently pig-headed, you won’t be convinced that it is indeed a means of transportation even after actually driving the car yourself; you could simply return to your obsolete definitions, open your dictionary, and compare the four-legged creature to the car over and over, and never see the resemblence. This is how it is when you break into new grounds.

You might not recognize art in a new medium if you insist on comparing it to the surface, the definitions, of the old. In fact you are unlikely to.
Even when you’ve experienced it yourself, if you open your books and look over the definitions of art, you may yet decide that what you experienced was something altogether different; even though it could be clear to almost everyone that it belongs to the same category once a well thought out theory of a unified category arises.

We cannot rely on the old definitions, and we cannot even rely on our own feelings and experiences to discover similarities. But we can rely on our minds, and our analytical skills, to give us some clue as to similarities and differences; if we are able to provide ourselves with sufficient insight into the mechanics of both games and art, and if we approach the subject with sufficient rigor, I think we just might get somewhere.

Are we, then, able to approach the mechanics of art without looking up a definition in a musty old tome?, Are we able to understand the mechanics of games just like that?

In fact, I think we must, and that we are. You cannot really dissect a general concept as loosely founded as art, but you can dissect a specific piece of artwork, and note down what makes it tick. What’s more, since games, after the development of the computer, have requirred very exact dokumentation, implementation and design to archieve a desired result, analysing game mechanics should be like reading an open book, as compared to understanding artistic design.

So my hope is that the chat this wednesday will be concerned with trying to find similarities between games (as a concept or as specific instances) and specific samples of traditional art, and seeing how close the two concepts can get, and what parallels can be drawn.

Thank you for your time.

As a small addition to my comment, my personal belief is that not only does gameness contain the ability to deliver art, but in fact that a cousin of ‘gameness’ already does so in most traditional works of art.. but I’m definately looking forward to reading both Jespers and Zimmermans thoughts, to see if they end up in a similar, or altogether different neighboordhood.
"

I got inspired to join Manifestogames by reading one of costiks blog entries; I had initially intended to take up discussing with him a number of fundamental statements he made in which I believe he was wrong, but in doing so, I ended up discussing the conclusions he made, conclusions which ring true to me, conclusions I believe are mostly right.

At any rate, it was long, so I think it deserves to be blogged as well.

The comment, in it's context, can be seen in this blog entry of costiks:

http://www.manifestogames.com/node/2348

Here it is, taken out of context. The subject is, more or less, how prototyping gameness can be made to work, the sort of challenges it can pressent to a designer. Of minor points to be made, it also illustrates how bound an indie game designer really is to certain types of designs, or perhaps rather, how impossible certain designs would be. Regardless, here the comment is in it's full length:

"
It's an interesting perspective(the importance of process rather than data, ps.) to put on modern games, and I agree with many of your observations as well as one of your central conclusions: That the core process, the gameness if you will, of a game does not need a strong material implementation in it's first iteration.

There are also some of your observations I find less obvious, but I don't feel a need to go into that since the very concept of how to harness process intensity is so much more interesting to me. So let's talk about that.

I think such a general statement as the one I put in bold, is dangerous to apply universally in practice, however, and honestly, I think it always comes with a price: Prototyping.

Let me start out by making some observations of my own:
Take for instance any one of blizzards massively supported online games developed these past recent years. I'm talking about Starcraft&Broodwars, Diablo II&LOD, Warcraft III&TFT, WoW, and surely WoW:TBC is soon to follow the same pattern...these games have all been balanced and rebalanced as they took the shape they have taken today.

The very algorithmic nature of these games - their rules - have changed throughout their countless iterations. It can be said this is due to the nature of the beast - That what has been balanced and rebalanced is not the core of the games themselves, but rather the online metagames that have grown from the fabric of these games : the online economy that needed to be supported in Diablo 2, the unit-balancing to ensure no class, skill, item or map is wrongfully balanced in Warcraft 3 and WoW -
That it is these metagames that could not be balanced before they were live because golly, no developer could possibly build a game-system of 5000 players to betatest such a metagame on for the time it would requirre to see the full effects of the algorithmic structure take hold.

My example never-the-less goes to show that prototyping is a clear necessity for any kind of algorithmic development, something any programmer will tell you is true if he's worth much.
And it also shows that sometimes, the "machine" necessary to run your prototype game must be composed of so many rescourses, and so many actual players, that you must make sure the game is polished enough for a grand official release first. This is the case with World of Warcraft, and it is perhaps here that players find their ultimate role in the big developers pursuit for the delivering the most addicting experience possible: The gamers become not only a field of wallets ripe for harvest, but also the building blocks used for putting the game itself together.

But to return to the crux of my arguement: Yes, many game rule architectures can and should be developed before expensive art assets are assembled for them. Many. Not all. And that is perhaps disheartening: That indie developers cannot simply keep developing a design untill it is right, and then upgrade the art assets; this cannot be done if the design does not have the inherent ability to be properly prototyped without a strong artistic implementation.

But I should like to go on to analyse some of your other thoughts a little. You mention several development cycles for the GTA games; an example of prototyping, I would argue, and continous prototyping, since the GTA games have developed and gone in new directions with each release.

I personally hated the move to 3d at first, but with the later 3d games, this, to me, changed drastically. But in essence, this is also the very problem the industry is up against; relying upon designs that have already been prototyped. It is all the more frustrating for bloggers such as ourselves who can sense the potential that lies on the roads-not-taken, the roads that have as yet been prototyped.

As indie software developers, we are in the unique situation that we cannot really compete with companies who can afford more expensive art assets than us if we choose game designs similar to what they are likely to choose; you mention moores wall, and that concept definately plays a part.
As such, we must be willing to develop games with process designs that have not yet been prototyped, or games with designs that are somehow foreign or unacceptable to the larger companies. And that, I think is the real gain we can attribute to this discussion: We have a chance to make a difference for our medium with our creativety and innovation alone.

Most of us will fail, that is statistical fact; most indie movie directors and muscicians do not manage to effect their respective industries, and we shouldn't expect to either, but in trying not to end this overly long comment on a negative note, I shall at least note that I think our chances are far better, since our medium has far more untapped potential as of yet.

But I must again thank you for the inspiring blog entry, even if, as I said, I do not share an amount of your initial observations.
"

There...that's it for a first blog entry.