Saturday 8 November 2008

Are video games Art?

Video games are Art as Cinema is an Art, no one can't deny it. Video games have it own language as many other arts, and it's necessary to know and study this language to analyse how the art of the games works.

Games are also an industry, as many other arts, that means that the money can influence in the creation of the game. But this have occurred in all the arts, painting, sculpture, architecture, music, comic or cinema. The comparison with cinema is unavoidable. Both are new arts focused on entertainment. At the beginning, cinema was not considered an art, like video games, was something only to entertain. Now, everybody talks about cinema as an art. We can see the art language in every single film, even in the worst ones. However we don't say that all films are artistic, there are bad films made without any sense or intention to create art. That occurs also in video games, and even more, because many developers are not interested or don't know how to use the video game art language.

How to identify a game with art values? When you are playing, you know it, you feel it. It happens the same with a film. But to develop this internal antenna you have to play many games or see many films. You start to analyse the gameplay and the puzzles as a movie critic analyse the shots or the sequences. Mario Galaxy is the last artistic game that I have played. It's a masterpiece of video game development and it will be remembered in the future as one of the greatest work of art in video games.




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