AuthorTopic: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima  (Read 33012 times)

Offline Helm

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #40 on: January 01, 2007, 10:21:41 am
A person with an opinion.

Do believe they're wrong, then? Do you believe that what they perceive as art is something other than art? Is it just an experience worthy of inspiration? Where do you draw the line between art and non-art? I'm curious to hear your definition (not to say that it's a definable thing).

Some of this sounds unforgivably cheesy, on account of me being drunk right now. But try to take the questions as seriously as you can. Maybe I'll revise later.

I don`t believe anyone is wrong or right, that sort of terminology doesn`t suit my point of view. I am very close to a solipsist but not one, I don`t have any trust for language, nor any axioms that lean towards objective self-importance. I like discussion because it`s fun (I am all about having fun. Watch me dance.) not because it strives to approach some objective truth.

On a less personal note, it is probably for everyone`s best to leave culture to advance rather than stagnate, so if the art signifier must be attached to video games for most people to accept them more fully into their lives, then so be it. When I was ensnared by video games at a young age it wasn`t because I thought Shadow of the Beast was ART. It was because I enjoyed it on a much more bare level. Same with listening to Fates Warning or watching -the movie- Rollerball. It was simply GOOD STUFF, for me.


Dusty: good post.

And sorry about not defining what art is, I don`t think my personal definition would be very interesting or ground-breaking, and my social definition even less so.
« Last Edit: January 01, 2007, 10:23:35 am by Helm »

Offline Feron

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #41 on: January 01, 2007, 11:35:12 am
my "definition" of art would be something to express emotion and feeling.  with a video game art the artists have been told what to draw/create.  while yes the graphics may looks aesthetically pleasing, it does not mean its a form of art.  Its merely a product of money and time.

Offline 9_6

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #42 on: January 01, 2007, 04:09:50 pm
So if an artist is being paid and told what to draw, the outcome isn't art? Just a product of time and money?
Great artists have been paid and told what to do. Some of those pictures are highly regarded as art nowadays.

Then again I don't think the term 'art' is easy to define.
Actually I don't think you can clearly define it at all. If you think it's art then so be it.
It's just the same thing as with the term 'reality', everyone has his/her own version of it.
Does scaling an image blur it?
Opera fix Firefox fix

Offline snake

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #43 on: January 01, 2007, 04:33:38 pm
People seem to mix their choices between their own perseption of art and the that of institutions, or the official definition. IMO, you can call anything that's been done, made or created "an art". Games contain art. However, they are not regarded by art-institutions as "fine art". I'm not very fond of the idea personally. Games are tools for entertainment at the moment, but I'm certain that they will sometime in the future be regarded as artworks, just as old tools from older civilizations have become in the past.

I also know for a fact that there has been made pure artistic games in recent years. (It was demonstrated at a convention last year, so I don't have anything to show of it sadly.) It was a game where you searched for pubic hair for Barbie. Looked like a collage of some kind. It was made by a feminist as far as I remember.

Just to correct what I said in my last post, I feel you can call making a game an art. Games themselves are not "officially" art though, but I reckon it's not long before art-games catches on, as it's certainly being tested.

Offline AdamTierney

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #44 on: January 01, 2007, 07:52:50 pm
The the question is 'Can a collection of art be considered art itself?' I'm definitely of the mind to say yes, since that's exactly what interactive art installations are, and art institutions certainly consider those art. Just as the viewer walks through an installation and encounters elements at their own pace, and often in their own order, the same occurs in videogames. Consider also that art is contextual, and placing two individual pieces of art together (such as say music and animation) creates a product much different than merely the sum of its parts. There is artistry in how these aspects interact.

Take the music composer of 'Shadow of the Colossus' by Ko Otani. As a work itself, it is beautiful and no one would fail to consider it art. But its artistry is only fully realized when it's played in context with the battles it was composed for. There is new artistry unveiled at the combination of this music with these visuals, this story, etc. I think that new contextual artistry is what makes the collection art iself, and not just a collection.

And no one can define what is and isn't art for everyone else in the world. Art is anything that anyone, anywhere considers to be art - institutions, books and experts be damned.

Offline Sohashu

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #45 on: January 02, 2007, 01:28:18 pm
Quote
1. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

OK.  Seriously.  This sums it all up.  In a game, the graphic style affects the style of the music, or, in some cases, the instruments on which the piece is played.  The style of the game defines the sounds of the music.  In a cut scene, certain music is played to set the mood, affecting the players sense of the movie.  A movie could be called an artwork, a cut scene is a movie within a game.  Whats the difference?

Alright.  What the game is affects the style of the game.  If the game is light hearted, its not gonna have high res., high powered graphics.  It's gonna have simple graphics.  And vice versa.  The movements of the graphics would be stylized so to fit.   All this is made by a conscious thought, so by definition, a game is an artwork where the art is a continuously changing flow of possibilities, to put in slightly immature terms, artsy-fartsy way. If the player moves, the animation is an artwork.  If there is a battle, and the music changes, there is art in that.  It's all just different art forms coming together with interaction. 

