Saying games are art is like saying painting is art or films are art. It’s just not so.
Some films are plain rubbish, so to even make a general statement like, “films are art” is pretty stupid.
“Painting is art” may seem to be a more sensible thing to say, but for anyone who has been to a local art society exhibition and seen the many twee pictures there are on display will know that they, too, are a long way from the art label. This is particularly so when compared to the works of Rembrandt, Turner, Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, Pollock, Hockney, etc.
But, of course, there are these great people who have created works of art using the medium of painting, but it is the individual works not the medium that is the art. Painting can be the means to create, in many ways, the embodiment of what people think of as art, but painting itself is just a means by which artists express themselves. Some films are art, when the director has approached it in a similarly expressive way, but the vast majority of films are not.
Painting and film, like other media, have both been given the term, artform, which effectively means that art is possible within that medium.
Games, then, are NOT art, but as a medium they could be an artform. However, we’ll only know for sure if someone creates a game that can be described as art. And we’ll likely have no idea what that is likely to be until it comes along.
(As a disclaimer, I assume you and I are talking about art that would be widely accepted and recognized within the “consumer base” of the medium just as movie directors like Kubrick are both widely known and recognized as artists. There are individuals trying to do art within our medium already, but the scope of the projects and the range of publication seem to be very limited.)
I absolutely agree with you. Question is, when (if at all) will we begin to see individuals with both the purpose and the muscle to create art within the means of the interactive entertainment medium?
When I started out in this industry almost 15 years ago I believed that all it took for that to happen was the growth of the industry and the growth of the base of people understanding and using the medium. Art, as an essential means of expression for the creative mind, would follow suit, as it had in other mediums. In fact I believed this to be imminent.
I have come to believe that I was wrong. Our industry has gone out of their way not to let its customers mature to the point where they actually care about “the art aspect”. Some efforts have been made, of course, to broaden the “base”, but most games are still tailored for 14 year old boys who could, for instance, (overly generalized, of course) not be further away from appreciating a Rothko painting than a turtle on an overdose of horse tranquilizers.
I am not saying that this is necessarily bad (society also seems not to care that TV is, with a few exceptions, also not used to promote or at least deliver art), and there is nothing wrong with creating good entertainment products.
I am probably just saying that those of us who expected art to someday make up a noticable part of this mediums output might have been chasing a fata morgana all along.
A great perspective there.
“Our industry has gone out of their way not to let its customers mature to the point where they actually care about “the art aspect”.”
I think a lot of this comes from the industry holding the blockbuster film as a kind of yardstick by which to be measured. Of course, there is nothing wrong with creating quality games with high production values, but those high values don’t make them art. Blockbuster films are often wonderful entertainment and that’s certainly, as you say, something worth pursuing.