| Vinther1991 said: No. Video games have some unique benefits over other art forms - essentially everything the film medium has in terms of audio/visual experiences + the element of interactivety. This does allow very immersive experiences. However, the drawbacks of the medium are too big to ignore. -Games usually require a lot of people to make, and hence rarely represent a strong vision by a singular artist (or a very small handful of artists). -Video games have a preservation problem, as they depend on hardware, that can become outdated. There are ways to get around this for sure, with emulation, but sometimes the hardware (form factor / controller) is part of the experience. -While the interactivity on paper opens up so many new options for art, it just hasn't been used well enough (yet) to provide new artistic experiences. Video games often just involve different ways to kill monsters/enemies for 50 hours, and while some of these games are still art (slaying monsters can also be art), the artistic differentiation between the games don't come from the gameplay, but rather audio/visuals/storytelling which other media already master. Quite often the gameplay mechanics just end up making the product less of a work of art and more a sport, more focused on providing a challenge, than exploring emotions and the human condition. Compared to other art forms, video games are just massively behind on this. There are of cause many games that do explore new artistic direction. To name a few, Nights: Into Dreams, Tempest 2000, Rez, Florence, Mirror's Edge, Inside, What Remains of Edith Finch, The Stanley Parable, Journey, Papers Please, Her Story, Braid etc. But they are usually drowning in games that do more of less the same things that hundreds of other games already do. |
Concerning your last point, I don't think it is fair to say that video games are not the best medium because there is a lot of uninspired copy paste gameplay going on. Sure, a lot of video games feel creatively bankrupt. But there are books like 50 shades of gray becoming an absolute sales phenomenon. And there is a sea of romance novels that are pretty much the same. I would argue the ratio between good books recognition (and sales) to pulp fiction books recognition (and sales) is about the same as good video games recognition (and sales) to bad video games recognition (and sales).
I hope by the way, that video games would be much more creative in how they handle interactivity.
Concerning your second point, one could even argue that the fleeting nature of video games makes them more beautiful and artistically interesting.
