there is a conversation to be had there that we have been rejecting for a long time. there is a conversation to be had about a medium that fucking still quite often positions itself as being a product independent of being art. there is something to be said about how games still has a problem where the biggest mainstream component of them wants to be called art entirely because of the status that comes with that, even if it doesn't want to deal with the inherent angle of critique that comes with art
and people get mad about this. and I get it. but a lot of the time the reason they get mad is for the embarrassing reason of "well if you say that then you're diminishing the work of all the people who worked on the game" and like... honestly? really? if you truly think that games are art, why is that the angle you approach it from? why is the angle you approach this from "if you say they're not, you might hurt somebody's feelings?" if that is your go-to, do you truly even believe that games are art?
or do you, like many people in games, simply see the label "art" as a status symbol?
because really, the whole "ugh, THIS AGAIN?" attitude to "are games art" basically every time it came up every other week since 2010 or whatever and dismissing the argument from that alone I think did and still does more harm than it does good. it treats it as a foregone conclusion and like a conversation people simply don't want to have! we've been dealing with the effects of not having it for ages now!
and the thing is, I do think games are art, but I think they're art in spite of themselves most of the time. so many games are desperate not to be seen as art, just as they are desperate to "not be political" or "not be about any one thing." they are art in their attempt to be absent of art! but we need to discuss this! we need to discuss this in the context of what may or may not be art well beyond the dismissive state of "art is any form of expression" because that standpoint is a conversation killer
and like, sorry, but I'm about to paste in a whole bunch of shit from a discord conversation so if you thought this was rambling before, well
if you want a really spicy take, I think roger ebert was entirely right to say "games aren't art" at the time he did and even when he relitigated it later but not for the reasons he stated
rather I think it is entirely fair to hold that viewpoint because games were unable to accept or even hold up to critical rigor from an artistic analysis
I don't agree with it, but I think it's an entirely defensible position and that games as a culture was more interested in the idea of being called "art" as a form of being legitimized rather than as a form of expression
where it was less about them growing as an art form and more about a way to reframe what was really something that had already became heavily commodified. even when ebert returned to talk about that position you can't even really bring up less commodified angles like indie games because he did that shit in 2010 when the height of "games as art" was fucking braid
which, as we all know, has no point. the greatest critic of our time (soulja boy) said as much
and I've mentioned this before but a lot of the attempts to rebuke his position there often didn't even involve using games themselves as example, as in the ludic elements of them, but instead things like the trailer for gears of war
and because people never let it go, even after he went "fine ,whatever, games are art, leave me alone" people used shit like the trailer for dead island
or they'd point towards cutscenes, like in metal gear solid
but they never actually talked about the games which is why I mention their inability to hold up to critical rigor
LISTEN I HAVE HASHTAG THOUGHTS TM
and like brian moriarty did a really good gdc presentation about roger ebert's fundamental views on art as a whole and how that establishes his views on games as art as a medium that I think is extremely worth watching if you ever have like... a fucking hour to spare
but I think that ebert pointing out that games are basically the equivalent of scratches on a cave wall is perhaps hyperbolic but not entirely wrong because I think it's taken a long-ass time (longer than it should have because of the commodification factors I've mentioned) for games to actually start thinking about themselves
because I really do think that art requires a degree of introspection both on the part of the artist and the part of the art itself as fuckin' like... pretentious as that sounds
and games really lacked that to the point where a lot of the time it felt like it was outright rejecting that
which is why bioshock infinite is not art
if you're wondering where the other person in this conversation is, they had exactly one response in the middle of that because she apparently for SOME reason deeply respects how hard I can ramble autistically
but like the discussion around "are games art" has always been bad, but it's been bad because of the people who support the idea just as much as it's bad because of people who reject it. yeah yeah both sides what the fuck ever shut up, but we need to have this conversation because if we do, we will still be struggling to reach a point where we have a robust way to discuss games from an art analysis standpoint
I mention kbash in that quote somewhere. kbash is a youtuber who showed up in my recommendations a while back and I watched a couple videos of, only for me to actually find myself immediately hooked because of something real fucking specific
kbash studied art history and knows how to actually fucking talk about art and applies that to how he talks about games
and that's important! because we do have language to discuss art! we do have the frameworks to do this analysis, but the vast majority of people who discuss games and critique them as art never do this and do not have the language to because they only engage with games in this way! a lot of games crit is the equivalent of scratchings on a cave wall only it's kinda deeply embarrassing for it to be like that because that cave is across the street from a fucking library full of centuries of critical approaches to other forms of art
like I do actually urge people to watch kbash's video on princess crown because despite being long you can actually get a good view of how approaching games as a form of art doesn't mean that the conversation has to be entirely academic, because that's not what crit is! it's about changing the way you view things, how you analyse those things, the language you use to talk about things! it is about understanding history and context well beyond just what is happening now!
and that's not to say that doesn't happen, but it sure doesn't happen in the way it does anywhere else, and that's because the commodification of games, as mentioned earlier, does involve a lot of actually rejecting the idea of being art unless it can be used as a status symbol. art means nothing in commodified games beyond being something that can be slapped on the back of the box under "NEXT GEN GRAPHICS AND SOUND"