racketboy.com

I thought this was a fairly interesting Cracked.com article on things that video games can offer that other forms of art really don't.

http://www.cracked.com/blog/5-things-video-games-do-better-than-any-other-forms-art/

The included cartoons are pretty amusing too.

And then 30 years from now when games come full circle and become what Hollywood is now, we'll at least have a golden age to look back on wistfully.

Too late.

pierrot wrote:

And then 30 years from now when games come full circle and become what Hollywood is now, we'll at least have a golden age to look back on wistfully.

Too late.

I sadly agree with this.

Cracked's article is correct in the idea that Video Games have the tools to be better than any other form of art and media.

When they talk about the various set pieces that you can look at and question how it is related to the story, you have to have a development team that is willing to put something there for you to see.

A lot of games simply put things in their games that look cool and are essentially the Zack Snyder of videogames, with a lot of flash and elements that mesh incredibly well together, but serve no purpose but to look cool. Other games, like Shadow of the Colossus and Ico, Majora's Mask, and the Myst franchise, litter their games with so much to look at and ponder, because their placement has purpose, albeit completely unrelated to the task at hand, that mystery does still indeed exist.

That is what separates the good games from the great games (artistically speaking, not mechanically), the small details.

BogusMeatFactory wrote:
Cracked's article is correct in the idea that Video Games have the tools to be better than any other form of art and media.

No they aren't. This is a bizarre line of thinking about art to me, though one that perhaps is tied to the gamers' competitive mindset. Is sculpture better than painting? Is theater better than film? Is rock music better than classical music? Claiming that one art is "better" than another is inane. Video Games are a form of art that, like all other forms, incorporates parts of other art forms and varied techniques into the creation of a new work.

Trying to say video games or "have the tools to be better than any other form of art or media" because it combines certain arts and techniques in ways that the author finds interesting isn't grounds to claim that video games can be a "better" form of art than, for example, film. This line of reasoning does more to hurt the "games as art" argument than to help it.

Would it be more accurate to say that it has better tools to be an interactive form of art than the other mediums?

I find interactivity to be more engaging. I have an affinity and appreciation for art of all forms and each has their place and purpose, no one is better than another in an objective world. I just find that the interactivity aspect of it has the ability to draw a person in in ways unseen before.

BogusMeatFactory wrote:Would it be more accurate to say that it has better tools to be an interactive form of art than the other mediums?

I find interactivity to be more engaging. I have an affinity and appreciation for art of all forms and each has their place and purpose, no one is better than another in an objective world. I just find that the interactivity aspect of it has the ability to draw a person in in ways unseen before.

I don't know. Participating in the creation of any kind of art is extremely engaging and interactive (and often demands an equal or greater level of skill than playing most games). On the other hand, from the perspective of a "consumer" of art, I can touch a sculpture, I can see actual people (instead of characters or avatars) draw me into a performance, i can choose my own level of engagement with or approach to studying a painting, etc. Games are an interactive art by definition, but I don't know that "interactivity" can be narrowly defined by something like "pushing buttons to manipulate the character or world"...I think almost all art offers a level of interactivity that has to be measured in and against other creations within the medium, not comparatively across art forms.

tldr: interactivity isn't unique to or "done better" in games

I'll add that the Cracked article is a shit piece of writing that "argues" through cherry picked strawmen in a way that can easily be torn apart. While the question is interesting, I think we can discuss it while safely ignoring that author's insipid points.

I remember that the site used to do internet comedy reasonably well. I see they've now devolved into total pandering and flamebaiting...

I agree with dsheinem, that article is pretty awful. Not that it cares, it wasn't written in good faith. Unless the author is really willing to argue Apocalypse Now has no message to send other than "lol someone is fat", which is too sad for me to imagine.

BogusMeatFactory wrote:Would it be more accurate to say that it has better tools to be an interactive form of art than the other mediums?

I'm also told Gastronomy is better at making tasty stuff

That's exactly the kind of discussion I was hoping to start. I'm not endorsing the author's stances personally. It's to be expected as Cracked is a comedy site and as such they're not taking the arguments very seriously.

Regardless of that the topic it raises is an interesting one, though I think you can pretty much leave the word "art" out of what they're discussing entirely since the focus is mainly on narrative and how video games have the potential to be actively engaging in ways that are more passive in other forms of relaying narrative.

I don't think it should be a "better and worse" argument in the way Cracked poses it and I agree that does far more harm to the "games as art" position than good.

Rather we should focus on the things video games do because they're unique to video games, not because they're necessarily "better" than the way a different medium does it.

This is an argument of semantics.