I know it is just my opinion, and also a hot take about something controversial and popular, but I need to voice it because everyone has to voice their opinions about this, and I find this discussion in particular to be quite compelling.
There is a discussion that has returned again when The Last of Us Part II became the monster of controversy that it is now: "are video games art?". Most times, I feel like this discussion will never reach a conclusion, because it more often than not hides different questions, like "what is art?" or "does art need to be mature?". Realistically speaking, if someone believes games are not art, it's not a new game that will convince them otherwise. It will most certainly be an introspective reflection of the medium.
I currently study a great novel of the last century called Ulysses, by a dude called James Joyce. And as many people know, that thing is also very divisive. Paulo Coelho said it is harmful to literature. Virginia Woolf called it a mess. Heck, it was banned in a lot of countries for being too obscene. An anarchist bomb, as Kevin Birmingham would say. But that being said, among most scholars, and also most people who are familiar with literature, Ulysses is still art. Even if they have not read it, the presumption is that it just is art. And most who read it don't think some things should have been changed (you just don't see people saying that Molly shouldn't have cheated on Leopold, or that Proteus shouldn't have been written the way it was), and of course, that also happens with poetry, and even young fiction, usually, but that is a literature thing: most people respect the work enough to understand that it just is, and should not have been something else. This happens more with movies and newer books, and I guess this is a consequence of the mindset that the reader/watcher/player is entitled to what the work is and what it should be. And maybe the weirdest part: art critique is based on what things should have been in an ideal world.
But of course, Ulysses was very divisive in its environment. It criticized everything that romantic literature stood for. It made fun of the greeks, of the great canons. It made some readers feel annoyed, it made some people give up on even reading it. And most of those things were a valid criticism: some puns were extremely bad, the dichotomy between "whore" and "maiden" that Joyce wrote into Molly Bloom was problematic (especially when you consider his biography), the whimsical jewishness of Leopold Bloom was also problematic. I mean, those are some of the critiques, at least. There are several critics who read into it and interpret the novel differently. And that is just Ulysses. You can probably find even more stuff in other books, like Lolita (also good) or The Fountainhead (not as good).
And in a capitalist commercial environment such as ours, it can be hard to see games as more than just products, of course. There is even a temptation to categorize only "some" games as art (the ones that are not AAA, or just the AAA ones, or the indies, or the ones that are not reliant on mistreating employees), but that can lead to some epistemic problems: "art" then becomes a title, or category, to fit everything you like in. "Actually, the only games that are allowed to be art are the ones that have an intention behind them", or "actually, only games that are focused on being game-y are art. Games that try to be movies can't". These ideas, while "apparently" objective, miss the point of their own intentions. By trying to turn a preference into a metric, you are just turning the subjectivity of a contract into a false objectivity.
And I think it's easy to agree with Adorno and apply his stuff to the gaming landscape. Thinking that the big industries with 1000 employees are bad and don't actually make art is a valid concern, I guess. But it is also so teleology-driven, isn't it? Art is not just the intention, or even the result of that intention. It also involves every materialist condition that led the art to become tangible. Even the most mass-produced, industrial product is always an expression of its time and place. If we see art less as a pedestal and more of a cultural landmark, there should be little to no difference between FIFA '14 and Proteus. One is just bigger in scope than the other, but they all have material properties, from engine development to publishing and marketing, and these material properties, manifested and produced by human labor (and exploration, of course, at least in FIFA). There are probably other things we should discuss, but in a broad sense, they are in the same artistic medium. Just like Freddy Got Fingered and Hiroshima Mon Amour (or Schindler's List. Better not make that comparison, but it should be noted that Hiroshima Mon Amour was criticized for also appearing to portray a tragedy in a trivial way), just like Trump: The Art of the Deal and Giovanni's Room, just like Justin Bieber and Miles Davis. The difference is all in the interpretation inside groups with subjective resonances.
It is strange to me that, in a forum where we discuss from Saya no Uta to Assassin's Creed, this notion of objectivity is so prevalent. And it feels like the only thing that stops games from "being art" are the Gamers themselves (yes, with capital G). A video game shouldn't need to "be" more "game-y" to be a game. And to be art. The multiple artistic movements that encompassed literature, architecture, cinema and other arts very often were about transgression in face of hegemony. Modernism was basically that. And games very often elicit this discussion by subverting some of those notions. Games don't need to have a period of mature releases to be art. They don't even need to be fun. Or be extremely interactive. Just like novels don't need to elicit specific emotions or be linear or comprehensible (looking at you both, Finnegans Wake and Água Viva).
And like someone said in a different thread, the interpretation is probably one of the medium's biggest problems. Not in a "game journalists are bad kek" type of discourse, obviously, but in how gaming was popularized specifically in a time period where these "objective reviews" were around. You just measure something from a lower number to a bigger number and boom, there's your critique. Throw a bunch of adjectives, so that the reader may know what is "good" or "bad", or maybe, if you're feeling spicy, something in-between that spectrum. And this really sucks sometimes. Like I said, controversy is healthy. I do love me some 120 Days of Sodom, but I wish discussions about games were about how they are, and not what they were supposed to be. You don't see people saying Moonlight would be a better written film if Chiron did something different (maybe this is a thing among RedLetterMedia-like critics).
Do you guys believe video games can become art? Do you think any art needed to prove itself to be valid as a medium? Do you consume games as products or enjoy them as art? And more importantly, do you believe your favorite game is worth more as an artistic expression (not only of the artist, but of the environment around them)?
