Games As Art, But At What Cost?

We'd like to see games as art. Even those of us who'd personally rather just shoot stuff, thank you very much, realize in general that "games as art" might be a simple way to vault them into the sphere of mainstream relevance, earn them appreciation and understanding from an audience that currently, unjustly, looks down on them.

We love, of course, when games have themes and messages, when they offer the player a choice - this equates to more complexity, we feel, this places a game on level with other media that aim to make us feel. There's an entire segment of the audience that devotes itself to finding the emotional moments in games; we write essays, post blogs and have forum discussions about Little Sisters, about holding hands with Yorda or getting rid of GLaDOS.

And many of us have even accepted, to some extent, that games are currently a little bit self-referential and insular. They often tread dangerously in the direction of comic books, which by giving comic book fans only and exactly what they wanted, ended up being of interest only to comic book fans and no one else. We see that games, as an interactive medium, have much greater potential than this.

But what happens when a game doesn't create the message from inside its fictional world, but uses a message that already exists?

What if "games as art" in the real world actually looks like something we really, really don't like?

http://kotaku.com/5041184/games-as-art-but-at-what-cost

A lot of bullshit.

Even if a game is offensive, it's the property and creation of the maker and therefore everyone else can go jump in a lake.

9-11 game?
About time!

I don't think games are art, and I don't think film or music are art either.

Labelling everything that has involved some creativity as 'art' is something that has only been around for the last 50 years. Beethoven would not have called himself an artist, he would have considered himself a composer and his work is considered to be finely crafted music. These days people like George Michael and Elton John like to call themselves artists to elevate themselves above what they really are (pop stars).

Writing has somehow escaped this trend and authors are generally not considered to be artists, yet they generally produce far more thought provoking and creative work than video games, films or music.

I think some computer game images (e.g. the Space Invader, Pac Man) have become cultural icons and this is closest computer games will get to becoming art.

I suppose it comes down to what is 'art' to you.