ssj12: 

"I believe that gaming needs to be pushed towards making things as realistic and immersive. Thats why I hate that they banned ManHunt 2. It was pretty realistic for the tech it was released on. Hopefully rockstar puts it on PC.

I'm saying the Wii is destroying the consept of immersive gameplay."

You just contradicted yourself again,

I Kinda understand the point your tryna say but I think you've gone the wrong way about it.

oh and how cant you see that okami isnt art Bodhesatva? when is it art to you? you gotta remember games are also meant to be playable, Little Big Planet also looks like art to me. its not like all the games are the same, there so many forms of styles. you cant ignore wind waker or No more heroes. i just cant see when you think its art, looks like gaming will never be art the way you see it.

I disagree with this thread on many levels but I'll only attack one point:

Some games are art. Team ICO's games are a perfect example. As was Half-Life. And I expect Bioshock to follow in their footsteps. Hell, even Tetris could be argued as art in some form or another.

What do these games have in common? Immersive, complex, and engaging gameplay. It doesn't matter if it's on the Wii, the PS3, or an old damned Commodore 64. As long as there are developers out there attempting to challenge the way the world views video games and how you interact with those games, there will be art in this industry.

When it comes to art, story often doesn't matter. Neither does style. In fact, the only damned thing that matters in art is user/viewer/reader reaction. Without it, nothing is challenged. The greatest painting in the universe wouldn't matter for dick if no one ever saw it, touched it, or thought long and hard about it. People who claim one thing is art but not another are usually shallow, pretentious, and terribly boring. And this is coming from a professional illustrator who spent most of his formative years studying various forms of art and applying the principles used in his own art. Art can be drawn from anything. Art IS everything. The visceral feel is what matters; not style, story, or canvas.

Bodhesatva, i live in the same world as you are in (lets call it the steam-world). well im also a 'pro' (small tournaments only, might be going to something bigger very soon). i agree with you on almost every point, so dont think im flaming you. just dont agree on the art thingy.

 Well said ... so that pretty much sums up to: The PS3 doesn't need to win this gen

What I meant was that no one needs to win anything for art to progress in this industry. Someone will pick up the slack and move on with great games, whether *you* think they are great or not. Someone will enjoy them.

And frankly, that's what art is all about. The end consumer. It may not be you in every case, but it all works out in the end.

As an avid Art History buff, I very much disagree with a lot of this. Just as you probably have some fairly nasty things to say, I'll avoid any serious flames, but I will make one point:

I do agree that art is extremely hard to define, but I do believe that reasonable people can reasonably agree. In fact, everything follows this: you can't prove I exist, as it's theoretically possible that a computer sitting in a very, very windy room happens to be turning on and having the buttons pressed by gusts of wind in the precise order necessary to open up and type this post. That's possible... but reasonable people can reasonably agree that's unlikely. Similarly, when almost all serious art critics agree that something is one of the most important works of art of all time, or that something is utter garbage, that general consensus of reasonable and educated people generally means something. Not always, but usually.

But this is a minor difference: I do think that art has some concrete form, but I also agree that form isn't absolute. In other words, I certainly wouldn't subscribe to your particular form of Dadaism, but I also wouldn't insist that art could be defined by a single blurb in a dictionary.

No one has to agree with me on this one. It's all up to the individual. In general, do "art critics" (you'll have to excuse my distate for that phrase) agree on the importance of one artist or another? Absolutely. Are they wrong? No. It's easy to point out whether an artist, over the course of time, heavily influenced others who followed. But that doesn't mean that it's "quality art". My point is that there's no such thing. Everything is on a personal level. I strongly dislike Picasso but I appreciate the fact that he changed the art world for 50+ years.

And you have to remember one constant throughout art history: with few exceptions, "general art" (meaning many of the people we now adore) were considered absolute crap during their own time. The impressionists are just one example of this. They (Degas, Monet, Manet, etc. etc.) formed together because they were the laughing stock of the Paris community and then proceeded to create some of the "greatest art" of their generation. Of course, this "greatest art" was only identified as such 50 years later.

I think we can both agree that taste is completely relative. BTW, I didn't point out the names of impressionists for you, Bothevesda. I did it so that others that don't know art history might know WTF I'm talking about. I don't want to come off like an arrogant prick. You spark good debates. :D

 I agree...

and then I would like to ad a reason why I think PS3 most lose: 600 USD.

That price alone would pull the whole game industry in an elite ghetto.

Not completely, but largely. I think a good example would be the human form; throughout history, what has been deemed "attractive" has changed in many  ways. Obesity was considered attractive, then near-anorexia. Lighter skin, darker skin, long hair, short hair, and so forth.

But a few things DO remain constant. It's been shown that in basically every culture since anthropologists began tracking such things, men with a shoulder-to-waist ratio of about 1.5 are considered the most attractive; for women, a waist-to-hip ratio of about .7 is considered attractive. Keep in mind that this is very precise -- not .8 or .6, and it's EVERY culture. 

What this suggests, to me, is that there are some things about taste that change over time, and some things that are programmed into our genes. In the same way, I think much of our taste in art may fluxuate, but there are some things that have remained constant.

The easiest examples: almost all art that's considered highly significant had a complex philosphical, intellectual, emotional, or thematic intention. Another simple thing: it's interesting to note that almost EVERYTHING considered "high art" -- be it modern painting, classical painting, sculpture, opera, or great cinema -- are almost universally loathed by children and teenagers. If they hated old art but loved modern, maybe you could argue that this is a consequence of older people "not being with the times," but the uniformity of the disinterest across all genres and time periods suggests that there are some common trends across all art forms and historical periods. I'm not even going to go into what I think those trends ARE, because it's obviously extremely complex, I'm just saying they apparently exist.