Hey everyone, I'm working on a school presentation and wanted to get some opinions. As a game art student, I must present my medium as a form of art and describe why are video games art. So, any opinions? Are video games art? Thanks.

My usual answer to this question is one of:

• The answer depends on your definition of "art"; or
• Does it really matter if video games are classified as "art", save for justifying a feeling of pretentiousness from either camp?

However, these days I can justify the validity of having the argument in order to gain credibility in the political sphere. If video games are regarded as an "art form" on par with books and films, it becomes a lot harder politically to make laws restricting content.

My opinion is that art has nothing to do with the medium, and that it is a mistake to classify an entire medium as "art" or "not art". If an artist decides to express their message through an interactive video game, that makes it no less a work of art than if they decided to make a painting or write a great novel. Likewise, because a particular game aims for mass consumerism doesn't make the entire medium "not art", just like how a trashy airport novel or a badly painted sign in a movie rental store window doesn't invalidate their entire media from the sphere of art.

Thanks for the reply TZ. I also include that each individual part that goes into making a video game can be considered art as well: soundtrack, scrip and story, art design, etc... Kinda like movies. the only difference is that in VG, you have some control on the outcome.

Wikipedia says "Art is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions."

Portal -> Companion Cube's destruction
Half-life 2: Episode 2 -> Alyx's death*
Half-life 2: Episode 2 -> Dr Vance's death
Final Fantasy 7 -> Aeris' murder
Chrono Cross -> Kid's near-murder*
Chrono Trigger -> Chrono's death

*Admittingly, I felt humour when these two happened, because Kid is so annoying, and Alyx is, well, Alyx.

Those are all examples of situations in games, where certain 'elements' where 'arranged' in a way to get a emotional rise out of us. The examples I gave were the deaths of characters, because that's where it's most obvious, but I can mention other moments in games that affected me emotionally in other ways (It's just harder for me to define that emotion).

Metroid Prime -> Any jungle-ish area where it rains, and music is playing.
Halo 1 -> Escaping from the Pillar of Autumn before it explodes.
Halo 3 -> Watching Master Chief and Cortana as they drifted through space.
MINERVA: Metastatis -> End scene, with helicopter leaving island as it's bombarded.
King's Field -> Wandering through the castle/island with music playing.
Quest 64 -> Finally making it through the long and difficult Cull Hazard Cave (a desert cave), and finding yourself in Normoon Village with green grass, nice music, a save point...
Quest 64 -> The beautiful Blue Cave (cave made of ice), the ambient Windward Forest, good ol' Larapool (village with waterfalls everywhere).

Many games, have scenes where you are in control of the character, and escaping from something that's collapsing or exploding, while dramatic music is playing. These types of scenes are designed to excite and exhilarate us.

A scene where there's a elaborately beautiful city you are walking through, is designed to bring us a sense of peace and pleasure. A scene where you discover a ancient ruin is designed to evoke wonder. A scene where you are in the midst of a incredibly massive city is designed to make us feel insignificant. A scene where you or another character is getting tortured is designed to anger you.

These are just a few examples that come to my mind, but there are many more.

If I were you, I'd collect a series of videos from many games, like the examples I gave above, but ones that affected you emotionally, and make a video that's a collection of scenes to prove that games are art.

I believe that a video game can be looked at as a piece of art much like a sports car or anything else that people design. I believe this mainly because there is no “Science” to video game development. maybe people have tried to make formulas that can be used to create games but I doubt that they were very successful. One part that I find intresting is even the programming part of creating video games can be looked at as an art so not just the artist but the programmer can have a creative influence on the game.

I guess people can argue otherwise but in my opinion yes video games can be looked as pieces of art.

Finally, I can put my fine arts degree to work!

The simple answer: yes.
If a computer game is contextualized as an object of aesthetic appreciation, it is art. Or, if you like, "if someone calls it art, it's art". Art is not some intrinsic quality of an object - see Duchamp's Fountain - rather, art-ness is a social construction, an institutional act performed upon an object.

Computer-Games-As-Art is neither a platonic ideal nor a concrete object - it is a process. To show that this social/institutional act is taking place what you need to look for is people treating computer games as art: Academics are doing this, for sure, and plenty of journalists and amateur commentators as well. It's easy to see online, even on this very site on rare occasion ;)

Some games are more easily contextualized as art then others - and some games are simply better as art objects than others - but that's picking at details and getting into judgments of value, which are entirely different questions.

They definetely are art, everything that implies creation, originality or even some sort of imitation and combination of different techniques is Art for me

Even expression of opinion and emotions is kind of an art for me

Is photography art?

The default answer is yes, despite the abundance of evidence of purely functional photography, personal use photography (is a picture of my kitten art?), indecent and tawdry photography (pornography, for instance), etc.

Is painting art?

Again, the default answer is yes, despite the hundreds of thousands of sheets of paper covered with the fingers and scribblings of infants.

The question is flawed: a category of created works - or the process of creating them - can not intrinsically be "art"; it is the use of the process or the product in the service of an artist goal that makes art. Artistic goals are as simple as pleasing aesthetics, or as complex as provocative political polemics. Thus, as we consider photography or music or painting to be art, video games are art.

What the question truly represents is a discomfort with a relatively new category of created works, and the struggles of an orthodox order that is largely non-participatory (art critics, senior academics, etc who mostly don't play video games) to comprehend an activity that they are on the outside of. Painting, drawing and photography are intrinsically related to the innate activity of picturemaking; music is related to expression such as singing. Video games are related to... what? The answer is "play," and it is a somewhat radical notion that the creation of forms and means of play could be art - and yet it is.

Yes, video games are art... when video games are art.