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[Gnarf]

I guess I've probably heard the Nirvana one. I dunno.

There are songs that sort of make me feel sad. But that's either a result of their lyrics or something I associate with the song. Like when I hear a song that was liek toatlly really meaningful to me at a point in my life when the world was mostly rabbits. Other than that I'd say music is unable to evoke the feeling of sadness. At least no feeling like the kind of sadness narrative art can invoke.

You've said something along the lines of game mechanics can invoke sadness when "it is being used in conjunction with some "story" element to represent something sad". So, and forgive me (or at least correct me) if I'm jumping to any wrong conclusions here, it would seem that game mechanics + narrative elements can invoke feelings and that narrative art can invoke feelings. Narrative seems to be the key word, but then some tune can invoke feelings in exactly the same way with no narrative elements. Hearing a certain sequence of notes is roughly equivalent to reading a story about rape. I don't follow.

That is, I do get why game mechanics on their own can't invoke feelings in the same way that narrative elements can. But then there are lots of other things generally considered art that can't do that either, simply because they don't have any narrative elements. It just seems a bit "well all those invoke a wide range of feelings and game mechanics don't because I say so".

[Craig Stern]

I don't know. Maybe that's true. I can keep my mind totally clear of associations, though, and still feel sad listening to Barber's Adagio for strings, even though there are no lyrics. You probably can too. Find it on Youtube, hit play, then minimize the window. If you end up associating sad things with the music, maybe it's because the music is inherently sad; maybe that's just how it invokes sadness in you.

I've seen people talk about certain games that invoke a sense of melancholy by having the player explore a lonely world. There are characters, but he can't speak with them. This makes the player feel isolated and alone. That's a good example of gameplay plus narrative elements equals emotion. On the other hand, exploration without the context of a surrounding world is only likely to invoke boredom.

[Gnarf]

Yeah well, gave that Adagio for Strings a listen. Sadness? I dunno, maybe some of it is a bit like sadness. Maybe not quite. I get what you mean, but I do think it is fundamentally different from the way relating to the story about something sad happening works. And then, music and literature are fundamentally different from architecture.

You're really capable of keeping your mind totally clear of associations?

Not so sure that amount of different feelings it can invoke is key to whether or not it should be considered art. Either way, it sounds all wrong to me to make playing non-story-driven games out to alternate between succeeding and failing and two distinct emotions to go with those. Yeah, I'm hopefully exaggerating, but still, there's a lot more to it. A lot. Like, tons. And so when someone makes a claim like that it's very tempting to assume that they don't "get" games. That what they care about are these interactive stories, maybe with a game mechanic or two where it emphasizes some narrative element, but not games (not that there'd be anything wrong with that).

I've seen people talk about certain games that invoke a sense of melancholy by having the player explore a lonely world. There are characters, but he can't speak with them. This makes the player feel isolated and alone. That's a good example of gameplay plus narrative elements equals emotion. On the other hand, exploration without the context of a surrounding world is only likely to invoke boredom.

That's fair enough. I don't have a problem with that. I just don't think it invalidates that being "in the zone" in a shmup being about rather different feelings than planning your next move in a TBS. Which I think it is.

[Craig Stern]

I can keep my mind free of associations for a while. It's a technique I learned from meditation.

Speaking of which, I think being in a trance-like state while playing a shmup is close to the opposite of what makes a game art. You've shut off your higher processes and are playing solely on instinct, using parts of your brain focused around pattern recognition and twitch reflexes. What are you really discovering about life, the world, and your self while that's happening? Not much. Which isn't to say that it isn't really fun, or a really good gaming experience, you understand. I love games like that as much as anybody. It's just that I don't think that's the same thing as it being art.

[charon]

You people keep mistaking art for something that has to be experienced in a specific way in order to be art, then constantly arguing about which 'kind' of experience defines art.

Art is when artist creates something with a sole purpose of it being experienced.

Looking at a Mondrian picture evokes absolutely no emotions within me. It is abstract, so how could it?

Still, I can experience it. And I wouldn't ever be able to if mister Mondrian had not decided to create it, for exactly that purpose.

Now if you want to talk about elitist art, that is something entirely different, because it is always codified. But you cannot apply this code to games, just like you couldn't to a movie when movies were invented, because it does not incorporate the updated 'codecs' yet.

Or, if you want to talk about cultural monuments, like Homer, Shakespeare and Mondrian, this is merely a selective process to expose the highlights / extreme points in cultural development. I'm pretty sure that the laws of this process have not yet been firmly established...

