121 réponses à ce sujet

[SwobyJ]

Let me ask you another question. The newspaper also has a Science section, a Business section, a Sports section, and a News section.

 

This is a really serious one: are you arguing there is no process by which we can define anything that goes in those sections? Is there no objective definition of Science, of Business, of Sports, or News? 

 

Is the Art section the only place where it's impossible to define what you should or should not be writing about? I think their Editors might disagree. If you think they are wrong, why are the Editors of the Science section not also wrong? Or the Business section? Or the News section? I will point out there often is a very lively debate in journalism over what is News and what isn't. But not that the argument is considered pointless, or impossible to answer beyond the personal level. 

 

Art tends to be acts of creation, when boiled down, are really just creating for the sake of itself. There may be other things attached to it - even symbiotically, but that's not art's 'core'. imo

 

Business is for a gain.

 

Science is for a learning.

 

Politics is for a relationship.

 

News is for a recording.

 

They cross over into each other because reallly, they're just words to describe concepts. But yeah, Arts is more focused on acts of creation. If we didn't have art somehow, we'd never be making things just to evolve and explore ideas. We would be robots.

[CybAnt1]

1. More. Because they try to be art, to at least some extent. Trying to be art tends to help in being more artful. Artful is a thing - it distinguishes something from being more of another thing instead of art.

 

2. I guess if there is to be a spectrum, Dragon Age would be in-between medium and high art. To become high art, they'd have to minimize the commercialism significantly, and focus entirely on the message compared to audience satisfaction. I don't think they need to do that.

 

*To bring up Mass Effect briefly, I think Bioware going more exclusively 'high level' at the end served a purpose, but that it wasn't exactly what ought to have been done. The design should have still included that kickass violent catharsis that people were waiting for, even if just optionally. I don't know if the devs will know what I mean or if I even understand what they were intending, but I hope so. Anyway, my point is that BW games don't need to be high art, even as they can aspire to it and work towards it. So don't worry about it.

 

3. Characters are easier to communicate a message with. The more non-human the subject is, the more abstractly the message is going to be interpreted as. So yeah, some games are going to be more clearly 'artful' than others. And there's going to be many cases where the intended message is VERY simple and not worth that much thought in itself. But it is still art.

 

I hope you will not mind, Sywobj, if I tell you I love you (in a Platonic way, of course). You are what I was looking for in posting this thread. 

 

1. So there is an effort involved. Yes? You have to try to aspire to art, to make it. (That can be independent of whether you succeed or fail.)

2. Since you are asserting there is a "message" to the Dragon Age games - something I've seen few people say - what is that "message"? Are they, in fact, trying to "say" something to an audience (besides, "have fun" and "win"?). What is that? See, I know how I would answer that question, but I so want your answer.

3. I also personally think that story is what helps start to make a game more than just a game, and more like art. The key, though, is unlike novels, film, or television, this interactive medium has to figure out how to make a game player an interacting piece of shaping & telling that story. 

[Amfortas]

I personaly agree with the critic's view. I am of the mentality that not every book is art, not every film is art and not every painting is art.

Where do I draw the line? It's hard to explain, usually art appeals to me in a different way than common entertainment, there is a certain beauty to it, and by that I do not mean it has to be something pretty. It's mostly a personal feeling.

Normal videogames, like dragon age can be pretty entertaining, but I don't see them as anything beyond that, scapism. Like many movies out there.

Usually, when I need to classify a film as art the 1st thing I look at are the visuals. And I think that could apply to games as well. After all I consider a game first and foremost a visual experience. Note that visuals don't equal graphics, just like with the movies. An old film like say Ivan the Terrible is art while a supermodern spiderman film is not. The visuals in dragon age games are 100% generic, like the spiderman movie. A lot of special effects or cinematic conversations, that's it.

