I used to argue that games were art because they contained art. That was silly. Games are more than the sum of their parts, and it is that whole - the game itself, completed and in its entirety, which should be judged as a work of art, not divvied up into pretty graphics, terrible music, glitchy code. Is the game as a whole a beautiful thing? Not "are the graphics pretty?" but "do they serve well and mesh with the rest of the game?" Does the music invoke emotion and capture the atmosphere? Does the
game play well?
I think games are art, flat out, no exceptions. However, like other artforms, there is good art, and there is bad art, and there is art that exists to look cool, and there is art that exists to piss people off, and there is art made by the pretentious and the humble. Art made by people who think they know how to make art but have no idea. Art made by people who just do what they feel and end up with awesomenesses*. So, then, do games fall into these categories. The games that alot of people say are not art, like Doom, or some generic FPS or something - to me that sort of stuff falls into the same category as, say, a poster of a ripped muscley guy shooting zombies with a .50 cal rifle at point blank range while clutching on the other side of him a hot chick in a skimpy outfit with giant boobs and flaming cherry crimson lipstick. It's still art. It may even be extremely well executed on a technical level. But it's still only there to look cool. To be as badass as possible with as little logic behind the situation as one can manage. But it's still art.
Er, note that, once again, I didn't read many of the posts in relation to this discussion. I think I'll do that now.
* I can't believe Firefox didn't underline that.
Yeah I brought that up but game art is usually not very good. You might look at a video game sprite or a background and think 'that looks pretty cool' but it's not very artistically viable.