[Gnarf]

Right, now, in some retarded attempt to clarify, I've been trying to make two claims: One is that there's more to gaming than enjoyment and frustration. Saying that it is, or that those are the two feelings it comes down to, is at best to simplify it to the point of incorrectness.

The other is that the recent definitions or criteria for art in this thread seem to exclude a lot of other things generally considered art (while being vague enough so that anything can be shoehorned into meeting them).

[Craig Stern]

Art is when artist creates something with a sole purpose of it being experienced.

That definition is easily torn down. First of all, if art is dependent on being created by an "artist," then you've built yourself a circular definition, since you then have to define "artist" (answer: someone who makes art). You can see how that doesn't clarify anything. Secondly, without the (rather useless) artist condition, that definition is way way way too broad. Is the numa numa guy video art? His sole purpose is for you to experience the video he's created. Likewise, suppose my sole purpose is for you to experience a fist in the face, and I punch you square in the nose. That's something, but it ain't art.

The point is, there have to be some things that are not art for the word art to have any useful meaning beyond "something that exists and can be experienced." So we're trying to hash out what is and isn't art in the context of gaming.

[Seth]

Personally I find most games not art (or not good art) because they focus too much on asspatting the player: saying You Win!, being the best fighter, highest level, solving the hardest puzzle, etc.. It's all about making the player feel good, which is kind of shallow in my opinion. 

I think there should be more games without a win condition (though not necessarily lack of a motivator), less of the sort of "I beat the game" mentality and more "I finished the game."

[Gnarf]

Is the numa numa guy video art? His sole purpose is for you to experience the video he's created. Likewise, suppose my sole purpose is for you to experience a fist in the face, and I punch you square in the nose. That's something, but it ain't art.

His sole purpose for that is retarded internet fame. The purpose of punching someone in the face is to hurt them.

The point is, there have to be some things that are not art for the word art to have any useful meaning beyond "something that exists and can be experienced." So we're trying to hash out what is and isn't art in the context of gaming.

However, invoking feelings and making making you discover things about life, the world, and your self are far vaguer criteria. Both apply far more obviously for a lot of non-art than art. If you want some sadness, read the news. If you want to discover something about the world, I'm sure an atlas can help you out.

Not gonna "approve of" charon's definition or anything, but it is easier to make sense of. And what he was getting at was not that art is "something that exists and can be experienced." What he said was that it was something that was created with a sole purpose for it being experienced. That is, experienced not just as means to some other ends (like, say, instruction manuals). Doesn't make it incredibly clear cut, but at least a bit more than depending on whether or not random nobody had some kind of feeling when he experienced it.

Personally I find most games not art (or not good art) because they focus too much on asspatting the player: saying You Win!, being the best fighter, highest level, solving the hardest puzzle, etc.. It's all about making the player feel good, which is kind of shallow in my opinion.

I think there should be more games without a win condition (though not necessarily lack of a motivator), less of the sort of "I beat the game" mentality and more "I finished the game."

Presenting a challenge for the player to overcome is not all about making the player feel good. The player feels as good as he is, and if he's not good enough he won't manage to beat the game. I do agree that that holds for a lot of current games though, in that it seems it's considered proper good game design these days to make sure there's absolutely no way the player can't win. And then, since playing the game doesn't make the player feel good (since being good doesn't enter into it any longer), they try to cover for this by saying to the player that he's amazing and that he has skills and reward him with pictures of tits all the time. So yeah, that's retarded and shallow. Nothing wrong with goals/win conditions though. Or tits.

[Chris Whitman]

Okay, so I did some research and I have discovered how it is that games become art.

The process begins when a wizard invokes a spell of augury by casting the intestines of a two-headed sow into a roaring fire no less than three feet tall. Amidst the whorls of coalescing smoke he divines the names of a select number of games with significantly more artistic potential than the rest. These are culled from Best Buy by groups of specially trained beagles equipped with night vision goggles. The titles must then overcome a series of challenges, each more difficult than the last, which will find them working sometimes together and sometimes against each other to help them to learn the true meaning of friendship. The winners are then crucified and descend to the underworld, from whence they will be judged by Anubis, jackal-headed god of the dead, who will weigh their transgressions against a surgical glove filled with gravy. If they fail, their hearts are fed to Ammit, the eater of souls. The winners receive a year-long subscription to Dog Fancier Magazine and a selection of handmade soaps and are entitled to proceed to the next round. If any of the games select a Double Jeopardy, their winnings are worth double except in cases where they land on a Creative Cat square and have to hum a song no one has ever heard of. All offers void in Connecticut and where specified by law.