Games like Planescape Torment, which you mentioned, really fail at that as well. It's closer to reading a book than playing a game, and it's a generic fantasy book (I don't mean to offend anyone with this). Icewind Dale however, it does have a few moments that could be close to being art, when the music starts playing in Kuldahar for example, I personaly found that moment something different.

So to sum up a bit, story and gameplay cannot excuse failing at the audiovisual side, which in my opinion is necessary if you are aiming for something more than entertainment. The opposite could be said as well, story and gameplay cannot be abandoned either.

To give an example, the game that comes on top of my head when thinking about games and art is the mobile game sword and sworcery. It goes beyond being a mere videogame, it's more like an interactive visual experience (despite the annoying twitter thing). Dragon Age is certainly a better game, but that means nothing when talking about art.

[Giant ambush beetle]

This is a really serious one: are you arguing there is no process by which we can define anything that goes in those sections? Is there no objective definition of Science, of Business, of Sports, or News?

It entirely depends on the reader of said articles, if I may give you an example - I surely don't think that golf is a sport, but many disagree with me. There are ''sports'' channels featuring poker games, I don't think poker is sport but many people disagree with me on that one. Or motorsports.
My argument is that everything is relative because everyone is different.

You could as well start an endless discussion about whats beauty. Everyone has a different idea about whats beauty. Same with art.

[CybAnt1]

Art tends to be acts of creation, when boiled down, are really just creating for the sake of itself. There may be other things attached to it - even symbiotically, but that's not art's 'core'. 

 

So art is about creativity, yes? I guess I would put one other dimension into it: I think it needs to be done for the sake of creativity (art for art's sake, as they say), and there has to be an aesthetic dimension to it. 

 

Thus - IMHO - whether or not something is art deals with whether it has an aesthetic dimension to it, or not. 

[CybAnt1]

It entirely depends on the reader of said articles, if I may give you an example - I surely don't think that golf is a sport, but many disagree with me. There are ''sports'' channels featuring poker games, I don't think poker is sport but many people disagree with me on that one. Or motorsports.
My argument is that everything is relative because everyone is different.

 

Cool. So that leads me into a followup question.

 

If we can't all agree on what Sports are, does that mean we should shut down ESPN? (And 2, and 3, and other subnetworks, ...) 

 

A lot of people say not everyone agrees on what Art is. Perhaps. But then, it doesn't follow from that (IMHO) that there is no point in discussing what is art or what isn't, or that there is no point to art schools, art museums, art magazines, or art sections of newspapers. Let alone, of course, there being no point to art itself. 

[SwobyJ]

 

1. So there is an effort involved. Yes? You have to try to aspire to art, to make it. (That can be independent of whether you succeed or fail.)

2. Since you are asserting there is a "message" to the Dragon Age games - something I've seen few people say - what is that "message"? Are they, in fact, trying to "say" something to an audience (besides, "have fun" and "win"?). What is that? See, I know how I would answer that question, but I so want your answer.

3. I also personally think that story is what helps start to make a game more than just a game, and more like art. The key, though, is unlike novels, film, or television, this interactive medium has to figure out how to make a game player an interacting piece of shaping that story.

 

1. Not necessarily. Art can be accidental, or unintentional. It just happens less that way. Something can have no artistic qualities, be 'low art', 'medium art', 'high art', or otherwise. People find their own definitions. But yeah, Angry Birds doesn't have much to tell most people, and it wasn't made for much more than a brief dopamine boost. But it's still art.

 

2. There are several major threads. I don't think they have one specific message. I think Dragon Age communicates about spirituality, human agency, responsibility, subjectivity, mystery, etc etc etc.

At least, Dragon Age is more direct than Mass Effect. One of its main messages is "What would you DO if you could make your epic story." Mass Effect is more "WHO would you BE", and that can be trickier.

 

3. I agree. It's not really necessary, but it REALLY helps. Sadly, video game story writing is only starting to mature. I'm very glad to be living in a time where the process is happening (To clarify, I've played and enjoyed games since SNES/PS1, but examples of artful story writing are pretty spaced out, and only starting to significantly emerge.)

