11/1 Chat: Are Games Art?
Submitted by costik on Thu, 2006-10-19 21:02.
Join us on Wednesday, November 1st for a chat with on the subject of games and art with Henry Jenkins, Jesper Juul, Marc LeBlanc, and Eric Zimmerman.
Network: irc.freenode.net
Channel: #gamesandart
Time: 6PM PST, 9PM EST, 2 AM GMT
See our page on how to get on IRC.
More About the Topic:
Hideo Kojima says "If 100 people walk by and a single person is captivated by whatever that piece radiates, it's art. But videogames aren't trying to capture one person. A videogame should make sure that all 100 people that play that game should enjoy the service provided by that videogame. It's something of a service. It's not art."
And Roger Ebert says "To my knowledge, no one in or out of the field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers... for most gamers, video games represent a loss of those precious hours we have available to make ourselves more cultured, civilized and empathetic."
Contrariwise, Henry Jenkins says "Computer games are art—a popular art, an emerging art, a largely unrecognized art, but art nevertheless... The time has come to take games seriously as an important new popular art shaping the aesthetic sensibility of the 21st century."
Are games art? If not, why not? And if so, why? Is thinking of games as art useful or actually a hindrance for game developers? If games are art, what should our aspirations for the form be?
Participants:
Henry Jenkins is the Director of the MIT Comparative Media Studies Program and the Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities. He is the author and/or editor of nine books on various aspects of media and popular culture, including the recently published Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide.
Jesper Juul is a video game theorist and an Assistant Professor in video game theory and design at the Center for Computer Game Research Copenhagen. He is author of Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds and numerous articles about games, and his prestigious and influential blog is The Ludologist.
Marc LeBlanc is a twelve-year veteran of the game industry. At Looking Glass Studios, he was a core contributor to several award-winning games, including the Thief and System Shock series. In collaborationn with Andrew Leker, he developed Oasis, the 2004 Independent Games Festival Game of the Year in the web/downloadable category.
Santiago Siri is an Argentinean game designer whose work includes Football Deluxe and Utopia (forthcoming). He works for Three Melons, an advergaming firm that offers innovative branding through games. He is also a writer and theoretician, and his blog, Games as Art, is a resource for all members of the game community.
Eric Zimmerman is a game designer and academic exploring the theory and practice of game design. He is the is the co-founder and CEO of gameLab, a game development company based in New York City. He is the co-editor of several works in the field, including Rules of Play, a seminal study of game design technique.
I wrote a 2000 word essay in
Submitted by essell on Sat, 2006-10-21 00:16.
I wrote a 2000 word essay in reply to what Roger Ebert had to say about videogames as an artform, earlier this year. It's posted up at the following address, if anyone fancies the read:
www.essell.org/text/ebertongames.php
Really looking forward to what these clever dudes have to say on the subject :)
"Are games art?" seems like
Submitted by jonofthewired on Sat, 2006-10-21 05:06.
"Are games art?" seems like a poor question, since it lumps all games together. It puts you in a position where if you claim that ICO or Deus Ex are art, you then have to defend the artistic merit of Space Invaders. A much better question would be "Can games be art?" in which case I think the answer is certainly yes. Videogames are primarily a medium for entertainment, just like film or novels, and just like a film or a novel a videogame can be more than simply entertainment, if that is the intent of its creator.
Yeah, I agree. There's
Submitted by essell on Sat, 2006-10-21 08:23.
Yeah, I agree. There's usually not enough distinction made between games that currently exist, and the [potential of the] medium itself.
can the script for this be
Submitted by Cityhermit on Sun, 2006-10-22 21:52.
can the script for this be made available on pdf format?? please??
Will anyone be turning up on
Submitted by Kipper on Tue, 2006-10-24 14:43.
Will anyone be turning up on that channel at the original time to redirect people to the new time?
The original announcement is up on selectparks.net...
My game designing students
Submitted by Ubu on Wed, 2006-11-01 11:25.
My game designing students recently read Costikyans text "I Have No Words & I Must Design". The one thing that almost all students commented on was the part about games being a form of art. I was a bit perplexed about the importance of this. Maybe it was because it put games in a serious or different context that my students had not seen before. Maybe it was because it placed games next to paintings, opera and sculptures and that transformed games to fine art.
My opinion on the matter is that the question is not whether games are art or not but if they can be aesthetic. There are a lot of art definitions and my favourite is “art is anything man made…” – a sunset is therefore not art but a picture taken of it is. Brittanica Online defines the word art as "the use of skill and imagination in the creation of aesthetic objects, environments, or experiences that can be shared with others". In both cases games are as much art as any other type of design, craftsmanship or human activity. And what is aesthetic? The only thing that you can say for sure is that something that doesn’t emit any form of energy so it doesn’t have the opportunity to be shared with others is not aesthetic. Being aesthetic means that the object (the game) creates some sort of reaction on the subject (the player).
My answer is therefore – games are a form of art that sometimes can be more or less aesthetic. The more interesting question is: what makes games aesthetic? What kind of art forms should game designers look at for inspiration? In my case reading about dramaturgy has helped me develop my own tools for interactive dramaturgy.
Maybe this was a bit to long for a comment on a blog. I leave it to the admins to move it to the forum.
My god. 3-4 AM + an immense
Submitted by Ubu on Thu, 2006-11-02 08:24.
My god. 3-4 AM + an immense tempo. IRC-chatting is an art form i don't comprehend. Its like hearing a broadcasted television debate, twice the speed, without beeing able to see the screen. But still a good initiative, and I liked it.
Thanks for the initiative.
I would like to second this
Submitted by sharp on Thu, 2006-11-02 18:31.
I would like to second this request. I tried logging in many times yesterday and had some technical challenges. I would get a few comments and then my screen would freeze, and after a while I'd get disconnected.
I would really appreciate a pdf/script of the chat.
Well I don't things games
Submitted by gordman on Fri, 2008-01-18 16:58.
Well I don't things games are an art although I am attreacted to videogames that have good graphics. I am also attracted to games tha challenge me, I think this is the real art of a game. Online backgammon is one of those games.
I tried logging in many
Submitted by bathulo on Mon, 2008-09-15 05:14.
I tried logging in many times and had some technical challenges. I would get a few comments and then my screen would freeze, and after a while I'd get disconnected.
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Name - Barry Bathulo
Email - torreno.programmer[at]gmail.com
AIM - labtested1980
Yahoo - blowerping
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Darn skippy. I'm going to
Darn skippy. I'm going to try and "be there."
http://www.wadjeteyegames.com/