When you want to separate out art from the architectural equation, the easiest route is usually to divide architecture from construction–one is the aesthetic practice, the other the practical art.

How might this relate to games? Well, it seems to me that the issue has always been that we don’t talk about games in very interesting aesthetic terms most of the time. Fun factors and eye-popping graphics don’t really connect very well to rhetorics of art concerned with, as I mentioned, truth and beauty. But to Nick’s original point, I do think that games and computer software are concerned with with deeply human and philosophical concerns. The history of the medium was built by people that worked from fundamental concerns and the representation of these ideas, whether they considered themselves artists or not.

Maybe what games needs is the architecture/construction disjunction so we can separate the ideas from the material practice? I sense a little of this in our endless fascination with “game designers” over all those other folks who mere “program.”

– David

Of course in my opinion that’s largely because the status of something as art vs. non-art isn’t inherently interesting, without some reason you would want to determine the status in the first place.

1. Artistic practice is distinct from other practices, such as design practice, engineering practice, the practice of developing entertainment, etc.
2. Game development is much more like one of these other practices than it is like artistic practice.
3. Game development might be called artistic practice, but is not best understood as artistic practice because there is a better fit elsewhere.

1. Artistic practice is distinct from other practices because there are one or more essential principles behind it or one or more essential aspects of its approach.
2. Game development does not have at least one of these principles or aspects.
3. Game development is missing something at the core of artistic practice and therefore can’t be well-understood as artistic practice.

Scientists are artists; engineers are artists; game designers are artists; any who create a workable model from an idea without necessarily having the goal of aesthetics in mind but rather a concept that unravels itself into a story, are artists.

The caveman who invented the wheel was looking for something that would make transport easier. The wheel is a perfect, pleasing circle. Maybe a meeting of the minds would add that awareness to the game creator’s toolbelt.

Does this by definition make games art? Possibly. Jenkins proposes them as ‘a new, lively art’, primarily as a tool for defense against prejudice, as Crawford alludes to. As previous comments mentioned, it probably depends on the game and your definition of art; if you think ‘London Calling’ by The Clash is art, then why not GTA IV? Like all art, games are of variable quality and their status as ‘art’ is negotiable, what is not is that they are the result of artistic endeavor.

My personal opinion, formed through teaching within games in an arts university, is to suggest that games are more relevant and creative, and yes even artistic, than the constant recycling of poor Rothko imitations and continually tedious conceptual nonsense churned out by many ‘fine art’ students. And that, perhaps by default, their very place within an arts institution is already assuring their acceptance as a popular art form.

As for my opinion on the “can games be art” debate, I posted about it about a month ago.

Perhaps this isn’t the connection between games and art that we were hoping for, but …