[Giant ambush beetle]

But then, it doesn't follow from that (IMHO) that there is no point in discussing what is art or what isn't, or that there is no point to art schools, art museums, art magazines, or art sections of newspapers. Let alone, of course, there being no point to art itself. 

Everyone has decide for him or herself what art is, some people think classical drawing is art, many people disagree, a lot of people think music is the truest form of art, many people disagree.
Depending on your views and preferences you pick your ''art'' and then your art class/school if you want to learn more about it.

[CybAnt1]

It entirely depends on the reader of said articles, if I may give you an example - I surely don't think that golf is a sport, but many disagree with me. There are ''sports'' channels featuring poker games, I don't think poker is sport but many people disagree with me on that one. Or motorsports.
My argument is that everything is relative because everyone is different.

You could as well start an endless discussion about whats beauty. Everyone has a different idea about whats beauty. Same with art.

 

Are there not points of commonality (to their idea) among some groups of people? Perhaps a shared commonality could lead to a shared community of appreciation and discussion.

 

I always ask this question: is there really no reason why the Mona Lisa is hanging in the Louvre, but Dogs Playing Poker is not? 

 

Really? 

[CybAnt1]

1. Not necessarily. Art can be accidental, or unintentional. It just happens less that way. Something can have no artistic qualities, be 'low art', 'medium art', 'high art', or otherwise. People find their own definitions. But yeah, Angry Birds doesn't have much to tell most people, and it wasn't made for much more than a brief dopamine boost. But it's still art.

 

2. There are several major threads. I don't think they have one specific message. I think Dragon Age communicates about spirituality, human agency, responsibility, subjectivity, mystery, etc etc etc.

At least, Dragon Age is more direct than Mass Effect. One of its main messages is "What would you DO if you could make your epic story." Mass Effect is more "WHO would you BE", and that can be trickier.

 

3. I agree. It's not really necessary, but it REALLY helps. Sadly, video game story writing is only starting to mature. I'm very glad to be living in a time where the process is happening (To clarify, I've played and enjoyed games since SNES/PS1, but examples of artful story writing are pretty spaced out, and only starting to significantly emerge.)

 

1. Ahhh, well you've hit a point of contention. Some people say that does define Art - that it does have "something" to "tell" people. Of course, there are others who say that makes Art too "preachy" and thus "message art" interferes with "aesthetic art". (I don't agree.) 

 

2. See I agree with you. But it's interesting to me how little discussion we have on exactly what you're saying here. Not just "what do we enjoy about playing Dragon Age" (or not) but "what does the game say to us". It clearly "spoke" to you in many ways - it also "speaks" to me too - it's one of the reasons I love it! 

 

All criticisms come out of it wanting to be more of what I love! Because I see it on the way! 

 

I happen to believe that one big theme in the game series - personally - is balancing order and liberty in society. At its base, this is what the mage-templar argument is supposed to be about (in terms of engaging an argument that matters to our real world). BTW, personally, I think their "message" is "we need to find a balance between order and liberty" and as "statements" go - that's pretty important! 

 

3. I so totally agree with the folk in the Wikipedia article who said Roger Ebert was way off base, because he's simply not giving the medium time to mature to where it  could be. Painting took a long time to get to Da Vinci. I personally find so much potential in video games in speaking to people in the ways other art and literature do. I don't know who's trying outside of CRPG developers, and some Strategy game developers (like the Sid Meier Alpha Centauri game), which is one reason why I really love such games! 

 

I would not be here if I did not feel Bioware was really, really trying to make games that aspire to art and literature. 

[CybAnt1]

Everyone has decide for him or herself what art is, some people think classical drawing is art, many people disagree, a lot of people think music is the truest form of art, many people disagree.
Depending on your views and preferences you pick your ''art'' and then your art class/school if you want to learn more about it.

 

Would art education be possible if what is or is not art, and how one makes it, is an idiosyncratic thing that is merely up to every single individual? 