In the end, any games still left standing are declared to be art and preserved for all eternity on a mountaintop under the auspices of choirs of angels and a seven-headed lion which performs select tracks from the album "Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em" until the end of time. Amen.

[brog]

Just give me a moment to grab my wizarding hat..

[Craig Stern]

However, invoking feelings and making making you discover things about life, the world, and your self are far vaguer criteria. Both apply far more obviously for a lot of non-art than art. If you want some sadness, read the news. If you want to discover something about the world, I'm sure an atlas can help you out.

For your benefit, I'll repost the definition I actually offered: "art evokes emotions deliberately for the purpose of elevating (or deranging) the consciousness of the observer, accomplished through a representational medium."

[Lucaz]

I have been reading this thread for a while, and now I'll post. I'm not very understood on the issue, so it might make few sense.

I undestand art as any cultural product with humanistic or aesthetic content. That means that for me, anything made with that things in mind, is art. All usual art forms (painting, movies, sculpture, etc) are art, and any kind of designing (from architecture to games) has both a practical and an artistic side to it. Yet, there is another form of the art, and it's when something becomes art, just because people think it is art, even when the object has no intrinsic artistic value, just the one given by the spectator. Tthe most clear example of this is Duchamp's Fountain, it's just a urinal, yet it's considered art. Anyway, this last part has nothing to do with games, so let's ignore it.

As for evoking feelings, art might do that, but doesn't needs to do it. Lots of things I consider art just limit to be slighty pleasing, or just not annoying, while some don't even try that. An example is ambient music, it doesn't tries to do any of that, it's supposed to be background music, not something you pay attention to.

Now what's specific to games. All the games are art. Not just good games, or artie games. ALL games, some with more or less artistic value, but all nonetheless. Not just good or artistic stuff is art. There is shallow and crappy art. Where's is the art in a game? In none of it's individual parts, nor in it's design. It's in the sum of it's parts. Also, from what I think, a game is kind of... undone, until it's played. The games are the only art form where the spectator isn't just an spectator (though sometimes it's used as a tool by the artist). The playing of the game is an integral part of it, so the players sums their experiences, everything that could have made their playing of it unique, to the game, at least for their version of it, as every art piece is different for every spectator. Specially considering every player has his own copy of the game.

[0rel]

hm...i don't know, but i think this thread was quite interesting and it could really lead somewhere... probably, the other one was just spawned a bit too early, cause we haven't found no clear common definition or characterization of art yet, which could be applied to games later on. to discuss the practical side, there really must be a clear understanding first of the field we're talking about... but the term "art" is extremly fuzzy, like this thread demonstrate quite well. someone may claim that art even doesn't exist, others think everything in a human life is art, including architecture, design, cooking, just everything in culture... the varity of possible definitions couldn't be larger than that, really. - so, it would be necessary to make up a common, fixed "feature list" first, for the sake of the practical discussion. i don't expect that we will find a superior, universial definition of art, but a broad ranged categorization is already sufficient here, i think.

(it's simpler to see all this more as technical problem than as a philosophical one. that's why i like these techy terms here...)


i've thought about it for while, and came to this:

in german exists a categorization for music which defines three (overlapping) groups: E-, U- und F-Musik. i thought, this would be quite a fitting system to separate games in a similar way. to make it clearer, here some examples for how it works for music, first:

1. F-Musik. Funktionale Musik ~ functional music:
   -> army music, ringtones, to some degree curch music, 'Happy Birthday' like songs, to a certain degree music in games and film, audio in advertising spots, trailers, jingles, background music in a bar, to a certain degree club/dance music...

2. U-Musik: Unterhaltungs Musik ~ entertainment music:
   -> popular music, light music, commercial POP music, music business, radio, mtv, folk music, traditional music...

3. E-Musik. Ernsthafte Musik ~ serious music:
   -> demanding, not commercially motivated music. art music, some forms of classical/jazz/... music, experimental things, improvisations...

and now, the same thing applied to games:

1. functional games:
   -> education, simulation, training, communication, documentation games. brain train. wii fit. too some degree skill-based arcade titles. some MMOs. (caution: also known 'Serious Games', not to be confused with cat-3)

2. entertainment games:
   -> the vast majority of all popular, commercial games: fun    -> games. battle games. puzzle games. games for hardcore gamers. casual games too. high-tech, photorealist and physics simluation candy. most MMOs.

