My girlfriend's art teacher said video games are not art. Do you agree?

[S.T.A.G.E.]

archer9234 said:

S.T.A.G.E. said:

archer9234 said:

S.T.A.G.E. said:
The way the art world sees it, if the piece serves a function or purpose its not art. Kojima, the conept artist and my illustration teacher all agree on this.

BS. All art serves two key purposes. An emotional response and making money.

No. Concept art serves a mechanical purpose and function no different from industrial design. Its not meant to evoke emotion. Gaming never used to be art but there are few games which try to influence your emotions to come out. Personally I believe the idea of what is art is changing and the Smithsonian seems to agree, but no most games are not art. Some are.

Concept/instrial art has a goal: to aid in making money. A game doesn't just have to make you cry or get excited to evoke an emotion. Just saying something it does is cool is a response as well.

If you went to school for this your professor would've had a nice hard conversation with you about this (trust me..I have). Saying something is cool doesn't mean its art. Its cool because it succeeded in serving its purpose. You are an artist, but your work is meant for mechanical purpose. Its not supposed to be the prettiest piece. Its function is to give game developers a scheme for how their design is supposed to work. Thats why its called game design. Its a design which serves the function to aid the creation of 2D and 3D game development. Only recently have people wanted to delve into concept art.  Most digital painting fanart and concept art are not the same thing.