3 thoughts on “Videogames are Art”

1. Interesting point. I’m not sure if videogames themselves are art, but certainly some technologies invented for gaming can be used as means to create artworks. I don’t remember the name of the artwork/artist, yet a few years back in a contemporary art gallery in London, I saw an artwork created through the use of advanced 3D graphics that are originally invented and used for first-person shooter games such as Doom/Quake.

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2. Yes, I was thinking along the lines that Ebert likely thought this clip was worth mentioning because of the cinematic assumptions underlying the argument. Iteration, do-overs, watching the consequences of your actions, and exploring the rules are all part of the pleasure of gaming, and those pleasures don’t have to be cinematic (as any text-adventure fan will tell you).

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3. A good canned version, although the implication that videogames become more valid as art as they become more movie-like makes my hackles rise; I have seen many, many games that have been made *worse* as art because its creators were trying to make a movie rather than a game.
   (You see a similar tendency in early movies, which often aren’t sure whether they’re meant to be theatre or still photography. Actors with bug-out eyes and great big gestures so that the people in the cheap seats can see; directors arranging shots as if they were sentimental photo-portraits.)

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