3. art games:
   -> art. not necessarily "fun" games. indie games like 'Gravitation', 'Passage', 'Façade', 'Mondo Agency', 'I'm OK', 'The Graveyard', 'Knytt' and others. demanding, hard games, games about games, games as metaphors, games as a deeper experience, without highscore goals and so on. - some RPGs... (??)

these 3 categories are just one possible way to split up the problem and declare some spots, if someone comes up with a better "grid", that would help too. probably, there exists a similar categorisation in literature and film, but i don't know...

(btw: i'm not a big fan of categorisation, especially not as a way to define value, but it certainly helps to see and talk a bit clearer... and these categories doesn't say anything about value either way. art isn't "better" than entertainment, or the functional cat.)


so, this thread is mainly searches for a the differention between entertainment and art games, if i use this three categories, right? so it's probably best to to analyse some concerete examples first, to make the difference more clear... i'm aware of the fact that there's a vast gray zone, especially between the entertainment and art poles, so, it would probably better to find the most extreme examples you know in order to compare them better...


art-VS-entertaiment:
for some people 'Super Man' might be art, as a cultural monument of our time... that's valid, but the main aspect to discern the categories is - like i already tried to say - how much the observer gets involved in the work. art only happens if the player/recipient/observer really participates, if he gets (inter-)actively involved, because, it is always him, who (re-)creates the art. he must become an artist himself as well, in some way. he must get active, and try to understand the work in his own way. in my opinion, art is never an object, but all objects which are created by an artist to invoke a feeling or a thought or certain type of experience through the medium of choice could be called "art objects". so, in the case of 'Super Man'', people may see it as art (they certainly will in 100 years), but the creator's main concern obviously wasn't to make his "clients" think or feel further. the product mainly intends to entertain them. hence, it's clearly cat-2: entertainment.
entertainment is about the consumer-experience, which is mostly something passive, here. it seems to me that entertainment is mainly about consuming. "fun for money". in tech-terms: it is about INPUT, but art is about input and OUTPUT. - you can relax to entertaiment music, you can have fun with arcade games, you can have intense experience in a good hollywood movie, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it is art. it's hard to say, but the type of involvement is different between art and entertainment, because art probably goes much further... instinctive "hard fun", relaxing melodies, simple happy-end stories with nice eye-candy convey rather short-termed value, and have the clear purpose to entertain for a defined period of time. they mostly address simple, more shallow emotions, uncompelling themes...
art must have something that wakes you up as an active individual person. hard to tell with words (and with my english, hm), but you probably know what i mean... art isn't about decoration, or relaxing or pure amusement, more about the essence. (amusement can be the central part of art too (-> hedonism), but then, that kind of art would tell something about the authors point of view, it's not only a product for amusment, it's a way to communicate something). - entertainmnet games can have brutal content. taken as art, it would then speak about violence by showing something particular which refers to more general topics... art is more like seeds which you have to grow, it's alive, but entertainment is more like fruits, products to consume.


(btw: i'm really not much into art or something... but i want to make games! and i'm more interested in games as whole, in the computer medium in general. just that you don't mean i wanna make the ultimate art game or something, i just think it's worth the discussion. i'm really for diversity, and find these "art games" very interesting to play. even more than bigger titles... and art in games really seems (unlike to film (designer <-> director)) only possible in the indie world at the moment)

unresolved brain_dump: so, to discuss the parctical side, how the design would be affected by the desired emotion/expression/message of a potential "art game", it would be important to compare the well-known design rules of entertainment games to the unknown rules for game design of art games... - at the end, games are a very technical medium, and intuitive creation is quite difficult here. code is such a stubborn, brainy matter, so that the art probably happens in first place within "outside-game media", like: concept/idea, plot/story/text and with audio-/visual assets... this is only one possible strategy, is see.
but it would be still interesting to understand more about the other topic, if and how games could be art, because of their gameplay, the realtime actions. if that would be the main content, not the story (like in PRGs), the pre-constructed concept/idea/rules (like in 'Passage'/'Gravitation'), or the audio visual assets (like in many games). a game where really the playing would be art. the gameplay/interactivity... art is often created spontanoulsy, but to make games with their central mechanics that way it would need either very advanced multimedia/CODE skills or some kind of simplifed tool, maybe...

(sorry for unclean mammut-ness )

[neon]

art evokes emotion.

games evoke emotion.

is that too succint?