 

BTW, it's interesting - I have also seen people say the same thing, for example, about morality. But if it were, in fact, true that everyone has their own personal morality with no overlap to others, there would be no ethical or moral philosophy. 

[metatheurgist]

Art: noun

1. the quality, production, expression, or realm, according to aesthetic principles, of what is beautiful, appealing, or of more than ordinary significance.

2. the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria; works of art collectively, as paintings, sculptures, or drawings: a museum of art; an art collection. See fine art, commercial art.

3. a field, genre, or category of art: Dance is an art.

4. the fine arts collectively, often excluding architecture: art and architecture.

5. any field using the skills or techniques of art: advertising art; industrial art.

 

Seems like games fit 4/5 definitions, given enough time it might be classified as "fine art". Ebert like a lot of critics of a particular medium is just a snob that doesn't like the idea of a new media encroaching on his purview. He's like a grumpy old guy yelling at games to get off his art lawn. He's wrong.

[SwobyJ]

Chaos and Order are HUGE.

[Giant ambush beetle]

Are there not points of commonality (to their idea) among some groups of people? Perhaps a shared commonality could lead to a shared community of appreciation and discussion.

Consensus among people is inevitable, you'll find groups that have a similar opinion to yours, there will be many groups and individuals that have an entirely different opinion about it, there will be people that agree with some things you say.

The question is what does a discussion about such a subjective matter gain you? There are no hard facts to discuss, no solution to be found, no errors to fix, no opinions to be corrected.

*edit* I can't keep up with your posts.

But if it were, in fact, true that everyone has their own personal morality with no overlap to others, there would be no ethical or moral philosophy.

Moral things that overlap are caused by basic common fears. Getting killed or raped isn't exactly beneficial to your life no matter your ideology, views and ethnicity, you don't want that to happen to you so you welcome laws that forbids those things and lowers the chances of that stuff happening to you.

[Aimi]

Art tends to be acts of creation, when boiled down, are really just creating for the sake of itself. There may be other things attached to it - even symbiotically, but that's not art's 'core'. imo

I dunno. From a history and art-history standpoint, there is a hell of a lot of art that was created with some form of compensation, usually financial, in mind, and which would not have been created otherwise.

The Hellenistic era (the centuries following the death of Alexander, when Greek-ruled monarchies dominated the politics of the eastern Mediterranean and Middle East) saw an explosion in the amount of art produced, the different forms of such art, and, arguably, the quality of such art. The key shift was the fact that kings were the real powers in Greek society instead of civic assemblies and councils and oligarchies. Those kings had a lot of money to throw around, by virtue of being rulers of land won with the spear, and one of the things they started throwing that money at was art, which had hitherto in Greek history been chiefly created for religious/votive or civic commemorative purposes.

In Hellenistic Greece, sculpture art became highly realistic, and artists began to experiment with forms and poses outside the previous norms. Architectural forms were pushed to the limit as well, as were bronze-casting technologies. (Apparently, the foundry of Lysippos, one of the most famous fourth-century sculptors, turned out dozens of copies of some of his most famous works due to his technological innovation in improving the lost-wax process. That same foundry was useful to Hellenistic kings for another reason: it supplied the rams fitted onto the prows of many of their warships, which required the same casting techniques.) The amount of art on hand dramatically expanded, too - we may even have more pieces from the Hellenistic period than from the Italian Renaissance. None of this could have happened without a massive injection of wealth into the artistic system.

The Hellenistic period only demonstrates something that I believe is representative of a larger truth: art tends to follow the money. Talking about art for aesthetic reasons is well and good and Romantic, and obviously plenty of art has been and is created without any serious expectation of compensation: for "art's sake", or for purposes of self-expression, or whatever. But it's hard to look at a modern gallery or an art museum and see "for the sake of itself" in the creation of works for a certain patron, or paid for by a considerable commission.

