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hollygramazio
@hollygramazio

I love it when this page comes around, I love it so much, it's absolutely perfect, it's like it's been crafted as a precise and unimprovable demonstration of how nobody should ever have an opinion about anything. It is impossible to engage with. Everything you might try to think about it just slides off. It is an unbreachable sphere. It is the egg at the end of the world that will give birth to a new universe, and we will wish it had not.

"Why is Yoshi's Island artistic and Super Mario World isn't?" Dinosaurs are more artistic than plumbers, next question.

"Why are so many of these games American" Americans are better at art.

"Wait, considered artistic, but by whom—" by Ryan.

"But what about—" stop. no. Don't say it. Do you wish any game that you personally consider to be artistic to be found in this baffling company? You do not.

"Why has no videogame been considered artistic since 2021?" Ryan's been busy with exams and also he's behind on laundry but he'll get around to it in February or, well March is really rammed but April at the latest, for sure.

I especially love the "desperate justifications for this game's presence" column in the List. The absolute best bit is when it gets to Flappy Bird. With every other game the justifications column is like this wide-ranging transformative masterpiece, considered an artistic reimagination of the franchise that pushed the bounds of technology and art, was described by the New York Times as "interesting I guess". With Flappy Bird it's just look idk what your metrics are but this is literally in the collection at the V&A and MOMA so.


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in reply to @Campster's post:

"games which are considered 'art' (but not 'art games') by at least one art or video game critic" is such a bizarre metric. but I guess if it's really important to get Doom, That Dragon Cancer, Bioshock Infinite and Papers Please on the same list, for some reason

I love that there's both "games that have ever been involved in 'are games art?' discourse that we can cite" and "games that have ever been called artgames that we can cite" (not to be confused for each other) because - Criteria Aside - they also have very clearly been confused for each other. the further you get into contemporary times on the artgames list the more games you get that are just... Games People Think Are Neat

in reply to @hollygramazio's post:

aaaaa I missed the Rez situation which like you say is very perfect.

The "considered artistic" article's talk page is very clear that "Art games are not the same as games considered artistic" but I think there's a case to be made for making a huge Venn diagram, and then a separate "Art games considered artistic" article for the honoured few in the overlap.

Agreed, we need both sets to be completely enumerated so we can evaluate all of the set operations against them. I need to see both "List of art games not considered artistic" and "List of games considered artistic but not art".

I give you the following from the Talk page behind the article:

You can read all the books you want about what art is, you will find that art is strictly related to the expression of sublime contents through aesthetical and linguistic "beauty". -Lucafg74, 2017

What a relief both to be given permission to read books about art and to have it implied that I need not bother.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm on a quest to find a certain "R. Mutt" so he can teach me about the sublime.

also such a relief to be reassured that all art there has been, is, and will ever be, will only depict objects of beauty. sure would be challenging to my worldview if there was ever art depicting ugly people or objects

i have heard of just about all of these. i feel like the fact that i, the GAMING PEON, have heard of all of these is a bad sign as to the value of this already meaningless highly subjective taste-based list. if im looking up a "list of games considered art" i fucking want some shit i've never heard of. get weird

that said i gotta get back to lain ps1 one of these days. its a stretch to call it too much of a game maybe but god DAMN is this absolutely art