There is a discussion that has returned again when The Last of Us Part II became the monster of controversy that it is now: "are video games art?". Most times, I feel like this discussion will never reach a conclusion, because it more often than not hides different questions, like "what is art?" or "does art need to be mature?". Realistically speaking, if someone believes games are not art, it's not a new game that will convince them otherwise. It will most certainly be an introspective reflection of the medium.
I currently study a great novel of the last century called Ulysses, by a dude called James Joyce. And as many people know, that thing is also very divisive. Paulo Coelho said it is harmful to literature. Virginia Woolf called it a mess. Heck, it was banned in a lot of countries for being too obscene. An anarchist bomb, as Kevin Birmingham would say. But that being said, among most scholars, and also most people who are familiar with literature, Ulysses is still art. Even if they have not read it, the presumption is that it just is art. And most who read it don't think some things should have been changed (you just don't see people saying that Molly shouldn't have cheated on Leopold, or that Proteus shouldn't have been written the way it was), and of course, that also happens with poetry, and even young fiction, usually, but that is a literature thing: most people respect the work enough to understand that it just is, and should not have been something else. This happens more with movies and newer books, and I guess this is a consequence of the mindset that the reader/watcher/player is entitled to what the work is and what it should be. And maybe the weirdest part: art critique is based on what things should have been in an ideal world.
But of course, Ulysses was very divisive in its environment. It criticized everything that romantic literature stood for. It made fun of the greeks, of the great canons. It made some readers feel annoyed, it made some people give up on even reading it. And most of those things were a valid criticism: some puns were extremely bad, the dichotomy between "whore" and "maiden" that Joyce wrote into Molly Bloom was problematic (especially when you consider his biography), the whimsical jewishness of Leopold Bloom was also problematic. I mean, those are some of the critiques, at least. There are several critics who read into it and interpret the novel differently. And that is just Ulysses. You can probably find even more stuff in other books, like Lolita (also good) or The Fountainhead (not as good).
And in a capitalist commercial environment such as ours, it can be hard to see games as more than just products, of course. There is even a temptation to categorize only "some" games as art (the ones that are not AAA, or just the AAA ones, or the indies, or the ones that are not reliant on mistreating employees), but that can lead to some epistemic problems: "art" then becomes a title, or category, to fit everything you like in. "Actually, the only games that are allowed to be art are the ones that have an intention behind them", or "actually, only games that are focused on being game-y are art. Games that try to be movies can't". These ideas, while "apparently" objective, miss the point of their own intentions. By trying to turn a preference into a metric, you are just turning the subjectivity of a contract into a false objectivity.
And I think it's easy to agree with Adorno and apply his stuff to the gaming landscape. Thinking that the big industries with 1000 employees are bad and don't actually make art is a valid concern, I guess. But it is also so teleology-driven, isn't it? Art is not just the intention, or even the result of that intention. It also involves every materialist condition that led the art to become tangible. Even the most mass-produced, industrial product is always an expression of its time and place. If we see art less as a pedestal and more of a cultural landmark, there should be little to no difference between FIFA '14 and Proteus. One is just bigger in scope than the other, but they all have material properties, from engine development to publishing and marketing, and these material properties, manifested and produced by human labor (and exploration, of course, at least in FIFA). There are probably other things we should discuss, but in a broad sense, they are in the same artistic medium. Just like Freddy Got Fingered and Hiroshima Mon Amour (or Schindler's List. Better not make that comparison, but it should be noted that Hiroshima Mon Amour was criticized for also appearing to portray a tragedy in a trivial way), just like Trump: The Art of the Deal and Giovanni's Room, just like Justin Bieber and Miles Davis. The difference is all in the interpretation inside groups with subjective resonances.
It is strange to me that, in a forum where we discuss from Saya no Uta to Assassin's Creed, this notion of objectivity is so prevalent. And it feels like the only thing that stops games from "being art" are the Gamers themselves (yes, with capital G). A video game shouldn't need to "be" more "game-y" to be a game. And to be art. The multiple artistic movements that encompassed literature, architecture, cinema and other arts very often were about transgression in face of hegemony. Modernism was basically that. And games very often elicit this discussion by subverting some of those notions. Games don't need to have a period of mature releases to be art. They don't even need to be fun. Or be extremely interactive. Just like novels don't need to elicit specific emotions or be linear or comprehensible (looking at you both, Finnegans Wake and Água Viva).
And like someone said in a different thread, the interpretation is probably one of the medium's biggest problems. Not in a "game journalists are bad kek" type of discourse, obviously, but in how gaming was popularized specifically in a time period where these "objective reviews" were around. You just measure something from a lower number to a bigger number and boom, there's your critique. Throw a bunch of adjectives, so that the reader may know what is "good" or "bad", or maybe, if you're feeling spicy, something in-between that spectrum. And this really sucks sometimes. Like I said, controversy is healthy. I do love me some 120 Days of Sodom, but I wish discussions about games were about how they are, and not what they were supposed to be. You don't see people saying Moonlight would be a better written film if Chiron did something different (maybe this is a thing among RedLetterMedia-like critics).
Do you guys believe video games can become art? Do you think any art needed to prove itself to be valid as a medium? Do you consume games as products or enjoy them as art? And more importantly, do you believe your favorite game is worth more as an artistic expression (not only of the artist, but of the environment around them)?