Art is decidedly more complex than pure aesthetism. It's another reason that it's so difficult to define. What's the essential difference between Michelangelo's creation of David under commission to the civic government of Florence, and any other hired job in the history of the world?

[SwobyJ]

I dunno. From a history and art-history standpoint, there is a hell of a lot of art that was created with some form of compensation, usually financial, in mind, and which would not have been created otherwise.

 

Nah, I actually completely agree. Just in your examples, its not the artist's desire, but the patron/customer/authority's.

[CybAnt1]

I didn't say aesthetic qualities were an all-encompassing definition, just a necessary but not sufficient criterion/element. 

 

And yes, the art/commerce distinction is not one that I would agree on as hard and fast, at least not in the ways some folk in the article were doing. 

 

I find that kind of pointless. Some of the greatest 'art films' and 'art rock' (to use two examples) made money. And well it should have. 

 

On the other hand, and it is true, I think people start to notice a difference between doing it for the love and doing it for the money, or there would be no way to discuss what is known as "selling out".   I think artists who want to have enough to eat, and not pursue a 2nd job, have to find a balance between the two objectives. 

[SwobyJ]

Better to sell out until you can make it on you own, than making it on your own then selling out. IMO

[CybAnt1]

Nah, I actually completely agree. Just in your examples, its not the artist's desire, but the patron/customer/authority's.

 

Which would really relate to another question we've sometimes seen on these boards.

 

Who is the patron of the game developer? 

 

Is it fans - players - customers - purchasers (those are not all necessarily the same thing, of course)? 

Or is it, since EA is a corporation, of which Bioware is a division, its shareholders?

 

Or perhaps do they have to do a juggling act between both? 

 

I do think players are patrons of one kind, and like a quote I used to have said, unusual sort of patrons as it is expected we will modify and interact with the audio-visual constructs we are presented with. 

[SwobyJ]

Which would really relate to another question we've sometimes seen on these boards.

 

Who is the patron of the game developer? 

 

Is it fans - players - customers - purchasers (those are not all necessarily the same thing, of course)? 

Or is it, since EA is a corporation, of which Bioware is a division, its shareholders?

 

Or perhaps do they have to do a juggling act between both? 

 

I do think players are patrons of one kind, and like a quote I used to have said, unusual sort of patrons as it is expected we will modify and interact with the audio-visual constructs we are presented with. 

 

Juggling act. Totes.

 

Corp - Business and Design, maybe Audience

Dev - Design and Business, maybe Audience

Player - Audience and Design, maybe Business

 

In off cases and in some ways, the Corp may be an Audience (depends on the people involved), and the Players may be part of the Business (especially with crowdfunding). In better cases, the Dev is part of the Audience, aka making games that they themselves want to enjoy.

 

Devs are the ones who have to be most aware of so many things at the same time, and I don't envy them for that. Spreadsheets galore.

 

 

*EDIT: Note that Audience may be the patron, or Business may be. Especially in advertizing, the patron is more the Business people, not the Audience. The Audience in that case is more like the Product.

[CybAnt1]

There are no hard facts to discuss, no solution to be found, no errors to fix, no opinions to be corrected.

 

Are those the only 4 things worth discussing? 

 

If those are the only 4 things worth discussing for human beings, you would not enjoy the discussion my friends and I often have over what makes a good beer, and by the way, we enjoy having it! 

 

The thing is, there is such a thing as beer-makers, and I would bet at the end of the day they probably base how they make beer on pools of consensus over what makes a good beer. 

 

Assuming, again, of course, they want to sell beer to people who will buy it, and are not just making beer for the love, and giving it away free to friends & family. 

[CybAnt1]

Swobyj, forgive me for again throwing compliments at you (I mean sometimes it seems people think I do nothing but criticize), but you renew my faith in humanity. 

 

I am so glad you're participating now. 

[SwobyJ]

0_0

 

 

Cool!

