Are video games art?

[Saz]

I completely agree with him. The guy is a f**k genus. Truly one in a billion.

"But an actual car, like a videogame, is interactive, so it's something used by people, so it's like a car where you have to drive it. There are 100 people driving a car; they have 100 ways of driving it and using it. It could be families driving the car. It could be a couple driving a car. The owner of the car could be driving along the coastline or they could go up into the mountains, so this car has to be able to be driven by all 100 of these people, so in that sense, it's totally not art."

I'm not sure what you don't get about that. It's a mutable thing, which unlike architecture or pottery, has no clear function. Buildings have a clear and defined function. Video games do not, their function is whatever the player imposes. Even music, despite being enjoyed and interpreted by an audience many ways, comes out as a single tune of the artists imagination. The function comes from the artist and a car or video game simply cannot have a single defined artist function because it is a "service" that will be used in various ways for various functions by different people. The inherent reason these can't be art is because the creator has no expectation of a unitary function for his work.

[The Comrade]

[Philly]

If you're talking about fine art there are all sorts of rules about what is and isn't. As far as being part of "the arts" these things all are clearly.

[The Comrade]

[Spider]

[John Galt]

Minimalism is mostly not art. All other things called art are though. Including videogames

[Saz]

There has to be a single function in the artists mind, and for things like cars or video games, that can't be possible. The artist knows its going to be used in a variety of ways, and that every iteration of it will be a slight change away from what the artist created. Unlike the Eiffel Tower, which is there as the artist intended, or a clay bowl, there as the artist intended, a video game or a functional car...what can the artists intent be? What function can he impart to it? None, because he knows the user is going to change it.

Jeremy Clarkson is a scholar.

[John Galt]

The function is to allow people to do what they want within the confines they establish

[Philly]

[John Galt]

Some games are very much point a to point b. Like the last of us, probably the best example of this. The art is the story itself, the graphics. Other things like Minecraft end up allowing people to create their own art with the provided pallette