Do you see games as pieces of art? *potential spoilers*

[Spindel]

I answered ”No” on the question in the poll.

And in general I stand by that even if there are some (few) exceptions.

Generally speaking if we look at the present day games are mass produced consumer goods more similar to a plastic garden flamingo that you buy at The Dollar Store than art. Games can contain assets that in some circumstances can be considered art, but in most cases they don’t.

A big reason for me saying this is that the industry as it stands today is extreamley formulaic, and as soon as you are formulaic you aren’t art you are massproduced consumer goods. Once in a while there comes along a game that truly does something new and then we have the exception that would be considered as art, the copycats that come after that follows the formula are not art.

There where more games that I would consider art in the early days of computer/video games, in part because the less formulaic approach, an example to this is a series like Zelda that nowaday (until BotW) has been extremely formulaic but if you look at the first 2 games there was no formula (yet).

But also because the bigger limitations in hardware. The hardware simply didn’t allow for grand visions so the developers had to come up with workarounds to try to get close to that grand vision and in the process actually sometimes created a piece of art in the process, an example of this that springs to mind is the first Silent Hill.

When it comes to storytelling I have not seen or experienced any game that even approeches the lowest level pulp stories. And to me John Carmacs quote from the mid 90ies: ”Story in a game is like a story in a porn movie. It's expected to be there, but it's not that important.” still holds true. To me it’s obvious that people raving about how good the story is in a game simply don’t read books.