[Zack_Nero]

Okay, I get where you are coming from.  And for the simplest answer yes, video games in general is an art form.  Art is a form of expression, and art can take many forms.  Be it music, film, books, pictures, and now video games.  Because when people work on something and you see the effort that they put into it the people viewing it will take in what is there and put their interpretation of what it is.  Proof of that is all the fan art, fan fiction, and cosplay is because they are bring their emotions, their interpretations, of what they love from the original source.  However, I think what you are asking as to what kind of art Dragon Age is at the very least, a true art form or something that is common.  That is really what is up for debate.  I personally think that Dragon Age has the potential of been a high art form because of the story that can be interpreted in many different ways, and not just because you choose your own path of playing the game.  For example let's say two different players decide to side with a mage in a certain argument as to a templar.  Those two players could do it for so many different reason like, I know that specific templar and I don't trust him, the mages has been oppressed for far too long, that mage is a friend of mine, there is a greater reward for going with this mage, and so many more.  That gives an art form in story.  Also there is (obviously) the visual appeal to any kind of art.  Music is also an art form, background music or characters (like Leliana) singing, granted that isn't one mainly used but it is still an expressive form from the characters, the game world, and the developers themselves.  Not sure if someone provided a link to this already but here is a person that explains it a bit better then I could.

 

http://thatguywithth...video-games-art

 

Everything can be interpreted as a form of art, but the kind of art is up to debate.

[Aimi]

Oh, and I didn't actually answer the questions. So I'll get on that.

1. I think that my main problem with Ebert's definition of art is that he seemed to believe that art was something that should be passively experienced, for a certain understanding of the word "passive". You look at it, you read it, you watch it, you listen to it, or whatever, but you don't actually do much of anything. My problem with this is that it doesn't really capture my understanding of how one experiences even the sorts of passive arts that he has in mind. When you read a really good book, you're not passively experiencing anything. The reader visualizes the scene in her head, she might assign voices to speaking characters, and she generally has to do a fair amount of work in trying to fill in all the gaps of experience a book will necessarily, by virtue of its medium, contain.

Ebert claimed that the key difference was in the notion that games are about choice affecting the person's experience, and art doesn't involve that. But that's not really true, either, is it? For one thing, plenty of games are linear; experiencing the storyline and other content is more or less the same every time a player runs through. How is that different from art appreciation in other contexts, though?

You may see a painting of a bunch of dudes with swords. Okay, that's neat. But you have choices about how to experience that painting. You might try to pick out small details on the canvas. You might acquire contextual information, and find that the name of the painting is Oath of the Horatii, that it was painted by a man named Jacques-Louis David, and that the painting is classified as part of the neoclassical strain of artistic expression that was most popular in late eighteenth century Europe and associated with certain social views and understandings of history. You could find out more about David's life, speculation from art historians about his choice of subject matter, the specific myth that David based his painting on, and the social context of French life at the time of his painting. Or you might not do these things. This isn't just fill-in-the-blank stuff, either, because there is no objective way to determine what sorts of things "properly" contextualize any given experience or source. These are choices with no right answer, and there are so many of them that DA:I's reputed "forty endings" pale in comparison.

Experiencing art has always been about choices on the part of the individuals doing the experiencing.

I don't have a particularly good definition of art myself, apart from the good old Potter Stewart standby of "I know it when I see it." (He was talking about pornography, but that's basically the same thing. Isn't it?) So I don't know that I can say that video games are art, because I don't know that I have a good understanding of what art is - not because I don't believe that video games can be art. But I think that Ebert's reasons for his particular definition of what was and was not art were flawed.

2. Again, unfortunately, I don't have an alternative definition of what is and is not art at hand, so I'm logically barred from answering this question.

3. I've never played Planescape: Torment, and don't have a particularly strong opinion on it or its quality as a game. It might be a slight to bring it up; it might not. I haven't got the knowledge to say.

4. I don't have a definition of art to operate from, but I don't think that genre would have much of anything to do with that definition if I did.