While reading Sharp’s piece on artgames I kept returning to the same question: do we need to prove that games are art? Beyond and before this class I had read many online articles arguing that videogames must be treated as an art form, but I never understand exactly why people felt the need for every person to acknowledge it. I would argue the majority of people who have seen Yoko Ono’s recent performances struggle to call them art, but she continues to be an artist and make more without needing to prove herself. To me, videogames are art. I’m sure people may disagree; I definitely struggle with the idea that DOOM or Duke Nukem are in the same “category” as Mona Lisa. But part of what more recent art pieces (performance art, splatter paintings, etc) try to convey is that art cannot and should not be defined. In order to “prove” this point to those who disagree, Sharp and others have created a term I think is harmful: art games.
In his analysis, Sharp looks at several different games by different designers: Passage, The Marriage, and Train. He describes what seems to make these games stand out: abstraction, openness for interpretation, and in the case of Train, morbid reality and the inability to be marketed. To me, many of these (except Romero’s decision to make a single copy) appear to be tenets of good game design in general. In fact, he goes out of his way to talk about a level in Braid that silently teaches you the time-reversal mechanic through the philosophy of “Show don’t tell.” In creating this category of art games, Sharp distinguishes games he considers “art” from "not art" using many of the same tropes as traditional artists. To me, this category did not appear to be wholly distinct from most well-designed games and therefore muddled the dialogue about art and videogames. Instead of painstakingly writing up definitions for infinite concepts like “art” or “games,” to draw even more separations, I believe we should prove videogames are art through action. I would love to visit a gallery of videogames, made for the express purpose of simply being art, just like a gallery of paintings.
nmclean, I definitely resonate with your point about the slippery and not wholly convincing metrics Sharp uses to distinguish artgame and game art. However, although I resonate with it, it is difficult to reconcile your resistance to defining concepts like “art” and “games” with your subsequent call to “prove videogames are art,” which seems to imply some normative ideas about what constitute videogames and art.
To pursue this further: I would push against your ultimate proposal to make videogames "for the express purpose of simply being art," and especially not by somehow imitating paintings. This would just seem to be a sort of much-belated game attempt to reiterate experiments undertaken long before in the “art for art’s sake” movements of…
I agree with your critique on the seemingly incessant need to define videogames as art. I believe that Jim Preston defines it perfectly when he states that "to think that there is a single, generally agreed upon concept of art is to get it precisely backwards." To echo what you said, art over the last century has become increasingly indistinguishable. We entered a post-modern age during the 20th century where Marcel Duchamp's toilets were deemed art, and even silence (John Cage's 4'33").
Some argue whether or not post-modernism has run its course. If it has not, we are certainly far into its timeline culturally. It's no surprise, then, that we cannot come up with a strict definition for art.
Another…
I found your point about 'art through action' by having a gallery of video games raise interesting implications about the nature of interaction with videogames as a medium. I wonder if having a gallery of videogames could, whilst opening them up for interpretation, limit some of their intended effects, or perhaps, merely serve as an introduction into the world of games for further experiences by the viewers of the gallery. I feel that galleries command less intensive time (at a surface level) then perhaps some video games are designed for.
Perhaps a parallel to art galleries are the increasingly popular videogame conventions that are becoming increasingly popular in the world. The nature of a new game release, surrounded by users…