Videogames you love, videogames you hate thread

[Rökkan]

The medium, in itself, is an art-form, because it can both be a way of the creator to express himself (which is where the word 'art' comes from, articulation), but can also be made for the sake of giving/sharing an experience or a vision to an audience, which I believe that is the definition of art.

However, there are few to no games which only principle of it IS to give or share an experience. All games does give experiences to the one playing it, but no games are there just for the sake of the experience, which is why Ebert is not convinced that games are not an art form, all videogames are first of all, well, games. They have objectives, goals, rules, etc, which for Ebert, keeps them from being art. Even games such as Shadow of the Colossus, Ico and Flower have those.

I do believe that videogames are art forms because while their primary objective might be to present a game, a challenge, etc, they end up, intentionally or not, giving experiences, visions, and emotions to those playing them. But, to evolve as a medium, we should put in our heads that our medium should not always be about a game, but, well, everything that an art form that has music, graphics, and interaction, can present. Unfortunately, we do not have any other directly, physically interactive artforms to compare, so it might be hard to make a videogame that is not a game, and only produced for the sake of art.

Art really is hard to define, not sure if my definition is completely correct and free of holes, because, for instance, yelling, in my definition, can be considered as art. Yelling can be made just to give to someone an experience, and it does provoke emotions on the audience, such as fear, surprise, or even laughter.


Art is often wrongly associated with quality, so just saying that if we are going to have a debate on this, keep this in mind. The more "artistic" something is, does not mean the more "refined" and "less shitty" it is.