Gaming an Art Form?

[Rider]

[glow=red,2,300]I'm with Buddy on this one. I''m just too lazy to quote his post.

Anything can be considered art. Just depends on whether you really put your soul into it, or if you followed the Aak formula. ;D Anything with soul and beauty is art, even if the beauty is in its hideousness. If some guy did get a toilet and scribble real feelings onto it with a cheap spray paint can, could it be art?

Art's really in the eye of the beholder. [/glow]

[Jessica Coconut]

Ever played Super Smash Brothers Melee, in training mode or camera mode, zoomed in, slowed down, and tried out some moves? If that's not art, I'll be darned to the bottom of Hell for all eternity. (I'm a good person, I believe, too)

The choreography (yes, choreography, ever watched Peach "dance") is beautiful, the art is detailed, it's beautiful 3d (unless you're in flat zone), the animation is near-perfect, the backgrounds are detailed, the music always has a wonderful orchestra of instruments, and sounds backing up your moves. Even the taunts and victory poses are fun to watch.

Yeah, it's a violence-oriented videogame. It's art. It's no less art than the Mona Lisa herself.

Really, how can such a beautifully orchestrated combination of player-interaction, music, plot (SSBM is one of those ones where you make your own plot-based battles in your head), visual design, sound, imagination, and fun, NOT be art?

I mean, for petes sake, Karate is violent, but it's art. Martial Art, to be specific. Just because it's violent doesn't mean it's not art.

I think some people have it backwards, believing that "it's violent, so it's not art," when it's actually, "it's art, so the violence is ok." I don't think we should be considering it not being art because that would give it licence to be as violent and inappropriate as possible. That's no reason to not call it art. It's art because it's art, and not because we're not worried about violence being present.

I don't know if the above really makes sense... but I kind of mean that we can't decide that it's not art because it has violence. We decide if it's art because of artistic merit. In that case, I believe it goes on a case by case basis. ... Oh, and that doesn't mean old 8-bit video games aren't art. Some people find a lot of artistic merit in classic, old-style gaming, when graphics didn't matter. (That, I found a little twisted in our games, I mean, who cares about the graphics if the game plays like crap?)

At the time, the technology was top quality, and impressive.