Can video games be both fun and art?

[Moonshroom]

I haven't been able to let this idea go since I heard it for the first time the other day.

It basically says that video games cannot be considered art because their artistic vision is compromised by the fact that they have to be made into a fun, enjoyable experience for players to see it fully, whereas something like a book, painting, movie or song can do whatever it wants and not care about the type of reaction it gets from its audience, only caring about getting an audience at all.

I think there's merit to this idea, for it is often said that art resists analysis, whilst video games are a constant subject of analysis. It's a fascinating subject to say the least.

What do you think?

[Jarkko]

The people saying games can't be art have never played a good RPG or action-adventure game. One example that I'll admit I haven't played yet but wish I could without buying an Xbox whatever is Shadow of the Colossus, which plays out like a Greek tragedy. Won't spoil it any further of course.

On the flip side, I find that modern pop music is overly concerned with sales to the detriment of artistic integrity (although in rare cases, the money generated goes towards something with more of this, like Lady Gaga's collab with Tony Bennett). One could argue this for certain genres of movie as well.

Video games can absolutely be art. But to be fair, this is a relatively recent development. There have been several turning points in the history of video gaming that turned our favourite three-sense entertainment into art, and I'd argue the first one was the release of Final Fantasy IV (or II outside of Japan) in late 1991, which was the first console game to have a truly robust story. This lead to later SNES games like Chrono Trigger, which was an innovator in multiple storylines, and Star Ocean, which went out of its way to have an almost movie-like storyline. It started becoming less about entertaining game play and more about captivating stories. But games that were truly ars gratia artis (at least to a large enough degree) wouldn't come until beyond the 64-bit era, and I would still argue that they are the minority in the bigger picture.

[LadyJirachu]

Yes.

Yume nikki and yume 2kki I find are really good examples of games that are also art. There is other games that I find are great in terms of art, too, but those games especially get expressive and creative for me….often I play them for the interesting art style alone haha. There’s also other games similar to them mentioned on tvtropes as “art games”. Basicly games known as much or more for their art style than game play.

But all games are art in general to me. Some more expressively than others, but they all were a project of someone’s creative ideas. To me, that’s what art is really about