| Bodhesatva said: You're absolutely right! Most people of all ages aren't interested in art. The few people that are, generally speaking, are: 1) Well educated 2) Adults 1) Less educated than average 2) About 23 Look, if you're just going to insist that well educated adults aren't going to want artistic games (although they've shown some signs of it already, as The Sims and Civilization are certainly both artistic and both were played much more heavily by adults than the average game), but somehow 23 year old males are going to love games that are intellectually and emotionally sophisticated (even though the games you name that might be directed at them -- Okami and Ico, as best examples, have bombed) then I'm not sure this conversation can go on. Of course we're speaking in generalities here; there are no grand studies that give us a good concensus on such things, nor can we even come to a conclusion on what "art" is. This is an abstract discussion about psychological sophistication. All we can possibly have in this discussion are generalities, and yours is a generality that is so obviously false I don't know how to continue. Just get back to me when you can reasonably claim that any serious artistic medium -- with sophisticated intellectual, thematic, or emotional content -- is thoroughly enjoyed by masses of young, less educated males, but is of no interest to well educated adults. |
Firstly I'll correct you on the average age of gamers. According to the ESA "The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years." link They also say that "In 2005, 25 percent of Americans over the age of 50 played video games, an increase from nine percent in 1999." Looks like there is quite a large number of gamers who would fall into the age group you suggest 'knows art'.
Now they don't give stats on the average intellegence of gamers, but I think you're trying to objectify the definition of art. You'll notice I've bolded a section of your paragraph. I'd suggest that you can never come to a concensus of what art is. Art is subjective. Just because it caters to different people, doesn't mean its any less artistic. You also suggest artwork is 'sophisticated intellectual, thematic, or emotional content'. Now while most art that people in your definition of art would probably agree with that, there are also works of art which don't fall into any of those. The one which came to mind while reading that is John Cage's 4:33. If you aren't familar with this peice, it is a song which consists of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of silence. This is pretty much as minimalist as music gets (although one could argue the peice could be shorter :P) and really contains no sophistication at all. Yet musical scholars around the world consider this musical work art.
The problem with defining art to be high art, is that artworks that fall into this category a) have withstood the test of time and b) are classified by, as you've mentioned, older people. Firstly, video games have only been around for approximately 40 years, approximately half the lifespan of someone. They've been around even less in the mainstream. This leads me to my second point, that these older people didn't grow up playing games. They don't have the early life experience of video games. I'm sure if younger people these days didn't have video games, they would enjoy more of the things you consider art. It is just games offer something which almost all of these classic artworks don't. Interactivity. Theater and music sometime supply this (hence why people would prefer to go to the theater or see a concert rather than just watch it on tv) and it is a big drawcard.
This interactivity leads me to my next point. Why do people only focus on the 'interactivity' of games when trying to argue them as art. Last time I checked, games had a lot of the same elements as movies. Sound, visuals and storyline. If any of these three were extracted from a game, they would most likely be considered art (in regards to most of these, you'll probably want to consider an RPG to be the best example). So why now, when we place these into a game, does the resulting product not get classified as art? Using our rpg example, many of them have ochestral soundtracks, impressive visuals (if you want to argue that computer rendering isn't art, remember there are computer generated movies) and sophistcated and indepth story lines.
