The increasing popularity of games may hurt games as an art.

[Reasonable]

bdbdbd said:
@Trashleg: Your first comment was included.

The OP, as you can see, made the point of the lack of art in videogames as the lack of creativity in them. Which i do agree and which is one of the reasons why Wii is what it is, to bring back creativity, the aspect of art.

Your first comment wasn't any different from the one i replied to. The first comment was about complaining the crappy games on the market.

@Nordlead: You missed the point. What makes a painting art? What makes a song art? What makes a movie art? What makes a videogame art? All the art share one thing in common, which is the creativity process, but every form of art has its own individual characteristics, that make them different from another. Music can't be music if you paint it and paintings can't be painting if it's video. Videogames can't be videogames if they don't differentiate from music, movies and paintings.
One of the problems in "making videogames art" seems to be that the people who pursue the art, seem to be pursuing videogames ceasing to be videogames. There definately are videogames that can be considered as art, but they can be art and videogames only if the art is in the characterics of videogame.

@Chichirimuyo: Except that how many artists are there who aren't remembered like Leonardo, Rembrandt or Beethoven.

Art is the product of creative process and the videogames today largely lack the creativity. NES games were far more creative than the games today.

This may be terminology, but in my view (and education if I'm honest) what makes something Art is not the creative process, although that is a common element required to achieve Art.

What makes Art is the experssion of an idea through the medium, the communication of an idea, or the generation of one or more emotions and ideally all of those.  Truly great Art, to stoop to cliche, touches the soul, it informs and enriches through it's experience.

I'm going to pick on Transformers 2 again to illustrate (sorry any die-hard Transformers 2 fans).  Transformers 2 is the result of a huge creative process, no doubt encompassing untold man-hours and a veritable army of taleneted people, whether using the creative process to:

1 - develop designs, storyboards, layouts, etc.

2- develop script

3 - film the actors, light the set, etc.

4 - the actors themselves in their performances (okay, I'm being generous here)

5 - the animation of the robots, etc. (pretty damn amazing if ultimately souless)

And many, many more.  But in this case the entire creative process was aimed at one thing, producing a commercial work aimed at a targeted demographic audience.  The final movie (I can't bring myself to call it a film, even though I normally dislike the 'movie / film' terms as much as 'casual / hardcore' terms) simply does not have one single element of true Art in it.

The creative process is a necessary step, the 'work' in a sense to create Art, but it does not guarantee Art in any way.

As another example, consider Transformers.  Still a popcorn movie, but actually a better movie than Transformers 2 in my, and thank goodness many critics I'd trust, opinion.  Using essentially the same creative process, consider the scenes in this commercial movie when the Transformers arrive, rise gracefull from swimming pools, slip delicately behind trees, etc.  Despite it's purely commercial stance those few fleeting moments do evoke some wonder and a genuine sense of mystery.  Not high Art, to use that phrase, but light years superior to jiving robots with gold teeth, no?

So the creative process I'd liken to the work involved in building a house.  But depending upon the intent, and of course the skill not just technical but artistic, that hard to pin down emphemeral ability some humans have while others don't, you might end up with an ugly, square functional house or a wonderfully attractive house.

I see this also mirroring games very well.  The creative process to create a game is little different whether the title turns out to be great or crap.  It's the skill that counts.  Of course, with games, as with films, the end result may just be entertainment.  It could be Art, but that requires something more than assembling the building blocks in a way known to simply entertain.