I apologize for the unorganized ramble that is the above post. 
Back from hiatus, just remembered how excellent this community is at forming technique in a fledgeling artist of any kind.

Offline Rox

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #46 on: January 03, 2007, 12:45:49 pm
Personally, I still think a game itself is not art, but every single aspect within it can be, and are in many cases. I'd still say the final judgement whether a product is art or not lies in the mindset of the creator. If someone decides to create a game in order to win popularity and TEH CA$H (look at anything with an EA Sports tag on it), I wouldn't want to call it art. If someone creates something out of an awesome surge of ingenious creativity, that comes off with the sole purpose of being playable (Tetris, Pac Man, Asteroids?), then that's just entertainment also. But some games exist to tell a deep story or to affect the player in various ways. If the goal is to affect emotionally, then it's possibly art. I'm thinking of things like Silent Hill, Halo (yes, Halo, you heard me), Jet Set Radio (obviously art), and such things.

I guess I chose those examples because, way back in the day, there was no way to produce art in the form of a game. It had to be entertainment, or for the sake of money. But nowdays computers are powerful enough to allow expressing yourself through interactive media. Hm, this is a complex topic... I could sit around and write down thoughts on this for hours, I suspect...

I think my opinion boils down to my interpretation of the game, and what I believe was the aim of the designers... Or, wait, what am I saying?! I don't think games are art! Period!

Offline gliding

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #47 on: January 03, 2007, 05:45:43 pm
This entire conversation is inconclusive, I do, however find that whether a game is or isn't art isn't really that important. What I think a game has the most of is the ability to inspire art. Perhaps this asset is what drew me to video games in the first place. At any rate, games differ from traditional art in that they are to be experienced in real time and allow the player to immerse him/herself far deeper into the game. Like art, games often deliver or evoke a message or theme- they just do it in a way that isn't as traditional as we might hope.

my 2 cents

Offline Helm

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #48 on: January 04, 2007, 06:55:01 pm
Quote
1. The conscious production or arrangement of sounds, colors, forms, movements, or other elements in a manner that affects the sense of beauty, specifically the production of the beautiful in a graphic or plastic medium.

OK.  Seriously.  This sums it all up.


It would suit you better I propose, to not be so fast to reach conclusions such as these. What is 'conscious'? What are the limits of consciousness? Is art a completely conscious procedure? Is red being my favourite color, and therefore a color you'll find in my artwork a lot because I chose red to be my favourite color consciously? I'd say making graphic art is much more the product of the inner workings of the human mechanism which you cannot scrutinize, rather the result of the relatively simpler and shallower debugger that we call 'consciousness'.

What is an 'arrangement'? How much is enough? Is a blue painting enough? are these three dots ... enough?

What are those other 'elements'. Do emotions count as elements? Is me being sad an art-form?

And finally, what the hell is beauty, I'd like you to tell me since this sums it all up, because there's been a rich history of 4,000 of culture or more and nobody has come to an Aesthetic Formula that encaptures all that people might consider beautiful.

Offline Sohashu

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Re: Video game is not art - Hideo Kojima

Reply #49 on: January 05, 2007, 02:03:05 am
OK Helm.  Conscious, as I was thinking while writing that, is when the choices made are because of forethought into how something is done.   If I choose to make something bright, it's because I want it to seem light hearted. 

The limits of consciousness is how much you know.  If you don't know much about colour theory, then it is harder to make colour choices which work well together. 

Art is not a completely conscious procedure.  The choices we make when doing things is based on our tastes, and therefore how it turns out will be different from person to person.

It depends on how you came to use red.  If you decided that the work needed more red, as without it didn't quite appeal to you,then that is conscious.  If you were selecting a pallette and came to use red, then that could be interpreted as either.  Yuo could have chosen because you wanted, or just from habit. 

To me, an arrangement, in the way I was using it, is where things are placed together through some sort of sentient thought.   

How much is enough depends on what you were trying to achieve. 

If something is enough it depends on the context.

An ellipsis can have a strong effect on a sentence.  It can change the mood of the sentence quite a bit. 

Other elements could be subject matter, lighting, background, number of forms, texture, and how rough or smooth the shading is. 

Emotions... I personally think that they are just something we feel because of events, and they can be affected by art, so I guess they aren't elements of art. 

No.

Beauty is where something appeals to us because we find it pleasing.  Examples of beauty differ from person to person according to opinion. 




EDIT:  I do agree that beauty is impossible to define in a way that everyone agrees with, but for the sake of having something there... :\
« Last Edit: January 05, 2007, 02:05:05 am by Sohashu »
Back from hiatus, just remembered how excellent this community is at forming technique in a fledgeling artist of any kind.